Archive for November 2022
Since yesterday’s posting was all about people and how and when they lost their virginities, I thought today I would do a short but interesting look at the history of “kissing”. It was always among my favorite things and the older I got the higher up my list of favorite things it went.
- I guess we should start with the Garden of Eden and Adam. Scripture says that God breathed the “spirit of life” into him and it might explain why many religious ceremonies include kissing.
- A Canadian anthropologist demonstrated that 97% of women shut their eyes during a kiss but only 37% of men did.
- As with many things it seems the Romans got involved with kissing early on. A husband returning from work would kiss his wife on the lips to see if she’d been drinking during the day. The Romans had three different types of kisses: abasium, the kiss on the lips; osculum, a friendly kiss on the cheek, anduavium, the full mouth and tongue. Emperor Tiberius once banned the practice of kissing after an epidemic of lip sores.
- Kissing at one point was frowned upon because it had been used as a sign of betrayal by Judas Iscariot. He identified Jesus to his enemies in the garden of Gethsemane by kissing him.
- Kissing under the mistletoe is an English tradition and started with the kissing bough, which had mistletoe at its center. When the Christmas tree replaced the kissing bough, the mistletoe was salvaged.
- How and where you kiss used to be a sign of where you stood in the social pecking order. Equals kissed each other on the cheek. The lower you ranked to another person, the lower you had to kiss him. Thus, a slave would kiss his masters’ feet, and a prisoner not even allowed to do that. They were forced to kiss the ground near the foot.
- Alice Johnson, a 23-year-old American waitress, won a car in Santa Fe, New Mexico, after kissing it for 32 hours and 20 minutes in a 1994 competition. She loosened four teeth in the process.
- An American insurance company discovered that men were less likely to have a car accident on their way to work if they were kissed before they set off.
- In Sicily, members of the Mafia have stopped kissing each other because the way they kiss was a dead giveaway to the police, and mobsters were getting arrested.
- The first film kiss was in, appropriately enough, the 1896 movie The Kiss. The participants were John C. Rice and Mae Erwin.
- My last entry will give all of you a reason to kiss a little more often. Kissing can prevent illnesses. When you absorb other people’s saliva, you also receive their enzymes, which gives you their immunities like a kind of antibiotic. Unfortunately kissing can also pass on diseases too.
“YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS; A KISS IS JUST A KISS.”
Dooley Wilson in Casablanca
What’s a day without a load of trivial and useless information. If you want to know everything about celebrity’s losing their virginities this is the place to be today. In no particular order.
Jimi Hendrix – age 12
Johnny Depp – age 13
Clint Eastwood – age 14
David Duchovny – age 14
Bruce Willis – age 14
Michael Caine age 15
Charlie Sheen age 15
Madonna age 15
Victoria Beckham – age 17
Brad Pitt age 18
Leonardo DiCaprio – age 18
Brooke Shields – age 18
Mira Sorvino – age 20
Mariah Carey – age 23
Lisa Kudrow – age 31
I LOST MINE AT AGE 14 WITH SANDRA
Today is a good a day as any to look back through history to find some strange rules, laws or customs. In the past I’ve shown some seriously strange laws still on the books in this country. Now let’s take a trip back into history look at some of their foibles because in truth some of theirs are way stranger than ours.
- It was once proposed in the Rhode Island legislature in the 1970s that there be enacted a two-dollar tax on every act of sexual intercourse.
- A law was passed in England requiring all corpses to be buried in a wool shroud, thereby extorting support for Britain’s flagging wool trade. The act was repealed 148 years later, in 1814.
- The average age of Elizabethan and Jacobean brides was about 24 and their bridegrooms around 27. The primary reason for delayed marriages was to limit births among poor people. The higher the social status, however, the younger the age at marriage.
- As in Abraham’s time, it was the custom among men in Rome, when swearing to tell the truth, to place one’s right hand on one’s testicles. The English word testimony is related to this custom.
- When a Chinese bystander ashore was killed accidentally by a cannon salvo of greeting from an English ship, during the early days of the China-Western trade, the English were forced to turn over to China the hapless gunner, who was promptly strangled.
