Archive for the ‘Journal’ Category
I haven’t had much of a response from readers about the 1960’s Science Test I posted two days ago. I can only assume that many of you had some difficulty answering the questions. Today I’ll try and make it a little easier for all of you. Today’s quiz involves a test of your history knowledge from the 1970’s. As always, the answers are below.
- In what country did the Jonestown Massacre take Place?
- What happened to President Nixon once the Watergate scandal went public?
- _________is the name of the organization/cartel of some of the world’s leading oil producers and exporters?
- Most Iranians are ethnically ________ and ________ Muslims.
- What did Americans celebrate in 1976?
- Who was the US Congressman that was assassinated by members of the Jim Jones Peoples Temple in 1978?
- The _______ war set off the 1973 oil embargo?
- The terrorist group that took the Israeli athletes as hostages during the 1972 Summer Olympics was.
- The men who carried out dirty work for President Nixon were known as the _________.
- Where were the 1972 Summer Olympics held?
📖📖📖
Answers
Guyana, Impeached in 1973, OPEC, Shia and Shiite, The Bicentennial, Leo Ryan, Yom Kippur, Black September, The Plumbers, Munich, Germany
I SCORED 8 CORRECT – HOW ABOUT YOU
(HAPPY MAY DAY)
I thought it might be interesting to have a general quiz of our American government’s history, past and present. As in all of my other quizzes the answers will be posted at the end of the post. I scored a measly 5 correct answers because some of these questions are a bit silly. Have fun with it.
- What two states claim the designation of being the Sunshine State?
- What US city is almost at the same latitude as Mexico City?
- What often played American song’s tune, meter, and verse were borrowed from an English drinking song?
- What does verdigris have to do with the Statue of Liberty?
- What is the most stolen street sign in New York City?
- What is the only place below sea level in the US that isn’t located in the California desert?
- What is the name of the boulevard on which the gold depository is located at Fort Knox?
- What name was originally considered by Walt Disney for Disneyland?
- In 1992 the governor of Hawaii received a petition containing 30,000 signatures to change the name of the island of Maui. What was that suggested name?
- How many chests of tea were dumped overboard at the Boston Tea Party on 12/16,1773?
Answers
Florida & South Dakota, Hilo Hawaii, The Star-Spangled Banner, It’s the green patina on the copper metal, Hooker Place, New Orleans, Bullion Boulevard, Mickey Mouse Park, Gilligan’s Island, 342.
Today marks the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This is certainly not a celebration but a memorial for the lives lost then and those that followed. Today’s trivia quiz is related to the military and war.
- What was the only US battleship to be present at both the attack on Pearl Harbor, and at the D-Day invasion, on June 6, 1944? The U.S.S. Nevada.
- What was the name of the Japanese destroyer that sank PT-109, commanded by Lt. John F. Kennedy on August 2, 1943? The Amigiri.
- Who was issued ID number when the US military started issuing dog tags in 1918? General John J. Pershing.
- What is a military contractor referring to when talking about a “manually powered fastener-driving impact device? A hammer.
- Who was the first American congressman tpo don a uniform following the attack on Pearl Harbor? Lyndon B. Johnson in the Navy.
- What president ordered the integration of the armed forces? Harry S. Truman in 1948.
- What actress obtained a patent as a co-inventor of a radar-controlled system to direct torpedoes at moving ships? Hedy Lamarr.
- Why was actor Paul Newman disqualified from service in the Navy’s pilot-training program in WW II? His blue eyes were colorblind.
- What was the name of Japanese propagandist Tokyo Rose’s WW II radio show for US servicemen in the Pacific? It was Zero Hour.
- What entertainer sold more War Bonds than anyone else during WW II? Kate “God Bless America” Smith sold $600,000,000 worth.
LEST WE FORGET
Today’s post is going to do the unimaginable and permit us to time travel back 84 years to 1940. This is going to be a rambling narrative of things that were happening at the time and will start with the top five movies of the day: Boom Town, Fantasia, His Girl Friday, Kitty Foyle, and Knute Rockne All-American. Strange as it seems I recently saw a couple of these movies being streamed and I spent an hour and a half watching His Girl Friday with Cary Grant. After all those years it was still fun to watch because Cary Grant was effing amazing.
Ginger Rogers earned the best actress at the Academy Awards. The movie Grapes of Wrath was huge, and Walt Disney’s animation began to become a force in the movie industry with Pinocchio and Fantasia. Tom and Jerry weren’t far behind with Hanna-Barbera releasing Puss Gets the Boot. The year also brought us two future celebrities: Smokey Robinson born on February 19 and Peter Fonda born February 23. With the Great Depression over, 1940 consumer food intake became more dependent on canned foods such as soup, meat and vegetables.
