Archive for the ‘History’ Category
I had so much fun yesterday I thought I’d continue with more interesting but totally useless information. Enjoy.
- The worlds largest pancake was cooked in England measuring 15 meters in diameter, weighed 3 tons, and contained approximately 2 million calories.
- “Lucifer” is Latin for “light-bringer”.
- One twenty-fifth of the energy released by an incandescent light bulb is light. The rest is heat.
- A “rusticle” is a rust formation similar to an icicle. It occurs under water when wrought iron rusts, as on shipwrecks.
- One ton of iron will produce a ton and a half of rust.
- The fly of a pair of jeans is the fold of cloth over the zipper, not the zipper itself.
- Twinkies are 68% air and 32% Twinkie stuff, which means you can pack three Twinkies in the same space taken up by only one.
- Throughout it’s lifetime, an elephant goes through six sets of teeth. The elephant starves to death once the sixth set of teeth falls out.
- The Spanish exclamation “Ole!” commonly heard at bullfights and flamenco dances, comes from Allah, meaning “Praise be to God”.
- The average lifespan of an NHL hockey puck is 7 minutes. Those that don’t fly into the stands are removed because they warm up from friction and bounce on the ice. Game pucks are chilled to -10 degrees Fahrenheit for maximum performance. They are kept in a freezer in the penalty box.
BE HAPPY, IT’S ALMOST FRIDAY
Today’s a good day for miscellaneous nonsense. A few odd and weird truths that you may not have heard before.
- An average McDonald’s Big Mac bun has 178 sesame seeds.
- The “spa” dates back almost 2000 years to when Roman soldiers, marching home from battle, stopped overnight in a Belgian village that had hot mineral springs. The town name “Spa”,became a popular resting spot for Roman soldiers returning from battle.
- John Lennon was the first person to be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
- Manhattan is about half the size of Disney World.
- A caterpillar has nearly 5 to 6 times as many muscles in his body as a human.
- Domino’s has marketed a reindeer sausage pizza in Iceland.
- An average office chair moves a total of roughly 8 miles over the course of the year.
- Princess Diana appeared on the cover of People magazine more than 50 times.
- The chili and the frijole are the official vegetables of the state of New Mexico.
- Blondes typically have more individual hairs on their heads than brunettes. Redheads have the fewest of the three.
- The launch of the shuttle Discovery was once delayed after woodpeckers pecked holes in the spacecraft’s foam insulation. Decoy plastic owls, purchased at Walmart, deterred the woodpeckers and solved the problem.
- Tickets to the very first Super Bowl sold for $12 – and that was for the most expensive seat.
ENJOY HUMP DAY
Are you an avid reader? I’ve been one since a very early age and it will continue forever. One of my favorite reads is just about anything ever written by Isaac Azimov. He was a prolific writer as well as a noted intellectual. His areas of interest were many but today I’ll post a few facts he gathered concerning books since we’ve both shared a love for them. Books are great and history is even greater. How can I go wrong posting about the history of books?
- Columbus had with him on his first voyage to the New World a copy of Marco Polo’s book about his 13th century, twenty-two-year odyssey to China and back.
- Twice as many books on religion were published in England as works of fiction in 1870. Sixteen years later, novels far outnumbered religious works.
- The Library of Congress houses over 72 million pieces of research material, including over 16.5 million books and 31 million manuscripts, and costs over $150 million a year to run.
- The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels was ignored in Germany when it was published in 1848, and a Russian translation was suppressed by censors in the 1860’s. It remained a rare pamphlet until it was reprinted in 1872.
- The art of printing from wooden blocks with the characters in reverse was initiated in Buddhist monasteries in China. The oldest surviving printed book that can be reliably dated is a Buddhist text, the Diamond Sutra, made in China in 868 A.D.
- Euclid is the most successful textbook writer of all time. His book Elements dated around 300 B.C. has gone through more than 1000 editions since the invention of printing.
