Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Day two began with a walk through the French Quarter to the Toulouse Docks where the steamboat Natchez was moored. My better-half has always wanted to ride the Mississippi River in an old steamship and we made that happen. We signed up for a three hour river cruise (hopefully better than Gilligan’s) that would take up south on the river through the busy port of NO. It was a brunch cruise and we had a great meal sitting on the main deck with a fantastic view of NO and the river.. It had been fully restored and was just like you would expect it to be minus the gambling tables and card cheats.
One of the m0ost interesting sights was the massive amount of damage caused by Katrina. There were huge section of docks and buildings that had been totally destroyed in the storm and had yet to be repaired or replaced.
On the upper deck we checked out the gift shop and of course the bar. Their specialty drink was the Jazz Punch which was delicious and wickedly alcoholic. I wanted to have a second one but wasn’t sure I could off the boat without injury. The views were incredible.
We made a U-turn an hour later and proceeded back north to NO which was a sight to behold from the middle of the river.
Another great day of relaxation to help us prepare for day three of the vacation. Day three was on the top of my wish list and it meant an airboat and trip into the bayou’s.
HOPING FOR LOTS OF GREAT PHOTO’S
Well, my better-half and I arrived home last night after spending 6 glorious days in the party capitol of the USA . . . New Orleans. If I disregard our god awful experiences with Jet Blue then we had a great time. It’s been a number of years since I visited NOLA but I was thrilled to see that it was the same old exciting place that I remembered. The evidence of Katrina’s visit eleven years ago has been all but erased.
I grabbed this shot from their website because mine was blurry as hell.
I booked our hotel in an off-the-beaten-path location located in the old creole section of NO on Burgundy Street, 2 blocks north of Bourbon Street. The St. Pierre hotel was once the NO Jazz Museum but has since been converted into an hotel.
It consists of a group of 150 year old creole homes joined together with small intimate courtyards and swimming pools hidden from street view. If you ever visit there you need to know this is not the Hilton or Weston style of hotel. This is an old building with 150 years of character and an 1850’s atmosphere. We loved going native for a few days and would do it again in a heartbeat.
This pool was 30 feet from our room. This is the view looking down from the balcony.
The weather was typical NO. It was 90 plus degrees all week with never less than 80% humidity. It was feel-like temperature of over 100 degrees. Even though the heat was brutal that pool made it bearable. We visited it twice a day to cool off and have a drink and meet people from all over the world who were also staying there. Just fabulous.
Another view of the courtyard from our balcony.
This posting is just the start of our trip. I’ll probably continue posting on our other activities for the next week or so. There was a lot to see and maybe I can give you a little taste of how it felt to be there.
IT WAS AN INCREDIBLE WEEK BUT WE’RE GLAD TO BE HOME.
We do a lot of trivia on this site which usually consists of total useless information about totally useless things and people. Today will be a miscellaneous mish-mash of things I’ve discovered recently. First is something called the Manner of Death statistics. It’s a list created by some group somewhere telling us all how we are dying in descending order of frequency. Enjoy!
Heart disease: 614,348
• Cancer: 591,699
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 147,101
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 136,053
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 133,103
Alzheimer’s disease: 93,541
Diabetes: 76,488
Influenza and pneumonia: 55,227
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,146
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 42,773
That’s enough to send a cold chill up anyone’s back. The perfect way to start your day. Next is a list of injury types, hospital data, and a whole lot more.
- Number of medically attended injury and poisoning episodes in the population: 39.5 million
- Episodes per 1,000 population: 126.3
- Number of visits (to physician offices, hospital outpatient and emergency departments) for injuries: 80.1 million (includes visits for adverse effects of drug, medicinal or biological substance)
- Number of emergency department visits for injuries: 43.0 million (includes visits for adverse effects of medical treatment)
- Number of discharges for fractures (all sites): 1.1 million
- Number of discharges for poisonings: 260,000
- Number of discharges for certain complications of surgical and medical care: 1.0 million
Mortality
Total number of deaths: 192,945
Deaths per 100,000 population: 60.2
Poisoning
Number of poisoning deaths: 48,545
Deaths per 100,000 population: 15.4
Traffic Deaths
Number of deaths: 33,804
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.7
Firearm Deaths
Number of deaths: 33,636
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.6
Are you feeling more secure now? Do you even want to leave the house? It appears that life in these United States is a real crap shoot. Roll the dice and hope for the best every time you leave the house.
I admit I’ve depressed myself with this posting so I’ll keep this last item short. On this day in history many people have passed on. Here are two that died on this day that I thought might interest you.