- The Tinguian people of the Philippines have their own way of kissing. They put their lives close to each other’s face and quickly inhale.
- In 1853 Illinois passed a law that required any black entering the state and staying more than 10 days to pay a fine of $50. If he could not pay, the black could be sold into slavery for a period commensurate with the fine.
- Over the centuries, playing cards have been put to strange uses. They became the first paper currency of Canada when the French governor, in 1685, use them to pay off some war debts. In 1765, the year of the Stamp Act, when every pack of playing cards was being taxed one shilling, they were also used for class admission at the University of Pennsylvania. Napoleon even used them as a ration cards during the French Revolution.
- The town of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England, carries on the multi-century custom called the “Weighing-in Ceremony.” In early May, the town’s mayor, mayoress, deputy town mayor, deputy mayoress, town clerk, and district counselors representing wards in the town’s boundaries are weighed in order to learn if they have grown fat at the public trough.
ISN’T HISTORY ENLIGHTENING?
What ever happened to all of those “pet rocks” that everyone loved? How about those fine-looking mood rings that were around for a time. Fads come and go and just when you think you’ve heard and seen it all, another bit of Fad strangeness comes along to baffle and amaze us. You might think our recent Fads are cool and awesome, but we are just the tip of the weird iceberg. So, grab your hula hoop and read on. It’s time to look at the past where our love for Fads originated.
1920 – Raccoon Coats
1924 – Flagpole Sitting
1939 – Goldfish Swallowing
1950 – Poodle Skirts
1955 – Coonskin Caps
1959 – Phone Booth Stuffing
1960 – Tie-dyed T-shirts
1970 – Platform Shoes
1973 – Puka Shells
1974 – Streaking
1975 – CB Radios
1976 – Pet Rocks
1980 – Rubik’s Cube
1982 – Smurfs
1983 – Cabbage Patch Kids
1993 – The Macarena
There’s the proof we’ve been looking for. The Fad gene goes all the way back to early cavemen. Did you honestly think that we really invented the “pet rock?” What will be next now that the “Spinner and Fidgit” fads has run out of gas. I hope the next one is a little more interesting.
HOW MANY OTHERS DO YOU REMEMBER?
It’s Sunday which is supposed to be a day of rest. Short and sweet today with a few limericks written by kids and for kids.
😎😎😎
Consider the poor hippopotamus,
His life is unduly monotonous.
He lives half-asleep
At the edge of the deep,
And his face is as big as his bottom is.
🙄🙄🙄
There was an old man of Peru
Who dreamt he was eating a shoe.
He awoke in the night
With a terrible fright,
And found it was perfectly true.
🙃🙃🙃
A visitor from Outer Space
On arriving presented his case.
“Earthlings? Inferior!
My race? Superior!”
Tripped up and fell flat on his face.
🤪🤪🤪
An elephant never forgets,
Neither messages, shopping nor debts.
He can hold in his trunk
A whole cartload of junk,
And the little ones make super pets.
I can’t tell you how many times in my life that I’ve been assured by so-called experts that things were good and ten minutes later another so-called expert is screaming “doom and gloom”, it’s damn confusing. It’s amazes me how many experts or so-called experts exist especially when discussing sports. Let’s look into sports a little and listen to the real experts.
