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Phonograph invented, Alascattalo Day, Satan (Florida Man) demands free Toyota, the goo on your ATM
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Published Monday, November 21, 2016 @ 1:53 AM EST
Nov 21 2016

Today is Monday, November 21, the 326th day of 2016, with 40 days remaining. There are three days until Thanksgiving, 30 days until the winter solstice, 33 days until Festivus, 34 days until the start of Hanukkah, 35 days until Christmas Day, 61 days until Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, and 717 days until the November, 2018 mid-term election.

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On this date in 1877, Thomas Edison announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and reproducing sound. It was demonstrated in public for the first time on November 29, and was awarded a U.S. Patent (#200,521) on February 19, 1878. While other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edison's phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound.

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Among other things, today is also Alascattalo Day, honoring Alaskan humor and based on their mascot, the mythical Alascattalo, a fictional chimera between a moose and a walrus. According to legend, it was genetically bred by miners during the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 19th century. The alascattalo also stands for the local people's unique sense of humor, dealing with tourists who ask naive questions, and is the mascot of the annual four-minute long Alascattalo Day Parade held on this date. The asteroid 2500 Alascattalo, discovered by German astronomer Karul Reinmuth on April 2, 1926, was named after the creature. TV news story on the 2015 Alascattalo Parade.

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Florida man claiming to be Satan demands free Toyota from dealership.

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As of this writing, The KGB Quotations Database contains 41,996 entries. Check it out.

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Persons born on November 21 who said interesting things:

Beryl Bainbridge, English writer;

Jim Bishop, American journalist and author;

Marilyn French, feminist American author;

Hugh Kingsmill, British writer and journalist;

Rene Magritte, Belgian surrealist artist;

Harold Nicolson, British diplomat, writer and politician;

Arthur Quiller-Couch, Cornish writer remembered mainly for The Oxford Book Of English Verse;

Harold Ramis, American actor, director, writer, and comedian;

Isaac Bashevis Singer, Polish-born Jewish author in Yiddish, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978.;

Marlo Thomas, American actress, producer, and social activist known; and

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher.

Quote of the day:
"There are those who think that the private lives of candidates are none of our business. But when those candidates ask us for our attention as they explain their plans for how they will represent us, no one should be surprised at our interest in how they represent themselves."
-Marlo Thomas

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You'll never look at an ATM the same way again. Scientists catalogue the yucky stuff on New York City ATMs... Bacteria found on human skin. Microbes from bony fish, mollusks, chicken and baked goods. These are part of the long list of life-forms that live on the surfaces of ATM keypads in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, according to a new analysis.

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Atlantic City was one of the first American cities conceived from scratch, not built around any preëxisting industry but created solely to be a destination for its own sake. Here's how that worked out.

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