The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

Today also happens to be I Love Lucy Day ...! 

 

Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily.   

  
Rural Woman ... !

Today is - International Day of Rural Women

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Today in History

1529		Ottoman armies under Suleiman end their siege of Vienna and head back to Belgrade.
1582		The Gregorian (or New World) calendar is adopted in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal; and the preceding ten days are lost to history.
1783		Francois Pilatre de Rozier makes the first manned flight in a hot air balloon. The first flight was let out to 82 feet, but over the next few days the altitude increased up to 6,500 feet.
1813		During the land defeat of the British on the Thames River in Canada, the Indian chief Tecumseh, now a brigadier general with the British Army (War of 1812), is killed.
1863		For the second time, the Confederate submarine H L Hunley sinks during a practice dive in Charleston Harbor, this time drowning its inventor along with seven crew members.
1878		Thomas A. Edison founds the Edison Electric Light Co.
1880		Victorio, feared leader of the Minbreno Apache, is killed by Mexican troops in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico.
1892		An attempt to rob two banks in Coffeyville, Kan., ends in disaster for the Dalton gang as four of the five outlaws are killed and Emmet Dalton is seriously wounded.
1894		Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer, is arrested for betraying military secrets to Germany.
1914		Congress passes the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, which labor leader Samuel Gompers calls “labor’s charter of freedom.” The act exempts unions from anti-trust laws; strikes, picketing and boycotting become legal; corporate interlocking directorates become illegal, as does setting prices which would effect a monopoly.
1917		Mata Hari, a Paris dancer, is executed by the French after being convicted of passing military secrets to the Germans.
1924		German ZR-3 flies 5000 miles, the furthest Zeppelin flight to date.
1941		Odessa, a Russian port on the Black Sea which has been surrounded by German troops for several weeks, is evacuated by Russian troops.
1945		Vichy French Premier Pierre Laval is executed by a firing squad for his wartime collaboration with the Germans.
1950		President Harry Truman meets with General Douglas MacArthur at Wake Island to discuss U.N. progress in the Korean War.
1964		Nikita Khrushchev is replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as leader of the Soviet Union.
1966		Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale establish the Black Panther Party, an African-American revolutionary socialist political group, in the US.
1969		Rallies for The Moratorium to End the War  in Vietnam draw over 2 million demonstrators across the US, a quarter million of them in the nation’s capital.
1987		The Great Storm of 1987 strikes the UK and Europe during the night of Oct 15-16, killing over 20 people and causing widespread damage.
1989		Canadian hockey player Wayne Gretzky makes his 1,851st goal, breaking the all-time scoring record in the National Hockey League.
1990		Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the USSR, receives Nobel Peace Prize for his work in making his country more open and reducing Cold War tensions.
1997		Andy Green of the UK becomes the first person to break the sound barrier in the Earth’s atmosphere, driving the ThrustSSC supersonic car to a record 763 mph (1,228 km/h).
2003		China launches its first manned space mission, Shenzhou I.
2007		New Zealand police arrest 17 people believed to be part of a paramilitary training camp.
2008		Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 733.08 points, the second-largest percentage drop in the Dow’s history.
2011		Protests break out in countries around the globe, under the slogan “United for Global Democracy.”

We Need Young Farmers ...

We Need Young Farmers, and Colleges Can Help

A New Room Was Just Discovered at the Winchester Mystery House

It's been almost 100 years since the famously disturbed Sarah Winchester died, but we're still discovering new surprising things about her legendary Mystery House in San Jose. After Sarah was accidentally trapped in an attic room during a 1906 earthquake, she had the room boarded up because she feared that spirits caused the earthquake. Inside the room, the preservation team uncovered items that had been sitting in storage for over 100 years, including a pump organ, a Victorian couch and more. It's a perfect surprise just in time for Halloween.

The Origin Of The Phrase "Guess What Chicken Butt"

Ask a little kid "guess what?", wait for them to say "what?" then reply "chicken butt" and watch their face light up at the absurdity of what you just said, either that or they'll yell something like "you're not funny!" and storm off.
Kids are weird, which is why they're likely to repeat the phrase "guess what? chicken butt" after hearing it for the first time, spreading it through the schoolyard like a linguistic flu bug.
But, like many of the silly rhymes kids love to repeat, the origin of the reference is complicated and far from common knowledge, just like the fact that butchers used to call barrels full of chicken shoulders "butts".

(YouTube Link)

Simon Whistler discusses the origin of this strange schoolyard phrase in this Today I Found Out video, so you can school kids on where their favorite chicken butt joke came from!

Green's Dictionary of Slang online

"Green’s Dictionary of Slang is the culmination of a life’s work for Green. First published in print as a three-volume behemoth in 2010, to awards and rave reviews, it now emerges in digital form with about 30% ‘revised, augmented and generally improved’...
Green’s Dictionary of Slang Online can be searched for definitions, first uses, etymologies, parts of speech, authors, titles, usage labels, etc. As the press release puts it: ‘Those who wish to know how many words James Joyce used for sexual intercourse or Charles Dickens for drunk will find their answers. And whether any came from Yiddish.’..
There are two levels of access. The basics (headword, definition, etymology) are freely available to the public. The rest (citations, timeline, full search) are for subscribers: initially £49 ($60) a year for single users, £10 ($12.50) for students.

