I’ve never really understood or cared why the Fourth of July is called Independence Day. I know it’s the celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence but in this day and age who really cares? It’s just become another excuse to have a long weekend and a day off and to drink and party and be foolish. It seems to me that only a very small percentage of the country really understands what is being celebrated on the Fourth of July.
Many years ago, while on a long weekend to Cape Cod I purchased a T-shirt in a shop in Provincetown. The minute I saw the shirt I knew I had to have it. I continued to wear it for years until it fell apart. I have since purchased another and wear it proudly. It’s a short statement of fact that I’m proud to wear across my chest, “I love my country and fear our government.” A simple yet true statement and even truer today than when I bought it. Mixing politics with patriotism is a dangerous thing and it still scares the hell out of me. Relying on our current crop of inept politicians to keep this county secure and on the right path is frightening at best. For me the Fourth of July is a bogus holiday. We should celebrate it on February 29 (Leap Year), every four years. Here is sample of how one of the Founding Fathers felt about it.
Did you know? John Adams believed that July 2nd was the correct date on which to celebrate the birth of American independence, and would reportedly turn down invitations to appear at July 4th events in protest.
It apparently wasn’t considered an American Holy Day back then. Those poor politicians hadn’t yet discovered the essentials needed to celebrate properly, charcoal brickettes, gas grills, and an endless supply of alcohol and weed. Mix all of that together with a few idiot politicians and you’ve got a real current-day Independence Day celebration.
Being a lover of baseball for most of my life I try to find unusual stories in a game that has been around forever. In most sports you see some games that are considered “tied” with overtime then ordered and special rules making it rather annoying at times. I decided to find out if there ever was truly a tied game in professional baseball. Believe it or not I found that game and coincidentally it involves my home team the Pittsburgh Pirates. Here’s the story.
On August 13, 1910, the Pittsburgh Pirates played the Brooklyn Dodgers. After nine innings the game was tied, but darkness stopped play. The nine inning statistics showed that each team had scored eight runs on 13 hits and committed two errors. Both clubs had sent 38 men to the plate, both sets of fielders were credited with 27 putouts and 12 assists. There were five strikeouts recorded against each team, and each side had given up three walks. It was the evenest game ever played.
Many things occurred in the early years of baseball and were funny and ridiculous at times. Sometimes the players were funny and just as many times the managers were even funnier. Here’s a story from the 1880’s concerning the antics of Brooklyn club president Charles R Byrnes.
What happens when the team doesn’t like one of their own players? Pitcher Johnny “Phenomenal” Smith of Brooklyn found out that it doesn’t pay to be too cocky. Smith was a rookie, and he boasted about his skills at every opportunity. On June 17, 1885, when Smith was pitching, his teammates decided to teach him a valuable lesson. They committed 20 errors, and the Brooklyn team was defeated, 18-5. Phenomenal Smith was angry, but Brooklyn club president Charles Byrnes was even angrier. He threatened to fire every player on the team if they tried such a stunt again. The following day Brooklyn won the game and committed no errors. That’s what I call a serious pep talk.
More weirdness from the human race. There seems to be an endless supply and I’m going to eventually post all of it.
The human eye can see only about 3000 stars on the clearest night, even though there are more than 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone.
One medieval theory to explain why a dunked witch would not float was that witches deliberately ate foods that make them fart. The gas would build up in their guts, making them lighter than air, so they could fly.
In Europe in the Middle Ages it was believed that there were over 7 million demons in the air, which could be inhaled or swallowed and would cause disease or make a corpse turned into a vampire.
Thomas Edison filed 1093 patents, including those for the lightbulb, electric railways, and the movie camera. When he died in 1931, he held 34 patents for the telephone, 141 for batteries, 150 for the telegraph, and 389 patents for electric lights and power.
No pain, no gain – in their quest for an hour-glass figure, some of Victorian women wore their corsets so tight that they suffered broken ribs.
During the Middle Ages, mummies became enormously popular as medicine. At first the resin-soaked bandages were thought to be health giving, but eventually the whole mummy, bones, flesh, and all, was ground up and sold to people who would eat it.
Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism, effects approximately 18% of the world’s population. People are capable of doing all sorts of things while in their sleep, including eating, bathing, and dressing. Some subjects have been recorded driving cars and committing murder while technically asleep.