Air travel was on the rise and the NFL’s Green Bay Packers became the first team to travel by air. The TWA Transcontinental Airline introduced the Stratoliner to help promote more travel across the continent. The United States had yet to be drawn into the war in Europe. The 1939-1940 World’s Fair was held at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in New York and was the largest world’s fair of all time.
In the world of sports baseball rapidly was spreading in popularity across the country. The Negro National League was steadily becoming more popular with teams like the Washington Homestead Grays (league champs), the Baltimore Elite Giants, and the Newark Eagles playing to large crowds.
Knute Rockne ruled college football with the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers being named the national champs. The Heisman Trophy winner was Michigan halfback Tom Harmon. The NFL Chicago Bears defeated the Washington Redskins 73-0, in one of the most one-sided games in professional football history.
In the early 1940’s cars began to take on a lower, longer and broader look. This new look fit in well with the luxury cars that were beginning to be produced. They were the La Salle Series 52, the Lincoln Zephyr V-12, and the Packard Custom Super-8 180.The Pennsylvania Turnpike was opened on October 1, 1940, and the first Los Angeles freeway was dedicated in December.
The entertainment industry released the top hits of 1940: In the Mood-Glenn Miller, Frensi-Arte Shaw, Only Forever-Bing Crosby, and I’ll Never Smile Again-Tommy Dorsey. The talk radio shows of 1940 listed The Adventures of Ellery Queen, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, and Fibber McGee and Molly. And last but not least Franklin Delano Roosevelt hit the campaign trail in an attempt for a third term.
Now for some of the important stuff. The US population was 132 million. The average salary for a full-time employee was $1200 a year with the minimum wage of $.30 an hour. A loaf of bread was $.08, a pound of bacon was $.27, a pound of butter was $.36, a dozen eggs were $.33, a gallon of milk was $.26, a pound of coffee which $.21, 5 pounds of sugar was $.26, 10 pounds of potatoes was $.24, gasoline was $.11 a gallon, movie tickets were $.24, postage stamps were $.03, and an average car cost $990.00, and a single-family home was on average $2938.00.
I BECAME SPEECHLESS WHEN I SAW THOSE PRICES
I consider myself to be an animal lover. I have a long history of dealing with dogs and an even longer history with cats. Fortunately, or unfortunately people in this country categorize people as being either a cat person or a dog person for some reason. Over the years I’ve had every kind of pet you can think of from snakes, mice, birds, squirrels, hamsters, dogs and ferrets. My favorite pets after my cats were the ferrets and my best years as a pet owner were when I had one cat and two ferrets. There was never a dull moment in the house, and they kept me smiling with their endless play times. Today’s posts are some interesting facts about our pets.
- Your average cat uses up to 100 different vocalizations. Dogs, on the other hand, use a mere 10.
- Multiple studies have shown dogs are more emotionally intelligent than cats; they are more trainable, have larger brains, and are far more social. Sorry, cat people, if it makes you feel any better, other studies have shown that cat owners are smarter than people who own dogs.
- Cats can be trained in a manner of minutes simply by placing a litter box in the house. No actual training is required – it’s instinct that drives cats to use litter boxes.
- The average canine has 42 teeth, compared to only 30 teeth for domestic cats.
- Dog memory is more “associative” instead of true memory. And a dog’s short-term memory lasts for about 20 seconds.
- A canine nose has more than four times as many scent receptors as the average cat and more than 14 times as many as the human nose.
- In both cats and dogs sweat glands are present only in the paws. To cool down, dogs pant. The thin ears of cats expose blood to ambient room temperatures and help them to lose excess body heat.
- So-called “seizure-alert dogs are able to detect changes in their owner’s verbal cues and body language and warn them of things ahead of time. This skill is not taught – it’s innate in a very small number of canines.
- Most people are aware that chocolate is toxic to dogs. Fortunately for cats they cannot taste sweetness, so the odds are lower of cats gorging on your half-eaten chocolate bar.
- Studies show that dogs respond with less aggression, and cats display positive reciprocation when interacting with women rather than men.
BOW WOW & MEOW
Ask any foreigner visiting the United States as to our language with its many and varied slang words. It has to be impossible to understand for most of them because truthfully, it’s pretty hard to understand even if you were born and raised here. I’ve noticed in recent weeks while reviewing some British Tick-Tock participants who apparently are as confused about some of our language as I am. For years I’ve collected a huge list of clichés because they intrigue me. Some of them are cute but if you’re not an American you’ll have one helluva time trying to figure them out. Today I’ll share with you a few samples that you’ve heard but probably never knew where they originated. See would just think . . .
SLEEP TIGHT
This term is nothing more than a way of saying “good night and sleep well”. The phrase dates back to when beds were made of rope and straw. It is a shortened form of the expression, sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite.” Before going to sleep at night, people would have to pull the ropes tight in order to have a firm bed to sleep on as the ropes would’ve loosened during the course of the previous night’s sleep. (I’ve actually slept on a rope bed and it’s like a sort of punishment or torture.)
