[Wolfeymole]

The cat may find its self unlucky if it finds my boot up its arse but thank God I don't live in America.

However on the flip side I possess two black cats and a black dog thus....

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thats a beautiful picture, what kind of dog is that? he/she is very pretty

[BHowett]

thats a beautiful picture, what kind of dog is that? he/she is very pretty

[DonnaB]

Looks like part setter, part lab. Very pretty dog Wolfie.

I have 3 black cats. One is a Tuxedo. Had 2 others that I had rescued as kittens though I got lucky and found them a home with a lady who works for a Funeral Home. She wears black to work, wanted a cat, though didn't want any cat hair to show on her works clothes.

Edited by DonnaB, 17 July 2013 - 02:22 PM.

[BHowett]

well did you know.... I have 4 cats (1 blk), 1 chocolate lab, and 20 various fish (Oscars and angel, are my favorite). I'm quite the animal lover, and donate plus work with a couple local rescue groups.

[DonnaB]

Aww. 4 kitties. I have 12 presently. 6 are mine, 6 are fosters. 1 is named Oscar (young girl I trapped him for as a kitten decided she didn't want him after she found out he was not a she. Didn't have the heart to release him.) Unfortunately, he has a chronic illness and he isn't adoptable unless I find that special person who will take him in. I have 3 others that I am trying to modify their behavior to make them adoptable.

Had 2 clown fish but the neighbor's educably handicapped kid sneaked into my house an dumped a full can of fish food into the 50gal tank and trashed the environment. :tears: Couldn't afford to start over. Sold the tank, stand, pumps, lights, etc.

No dogs, but if I did, it would definitely be a lab or a setter. Not to keen on the little ankle biters.

[Wolfeymole]

Thanks guys, she is a Border Collie but she drove the wife and I nuts when she was a pup by chewing the cushion flooring in the kitchen.

The cats are toms.

[BHowett]

did you know......

The 25 Worst Moments In American History

1804: Aaron Burr kills one of the greatest figures in American history, Alexander Hamilton, in a duel.

1814: British forces burn down the White House during the War of 1812.

1838: The Trail of Tears. 4000 Cherokees die during a forced relocation to the West.

1857: The Dred Scott Decision. The Supreme Court essentially rules that black people are nothing more than property like a chair or couch.

1861: The bombardment of Fort Sumter was the beginning engagement of the Civil War.

1862: The battle of Antietam was the single bloodiest day in American history with 25,000 soldiers killed, wounded, or missing.

1865: Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. One of our greatest Presidents, if not our greatest President, was murdered soon after the beginning of his second term.

1900: A hurricane strikes Galveston, Texas killing 6000 in the worst disaster in American history.

1917: The Zimmerman Telegraph. Germany's Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann sends a telegram to Mexico encouraging them to attack the United States. The British intercepted the telegram and sent it to the United States where it led to America's entry into WW1.

1918: The influenza pandemic begins at Fort Riley, Kansas. By the time it was over, 25% of the US population would become sick and by some estimates, well over half a million Americans died as result.

1929: A massive drop in value of the stock market helped trigger the Great Depression which lasted until the increased economic activity spurred by WW2 got us going back in the right direction.

1941: Pearl Harbor. "A date which will live in infamy" indeed.

1942: The US government came to the conclusion that interning Japanese-American citizens was the best of a number of bad options . Roughly a hundred thousand Japanese-Americans ended up in camps.

1949: The Soviet Union tests an atomic bomb. For the next 50 years, Americans fear the Cold War will end in a nuclear holocaust.

1950: As American and Rok forces appear poised to finish off the Norks and reunite Korea, a Chinese offensive caught them completely by surprise and drove them back, nearly into the sea before they regrouped, pushed back, and managed to fight them to a stalemate.

1961: The Bay of Pigs invasion. Kennedy's decision to go forward with the invasion and then deny them air support doomed the entire enterprise to failure. Today, 44 years later, Fidel Castro, a diehard enemy of the United States, is still in power.

1963: In an event that scarred the American psyche and produced countless conspiracy theories, John F. Kennedy is assassinated.

1968: The Tet Offensive was a crushing defeat for North Vietnamese forces but was incorrectly portrayed as a huge victory for them by the American media. This was a key event in destroying the American public's support for the war.

1968: America's greatest civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, is assassinated.

1973: The Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision leads to the legalization of abortion nation wide and the deaths of countless millions of innocent children.

1974: Richard Nixon resigns after being disgraced by Watergate, a scandal which shook American faith in the government.