According to the World Toilet Organization, the average person visits the toilet about 6 to 8 times a day, or 2500 times a year, and spends three years of his or her life sitting on the toilet.
Emetophobia is the fear of vomiting or of being around others who are vomiting. It is the fifth most common phobia according to the International Emetophobia Society.
Diabetes can lead to high levels of sugar in the urine. Before simple test for sugar levels were made available, doctors would taste their patient’s urine to see if it was sweet.
I’ve been blogging for almost 15 years and have written thousands of words. Also, I’ve been addicted to crossword puzzles for my whole life and know thousands of other words. That being said, I recently stumbled across some trivia concerning words and languages and I like to pass them along. I know a lot of words, but I found out I didn’t know as much as I thought I did.
Egyptians, Indians, and Turk’s search for “sex” on Google more than any other nationality. “Hitler” is the most popular in Germany, Austria, and Mexico. The word Nazi is a favorite in Chile, Australia, and Britain. “David Beckham” gets the most hits in Venezuela.
In the Eskimo language Inuktitut, there is a single word meaning “I should try not to become an alcoholic”: Iminngernaveersaartunngortussaavunga.
The words “tomato”, “coyote”, “avocado”, and “chocolate” all come from the Aztec language Nahuatl.
The word “boredom” did not exist in the English language until after 1750.
The “zip” in “zip code” stands for “zone improvement plan”.
An 18-year-old knows approximately 60,000 words, which represents a learning rate of one word per 90 walking minutes from the age of one.
By the age of five, children will have acquired 85% of the language they will have as adults.
The Finnish language has no future tense.
Over just six days in the month of August 1998, The Washington Post devoted 80,289 words to the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The condition of being unable to release a dart from one’s hand when throwing is known as dartitus.
I’ve been promising for some time to post a few bawdy limericks and today’s the day. These four limericks can be rated either “R” or “X” depending on the reader. If you have any children who use your computer, make sure they don’t get to see these. I don’t have much more to say about this post because believe me, it speaks for itself. I hope all of you who requested this posting (and you know who you are) appreciate how uncomfortable it makes me to post this. So here we go.
In keeping with the name of this blog, here are a few tidbits and quotes of totally useless information to help kickstart your Summer.
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Keen on disproving a key point made on an episode of CSI, a 55-year-old South Dakota man was killed in 2007 after shooting himself in the stomach, despite a script that showed otherwise. Sadly, he was absolutely correct
I think more people would be alive today if there were a death penalty. Nancy Reagan
An accident on the north end of Boston on January 15, 1919, flooded the area with 2 1/2 million gallons of molasses in a wave as much as 15 feet high. 21 people were killed, and 150 more were injured.
If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it. Jonathan Winters
Theodore Roosevelt was shot as he campaigned for the presidency in 1912. The bullet hit him in the chest but not before passing through his glasses case and the speech he had folded in his pocket. Roosevelt received a superficial wound and finished his speech before going to the hospital for treatment 90 min. later.
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. Timothy Leary
FYI – Egyptian artwork from 3000 years ago reveals Bes, the God of birth and carnal pleasures, wearing a condom type device. The Chinese were said to have worn a silk sheath as a prophylactic 2000 years ago.
Women should be obscene and not heard. Groucho Marx
In the National Basketball Association’s first season, 1946-47, the top paid player was Detroit’s Tom King, who made $16,500. He also acted as the team’s publicity manager and business director. Just like today LOL.
There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you’re busy interrupting. Mark Twain
I thought today I’d touch on sports again since it’s that time of the year when so many sport finals are being played. I thought I’d start off with a little tidbit on basketball, a sport that I’m not all that crazy about. I have a grandson who is absolutely nuts for basketball, so this is in his honor and anyone else that loves the sport as much he does.
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How far does a basketball player run during a game? The distance can vary greatly, but some years ago Ben Peck, a coach at Middlebury, Vermont, decided to find out. He put pedometers on the feet of all of his players. Here are the results:Overall, his team traveled a total of 24.01 miles, 11.97 in the first half and 12.04 in the second half. Forward Fred Lapham ran the farthest, 5.31 miles. The other forward, Tom Neidhart, covered 5.14 miles. Center Bob Adsit ran 4.25 miles. The guards averaged 2.66 miles each.
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Now Back to Baseball.
