Strange but true stories have always fascinated me. Some people call them coincidences and others call them serendipitous or synchronicity, but who really knows for sure. I certainly don’t. I’ve had a few weird things happen to me over the years which gave me pause since I’m really not a believer of things supernatural or coincidental. So, I thought I’d share three such stories that I stumbled upon a few years ago in a book entitled The Book of the Bizarre and I hope you enjoy them.
According to the Detroit Free Press, in February of 2007, in the Paw Paw Township of Michigan, two brothers were killed in a head-on collision with each other. The brothers, ages 24 and 33, shared a home. The elder brother lost control of his vehicle and crossed into the path of his brother’s oncoming car. They were both pronounced dead at the scene.
” Coincidence is Gods Way of Remaining Anonymous.” Albert Einstein
This second story also concerns a double fatality, but one taken to a whole new level.
In Germany in the late 1970’s, a story hit all the newspapers, television and radio stations – a story that contained one of the most tragic examples of synchronicity to date. A man was walking along a country road at night when a car struck him from behind and killed him. One year from the day he died, the man’s twin brother went for a walk at that same spot, in memory of his departed brother. As it turned out, the driver of the car that hit and killed the first man also had a twin brother. That twin brother decided to drive along that same road, in memory of his own departed brother. He hit and killed the second twin brother, re-creating a scene that has shocked everyone who has heard the story.
” In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents.
Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.” William S. Burroughs
A man attempting to rob a convenience store in Cherry Hill, North Carolina, thwarted his own plans when he dropped the pistol he was brandishing. It hit the ground, went off, and the bullet stuck the robber in the foot.
I thought it was only right and necessary to congratulate the Jack Daniels company for their release of a new and excellent single malt, Jack Daniels American Whiskey. They’ve always had the best quality products and I’m looking forward to sipping some of this one. With that thought in mind, here are a few more interesting tidbits on whiskey to educate all of you silly wine and beer drinkers.
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Let’s start with a quote from Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw.
“I’d rather be someone’s shot of whiskey than everyone’s cup of tea.”
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Here are a few facts about the company.
Approximately 2500 barrels are produced each day.
Jack Daniels is the only distiller in the world that makes barrels for its own products.
Tennessee’s Moore County, where the Jack Daniel’s distillery is located, has been a dry county since Prohibition, so you have to go to the next county to buy a bottle.
On the first Friday of every month, pay day, all employees at Jack Daniels, get a free bottle of Jack Daniels. It’s a guarantee that no one takes that day off.
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According to Margaret Thatcher’s private diet notes, in 1979, the soon-to-be Prime Minister only allowed herself to imbibe whiskey (and soda) “on days when meat was eaten. Otherwise, no alcohol.” Meat days were Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.
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Errol Flynn
“I like my whiskey old and my women young.”
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Legend has it that the original Jack Daniels became so frustrated with his safe that he kicked it and shattered his left big toe. He got gangrene and the toe was surgically removed, followed by his foot, then his leg. He died six years later from complications from the original infection.
It’s obvious he didn’t make proper use of “the water of life”.
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Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation!
As anyone who reads this blog knows I love limericks. I love the mild ones written by kids and for kids, the medium ones for many of the limerick loving adults who shy away from many of the naughtier limericks, and occasionally I get in the mood to post something a little raunchier. My favorite limerick writer has always been Isaac Azimov but one of his close friends deserved an honorable mention today. That friend was John Ciardi who for 16 years was the poetry editor for the Saturday Review and his translation of The Divine Comedy is still considered a classic. Sadly, he passed away in 1986 but his works and love of limericks lives on. Enjoy.
I seem to be on a sports mission this week even though I’m not a devoted sports fan. Fortunately, or unfortunately I have a family member who is a professional sports analyst and as I watch him a lot of sports information and misinformation has made its way into my brain. I then decided to look for some of the more obscure and interesting facts about baseball that you may never have heard before. I think you’ll find them interesting.
Abner Doubleday
Though a U. S. Army officer, Abner Doubleday, is generally hailed as having invented baseball at Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. Games called baseball, embodying the idea of hitting a ball and running bases were mentioned in English publications as early as 1744 and later in America 14 years before the Declaration of Independence.
During the baseball rivalries between the two major leagues in the 1890’s, the Pittsburgh Nationals, taking advantage of a technicality, signed a player from another club. For that reason, the Nationals president, J. Palmer O’Neill, and his club later became known as the Pittsburgh Pirates
Hugh L. Daily
Between 1882 and 1887, Hugh L. Daily played second base, shortstop, and pitched for several major league baseball teams. As a pitcher, he won 74 games, including a no-hitter, and he registered a long-standing record of striking out 19 batters in a game. Not bad for a man with only one arm.
