Monthly Archives: November 2017

Really Feel

Fidget Spinner Classic Edition

Distracted

Catastrophe

Disturbing

Canada is getting a Real-Life Mario Kart Track!

Do you like Canada? Is that even a question? Do you like karting? Time to log on to MapleMingle.gov or get a passport, because there’s a new speedway opening next year that looks like it will let you live out your Mario Kart dreams in the real world.

Come Spring 2018, the newly constructed Niagara Speedway at Clifton Hill in Niagara Falls, Ontario will open its four-story karting track. According to DailyHive, the new track is the largest elevated karting track in North America.

For anyone who hasn’t played Mario Kart, there’s now an on-track video to show you around. Uh, spoiler alert?

 

Own Food

Hobby

WKRP in Cincinnati – “Turkeys Away”

Happy Thanksgiving!

Undocumented Immigrant

Cat playing with Rhino calf

John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917–November 22, 1963)

The assassination of John F. Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, took place on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, USA at 12:30 p.m. CST (18:30 UTC). John F. Kennedy was fatally wounded by gunshots while riding with his wife Jacqueline in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, an employee of the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza, according to the conclusions of multiple government investigations, including the ten-month investigation of the Warren Commission of 1963-4 and the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) of 1976-9. This conclusion initially met with widespread support among the American public, but polls, since the original 1966 Gallup poll, show a majority of the public hold beliefs contrary to these findings. The assassination is still the subject of widespread speculation and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories (even the HSCA, based on disputed acoustical evidence, concluded that Oswald may have had unspecified co-conspirators), though these theories have not generally been accepted by mainstream historians and no single compelling alternative theory has emerged.

Rotary BMW M3

Hippo Zippo

Squid: Coming to Life

Happy Birthday, ISS

On November 20, 1998, the first segment of the ISS, the Zarya FGB, was launched into orbit on a Russian Proton rocket, and was followed two weeks later by the first of three ‘node’ modules, Unity, launched aboard STS-88.

Wikipedia Link

RIP Angus Young

AC/DC co-founder and guitarist Malcolm Young has died after battling dementia for several years, the band announced Saturday. He was 64.

Young died at home with his family at this bedside, the band said in a statement.
Young, along with his brother Angus, founded the legendary rock band in 1975 in Australia.
 
 “Renowned for his musical prowess Malcolm was a songwriter, guitarist, performer, producer and visionary who inspired many,” the statement said. “From the outset, he knew what he wanted to achieve and, along with his younger brother, took to the world stage giving their all at every show. Nothing less would do for their fans.”

Young played rhythm guitar to Angus’ lead, and his driving riffs and mop-top hair were signatures of the band’s sound and image for decades.

RIP M-M-M-Mel Tillis

Lonnie Melvin “Mel” Tillis (August 8, 1932 – November 19, 2017)

Country Music Hall of Fame member Mel Tillis died on Sunday (Nov. 19) at the Munroe Regional Medical Center in Ocala, Florida. He was 85. The suspected cause of death is respiratory failure, according to his publicist, Don Murry Grubbs.

Despite his many distinctions as a performer, songwriter, actor and music publisher, Tillis was most identified with his stuttering, a speech impediment from childhood that he transformed into a comic bonanza.

Lonnie Melvin Tillis was born Aug. 8, 1932, in Tampa. By his account, he began stuttering when he was 3 years old, following a bout with malaria. His early attraction to music led him to learn to play guitar and violin while still a teenager. He also played drums in his high school band. While serving in the Air Force from 1951 to 1955, he played in a country band called the Westerners.

In 1956, Tillis made his first pilgrimage to Nashville, hoping to secure a recording contract. When that effort failed, he returned briefly to Florida and turned his attention to songwriting. Here success came quicker. Webb Pierce scored a No. 3 single in 1957 with “I’m Tired,” a song Tillis co-wrote with Buck Peddy and Ray Price.

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Tillis

Lincoln delivers Gettysburg Address

On November 19, 1863, at the dedication of a military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln delivers one of the most memorable speeches in American history. In just 272 words, Lincoln brilliantly and movingly reminded a war-weary public why the Union had to fight, and win, the Civil War.

The Battle of Gettysburg, fought some four months earlier, was the single bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Over the course of three days, more than 45,000 men were killed, injured, captured or went missing. The battle also proved to be the turning point of the war: General Robert E. Lee’s defeat and retreat from Gettysburg marked the last Confederate invasion of Northern territory and the beginning of the Southern army’s ultimate decline.

Charged by Pennsylvania’s governor, Andrew Curtin, to care for the Gettysburg dead, an attorney named David Wills bought 17 acres of pasture to turn into a cemetery for the more than 7,500 who fell in battle. Wills invited Edward Everett, one of the most famous orators of the day, to deliver a speech at the cemetery’s dedication. Almost as an afterthought, Wills also sent a letter to Lincoln—just two weeks before the ceremony—requesting “a few appropriate remarks” to consecrate the grounds.

At the dedication, the crowd listened for two hours to Everett before Lincoln spoke. Lincoln’s address lasted just two or three minutes. The speech reflected his redefined belief that the Civil War was not just a fight to save the Union, but a struggle for freedom and equality for all, an idea Lincoln had not championed in the years leading up to the war. This was his stirring conclusion: “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Reception of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was initially mixed, divided strictly along partisan lines. Nevertheless, the “little speech,” as he later called it, is thought by many today to be the most eloquent articulation of the democratic vision ever written.

To Do List