1948 Babe Ruth, Baseball legend (NY Yankees), dies in NY at 53
1977 Elvis Presley, American musician, dies at Graceland at 42. Official cause of death is cardiac arrhythmia
I THINK I’LL GO BACK TO BED
Mother Nature is normally not my friend.
We celebrated yesterday because it finally rained. Not like the dozen or so sprinkles we’ve received in recent weeks but an honest-to-god rain shower. The rain cooled things off overnight but ten minutes after the sun came out this morning the temperature zoomed back to 90 degrees.
I should be happy . . right? Not very. We need a good five or six days of rain just to get the water levels back where they belong. Early this morning at 5am both my better-half and I were awaken by the sounds of tree branches cracking. Just outside our bedroom window a rather large tree branch snapped and barely missing the house. This portion of the tree was obviously dead and we knew it was only a matter of time before it fell. I once attempted to climb the tree with a chain saw to cut it down but it was just too dangerous.
The house is just a few feet to the right of the photograph.
How it missed the house is a mystery but thank god it did. That’s the second time in the last year a tree has fallen close to the house and missed it completely. We must have a guardian angel keeping an eye on things.
Mother Nature isn’t usually this kind. I remember a time in Massachusetts that we had a storm that dropped a 100 foot tall oak tree onto our backyard and took the corner of my house with it. At the same time a giant pine tree fell on my car in the driveway and crushed it completely. I count my blessings any time she chooses to leave me alone. Today was one of those days.
MOTHER NATURE IS NOT NICE
I’ve been doing everything in my power to disassociate myself from politics during this presidential election year. I’ve been keeping my opinions to myself except for a few comments to my better-half. If the truth be told, I have little or no use for any political party at this point. I’ve morphed from being an social moderate, fiscal conservative Independent to an “Anyone But Hillary” Libertarian. Actually all of those labels are mostly BS anyway but everyone insists that everyone else have a label. If our forefathers could see us now they’d be sad, disappointed, and most certainly ashamed of what we’ve become and are still becoming.
With that thought in mind why don’t you sit back and read some of the thoughts of the men who helped create this country. Take those thoughts from our forefathers and match them up to any of the antics of either the Bushes or Clintons. If your an intelligent and thoughtful American you should be able to figure things out before pulling the lever for Hillary.
- “A government of laws, and not of men.” JOHN ADAMS 1774
- “If the government is in the hands of a few, they will tyrannize the many, if in the hands of the many, they will tyrannize over the few.” ALEXANDER HAMILTON 1787
- “A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.” THOMAS JEFFERSON 1801
- “The aggregate happiness of the society, which is best promoted by the practice of a virtuous policy, is, or ought to be, the end of all government.” GEORGE WASHINGTON 1790
Do those statement in anyway describe our current political situation? That would be a big “HELL NO”. Lets take a moment to discuss with our forefathers the matter of government corruption.
- “Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.” BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 1738
- “Few men have enough virtue to withstand the highest bidder.” GEORGE WASHINGTON 1799
- “Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.” THOMAS JEFFERSON 1821
- “Where the private interests of a member of Congress are concerned in a bill of question, he is to withdraw.” THOMAS JEFFERSON 1801
I think they’ve made my point for me. I’ll drop in one last quote from the most infamous of all politicians that perfectly describes many of out current representatives, senators, and Big Businesses.
- “I recognize no moral law in politics. Politics is a game, in which every sort of trick is permissible, and in which the rules are constantly being changed by the players to suit themselves.” ADOLF HITLER Mein Kampf 1924
I realize that my opinion means very little in the grand scheme of things but here it is anyway. Hillary Clinton is the epitome of what’s wrong with our government. Donald Trump may be brash, loud, and combative but he’s a better choice than anyone else I see. We’ve had eight years of Liberal nonsense with Obama and Hillary will be more of the same. Trump will be a breath of fresh air in the halls of Congress that currently smells a lot like a hot and humid day in an outhouse.
VOTE TRUMP!
I feel the need today to once again fill your heads with more of my useless information. These factoids were chosen at random and are in no particular order or category.
- Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair.
- The philosopher Daniel Dennett introduced the Frisbee to Britain.
- Isaac Newton invented the cat door.
- The longest length of time from invention to production was for the ballpoint pen at 58 years. The zipper took only 32 years.
- Windshield wipers, laser printers, and bullet-proof vests were invented by women.
I’m amazed at some of the facts I’ve been finding and the longer I look the crazier they seem to get. Lets continue.
- In India, 127 million people were vaccinated in a single day in 1997.
- There are nearly as many American Indians in California now as there were in the eighteenth century.