The first formal rules for playing baseball required the winning team to score 21 runs.
Hoyt Wilhelm
The famous knuckleball baseball pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm hit a homerun in his very first time at bat in the major leagues, and never hit another in more than 400 times at bat in a 20-year career. In his second season, he hit a triple and never had another, and two doubles and hit only one more of them. His career batting average was .088.
Ty Cobb
Ty Cobb, of the Detroit Tigers played slightly more than a score of baseball seasons in the American League. He banged out 4,191 hits and posted a lifetime batting average of .367.
To boost attendance, the St. Louis Browns of the American League signed up a midget in the 1951 season. Eddie Gaedel was 3’7″ tall and wore uniform number 1/8th. He went to bat only once, in a game against the Detroit Tigers, and walked on four pitches. Midgets are now banned by the major leagues.
Babe Ruth
For 62 years, baseball’s greatest slugger, Babe Ruth, alone held the record (nine) for pitching the most one-season shutouts in the American League. In 1978 he became the co-holder, with Ron Guidry, of the record.
Growing up I was expected to play as much sports as possible by my ever so athletic father. I completed one year of varsity basketball which I absolutely hated and two years of football which ended with my being unconscious on the sidelines after being drilled by a rather large and muscular defensive player. Baseball was always my main thing, and I began playing at seven years of age and played until I went off to college. Unfortunately for me the college I attended had no baseball team and that really pissed me off as well. I had many coaches throughout the years and was required to sit and listen to endless “pep talks” prior to our games and endless criticisms if and when we lost. There were only one or two coaches who actually took the time to create and deliver a pep talk that accomplished what they wanted. A few others believed in blatant terrorism and threats to help motivate us to a victory. Today’s post is a short story about some real coaches with real methods that showed real results.
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Coaches use all kinds of psychology to lift the spirits of their players. Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne once refused to sit with his team in the second half of a game. He sat up in the stands, which got the team so fired up they went out onto the field and wonthe game.
One of the most unusual pep talks was delivered by coach Dana X. Bible during the Indiana-Nebraska football game of 1936. Nebraska was losing, 9-0, at halftime. Coach Bible looked scornfully around the dressing room and berated the players unmercifully. “You don’t have the desire to win!” he thundered. “You don’t have the courage to fight back!” Then he said, “The first eleven players who go out that door will start the second half and the rest of you will sit on the bench.” Immediately, the fired-up team jumped to their feet trying to quickly reach the door. But Bible got there first and barred the way. “That’s not good enough,” he snarled. “You’re not ready to win.” A slugging match followed with teammates who really liked each other pushing and shoving, and then scrambling for the door. It became a free-for-all but finally, eleven players managed to squirm through. Bible immediately put those eleven on the field and they beat Indiana 14-9.
To those of you who were alive in the 1960’s, you know what a strange time it was not only for the country but for each of us individually. Free love, drugs, rock & roll, and anti-war fever made for interesting relationships and all the craziness you could possibly handle. I have to say I enjoyed the hell out of it. With that in mind I’m offering up a few limericks from the early sixties that you might find interesting. Put on your bell-bottoms and roll up a “J” and enjoy.
I have upon occasion been called a sarcastic smartass. Truth be told, I’ve been called that on many occasions by many people and I wear that mantle with pride. It probably will explain this post that concerns two of my all-time favorite people, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), two of the most famous smartasses in the world. History calls them humorists, rascals, and intellectuals but that’s just history being kind. They took biting humor and sarcasm to new levels and did it in such a way as to make people love and respect them. Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about that. Here’s a little personal information on Oscar with a collection of his quotes.
Oscar Fingal O’Flaherty Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s.
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
“Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”
Now for a little taste of Mark Twain. He was a good old down-home boy who had the ability to make politicians shiver in their boots and the rest of us to laugh at his humorous way of seeing things.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), best known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the “greatest humorist the United States has produced”. Here a a few pearls of wisdom from Mark.
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”
“A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
“Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
Back in my college days when I thought I knew everything but really didn’t, I had a professor once ask me what person living or dead would I like to sit down and have a meaningful conversation with. I can’t remember my answer but I’m sure it was stupid and meaningless because at that time I was totally clueless. If I could communicate with him now these two gentlemen would be my first and second choices. Better yet, I’d love to have them both sitting with me in a corner of a dark quiet pub sharing a bottle of brandy or bourbon and puffing on a cigar to discuss the state of the world or anything else they’d like to tell me.
