7-17-14

     

Tucson Weather Today

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Before a government can become a full-blown tyranny, the government must first disarm its citizens.
--Richard W. Stevens

While walking along Speedway Boulevard I saw a view that I thought might make a good picture, but it was too wide for my little camera so I snapped two shots, one of the left side and one of the right side. Then when I got home I opened my Photoshop Elements program and did a photomerge, thereby creating a panoramic picture of the entire scene.

(click photo for full size view)

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Space Station Cargo Ship Activities to Air on NASA TV

NASA Television will broadcast live the departure of an unpiloted Russian cargo spacecraft from the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday, July 21, and the launch and docking of its replacement Wednesday, July 23.

ISS Progress 55 arrived at the orbiting laboratory in April and will undock from the space station's Pirs docking compartment at 5:41 p.m. EDT on July 21. NASA TV coverage of the undocking will begin at 5:30 p.m. The cargo ship will undergo several days of engineering tests in orbit before being commanded to reenter Earth's atmosphere during which it will burn up over the Pacific Ocean.

On July 23, the ISS Progress 56 resupply ship will launch at 5:44 p.m. from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (3:44 a.m. local time on July 24), with about  5,700 pounds of food, fuel and supplies for the station's Expedition 40 crew. Launch coverage begins at 5:30 p.m. Progress 56 will make its four-orbit, six-hour trip to the space station and dock at 11:28 p.m. Docking coverage will begin at 11 p.m.

The NASA Television schedule is available at:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

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HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day in 1975, as part of a mission aimed at developing space rescue capability, the U.S. spacecraft Apollo 18 and the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 19 rendezvous and dock in space. As the hatch was opened between the two vessels, commanders Thomas P. Safford and Aleksei Leonov shook hands and exchanged gifts in celebration of the first such meeting between the two Cold War adversaries in space. Back on Earth, United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim congratulated the two superpowers for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and praised their unprecedented spirit of cooperation and peace in planning and executing the mission.

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Did You Know . . .?

Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States of America on July 9, 1962. The explosion took place 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean. It produced a yield equivalent to 1.4 megatons of TNT.

Note: I wonder how many people know about this.

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WORD FOR TODAY

secretory  [sih-KREE-tuh-ree]
adjective
1.  pertaining to secretion.
2.  performing the process of secretion.
noun
    a secretory organ, vessel, or the like.

Note: not to be mistaken for secretary, which is is a person whose work consists of supporting management, including executives, using a variety of project management, communication, or organizational skills.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Donald Edward McNichol Sutherland

(born 17 July 1935)

Donald Sutherland is a Canadian actor. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles are The Dirty Dozen, The Eagle Has Landed, M*A*S*H, Kelly's Heroes, Casanova, Don't Look Now, Klute, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, JFK, Ordinary People, Pride & Prejudice, and The Hunger Games. He is the father of actor Kiefer Sutherland.

Diahann Carroll

(born July 17, 1935)

Diahann Carroll is an American television and stage actress. She has had a long, successful career that has spanned nearly six decades. After appearing in some of the earliest major studio films to feature black casts such as Carmen Jones (1954) and Porgy and Bess (1959) and on Broadway, she starred in Julia (1968), one of the first series on American television to star a black woman in a non-stereotypical role.

David Michael Hasselhoff

(born July 17, 1952)

David Hasselhoff is an American actor. He is best known for his lead roles as Michael Knight in the popular 1980s US series Knight Rider and as L.A. County Lifeguard Mitch Buchannon in the series Baywatch.

Elizabeth Anna Halcyon "Beth" Littleford

(born July 17, 1968)

Beth Littleford is an American actress, comedienne, and television personality. She is perhaps best known for being one of the original correspondents on the popular Comedy Central satirical news series The Daily Show from 1996 to 2000; she is also known as Tripp's mother Beth Campbell from I'm in the Band and Avery's mother, Ellen Jennings in Dog with a Blog.

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"NASA spent millions of dollars inventing the ball-point pen so they could write in space. The Russians took a pencil."
--Will Chabot

NASA TV

This Is Who I Am