USA Geography

You want to start an argument between New Yorkers and New Jerseyans, bring up this bone of contention. Even though the US Geological Survey has placed Liberty Island in New York's 8th Congressional District, the island actually resides in New Jersey's waters, and is much closer to Jersey's mainland than New York's.
The Mississippi River is the longest in the US at 2348 miles. The Missouri River is 2,341 miles.
The Aleutian Islands in Alaska cross over the 180th meridian, which means that the islands on the far side of the line are technically in the farthest eastern longitudes of the world an the easternmost point of North America. The islands on this side of the line also make Alaska our westernmost state as well.
The Florida Keys are a picturesque haven for tourists who flock to the southernmost geographical marker in Key West, but it is just the southernmost continental point. Hawaii, in fact, reaches down nearly to the 21st latitude, only 1,465 miles from the equator.

According to a 2016 census estimate, Wyoming has the fewest residents, with just below 586,000, ranking it No. 50 in state populations. Vermont comes after that with about 625,000, while Alaska is ahead at 48th, having nearly 742,000 residents.

Mobile Phone Tip

Hide a folded bill behind your phone case so you have some emergency cash if you forget your wallet or purse. In the old days, my sisters used to pin a bill to their bra, in case someone ran out of gas or had a flat tire.

Mobile Phone Facts

Most mobile phone users check their phones up to 63 times daily.
Americans spend an average screen time of 5.4 hours on their mobile phones daily.
Currently, there are 272.6 million smartphone users in America.
13% of Millennials spend over 12 hours on their phones daily.
Baby Boomers spend 5 hours using their phones. 

Mosquitoes are Killers

The mosquito emerged 190 million years ago. During 2018 mosquitoes killed 850,000 people, but the annual average is around 2 million. Sharks, by contrast, killed 10.

There are 110 trillion mosquitoes stalking the world at this time (with only a few places, like Antarctica, the Seychelles and a few French Polynesian islands outside the range). These insects harbor at least 15 lethal diseases. The most deadly are malaria and yellow fever, but mosquitoes also transmit other lethal viruses, like West Nile and Zika, worms, and parasites.

Mosquitoes on average kill more humans than any other animal, including man himself. The annual average number of deaths worldwide caused by:
    Mosquitoes: 2 million
    Humans: 475,000
    Snakes: 50,000

Google Lens

Google Assistant has an option called "Google Lens" which can recognize almost any flower, plant, insect, animal, logos, landmarks, etc. that you point it at. It can also translate text into other languages.

Open the Google Assistant and tap the camera icon to the left of the four colored dots at the bottom. This will open Google Lens, which is an AI able to recognize almost anything you point the camera at. You can even load pictures you have already taken by tapping the picture icon in the top right corner.


The free app is available to download for iPhone and Android. Great for getting the names of flowers and plants in your yard that you forgot the name of.

Coffee Bag Holes

The little holes in coffee bags are there to release carbon dioxide. After roasting, coffee beans can release carbon dioxide for two weeks and without the one-way hole the bag would swell up and burst.

CDC Covid Tracker

Here is an interesting site from the CDC with various statistics by state. Interesting. LINK

History of the Hawaiian Shirt

During 1916, Hawaiian records outsold all other genres. During the Great Depression, Americans added another piece of Hawaiian culture: the aloha shirt. The aloha shirt first appeared in Hawaii in the 1920s or ’30s, probably when local Japanese women adapted kimono fabric for use in men’s shirting. The shirts achieved some popularity among tourists to Hawaii and found greater commercial success when they hit the mainland.

After Pearl Harbor service members returning to the mainland from the Pacific made the signature apparel more popular than ever. In the past five years, fashion magazines have been heralding a comeback, and high-end labels like Gucci are taking the aloha shirt to new heights, with prints that draw on Japanese designs favored in the garment’s early days. Meanwhile, some shirt makers from Hawaii’s old guard are still going strong.

Happy Friday

Make happiness a family trait you pass along.

It is a good habit to exhibit often, especially on a Happy Friday!

What's in a Name, Pegman

Pegman is the name of the little yellow figure in Google maps. Drag him to a location on the map and it changes to street view.

Google Maps Street View

You can travel back in time with Google Maps using Street View. You can see what a landmark looked like over the years as part of a digital timeline.

Look for the clock icon in the upper left-hand portion of many Street View images. Click on it and move the slider that pops up left and right to travel through “time” to see images of a structure in the past and in present. There are various thumbnails you can look through to see how it looked in the past.

Wordology, Altitude vs. Elevation

Altitude is used to describe a point above sea level in the air. Pilots use altitude. Elevation is a point above sea level on land.

National Monument vs. National Park

Enacted in 1906, the American Antiquities Act established the protection of "natural and cultural resources" in the United States, paving the way for national monuments and parks. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed four national monuments in that same year. The first of those was Devils Tower in Wyoming. This massive column of igneous rock attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors per year.

The first official national park is Yellowstone in Wyoming, established by President Grant in 1872. The difference between a national monument and a national park is that parks are set aside by Congress for their scenic or natural significance, while monuments can have historic or scientific significance of any kind and are created via executive order. Buildings and ruins, for instance, can be monuments, not parks.

What's in a Name, Mount Rushmore

This famous of American landmarks did not get its name from the mountain it is built on nor is it named after the man who sculpted it. In 1884, an attorney named Charles Edward Rushmore visited the Black Hills area to verify some legal titles. According to the National Parks site, Rushmore asked a local guide what the name of the mountain was. The guide replied, "We will name it now, and name it Rushmore."