SNUG AS A BUG IN A RUG
This expression dates from the 18th century, although a “snug” is a 16th century word for a parlor in an inn. The phrase is credited to Benjamin Franklin, who wrote it in 1772 as an epitaph for a pet squirrel that had belonged to Georgiana Shipley, the daughter of his friend the Bishop of St. Asaph. Franklin’s wife had sent the gray squirrel as a gift from Philadelphia, and they named him Skugg, a common nickname for squirrels at that time. Tragically, he escaped from Its cage and was killed by a dog. Franklin then wrote this little ditty:
Here Skugg
Lies snug
As a bug
In a rug.
KISS OF DEATH
This phrase derives from Judas Iscariot’s kiss given to Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane before he betrayed him (Luke 23:48 and Matthew 26:49). It’s also known as a “Judas Kiss,” meaning an insincere act of courtesy or false affection. In Mafia circles, a kiss from the boss may indeed be a fatal omen. The phrase is often used today in political or business contexts, meaning that certain associations or actions may prove to be the undoing of a person or organization, or the downfall of a plan or project. (I always thought it referred to several of my former ex-girlfriends.)
CATCH FORTY WINKS
A colloquial term for a short nap or a doze. Just why shutting one’s eye 40 times has come to mean a quick snooze is unclear, but it could have something to do with the fact that the number 40 appears frequently in the Scriptures and was thought to be a holy number. Moses was on the Mount for 40 days and 40 nights; Elijah was fed by ravens for 40 days; the rain of the Flood fell for 40 days, and another 40 days passed before Noah opened the windows of the ark. Christ fasted for 40 days, and he was seen 40 days after his Resurrection. As an aside: A “40” is a bottle containing 40 fluid ounces of malt liquor beer. Street gang members will drink 40’s and will sometimes pour out a little of the beer onto the ground for their dead homies. (Not so holy anymore.)
PUT A SOCK IN IT
This is a plea to be quiet, to shut up, to make less noise. It comes from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, when the early gramophones, or phonographs, had large horns through which the sound was amplified. These mechanical contraptions had no volume controls, and so a convenient method of reducing the volume was to stuff a woolen sock inside the horn.
I LOVE WORDS!
Are you ready for another day of freaky and bizarre? Let me dig into my bag of nonsense and come up with four or five more oddities which you might find interesting. I don’t need to say anything else, here we go.
- When English writer Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) died, his heart was kept apart from his body that was cremated. The idea was to bury it in Stinsford, England, the home of his beloved childhood church and his family’s burial plot. All went according to plan until his sister’s cat leaped up on her kitchen table, snatched the heart, and ran off into the woods with it.
- Centuries ago, animals were often put on trial for crimes ranging from witchcraft to theft and murder. Throughout history, the animal that’s been prosecuted mostly is the pig. In 1547 France, for example, a mother pig and her six babies were sentenced to death for killing and eating a child. The sow was executed, but the piglets were pardoned because it was felt that they were led astray by the bad example of their mother.
- A fortune teller told businessman Kichiro Toyoda that it would be good luck to change his company’s name to Toyota and to give the company cars names beginning with the letter “C “such as Celica and Camry.
- Francesco Lentini was born in 1889 with what appeared to be a tail, but which was in fact a nearly developed foot growing from the base of his spine. Although he was treated as a disabled outcast most of his life, he found work in Italian sideshows and was quoted as having said, “I have never complained. I think life is beautiful, and I enjoy living it.” He lived to the ripe old age of 78 years.
- Investigators in Tacoma, Washington, were able to identify two generations of maggots on a body that had died from a gunshot wound. In doing so, they determined the approximate date of the corpses demise, as a maggots lifecycle lasts only about three weeks. Armed with the estimated time of death, the investigators were able to trace the disease whereabouts and eventually found the killer.
OOH MY!!!
With my better half’s spending a week with her grandson in California, I thought I’d enjoy this gray and rainy Maine day by supplying all of you with interesting, weird, freaky, and odd tidbits of facts and trivia. So, todays post (part 1) and Tuesdays post (part 2) should be interesting and just a bit weird.
- On April 21, 1997, a rocket containing the cremated remains of 24 people was launched into space. Among the remains were those of Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek series creator. The rocket was launched by Celestis, a company formed in 1996 for the expressed purpose of launching ashes into space.
- A tourist visiting San Francisco in 1964 was involved in a minor cable car accident. As a result, she sued the city of San Francisco, claiming that the incident had turned her into a nymphomaniac. She won the case and received an award of $50,000. (Only in San Francisco)
- The extreme dread of thunder is called brontophobia. For brontophobes , the boom and crash of thunder has a demonic quality. Often found in people suffering from a psychoneurosis, brontophobia can also be associated with a person, often a person in a position of authority, and the fearsome thunder is their expression of disapproval.
