I’ve been fascinated for decades about anything related to space travel. I can thank my mother for that when shortly after Sputnik made its appearance she showed up in my bedroom with paint brushes and paints. She then proceeded to turn my bedroom into a huge space mural filled with planets, stars, meteorites, and spaceships.. She knew I loved anything related to space travel because I was already a sci-fi junkie at the ripe old age of five. Today’s post contains information that I’ve picked up along the way concerning the space race and weird little factoids that you may never have heard before. I hope you enjoy them.
Our galaxy is so wide that, at the speed of light, it would take you 100,000 years to cross it.
A meteorite the size of the school bus would destroy the entire eastern seaboard of the United States.
The volume of the Earth’s moon is the same as the volume of the Pacific Ocean.
A solar flare is basically a gigantic magnetic arch-like horseshoe magnet-that attracts itself inward, back to the surface of the sun.
The famous Halley’s Comet returns to earth every 76 years. It last appeared in 1986 and will reappear here again in 2062.
A solar flare, ejected from the sun’s surface, can reach speeds of 190 miles per second or 306 kilometers per second.
It takes 3 minutes for the sunlight that is reflected from the moon to reach our eyes.
Astronauts are not permitted to eat beans before they go into space because the methane gas released while passing wind can damage spacesuit materials.
A light-year is the distance light travels in one year or 870,000,000,000 miles or 9.4 5 trillion kilometers.
A Martian day lasts 24 hours, 37 min., and 23 seconds. And Earth Day last 23 hours, 56 min., and 4 seconds.
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Here’s a salute to one of the greatest minds of all time.
Galileo Galilei
Here’s fair warning to some of you out there with outrageous or ridiculous theories. Galileo got into trouble with the Inquisition for his many theories, and spent some serious time in prison. The fact that he was correct made no difference.
I love reading odd facts about damn near anything. For years I religiously read the Darwin Awards and while they offer stories on weird ways to die, they are at times humorous as hell. People might take offense to that but I really don’t care because funny is still funny regardless of the circumstances. I recently stumbled upon three short stories on death that actually became a part of history. They’re not all that funny but they are definitely interesting. Let’s get started.
On September 14, 1899, Henry Bliss stepped down from a streetcar at West 74th and Central Park West in New York City. As he turned to help a female passenger down the stairs, he was struck by a passing cab, making the 68-year-old man the first pedestrian ever killed by an automobile in the United States.
Five years after their historic first flight at Kitty Hawk, the Wright brothers took their new plane, the Wright Flyer, on a cross-country tour to prove it could safely carry passengers. The third stop was at Fort Myers, Virginia, on September 17, 1908. As a crowd of 2000 cheered, Orville Wright and his passenger, Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge of the US Army Signal Corps, lifted off into the sky. Then the propeller snapped in two and the Wright Flyer nosedived 150 feet to the ground. Selfridge was killed instantly; Wright suffered multiple hip and leg fractures that plagued him with chronic pain for the rest of his life. This was the first documented death on an airplane.
Here’s another oldie but goodie that occurred during the September 15, 1833 at the launch of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in England. It was attended by the Duke of Wellington and William Huskisson, a member of Parliament. Ignoring the engineers warning to remain on the train, Huskisson joined the other passengers and disembarked to gawk at the engines lined up on the parallel tracks. He stepped onto an empty track just as an engine called the Rocket barreled into the station. Huskisson fell beneath the wheels of the locomotive and lost his leg and died a few minutes later. He was unaware that he had made history as the first person ever killed by a train.
I’ve spent the last five and a half years being tended to by a score of doctors and nurses and it saved my life. It’s given me time to really examine their profession and the the abilities they have to save lives. Todays post will introduce odd facts and historical information where the roots of our current medical treatments began. Some of it is a little strange and also a little frightening but that’s how we’ve learned the skills being used today.
The first image of the doctors stitching up a wound can be found on the Edwin Smith Papyrus (1600 B.C.).
Ancient Egyptian medicine was considered so advanced that the rulers of neighboring kingdoms would often bribe, cajole, or even send someone to kidnap the Pharaoh’s best doctors.
The 3000-year-old “Ebers Papyrus” was written on a 65 foot long scroll and describes treatments for the eyes, skin, extremities, and organs. It also lists medicinal plants such as mustard, saffron, onions, garlic, thyme, sesame, caraway, and poppy seed, and offers more than 800 recipes for their use.
The Egyptians used opium as crude forms of anesthesia when operating on patients. They also created a milder painkiller by mixing water with vinegar and adding ground Memphite stone. The resulting “laughing gas” was inhaled.
The first known surgery for cataracts was performed in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in about A.D. 100.