In 1876 a pitcher named Joe Borden of Boston Hurled the first no-hitter in the history of the National League. But Borden couldn’t leave well enough alone. Soon after the game he changed his style of pitching and began to lose his stuff. Borden went steadily downhill, and by the end of the season he was no longer a pitcher – he was the club’s groundskeeper.
Many pitchers have gone into the ninth inning working on a no-hitter, only to see it spoiled. On April 7, 1918, Odis “Doc” Crandall of the Los Angeles Angels had a perfect game going against Salt Lake City. With two out in the ninth inning, not a man had reached base. Then Doc’s brother, Karl Crandall, came to bat. He dumped a dinky base hit just over the infielders’ heads. This is the only case on record where a pitcher’s no-hitter was broken up by his own brother.
One of the most famous of all poems is “Casey at the Bat”, which was written by Ernest Thayer. It has been read by millions and recited by dozens of actors. In the poem, Casey, a great slugger, comes to bat with his team behind in the ninth inning. There are two outs and runners on base. Casey can win the game with a home run but unfortunately strikes out. A great deal is known about Casey’s team from Mudville. The poem names and describes the four batters ahead of Casey – Cooney, Barrows, Flynn and Jimmy Blake. The poet didn’t pay much attention to the other team, however. The pitcher who faced down “the Mighty Casey” and struck him out was never given a name.
Both William Shakespeare and Miguel D. Cervantes, who is considered by some to be Shakespeare’s literary equivalent, died on the same day, April 23, 1616.
In 1958, a Kansas tornado ripped a woman out of her house and deposited her, unharmed, 60 feet away, next to an LP record of the song Stormy Weather.
In Paris in the Twentieth Century, Jules Vern describes the Paris skyline dominated by a large metallic structure. The book was written in 1863, years before the Eiffel Tower was conceptualized in 1887.
The bubonic plague was nicknamed the Black Death because of the nasty black sores it left on its victims’ bodies.
In January 2008, the Dunkinfield Crematorium in Manchester, England, asked local residents and clergymen to support its plan for heating and powering its chapel and boiler using the heat created by burning bodies.
John Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman, was a church group leader. It is said that he would lead sing-alongs to the tune of Lennon’s song “Imagine”, during which he would change the lyrics to “Imagine there is no John Lennon”.
If 13 people sit down to eat at a table together, one of them will die within the year.
A grilled cheese sandwich bearing the image of the Virgin Mary was sold in 2004 for $28,000.
Novelist Ernest Hemingway and poet Hart Crane were both born on July 21, 1899. Both struggled with alcoholism and depression, and both committed suicide.
American author Norman Mailer once stabbed his wife and then wrote a novel about it (An American Dream).
These 10 items are just a mishmash of oddities. Fortunately for me the more I research the more of them I stumble upon. Like it or not I’ll be passing them on to you for your enjoyment. I’d like to finish this post with a quote from John Lennon which I found interesting:
“Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground,”
As a kid I learned to read the newspapers from my parents. At that time there was very little current event news available except by newspaper due to the fact there was no Internet and in my case no television. You either picked up the local news by radio or from the newspapers. In my later years I occasionally read newspapers on Sunday mornings, and it took a couple of hours because the newspapers were at least 3 inches thick. A few years later I again took to reading the Sunday papers primarily looking for jobs. I never really appreciated the newspapers like I should have and there are times I do miss being able to wake up on a Sunday morning, make a huge mug of hot coffee, and sit and read every word of every page of the New York Times or the Pittsburgh Press. Unfortunately, with the passing of time newspapers are slowly fading away. I can’t let that happen without having a little fun with them before they’re all gone which means today, you’re going to get some more of our more humorous newspaper headlines supplied by many alleged professional editors. Have fun with it.
Include Your Children When Baking Cookies
Iraqi Head Seeks Arms
British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands
Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
Stiff Opposition Expected to Casketless Funeral Plan
Farmer Bill Dies in House
Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim
Alzheimer’s Center Prepares for an Affair to Remember
Well, it’s June! What better way to start a new month than with a Limerick Alert. I understand that many of the readers of this blog wait patiently for me to post limericks that are a bit more interesting and suggestive, but once again I’ll post this selection of limericks that are cute and funny and written primarily for and by children. For those of you who like your limericks with a bit more spice, I’m compiling a collection more to your liking that will be posted in a few weeks. These six will have to carry you through until then, so let’s get started. I also hope you’ll appreciate this first limerick because it’s the only limerick ever to use the word Nantucket without offending anyone.