- General Lew Wallace’s bestseller Ben Hur was published in 1880 and was the first work of fiction to be blessed by a Pope.
- America’s first best-selling novelist was a woman, Susanna Haswell Rowson. Although it was a melodramatic work with wooden characters and a hackneyed plot, Charlotte Temple, published in 1791, appealed to popular tastes. It went through more than 200 editions.
- Icelanders read more books per capita than any other people in the world.
- To get her book published, in 1896, Fannie Farmer had to pay publishers Little, Brown and Company the printing costs for the first 3000 copies. The publisher refused to take the risk, saying that women would not buy still another collection of recipes. Ironically, her Boston Cooking School Cook Book eventually became the most popular cookbook of its time and a “gold mine” through the years for the publisher; millions of copies have been sold in dozens of editions.
THANK YOU ISAAC
Living in rural Maine has some distinct advantages. Less noise, less people, lots of wildlife and just enough of a wilderness feel to keep me happy. Along with the pluses come a number of minuses. Do you like gnats, black flies, mosquitos, wasps, bumble bees and honeybees? If you do, then pack your bags and move to Maine. We have them all and then some. Also bring with you a few gallons of bug spray because if you leave the house without spraying down, you’ll be itching and scratching all day. With that being said I still love this place. Adjusting to insect life is a chore but people have been making that adjustment for centuries. Here are a few interesting facts about some of those pests.
- There’s an old wife’s tale that claims if you’re stung by a bee, you should rub grass on the sting and breathe on the grass while you’re rubbing the bite. It will bring you lots of good luck.
- If a bee flies into your home through a window, don’t kill it and don’t panic. It has been said that the bee is a harbinger of good news.
- If bees build their nest under the eaves of your home, none of your daughters will marry.
- Hornets are another matter entirely. If you kill the first hornet in the spring, that’s unlucky, but in England killing the first one means you’re very lucky.
- If wasps decide to nest in your home, it’s a sign you’re a miserly spendthrift and you’ll come to want.
- Looking back to ancient times it’s reported that Pliny the Elder claimed that to cure a fever you should catch a wasp in your left hand.
- Most ancient peoples believed that seeing a swarm of bees meant good luck, wealth, and success, no matter what continent they and the bees inhabited.
- Seeing a swarm of bees is one thing but having them settle on the ground, means someone will die. And if by chance a swarm lands on a tree branch in your yard, you will soon die.
- If while strolling outdoors and you see a bee fly by stay away from its nest. If you leave the nest undisturbed it’s likely you will shortly receive good news.
- It is very bad luck to kill a bee but if you accidentally kill one, keep the dead bug in your purse or wallet. This will supposedly bring you wealth.
It seems that our ancestors were just a tad superstitious about damn near everything. Regardless, there’s no way I’ll be carrying a dead bee around in my wallet. I have a bad history with stinging insects, and I think they know it. They’re always waiting in the bushes for me to cut grass or work in the garden, and then WHAM. They get me every time.
THANK GOD I’M SAFE IN THE WINTER
Yesterday as I was creating my lunch, I threw in a healthy dash of soy sauce. It’s my only way of eating salt without totally violating my doctors’ orders. In my humble opinion food has very little taste without it. Try eating popcorn or corn on the cob without salt. Ridiculous!!!! Since it sends my blood pressure through the roof, I’m forced to obey but not entirely. Rather than continuing to drone on about my salt issues here are a few facts about salt (trivia wise).
- Each year, 9,000,000 tons of salt, more than 10% of all the salt produced in the world, is applied to American highways for road deicing. The cost of buying and applying the salt adds up to $200 million dollars.
- Salt helped build the Erie Canal. A tax of 12 1/2% on New York State salt, plus tolls charged for salt shipments, paid for nearly half of the $7 million dollar construction costs.
- There is a salt mine in the Polish town of Wieliczka, near Kraków, that has been in operation for nearly 1000 years.
Enough about salt, I just threw in a few tidbits for the fun of it. Let’s try something else like military history. It was in the Army that I was first forced to eat salt tablets. Talk about mixed messages. Good for me then, not so much now.