BASEBALL
- “If Jesus were on the field he’d be pitching inside and breaking up double plays. He’d be giving high fives to the other guys.” Tim Burke, Montréal Expos pitcher
- “They shouldn’t throw at me. I’m the father of five or six kids.” Tito Fuentes, National League infielder
- “I am a four-wheel-drive pickup type of guy. So is my wife.” Mike Greenwell, Boston Red Sox outfielder
FOOTBALL
- “Man, I want you just thinking of one word all season. One word and one word only: Super Bowl.” Bill Peterson, Florida State football coach
- “I don’t care what the tape says. I didn’t say it.” Ray Malavasi, St. Louis Rams coach
- “Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.” Joe Theismann, player/commentator
BASKETBALL
- “Left-hand, right-hand, it doesn’t matter. I’m amphibious.” Charles Shackleford, North Carolina State player
- “I have won at every level, except college and pro.” Shaquille O’Neal, former Los Angeles Laker player
- “A lot is said about defense, but at the end of the game, the team with the most points wins- the other team loses.” Isaiah Thomas
SOCCER
- “If we play like that every week, we wouldn’t be so inconsistent.” Bryan Robeson
- “I’m going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes.” Unnamed senior, University of Pittsburgh
- “What I said to them at halftime would be unprintable on the radio.” Gerry Francis
- “He’s one of those footballers whose brains are in his head.” Derek Johnstone
YOU KNOW, I THINK I’M AN EXPERT TOO!
Being a lover of trivia has always been fun and games. There’s so much information available about so many people and the majority of that information is almost never published. The past I’ve centered a lot of my trivia on celebrities and certain politicians especially former Presidents. Today I thought I would take a look at presidents’ wives and some of the information available that you’ve probably never heard of. Some of them are actually more interesting than their husbands.
- Andrew Carnegie personally paid pensions to widows of former presidents before Congress decided that the responsibility was the country’s and not a steel magnate.
- President. Ulysses S Grant’s wife was cross-eyed and wanted to correct the problem. Grant refused to let her have the operation because he liked her that way.
- Abraham Lincoln’s wife – like Lincoln himself – was born in Kentucky. During the Civil War, she was accused of being a spy for the South, for her brothers were members of the Confederate Army.
- President Calvin Coolidge did not allow his wife to supervise any details of White House life. He did it all. Even the menus and other housekeeping plans were submitted to him and not to the First Lady. She did not even buy her own clothes without Coolidge’s approval.
- When the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, received an alarming number of letters threatening her life, soon after her husband, Franklin D Roosevelt, took office as President during the depression, the Secret Service insisted that she carried a pistol in her purse.
- Martha Washington and was nearly 60 years of age when she became “Lady Washington,” as she was called during her husband’s Presidency. She did not enjoy the role. Privately, she wrote that she was “more like a state prisoner than anything else.”
- Mary Todd Lincoln was tried for insanity before a jury after her husband’s assassination. Her son Robert attempted to have her declared legally incompetent when she began suffering hallucinations and phobias, but the law required a trial before a person can be institutionalized. Mrs. Lincoln attempted suicide after she was judged insane by the court, and was taken to a sanitarium, where she received treatment. She improved to the point that another court reversed the insanity verdict in 1876.
- Pres. Andrew Johnson’s daughter, who ran the White House domestic affairs in place of her invalid mother, bought 2 Jersey cows, which she kept on the White House grounds, to assure her family of fresh milk and butter.
- Mrs. William Howard Taft also bought a cow which grazed on the White House lawn. Twice a day, milk from the cow was delivered to the White House kitchen.
- Mrs. Woodrow Wilson purchased a flock of sheep to help crop the White House lawn, and then auctioned their wool for the benefit of the Red Cross. She was proved a good businesswoman when the auction netted $100,000.
BEHIND EVERY MAN IS A WOMAN WITH A CATTLE PROD
I thought all of you would appreciate a few relatively harmless limericks mainly concerned with anatomical issues. The weekend is in sight and maybe these little ditties will help get you through until then.
There was a young lady of Kent,
Whose nose was most awfully bent.
One day, I suppose,
She followed her nose,
For no one knew which way she went.
🥰🥰🥰
There was an old man of Blackheath,
Who sat on his set of false teeth.
Said he, with a start,
“O Lord, bless my heart!
I’ve bitten myself underneath.
😜😜😜
There was an old man of Tarentum
Who gnashed his false teeth ’til he bent’em.
When they asked him the cost
Of what he had lost,
He replied, “I can’t say, for I rent’em.”
😏😏😏
A girl who weighed many an oz.
Used language I dared not pronoz.