A collection of 37 surgical instruments is engraved on the wall in the Egyptian Temple of Kom-Ombo (2d century B.C.). Some show amazing similarities to modern surgical instruments and includes scalpels, scissors, needles, forceps, lancets, hooks, and pincers.
The original Hippocratic Oath was written by a school of philosophers known as the Pythagoreans and was actually a reaction against the writings of Hippocrates. The Pythagoreans were conservative and even backward looking in many ways forbidding many medical practices, including the surgery.
The Romans considered cabbage to be a magically protective food. The philosopher Cato wrote that Romans should not only eat cabbage at every meal, but also drink the urine of someone who’d eaten cabbage two days before.
In both ancient Greece and Rome, doctors didn’t need licenses or any formal training to practice. Anyone could call himself a doctor. If his methods worked, he attracted more patients, if not, he found himself another job.
Most Roman surgical instruments were made of bronze, or occasionally of silver. Iron was considered taboo by both Greeks and Romans and was never used for surgical instruments on religious grounds.
Are there any wanna-be botanists out there? If so, todays post should really interest you. Finding interesting trivia about plants was a serious challenge but I’ve had some success. Here are twenty items you never knew about plants and botany. Here we go . . .
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At 167 calories per 3.5 ounces, avocados have the highest number of calories of any fruit.
The foxglove plant can help prevent congestive heart failure.
The cellulose in celery (mostly in its stringy fibers) is impossible for humans to digest. Most of the celery passes right through your digestive tract.
Juniper berries smell so strongly of evergreen trees that they have been chewed as a breath freshener.
Orchids have the smallest seeds. It takes more than 1.25 million seeds to weigh one gram.
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Oak trees do not have acorns until they are 50 years old or older.
Pollen is considered the “male” part of a plants reproductive system.
The greens, you see covering ponds might actually be a carpet of duckweed – the smallest plant with a complete root, stem, and leaf structure.
Cayenne pepper stimulates the appetite, as do the herbs dill, celery, dandelion, caraway, anise, garlic, leek, mint, tarragon, saffron, and parsley.
The word “herb” is from the old Sanskrit word bharb, meaning “to eat”.
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A lemon will lose 20% of its vitamin C content after being left at room temperature for eight hours, or in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
The eggplant is a member of the nightshade family, along with the potato and tomato.
An uncooked apple is 84% water.
If you wash an area of skin that has been exposed to poison ivy within 3 min. after exposure, the chemical urushhiol does not have time to penetrate the skin.
The herb peony, when dried and chewed, can help heal a cold sore.
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A banana is technically an herb because it grows on dense, waterfilled leaf stalks that die after the first fruit is produced. Botanists call the banana plant a herbaceous perennial.
Bananas are one of the easiest fruits to digest and trigger very few allergies. This is why they are an ideal food for babies.
It takes a coffee bean plant five years to yield consumable fruit.
The most widely cultivated and extensively used nut in the world is the almond.
Plant life in the oceans makes up 85% of all the greenery on earth.
I really hate to admit this, I’ve turned into a raging paranoic. I’ve blogged many times about fake and biased news and while it’s being addressed nationally these days, a lot of everyday folks love believing everything they read or hear. Today’s blog is a list of random nonsense being spoken of by good old ordinary Americans who obviously don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. It scares me a little because the more you tell a lie the more likely it is that some of the boneheads you’re telling believe it without question. I can’t do anything to stop that but I’ll certainly point out some strange shit that I’ve been seeing and hearing recently.
More than 1% of the US population is currently in jail. FALSE
Aspirin was originally invented to treat erectile dysfunction. FALSE
Left-handed people live an average of nine years longer than right-handed people. FALSE
Legendary children’s show host Mr. Rogers was once a Marine sniper with thousands of killed under his belt. FALSE
Despite being a common joke today, Robin never actually says Holy Cow (or Toledo)Batman during any episodes. FALSE
The planet Mercury is the hottest planet in the solar system. FALSE
If we removed every boat, ship, and submarine from the oceans, sea level would fall about 6 inches. FALSE
The popular online rumor suggests that hippopotamus milk is pink. FALSE
The word FUCK was once said over 1000 times in one movie. FALSE
Humans are the only animals on earth to perform oral sex on each other. FALSE
I’ve spend a great deal of my life investigating matters which required me to become well versed in verbal gymnastics by people who were skilled in the art of lying. I’ve interviewed and interrogated thousands of individuals, suspects, criminals of all types, and just plain evil people. Many were well skilled at lying and confusing the facts and had to be verbally dissected by me to get at the truth. I actually had a company send me to a school in Chicago where I was thoroughly trained to become a human polygraph. Learning body language and advanced interrogation techniques helped me immensely in identifying and dealing with those sneaking folks who used more silent and damaging techniques through the use of rumor and innuendo. I met and was constantly challenged by some truly smart but dishonest and dangerous people. Was I always successful? No! To this day I still look back on some that got away and it still angers me.