I’m a bit of a history lover but that usually involves old history like the Romans, Egyptians, and the Greeks. Today I thought I’d go into the past back to 1940. That’s well before my time and I’m pretty sure there aren’t many people left who were born in 1940. I’m also sure you’ve heard many people say it was always better back in “the good old days.”, so let’s find out.
The top three radio shows of 1940 were The Adventures of Ellery Queen, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, and Fibber McGee and Molly. I wonder if they were appreciated by their audience as much as some of the TV shows are today.
1940 was also the first and only year for the production of the Mercury 8, a new model car. Also available was the Chevrolet Special Deluxe Sport Sedan, the new Ford V-8, and the Buick Super Model 51 Four-Door Sedan.
It was the year of the World’s Fair held at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in New York and was the largest world’s fair at that time.
Because of the war there were shortages of many things but one of the first new items to return to the stores was a new product, nylon stockings. They went on sale for the first time on May 15, 1940.
The 1940 college football season ended with the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers being named the national champions and Stanford in second place. The Heisman Trophy winner was Michigan halfback Tom Harmon. In the National Football League, the Chicago Bears defeated the Washington Redskins 73-0 in one of the most one-sided games in professional football history.
Here some facts and figures of 1940. The president of the United States was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the vice president was John Nance Garner. The population of the United States was 132,122,000, and the average salary for a full-time employee was $1200. per year. The minimum wage per hour was $.30.
On May 15, 1940, the first McDonald’s restaurant is opened in San Bernardino, California by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald.
On January 31, 1940, Ida M. Fuller became the first American citizen to receive a Social Security check. Her first check was for $22.54.
On January 17, 1940, Eleanor Roosevelt publicly endorsed birth control in a statement that she was not against the “planning of children”.
Now let’s get down to the important stuff. Here are the average costs for many of their everyday foodstuffs and we can only wish to have these prices back again. A loaf of bread was $.08, a pound of bacon was $.27, a dozen eggs was $.33, a gallon of milk was $.26, 1 pound of coffee was $.21, gasoline was $.11 per gallon, postage stamps were .03, the average car cost was $990.00, and a single-family home averaged just $2938.00.
I thought I’d start the weekend off with a little humor. Seeing as how there are only 106 shopping days until Christmas, you should start smiling as soon as possible in preparation.
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A farm girl brought a bull to a pasture in order that it might service the cow there. The farm boy in charge of the cow joined her and they watched the process. After a while, the farm boy turned to the farm girl and said, “That just makes me itch to do the same thing. How about it?” And the farm girl said indifferently, “Go ahead. It’s your cow.”
The nuclear war had come and gone. Earth lay devastated and nearly lifeless. In a puddle of water were two tiny bacteria. One said the other, “All over again – but this time, no brains.”
I once saw a cartoon which that showed two people staring at each other. One was a little man in a loin cloth, looking like Mahatma Gandhi. The other was a stalwart man with a full feathered headdress looking like Sitting Bull. Both are speaking simultaneously, and the caption reads: “Funny but you don’t look Indian.”
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There was an old fellow named Paul
Whose prick was exceedingly small.
When in bed with a lay
He could screw her all day
Without touching the vaginal wall.
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“Well,” said Mrs. Jones to her young daughter, “and what did you learn in Sunday School today?” “We learned,” said little Nancy, “about Moses.” “Ah,” said her mother, “and what did you learn about Moses?” Nancy said, “Well he was a general leading an army on a retreat from Egypt. The Egyptians, in hot pursuit, had the weight of tanks on their side, and Moses, taking casualties, was forced back upon the Red Sea, where he faced annihilation. Calling for air support, however, he proceeded to throw a pontoon bridge hastily across —” By this time Mr. Jones had finally managed to catch her breath and said, “Nancy! Surely that is not what they taught you about Moses.” “Well not exactly,” said Nancy, “but if I told it to you the way the teacher told it to me, you’d never believe it.”
Here’s a collection of really stupid headlines I rediscovered recently in my files. It still amazes me how much stuff I forgot I was saving for a rainy day. The more I dig around the more I seem to find. You can thank all of our many educated and skilled editors for their fine jobs in editing these gems.
Amphibious Pitcher Makes Debut
Forecasters Call for Weather on Monday
War Dims Hope for Peace
Death Causes Loneliness, Feeling of Isolation
Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
Statistics Show Teen Pregnancy Drops Off After Age 25
“Lady Jacks” Off to Hot Start in Their Conference
Utah Poison Control Center Reminds Everyone Not to Take Poison
City Unsure Why Sewers Smell
17 Remain Dead in Morgue Shooting Spree
Safety Meeting Ends in Accident
Best Man Left Bleeding After Being Hit by Flying Dildo
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