- By 2007, the cost of a coffin in Bagdad was 50-75 dollars, up from 5-10 before the Iraq war.
- In Britain, 93% of young people can master a computer game while only 38% can bake a potato.
- Jack Bauer, the lead character from the series 24, personally killed 112 people in the first five seasons of the show.
Re your eyes getting tired? Are you bored yet? No! I’ll just keep going until you’re asleep.
- There are no legal public cinema’s in Saudi Arabia.
- One in every 3400 Americans is an Elvis impersonator.
- There are approximately twenty families with the name Obama in the US, compared with more than 11,000 Clintons and 60,000 Bushes.
- In the year 1377, 35% of all English men were named John.
- There are more people named Chang in China than there are people in Germany.
That’s just about it for today but I have one more tidbit I especially liked:
“In the urban West, one of every three women has blond hair; only one in 20 is a natural blond.”
Someone has the best job ever. He spends all day checking to see if the rugs match the drapes.
I WANT THAT JOB
I am not now or ever have been considered a religious person. I’ve read as much information as I could find on almost every major religion over the years. It was my vain attempt to convince myself one way or the other that such a thing was necessary in my life. I accomplished my goal but it left me with volumes of information on religions both interesting and some not so much. Today I’ll post some strange but true religious trivia and you can do with it what you will.
- The temple of all faiths: Birla Temple in New Delhi, India, includes separate areas for worship for every known religion.
- It was not until the fourth century that the church (Christianity) began to celebrate the feast of Christmas.
- The first Bible printed in America in 1663 was a translation into the Algonkian language.
- The word “and” appears 46,277 times in the King James version of the Bible.
- Hijmar, a holy man of Benares, India, held his left arm in the same position for 12 years.
- The first book digest: Dubash Meghji, of Zanzibar., ate one page of the Koran each day for thirty years.
- Each year Shia Muslims in Ahmadabad, India, mourn the death of Imam Husain, a descendant of the prophet Mohammad, by whipping themselves with knife-tipped chains.
- In 1993, Israel’s telephone company offered a service for people to fax messages to God, to be placed in the Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall.
- Forty nuns at a convent in Stetyl, the Netherlands, have maintained a continuous prayer in their chapel for ninety-eight years.
- The people who worship a nail: The Maria Gonds of Chandra, India, pray only to a 12 inch spike.
- In 1685 a church bell from a Protestant chapel in France was whipped and burned after being charged with “inflaming the hearts of heretics”.
- Prayer stones addressed to Egyptian god Ra and sold to worshippers in Ancient Egypt had large ears engraved on them – so Ra would be sure to hear their messages.
- In 1992 a historic church in Melle, France, installed a juke box that plays Gregorian chants, Tibetan mantras, and Jewish liturgical music.
And last but not least:
- Ancient Egyptian priests in 450 b.c. trained baboons to sweep out their temples.
CAN I GET AN AMEN?
Even though June has barely started I thought an garden update was in order. The warmer weather for the last few weeks has brought everything to life in a big way. Due to the efforts of my better-half we have flowers blooming everywhere.
The gardens in the yard are filled with irises as you can see. we’ve planted them every where and this is the first year we get to see them in all their glory.
Just three years ago this rhododendron was one foot tall and looking poorly. We transplanted it to this spot and here is the results of our efforts.
One of the better-half’s passions is to have as much color in as many places as possible. That of course includes the deck. We get to walk through all of these flowers on our way to the table to have our morning coffee. How great is that?
It’s things like this that help us Mainers wipe away memories of sleet, ice, snow, and our six month’s of winter. It’s worth waiting for. Here’s my recent photo of the vegetable and herb garden as compared with one taken in May. The changes as we move forward will become more and more obvious.
‘May’
‘June’
No, I’m not celebrating computer Spam, that would be stupid. I’m celebrating my all time favorite meat product much loved and much hated around the world. I began my love affair with SPAM while in the service of our great country. The Army introduced me to discipline, mean DI’s (drill instructors ), forced marches, and much, much, more including SPAM. My love for SPAM was one of the only things I left the Army with except for a bag of really ugly olive green clothing.
Many people, my better-half included, hate SPAM. I’ve never understood why because it’s freaking delicious. Since this blog is dedicated to all categories of trivia I thought it only fair you learn something about SPAM today on it’s birthday. I collected a great deal of information from around the Net and elsewhere on this subject and here it is.
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George A. Hormel & Co introduces SPAM on this date in 1891 although it wasn’t marketed until 1937.