For a fellow unkind
Pulled her chair out behind
Just to see (so he said) if she’d boz.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
These days when I talk about “rich” people it is considerably different than when I was in my twenties. Back then it was unbelievable that someone could become a millionaire. It was difficult to believe that amount of money could be earned by anyone except for the mega-rich. Today it’s almost unbelievable. If you own a large home in a nice neighborhood, have two cars, and good paying job, your net worth is probably more than a million. I couldn’t even imagine trying to guess how many millionaires are playing pro sports. It boggles the mind. As outrageous as that is, the uber rich remain in a separate class all their own. To them a millionaire is seen as a low rent bum. Let me show you what I mean.
- William Randolph Hearst once purchased a pair of Cellini saltshakers for the low, low price of $500,000.
- Henry Ford once stated to Hearst after he had been complaining about never seeming to have any money: “That’s a mistake,” replied Ford. “A man ought to have $500 million or so in cash for a rainy day.”
- Once when a reporter asked John Paul Getty if he was really worth over $1 billion, “Yes, I suppose it’s true, but $1 billion doesn’t go as far as it used to.”
- A young Nelson Rockefeller was sailing his toy boat in a pond when another boy asked, “Where’s your yacht? “Whaddaya think I am, “he replied,” a Vanderbilt?”
- When an elderly John D Rockefeller, Sr, learned that members of his family intended to give him an electric cart to ride around his estate, he told them in no uncertain terms, “I rather have the money.”
- Howard Hughs started out as a very presentable young playboy with the world at his feet. He ended up as a starving, paranoid recluse trapped in a room watching old movies.
- The oil billionaire H. L. Hunt wrote and published a book in which he proposed that citizens voting power be proportionate to the amount of taxes they paid.
- H. Ross Perot had a coral reef dynamited at his oceanfront home in Bermuda because it interfered with his boat slip.
- Armand Hammer once bought an important manuscript written by Leonardo da Vinci and renamed it the Codex Hammer.
- William K Vanderbilt once stated, “I am the richest man in the world. I am worth $194 million. I would not walk across the street to make $1 million.”
They live in a different world in a galaxy far, far away. They barely have the ability or the desire to stoop so low as to talk to someone considered a “blue collar” worker.
MONEY BREEDS ARROGANCE
I am constantly amazed as I do my research for this blog. So many facts exist that are different and sometimes strange. It seems that the stranger facts regularly turn out to be true. Here are ten interesting facts you might enjoy.
- The Puritans brought beer to America. According to Mourt’s Relation (1622), the Mayflower Pilgrims settled at Plymouth because supplies, especially beer, were running low. Beer was a dietary mainstay on long voyages because, having been boiled, it was purer than water.
- Despite being made famous by Dutch paintings and Spain’s Don Quixote, windmills originated in Persia before the 10th century.
- At -90°F, your breath will freeze in midair and fall to the ground.
- The word “deadline” originated in Civil War prisons, where lines were drawn that prisoners passed only at the risk of being shot.
- On March 15, 1985, Symbolic.com became the first registered Internet domain. Science-fiction writer William Gibson had coined the term “cyberspace” in his novel Neuromancer only the year before.
- The first film version of Frankenstein was a 15-minute silent film produced by Thomas Edison.
- Inventions that changed how we shop: the cash register (1884), the shopping cart (1936), and the scannable barcode (1952).
- Warren Buffett, legendary investor and self-made multibillionaire, filed his first income tax return at age 13, reporting revenue from a newspaper delivery job. He claimed a $35 deduction for his bicycle.
- Shakespeare coined thousands of new words, or “neologisms” in his plays and sonnets. Among these are: amaze, bedroom, excellent, fitful, majestic, radiance, and summit.
- Dolly the sheep – the first cloned mammal – was named after country singer Dolly Parton. Stockmen dubbed the sheep “Dolly “because she was cloned from a mammary cell.
How many of the ten were you aware of before reading this post? I’m just a little curious. I’ll just bet the real Dolly was so proud she was popping her buttons off. LOL
START NOVEMBER WITH A GIGGLE
everyuselessthing.com 