- The British and French armies in World War I did not advance more than 3 miles at any point on the western front in the whole year of 1915. Those three miles costed the French army alone nearly 1.5 million men.
- The Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II were given privileged treatment and considered to be heroes. All volunteers, they underwent rigorous training that prepared them for their suicide missions. If they refused to stay in the corps, they were shot as traitors.
- The Crusaders were able to conquer Acre, a coastal city 80 miles north of Jerusalem, in July 1191, only after 100,000 men on both sides had been killed.
- Through the six-year war of independence ranged enraged over most of the 13 colonies, George Washington’s Continental Army never consisted of more than 22,000 troops at any one time.
- On the eve of World War II, the US Army ranked, with reserves counted, 19th among the world’s armed forces. This placed the United States after Portugal but ahead of Bulgaria.
Let’s enjoy our last few weeks of summer. Things here in Maine can finally return to normal after the tourists begin leaving after Labor Day. People have been telling me that we’re in for a difficult winter. I really don’t mind all that much because I hate hot weather. I’ve made the statement many times that if “climate change” continues to make things warmer in Maine, I’ll be moving to northern Canada to live in an igloo. LOL
CHASTITY IS CURABLE IF DETECTED EARLY
I’m feeling a little silly today and I’m not entirely sure why. A good night’s sleep, some weird dreams, and a great cup of coffee. and “Ta Da”, here I am! I’ll start today with some true silliness. As I was surfing around yesterday, I stumbled upon a website called unijoke.com and it had a collection of jokes about “Little Johnny”. I’ve loved those jokes for many years, and I found one on that site that made me laugh out loud. That’s my criteria for determining funny. Here it is . . .
A teacher asks her class, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Little Johnny says “I wanna be a billionaire, going to the most expensive clubs, take the best bitch I can find with me, give her a Ferrari worth over a million bucks, an apartment in Hawaii, a mansion in Paris, a jet to travel through Europe, an Infinite Visa Card and to make love to her three times a day”. The teacher, shocked, and not knowing what to do with the bad behavior of the child, decides not to give importance to what he said and then continues the lesson. “And you, Susie? ” The teacher asks. Susie says “I wanna be Johnny’s bitch.”
Almost everyone loves Rock-and-Roll music except maybe for those Country & Western folks and the Hip-Hop idiots. I was thinking about all of the silly names’ musicians create for their bands to help them standout in the crowd. I’ll list a few oldies but goodies and I’m sure you can think of many more.
STOP CALLING ME FRANK
AFGHANISTAN BANANA STAND
BUDDY WHATSHISNAME AND THE OTHER FELLAS
THE COLOR FRED
THE NAUGAHYDE CHIHUAHUAS
QUESTION MARK AND THE MYSTERIANS
THE WELL I’M SURE I LEFT IT THERE YESTERDAY BAND
ME FIRST AND THE GIMMEE GIMEES
THE DISAPPOINTED PARENTS
SHE STOLE MY BEER
You have to admit those rockers had quite the imagination and used the hell out of it. The list of silly band names is never-ending but still fun. Here’s my final thought for today:
Why is a virginity like a balloon?
One prick and its gone!
AND SO, AM I!
I finally rolled out of bed today and headed directly for the coffee maker. I found the badly needed coffee and also a small surprise. My better-half left me a very old kid’s book filled with fun questions and answers circa 1957. Let’s start your weekend with a laugh or two.
- What dog cannot bark? Answer: The basenji. It makes sharp little cries that sound like yodeling.
- What bird can whistle with its wings? Answer: The hornbill. Its wings make a sharp whistling sound when it flies.
- What bird has no wings or tail? Answer: The Kiwi.
- How much would a 150-pound man weigh on the moon? Answer: Approximately 25 pounds.
- Where are the largest coins in the world used? Answer: On the Pacific Island of Yap. They are made of stone and measure from 2-12 feet across.
