hi/lo

Here are the temperature extremes for January 26th through January 30th, 2005

Wednesday(26th)
65/43

Thursday(27th)
46/40

Friday(28th)
42/37 .22"

Saturday(29th)
43/38

Sunday(30th)
40/35 .12"

hi/lo

Here are the temperature extremes for January 24th & 25th, 2005.

Monday(24th)
35/32

Tuesday(25th)
76/44

Its gonna be a while before we see temps like this again!

Just a thought

Never try to tell everything you know. It may take too short a time.

~Norman Ford

Journal

Before supper last night I spent an hour or so reading my Ben Franklin biography (which I'm very close to finishing). Proud of my newly gained knowledge of our founding father, I mentioned to my daughter that Franklin thought that the turkey was better suited to be a symbol of our new nation instead of the bald eagle. My daughter pondered that for a moment and replied, " If the turkey was our national symbol, we would have to eat bald eagle for Thanksgiving." I was delighted by the weight of her wit.

I wondered if that was part of the discourse in the Constitutional Convention?

This Date in History

1965

Winston Churchill dies


Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, dies in London at the age of 90.

Born at Blenheim Palace in 1874, Churchill joined the British Fourth Hussars upon his father's death in 1895. During the next five years, he enjoyed an illustrious military career, serving in India, the Sudan, and South Africa, and distinguishing himself several times in battle. In 1899, he resigned his commission to concentrate on his literary and political career and in 1900 was elected to Parliament as a Conservative MP from Oldham. In 1904, he joined the Liberals, serving in a number of important posts before being appointed Britain's first lord of the admiralty in 1911, where he worked to bring the British navy to a readiness for the war that he foresaw.

In 1915, in the second year of World War I, Churchill was held responsible for the disastrous Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns, and he was excluded from the war coalition government. He resigned and volunteered to command an infantry battalion in France. However, in 1917, he returned to politics as a cabinet member in the Liberal government of Lloyd George. From 1919 to 1921, he was secretary of state for war and in 1924 returned to the Conservative Party, where two years later he played a leading role in the defeat of the General Strike of 1926. Out of office from 1929 to 1939, Churchill issued unheeded warnings of the threat of Nazi and Japanese aggression.

After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Churchill was called back to his post as first lord of the admiralty and eight months later replaced the ineffectual Neville Chamberlain as prime minister of a new coalition government. In the first year of his administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, but Churchill promised his country and the world that the British people would "never surrender." He rallied the British people to a resolute resistance and expertly orchestrated Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin into an alliance that crushed the Axis.

In July 1945, 10 weeks after Germany's defeat, his Conservative government suffered a defeat against Clement Attlee's Labour Party, and Churchill resigned as prime minister. He became leader of the opposition and in 1951 was again elected prime minister. Two years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his six-volume historical study of World War II and for his political speeches; he was also knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. In 1955, he retired as prime minister but remained in Parliament until 1964, the year before his death.

Quote of the Day

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

~Anne Frank

Weather Word of the Week

BLIZZARD- Snow with winds greater than 35 mph and visibility of 1/4 mile or less that lasts for several hours.


Jeff Haby's Weather Education Site

hi/lo

Here are the temperature extremes for January 19th through January 23rd, 2005

Wednesday(19th)
61/30

Thursday(20th)
74/34

Friday(21st)
76/36

Saturday(22nd)
55*/24 *high occurred at 1:42am

Friday(23rd)
44/18

"You Say You Want a Revolution?"

(This Day in History)



1793 King Louis XVI executed
January 21

One day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention, King Louis XVI is executed by guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris.

Louis ascended to the French throne in 1774 and from the start was unsuited to deal with the severe financial problems that he had inherited from his grandfather, King Louis XV. In 1789, in a last-ditch attempt to resolve his country's financial crisis, Louis assembled the States-General, a national assembly that represented the three "estates" of the French people--the nobles, the clergy, and the commons. The States-General had not been assembled since 1614, and the third estate--the commons--used the opportunity to declare itself the National Assembly, igniting the French Revolution. On July 14, 1789, violence erupted when Parisians stormed the Bastille--a state prison where they believed ammunition was stored.

Although outwardly accepting the revolution, Louis resisted the advice of constitutional monarchists who sought to reform the monarchy in order to save it; he also permitted the reactionary plotting of his unpopular queen, Marie Antoinette. In October 1789, a mob marched on Versailles and forced the royal couple to move to Tuileries; in June 1791, opposition to the royal pair had become so fierce that the two were forced to flee to Austria. During their trip, Marie and Louis were apprehended at Varennes, France, and carried back to Paris. There, Louis was forced to accept the constitution of 1791, which reduced him to a mere figurehead.