Additional discussion at Sentence First.

World population growth is declining

"...world history can be divided into three periods marked by distinct trends in population growth. The first period (pre-modernity) was a very long age of very slow population growth. The second period, beginning with the onset of modernity (with rising standards of living and improving health) and lasting until 1962, had an increasing rate of growth. Now that period is over, and the third part of the story has begun; the population growth rate is falling and will likely continue to fall, leading to an end of growth towards the end of this century."

Most people don't understand this.   I have presented this concept several times using the outstanding lectures of Hans Rosling.
LOTS more relevant charts at the OurWorldInData website.

One health care chart to rule them all

Life expectancy on the vertical axis vs. inflation-adjusted health expenditures on the horizontal axis, over a forty-year time period, in 24 countries.
There are of course a huge number of factors that influence longevity other than health-care expenditures (genetics, lifestyle, diet), and longevity is not a priori the best measure of quality of life.  And one can probably quibble over methodology.  But anyone who has personally experienced the U.S. health-care system will have a gut feeling that the data shown are what one would expect.
Note: "Over the period shown in the chart above violence and homicides have fallen in the US more than in other rich countries and this should have led to a narrowing of the difference to other countries and not to the increase that we see."
Lots more charts at the OurWorldinData website.

Schizophrenia

Your Boyfriend or Girlfriend Is Less Likely to Support You If You Have This Mental Health Disorder

Gay man schools Texas cult that kicked him out over same-sex relationship

Gay man schools Texas cult that kicked him out over same-sex relationship — and it’s awesome

Proving once again that plenty of 'christians' still don’t have a clue what jesus was talking about, a Dallas-area cult’s members have been publicly shamed by a gay man who was ejected from their community after revealing his sexuality to them.

Wal-Mart and Home Depot Used the Same Actors and Scripts for Their Anti-Union Propaganda Videos

Oops! Looks Like Wal-Mart and Home Depot Used the Same Actors and Scripts for Their Anti-Union Propaganda Videos

Man accused of firing rifle on boat following alleged 'mutiny' by passengers

A man from Florida Keys was arrested on Thursday after he fired a gun on his boat during an argument with the passengers, Monroe County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Becky Herrin said. Tobias Bybee, 38, of Marathon, was fishing and having drinks with four friends at sunset Thursday when they got into an argument. Bybee got his rifle, struck one of his friends in the throat with the stock of the gun and fired several shots, scaring the others, who thought Bybee was going to shoot them, Herrin said.
While they were on their way to shore, one of the passengers called 911 to report the incident. When Bybee arrived, he was met by a deputy who placed him under arrest. Herrin said Bybee told the deputy that he fired the gun because there had been a "mutiny on board the vessel."
Herrin said two guns were found on the boat. Bybee, who is a felon, faces four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, one count of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and one count of possession of a weapon by a convicted felon.

Man threatened employees at closed store with rifle for not fixing his phone

A 59-year-old Florida man was arrested on Monday morning after allegedly threatening employees of a phone store that hadn't yet opened for the day with a gun. Wayne Cannon, from Bronson, arrived at the store in Gainesville and demanded to have his cell phone fixed, according to police. He became enraged when told by employees that he'd have to wait until the store opened,
Cannon then retrieved a rifle from his car and started threatening employees and a nearby bystander, police spokesman Ben Tobias later said. When police arrived at the store, they found a single-shot shotgun in Cannon’s car in plain sight and a loaded .22-calibre revolver on the front passenger seat under some papers.
Cannon also threatened to kill the officers assigned to the call once he gets out of jail, police said. He was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill and carrying a concealed weapon (unlicensed firearm), according to Alachua County jail records. He remains at the jail on a $200,000 bond.

Random Photos

Western Contact With China Began Long Before Marco Polo

China and the West were in contact more than 1,500 years before European explorer Marco Polo arrived in China, new findings suggest. Archaeologists say inspiration for the Terracotta Warriors, found at the Tomb of the First Emperor near today's Xian, may have come from Ancient Greece.
They also say ancient Greek artisans could have been training locals there in the Third Century BC. Chinese historians recorded much earlier visits by people thought by some to have been emissaries from the Roman Empire during the Second and Third Centuries AD.

Stone Age artifacts emerging from glaciers

YouTube link.

In the past we wrote Retreating glaciers and melting ice yield treasures, about discoveries in the Alaksan Yukon, and in 2012 Artifacts from retreating glaciers showed a 4th century A.D. wool garment found in Norway.  The video embedded above, via Science Nordic, shows an additional example from Norway’s Jotunheimen range.

Two trillion galaxies in 'observable' Universe

Two trillion galaxies in 'observable' Universe: NASA

Past Climates More Important to Species’ Distribution than Modern Climate

Past Climates More Important to Species’ Distribution than Modern Climate

The legacy of paleoclimate on modern biodiversity patterns is the subject of a new study by a team of researchers that includes UMass Amherst anthropologist Jason Kamilar. Their startling finding, that past climates are more important to the structure of mammal...

Jumping spiders can hear at a distance

Jumping spiders can hear at a distance, new study proves

While jumping spiders are known to have great vision, a new Cornell study proves for the first time that spiders can hear at a distance. The discovery runs counter to standard textbook wisdom that claimed spiders could only detect nearby sounds. A study published...

Animal Pictures