- During World War II a young woman in Germany, Emmie Marie Jones, gave birth to a daughter, despite the fact that she insisted she was a virgin. In 1955, scientists in England did genetic testing and discovered that Emmie and her daughter were genetically identical twins. The only explanation the scientists could offer was that the shock of the bombing caused parthenogenesis, the spontaneous splitting of an unfertilized egg.
- Queen Mary I of England and Ireland (1516-1558) was a Catholic who had Protestants tortured and killed. Her actions inspired the nickname “Bloody Mary”, which in turn later inspired the famous cocktail.
LOOKS LIKE MY HIGH SCHOOL PROM DATE
I purposely avoid posting about current political events after running a political blog in the early 2000’s called Anti-Stupidity. It was an interesting experiment that ultimately convinced me never to do it again. No matter what you post politically, half the country agrees, and the other half sends you hate mail and death threats. Such is the political condition of the country, and it hasn’t changed much in the intervening years.
I dislike all politics and political parties and will never understand why anyone would run for office these days. That includes those power-hungry individuals running for President. It would hardly be worth it if not for the corruption that eventually makes almost every former senator, representative, and President a multi-millionaire.
Today’s post is political trivia in its lamest form. These are odd and rarely known facts on many of our past Presidents chosen at random . . .
- Jimmy Carter is the first President to have been born in a hospital. All thirty-eight previous presidents were born “at home.”
- The chief drafter of the United States Constitution and twice President was a lightweight on the scales. James Madison weighed in at only 100 pounds and he was the shortest President, at 5’4″.
- James Buchanan has been the only bachelor to serve as president of the United States.
- Not until Herbert Hoover was President., in 1929, did the U.S. Chief Executive have a private telephone in his office. (The telephone had been invented 53 years earlier.) The booth in a White House hallway had served as the president’s private telephone before one was finally installed in the Oval Office.
- A campaign issue in John Quincy Adams unsuccessful reelection campaign of 1828 was the White House expense account: $50 for a billiard table, six dollars for billiard balls and $23.50 for chessmen.
- The first U.S. President to be born in the 20th century didn’t take office until 1961 – John F. Kennedy (1917-1963).
- The longest Presidential inauguration Address lasted nearly two hours, 8,445 words, almost twice as many as any other Presidents. It was delivered during a snowfall by a hatless, coatless William Henry Harrison in 1841. He became ill and died of pneumonia exactly a month later making his presidency the shortest in history.
- Theodore Roosevelt was the first US President to ride in an automobile and the first to fly in an airplane, among many other firsts.
- Until 1826, white people in the United States were sold as indentured servants who would be freed after a certain period of time. Andrew Johnson, who became President in 1865, was a runaway white slave; advertisements appeared in newspapers in an attempt to get him back.
- President William Howard Taft weighed 350 pounds. He got stuck in a bathtub in the White House and someone had to be called to pull him out. He then had a special bathtub made. It was so big that, when it was delivered, four White House workmen climbed into it and had their picture taken.
HAIL TO THE CHIEF – LOL
Is there anyone out there who doesn’t think the media is a problem these days? I do miss the days of reading newspapers because there were so many inaccuracies and misstatements, it was fun just to search them out and have a laugh or two. Now if we want to read a newspaper you got to go online and sign up for their website, fill out a form with all of your information, and agree to accept all the crappy spam they decide to send you. Then they can and will sell your information to damn near anyone. In the past I’ve made a lot of fun of the written media only because there’s so much information out there that’s worth a laugh or three. Apparently, the worst job you can have in written media is being an editor. It’s also apparent from the information I’ve been reading that if they have editors, they aren’t all that bright. Here’s a short selection of headlines from newspapers and I cannot believe any alleged editors were doing their job. Here we go . . .
- Statistics Show That Mortality Increases Perceptively in the Military During Wartime What editor in his right mind let this one slip through?
- Two Sisters Reunited After 18 Years in Checkout Counter Unbelievable!!!
- Safety Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted We live in a time of geniuses.
- NJ Judge to Rule on Nude Beach I wonder if he’s required to wear a robe for that.
- Never Withhold Herpes from Loved One There some good dating advice . . . NOT!
- If Strike Isn’t Settled Quickly It May Last a While Another Rhodes scholar.
- Smokers Are Productive, But Death Cuts Efficiency Thanks to the tobacco lobby for this one.
- Dirty-Air Cities Far Deadlier than Clean Ones, Study Shows Another genius observation.
- Fish Lurk in Streams This might be great for a Bass Pro Shop logo.
GOD HELP US ALL
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