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During WW II, Hormel sold more than half of its output to the U.S. government, which supplied SPAM to the armed forces of the U.S., and also to the U.S.S.R. under the lend-lease program.
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A convenient source of protein that required no refrigeration, 100 million pounds of SPAM were shipped to Allied troops during World War II. Russian president Nikita Khrushchev is quoted as saying, “Without SPAM, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army.”
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No one outside the company really understands what the name SPAM represents. While people have posited “Something Posing As Meat” and “Specially Processed Artificial Meat,” the title is likely derived from the words “spiced ham” or an acronym for “Shoulders of Pork And Ham.”
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To distinguish Hormel’s "spiced ham" from similar products, the company held a contest to come up with a unique name. Kenneth Daigneau, brother of a Hormel executive, won the $100 prize with ‘SPAM.’
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Hormel produces 44,000 cans of SPAM every single hour. If that sounds like a lot, consider the facts that the canned good is available in 41 countries and comes in 14 varieties. Despite what critics may say, the world loves “Swine Parts and More!”
‘SPAM Sir-fry’
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The 1 billionth can of SPAM was sold in 1959.
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The 6 billionth can was produced in 2002.
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The 7 billionth can was sold in 2007.
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In 2012 SPAM was being sold in more the 44 countries.
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Hawaii ranks highest amongst the states in SPAM consumption, downing seven million cans a year. Found in grocery stores, on the McDonald’s menu, and featured at high-end restaurants, Spam should probably be added to the state flag.
‘SPAM & French Fries Casserole’
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Richard LeFevre holds the world record for eating SPAM by eating 6 pounds in 12 minutes.
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In the United States alone, 3.6 cans of SPAM are consumed every second, making it the number one product in its category (canned meat) by far.
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On the island of Guam, more than eight cans of SPAM are consumed by every person each year.
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West Yellowstone sponsors the ‘SPAM Cup’ cross country ski race, with the winner receiving one can of SPAM.
‘SPAM Sushi’
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In addition to the U.S., spam is produced in 7 other countries: Australia, Denmark, UK, Japan, Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan. SPAM is distributed in more than 50 countries.
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The SPAMJAM Cafe opened in February 2004 in the Philippines. Except for hot dogs, French fries and desserts, all other menu items are made with SPAM, including SPAM Burger, SPAM Hero, SPAM Club, SPAM Spaghetti, SPAM Baked Macaroni, SPAM Nuggets and SPAM Caesar Salad.
‘Only True SPAM Lover’s Can Pull These Off’
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SPAM even has a mascot — Spammy, the miniature pig. In 1991, for its 100th anniversary, Hormel Foods opened the First Century Museum. The exhibit of SPAM memorabilia quickly became the most popular.
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SPAM has earned a place in pop culture history partially thanks to the Brits. The canned creation made its television debut on "Monty Python’s Flying Circus" in 1970.
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A collector’s edition SPAM — Stinky French Garlic — was introduced to celebrate the opening of "SPAM lot" in London. Not shockingly, the stinky SPAM tasted far better than anything else in the culinary-challenged country.
So there you have it. Everything you ever needed to know about SPAM but were afraid to ask. I love it so much I always have at least one can hidden away in the house. Once my better-half goes to work I’ll get it out and prepare any one of a dozen recipes I love. My all time favorite is my version of SPAM Fried Rice and it’s to die for.
MORE SPAM . . . MORE SPAM . . . MORE SPAM
I’m lying in bed this morning going through my normal morning ritual. What better way to start your day than enjoying a couple of episodes of The Soprano’s. I’m watching the scene where they buried Tony’s mother with all of the family smoking dope and snorting cocaine. Not really much like my own family (Thank God) but it’s still fun to watch.
I’m moving a little slower than usual due in part to our Cinco De Mayo celebration last night. We wanted to avoid the crowds as much as possible so we made an earlier than usual appearance at out favorite Mexican establishment, Casa Fiesta. I decided a margarita was in order so I ordered the biggest one I could find. Here it is in all it’s glory. It was one delicious drink but the three episodes of brain-freeze I could have done without.
‘It was just as big as it looks.’
The better-half was in her glory as well when she discovered they had Pacifico beer on-tap. That’s as happy as I’ve seen her since the start of our current weight loss program. I had a sampler platter with all of the Mexican specialties we’ve come to know and love. The food was great and the habanero Verde sauce was delicious and brutally hot.
‘Delicious, with third degree burns of the tongue.’
We left with habanero on our breath and a distinct glow from the margaritas and Pacifico beers. All in all a rather enjoyable night. Maybe next year will be able to celebrate a little more boisterously with some of our friends.