- Is it possible to step across the Mississippi River? Answer: Yes, near Lake Itasca, Minnesota.
- Is all asparagus edible? Answer: No, only the common garden variety.
- What animal picks fruit from trees with its tail? Answer: The kinkajou.
- What is a guanaco? Answer: It is a wild llama from South America.
- How much raw material would be needed to obtain one pound of radium? Answer: No less than 2,680 tons.
Thanks to my better-half and the Giant Little Golden Book – QUIZ FUN. I’m fairly certain that the kid books these days aren’t quite as informative.
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND
Over the years I spent a great deal of time roaming through graveyards in New England and elsewhere. I’ve always found them to be very quiet and calming. I also discovered that the older the tombstones the more interesting are the epithets. Here are a few you might get a kick out of.
Beneath this stone, a lump of clay,
Lies Uncle Peter Daniels,
Who too early in the month of May
Took off his winter flannels.
😵😵😵
The children of Israel wanted bread,
And the Lord sent to them manna.
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
😵😵😵
Here lies my husbands, One, Two, Three,
Dumb as men could ever be.
As for my fourth, well, praise be God,
He bides for a little longer above the sod.
Alex, Ben, and Sandy were the first three names,
And to make things tidy I’ll add his – James.
😵😵😵
Here lies the body of fat May Preston
Who’s now moved to heaven
To relieve the congestion.
T.G.I.F.F.
Let’s put an end to this week with a few cute and clean limericks. While most of us really enjoy the racier limericks there are many readers out there who enjoy a tamer version. Here we go . . .
There was an old man of Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter named Nan,
Ran away with a man,
and as for the bucket, Nantucket.
😜😜😜
The bottle of perfume that Willie sent
Was highly displeasing to Millicent.
Her thanks were so cold
They quarreled I’m told,
Through that silly scent Willie sent Millicent.
😃😃😃
A flea and a fly in a flue
Were caught, so what could they do?
Said the fly, “Let us flee.”
“Let us fly,” said the flea.
So, they flew through a flaw in the flue.
😗😗😗
There once were two cats of Kilkenny,
Each thought there was one cat too many.
So, they fought, and they fit,
And they scratched and they bit,
Till instead of two cats there weren’t any.
😂😂😂
TGIF
Unfortunately, the word “Greed” is used to describe our country by many foreigners and also from many of our own citizens. I can’t say that I disagree because in too many cases it’s absolutely true. “Money is the root of all evil” immediately comes to mind when I hear that word. It’s not something we should be proud of but “It is what it is.” I thought today I would examine the statements made by an assortment of well-off persons who are well enough known to be quoted in publications. For those of you out there who are not rich let me inform you.
- “People will swim through shit if you put a few bob in it.” Peter Sellers
- “Time is money.” Ben Franklin
- “Money isn’t everything as long as you have enough.” Malcolm Forbes
- “It isn’t enough for you to love money – it’s also necessary that money should love you”. Baron James D Rothschild
- “If I had my life to live over again, I’d be a $30 a week librarian.” Andrew Carnegie
🤑🤑🤑
- “In some ways, a millionaire just can’t win. If he spends too freely, he is criticized for being extravagant and ostentatious. If, on the other hand, he lives quietly and thriftily, the same people who would have criticized him for being profligate will call him a miser.” J. Paul Getty
- “There is always the question. You wonder if people like you for you or the inevitable disturbing question: Are they after something?” Mary Leah Johnson (heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune)
- “The best reason to read about the very rich, of course, is to be reassured that money cannot buy happiness and indeed, often seems to buy trouble.” Maureen Dowd
- “As a cousin of mine once said about money, money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.” Gertrude Stein
- “Money talks. The more money, the louder it talks.” Arnold Rothstein
One final thought, a quote from my late down-to-earth father concerning money. It’s as true today as it was fifty years ago when I first heard him say it:
“MONEY TALKS AND BULLSHIT WALKS!”
everyuselessthing.com 