1975: After the Democrats in Congress cut off aid and promised air support, South Vietnam was doomed. When Saigon actually fell, that symbolized what a disaster the Vietnam War turned out to be.

1977: Jimmy Carter hands over control of the Panama Canal to Panama mainly because they asked for it.

1995: Oklahoma City Bombing. 168 people die as the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building is destroyed by domestic terrorists.

2001: 9/11. Terrorist madmen attack the Twin Towers and Pentagon, kill nearly 3000 Americans, and set off a war on terrorism.

==========================================================

The 25 Greatest Moments In American History

1776: The Declaration of Independence is signed. Americans officially begin their fight for freedom.

1776: Washington's surprise strike and victory at Trenton increases morale, heartens his troops, and provides enough of a recruiting boost to keep his army from melting away in the Spring, which would have meant an end to the war.

1781: Washington's victory at Yorktown, with the help of the French, seals the victory for America over the Brits.

1789: The Constitution is ratified.

1791: The Bill of Rights is ratified.

1803: The Louisiana Purchase: Roughly 1/5 of modern day America was purchased by Thomas Jefferson from Napoleon for about 15 million dollars.

1805: The members of the Lewis and Clark expedition become the first Americans to reach the Pacific ocean.

1814: Andrew Jackson defeats the British forces at the Battle of New Orleans in a fight that took place after the war had already ended. Had the British controlled New Orleans, which was a vital American port at the time, they might have wrung more concessions out of America or even taken a large swath of what is today American territory for Canada.

1836: Sam Houston and a group of Texans, outnumbered 2 to 1 by the Mexican Army, got revenge for the Alamo in the Battle of San Jacinto. Their victory and the capture soon after of Santa Anna secured the freedom of Texas and cleared the way for them to eventually join the United States.

1846: The Oregon Treaty, made with Britain, officially brings Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming into the US.

1848: After being defeated in the Mexican-American war , Mexico was forced to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which granted America control of "Texas as well as California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming" in return for about $18 million dollars.

1863: Abraham Lincoln frees the slaves in the South, technically at least, with the Emancipation Proclamation.

1864: Sherman's victory in Atlanta not only helped hasten the end of the war, it likely was the key factor that led to Abraham Lincoln defeating George McClellan in the November elections. Had McClellan won, he made it clear that he intended to cut and run rather than press on to victory.

1898: America crushes the Spanish fleet in the Philippines, which cemented our position as a world power.

1903: The Wright Brothers are the "first in flight."

1908: The Model-T Ford, the first car cheap enough for the general public to afford, becomes available.

1914: The 48 mile long Panama Canal is completed.

1918: WW1 ends in victory for the Allied forces after the Germans surrender.

1920: For the first time, American women are allowed to vote.

1945: WW2 ends in victory for the Allied forces after the Japanese surrender.

1947: America helps rebuild Europe after WW2 with the Marshall Plan.

1950 : In what was perhaps the most brilliant military maneuver in American history, Douglas MacArthur lands behind the North Korean lines at Inchon. The subsequent strikes against the Norks broke their army and only the entry of the Chinese into the war kept Korea from being reunited.

1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

1969: Neil Armstrong is the first man to walk on the moon -- An amazing feat that showcased American ingenuity and technology.

1989: The Berlin Wall came tumbling down which symbolized the break-up of the Soviet Union and the victory of the United States in the Cold War.



I found this here and in my opinion its pretty close, but I haven't looked up all of them.

[T9RKELL]

Did you know...

The First Mechanical Gear in a Living Creature


A scanning electron micrograph image of the gears. Credit: Malcolm Burrows

With two diminutive legs locked into a leap-ready position, the tiny jumper bends its body taut like an archer drawing a bow. At the top of its legs, a minuscule pair of gears engage—their strange, shark-fin teeth interlocking cleanly like a zipper. And then, faster than you can blink, think, or see with the naked eye, the entire thing is gone. In 2 milliseconds it has bulleted skyward, accelerating at nearly 400 g's—a rate more than 20 times what a human body can withstand. At top speed the jumper breaks 8 mph—quite a feat considering its body is less than one-tenth of an inch long.

This miniature marvel is an adolescent issus, a kind of planthopper insect and one of the fastest accelerators in the animal kingdom. As a duo of researchers in the U.K. report today in the journal Science, the issus also the first living creature ever discovered to sport a functioning gear. "Jumping is one of the most rapid and powerful things an animal can do," says Malcolm Burrows, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge and the lead author of the paper, "and that leads to all sorts of crazy specializations."