In August 1792, the royal couple was arrested by the sans-cullottes and imprisoned, and in September the monarchy was abolished by the National Convention (which had replaced the National Assembly). In November, evidence of Louis XVI's counterrevolutionary intrigues with Austria and other foreign nations was discovered, and he was put on trial for treason by the National Convention.

The next January, Louis was convicted and condemned to death by a narrow majority. On January 21, he walked steadfastly to the guillotine and was executed. Nine months later, Marie Antoinette was convicted of treason by a tribunal, and on October 16 she followed her husband to the guillotine.



1924 Vladimir Lenin dies


Vladimir Lenin, the architect of the Bolshevik Revolution and the first leader of the Soviet Union, dies of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 54.

In the early 1890s, Lenin abandoned his law career to devote himself to Marxist study and the provocation of revolutionary activity among Russian workers. Arrested and exiled to Siberia in 1897, he later traveled to Western Europe, where in 1903 he established the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party. The Bolsheviks were a militant party of professional revolutionaries who sought to overthrow the czarist government and set up a Marxist government in its place.

In 1905, workers rebelled across Russia, but it was not until 1917, and Russia's disastrous involvement in World War I, that Lenin realized that the opportunity for Communist revolution had come. In March 1917, the Russian army garrison at Petrograd defected to the Bolshevik cause, and Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. Lenin immediately left Switzerland and crossed German enemy lines to arrive at Petrograd on April 16, 1917. Six months later, under his leadership, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, and Lenin became virtual dictator of the country. However, civil war and foreign intervention delayed complete Bolshevik control of Russia until 1920.

Lenin's government nationalized industry and distributed land, and on December 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was established. Upon Lenin's death in early 1924, his body was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum near the Moscow Kremlin. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor. Fellow revolutionary Joseph Stalin succeeded him as leader of the Soviet Union.


The History Channel

hi/lo

Here are the temperature extremes for January 17th and 18th, 2004.

Monday(17th)
43/20

Tuesday(18th)
45/22

Temperatures will warm to near 70 Thursday and Friday!

This Date in History

January 17,1949

German Bug Invades America

The first Volkswagen Beetle in the U.S. arrived from Germany. The little Volkswagen ("people's car") was a sturdy vehicle designed by Ferdinand Porsche at the request of Adolf Hitler. The car was meant to be a durable workhorse car for the common German man. After the defeat of the Nazi government in Germany, the VW Beetle remained a popular car, and its reputation for affordable reliability made it a profitable export.

hi/lo

Here are the temperatures extremes for January 14th through January 16th, 2005.

14th(Friday)
52/25

15th(Saturday)
37/23

16th(Sunday)
34/23

Looks like a nice warm-up is on the way late this week.

hi/lo

Here are the temperature extremes for January 10th through January 13th, 2005

10th (Monday)
73/50

11th (Tuesday)
60/39
*temperatures were in the 40s in the afternoon

12th (Wednesday)
71/42

13th (Thursday)
52/33

Cold weekend ahead! Highs Saturday through Monday will only be inthe 30s.(yuk!)

This Date in History

January 10, 1901

Texans Strike Oil

In the town of Beaumont, Texas, a 100-foot drilling derrick named Spindletop produced a roaring gusher of black crude oil. The oil strike took place at 10:30 a.m. on this day in 1901, coating the landscape for hundreds of feet around in sticky oil. The first major oil discovery in the United States, the Spindletop gusher marked the beginning of the American oil industry. Soon the prices of petroleum-based fuels fell, and gasoline became an increasingly practical power source. Without Spindletop, internal combustion might never have replaced steam and battery power as the automobile power plant of choice, and the American automobile industry might not have changed the face of America with such staggering speed.

Happy (not-so) New Year!!

...we've got some catching up to do!

Here are the temperature extremes for the last 3 days of December, 2004

Wednesday(29th)
65/48

Thursday(30th)
71/55

Friday(31st)
73/46

Wow! What a way to end the year.

Oh, by the way, we finished the year with 37.87" of rain. Making 2004 the 5th wettest year in Wichita Falls History!! Lord knows we needed it.

OK on to 2005...


Saturday(1st)
70/55

Sunday(2nd)
70/57

Monday(3rd)
63/28

Tuesday(4th)
46/38

Wednesday(5th)
38/22

Thursday(6th)
33/17

Friday(7th)
54/25

Saturday(8th)
56/22

Sunday(9th)
72/35