The researchers believe that the issus—which lives chiefly on European climbing ivy—evolved its acrobatic prowess because it needs to flee dangerous situations. Although they're not exactly sure if the rapid jump evolved to escape hungry birds, parasitizing wasps, or the careless mouths of large grazing animals, "there's been enormous evolutionary pressure to become faster and faster, and jump further and further away," Burrows says. But gaining this high acceleration has put incredible demands on the reaction time of insect's body parts, and that's where the gears—which "you can imagine being at the top of the thigh bone in a human," Burrows says—come in.

"As the legs unfurl to power the jump," Burrows says, "both have to move at exactly the same time. If they didn't, the animal would start to spiral out of control." Larger animals, whether kangaroos or NBA players, rely on their nervous system to keep their legs in sync when pushing off to jump—using a constant loop of adjustment and feedback. But for the issus, their legs outpace their nervous system. By the time the insect has sent a signal from its legs to its brain and back again, roughly 5 or 6 milliseconds, the launch has long since happened. Instead, the gears, which engage before the jump, let the issus lock its legs together—synchronizing their movements to a precision of 1/300,000 of a second.

The gears themselves are an oddity. With gear teeth shaped like cresting waves, they look nothing like what you'd find in your car or in a fancy watch. (The style that you're most likely familiar with is called an involute gear, and it was designed by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in the 18th century.) There could be two reasons for this. Through a mathematical oddity, there is a limitless number of ways to design intermeshing gears. So, either nature evolved one solution at random, or, as Gregory Sutton, coauthor of the paper and insect researcher at the University of Bristol, suspects, the shape of the issus's gear is particularly apt for the job it does. It's built for "high precision and speed in one direction," he says. "It's a prototype for a new type of gear."

Another odd thing about this discovery is that although there are many jumping insects like the issus—including ones that are even faster and better jumpers—the issus is apparently the only one with natural gears. Most other bugs synchronize the quick jolt of their leaping legs through friction, using bumpy or grippy surfaces to press the top of their legs together, says Duke University biomechanics expert Steve Vogel, who was not involved in this study. Like gears, this ensures the legs move at the same rate, but without requiring a complicated interlocking mechanism. "There are a lot of friction pads around, and they accomplish pretty much of the same thing," he says. "So I wonder what extra capacity these gears confer. They're rather specialized, and there are lots of other jumpers that don't have them, so there must be some kind of advantage."

Even stranger is that the issus doesn't keep these gears throughout its life cycle. As the adolescent insect grows, it molts half a dozen times, upgrading its exoskeleton (gears included) for larger and larger versions. But after its final molt into adulthood—poof, the gears are gone. The adult syncs its legs by friction like all the other planthoppers. "I'm gobsmacked," says Sutton. "We have a hypothesis as to why this is the case, but we can't tell you for sure."

Their idea: If one of the gear teeth were to slip and break in an adult (the researchers observed this in adolescent bugs), its jumping ability would be hindered forever. With no more molts, it would have no chance to grow more gears. And with every bound, "the whole system might slip, accelerating damage to the rest of the gear teeth," Sutton says. "Just like if your car has a gear train missing a tooth. Every time you get to that missing tooth, the gear train jerks."






Source: Popular Mechanics

[DonnaB]

Did you know that Black Cats are healthier and live longer than most other cats?

See here

[BHowett]

my wife's mother had 3 black cats, and all of them lived over 23 years.

[kungfu]

cool~

[DonnaB]

Did you know that Tuxedo cats are 200% smarter than other breeds and varieties of cats? It is said that other felines benefit from their intelligence in a multi cat household.

More facts about Tuxedo cats

My tuxedo is named Sir Felix. He is the first to welcome a new foster into my kitty cat crew and shows them the ropes. He will follow the cat/kitten around the house until the new foster learns the rules of the household.

[BHowett]

I a little skeptical of this fact .....

9. Other Amazing Facts About Tuxedo Cats
Tuxedo cats can, in an emergency, drive a car.
When a full moon occurs on the vernal or diurnal equinox, TCs can become invisible.

[DonnaB]

Yeah......... I was a bit skeptical myself, so I did a little research on the internet. Now, we all know that you can't put anything on the internet that isn't true, right?

[zep516]

Did You Know Old MacDonald Was a Really bad speller




GEICO Spelling Bee Commercial - Did You Know Old MacDonald Was a Really Bad Speller