Years ago I stumbled upon a book that I later came to cherish. It was written in the 1960’s and was titled The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense compiled by Suzette Haden Elgin. She published an excellent book that organized and defined the subject of verbal abuse. She explained how to identify verbal attacks and how to defend against them. This post will contain a number of quotes from that book that may help us all to better understand the problem and the possible defenses against it.
The Four Basic Principals
Know that you are under attack.
Know what kind of attack you are facing.
Know how to make your defense fit the attack.
Know how to follow through.
There is a well know therapist, Virginia Satir who in her books has developed a set of terms for common verbal behaviors. These five patterns are called the Five Satir Modes and identify the types of people to look out for. It’s much easier to defend yourself if you can identify the type of person who is creating your difficulties.
Five Satir Identifiers
The Placater
The Placater is frightened that other people will become angry, will go away, and never come back.
The Blamer
The Blamer feels that nobody cares about him/her, that there is no respect or affection for him/her and that people are indifferent to his/her needs and feelings.
The Computer
The Computer is analytical. He/she is terrified that someone will find out what his/her feelings really are. If possible the Computer will give the impression that he/she has no feelings whatsoever.
The Distracter
The Distrater is a tricky one to keep up with, because her/she does not hold to any of the other previous patterns. He/she cycles rapidly between modes, with an underlying feeling of panic with surface behavior being a chaotic mix.
The Leveler
The true Leveler does just what the name implies; this person levels with you. A phony Leveler, however, is more dangerous than all the other categories combined, and hard to spot. If you assume you are discussing the genuine article, what the Leveler is actually saying is only what he/she is feeling.
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Needless to say this is just a bare-bones summary of what could always be a difficult and dangerous situation. Maybe it will help.
Abraham Lincoln lost five different elections prior to becoming a United States president.
There are 13 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet.
The only word that begins and ends with the letters “und” is the word underground.
Due to contrasting gravity, a person normally weighing 200 pounds on earth will weigh just 76 pounds on Mars.
Recycling one glass jar will save enough energy for three hours of television.
A tsunami can move at the same speed as a jet plane.
You could fit almost 900,000,000,000,000 footballs into the Grand Canyon.
Rio de Janeiro means River of January.
Sometimes when you are sleeping, your brain is busier than when you’re awake.
The left and right sides of your body are controlled by the opposite sides of your brain.
In Japan you can buy square watermelons, specifically created to stack more easily in supermarkets.
Wild lions usually do not kill more than 20 times a year.
Crocodiles along the banks of the Nile River are accountable for over 1000 deaths per year.
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And last but not least some information that I hope our
current generation of scientists are paying attention to.
1. The First Law of robotics is a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. The Second Law of robotics is that a robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. The Third Law of robotics is that a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
Police are warning all men who frequent clubs, parties and local bars to be alert and stay cautious when offered a drink by a woman. Many females are using a date rape drug on the market called “Beer.” The drug is found in liquid form and is available anywhere. It comes in bottles, cans, or from taps and in large kegs. Beer is used by female sexual predators at parties and bars to persuade their male victims to go home and sleep with them. A woman needs only to get a guy to consume a few units of Beer and then simply asks him to come home with her for some no-strings attached sex.
Please! Forward this warning to every male you know. If you fall victim to this Beer scam and the women administering it, there are male support groups where you can discuss the details of your shocking encounter with similarly victimized men. For the support group nearest you just look up “Golf Courses” in the phone book
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A man walks into a bar and says “G-g-gimme a b-b-beer. The bartender says, “Seems as though you’ve got a major stuttering problem.” The man replies, N-n-no k-k-kidding!” The bartender says, “I used to stutter, but my wife cured me. One afternoon she gave me oral sex three times in a row, and I haven’t stuttered since!” The man says, “W-w-wow, th-th-that’s great to kn-kn-know” A week later, the same man returns to the bar, and says, “G-g-gimme a b-b-beer.” The bartender says, “Why didn’t you do what I told you?” “I d-d-did try”, said the man. “It j-j-just d-d-didn’t w-w-work. But I m-m-must say, you have a r-r-really n-nice apartment.
AND TO MY BETTER-HALF AND ALL OF YOU OTHER BEER FANATICS
I’m feeling the need to post another quiz. In recent weeks I’ve posted quizzes from pop culture in the 1960’s and 1970’s and the age of the reader almost always determined their average score. Apparently looking back isn’t very popular these days with our younger generations. Todays attempt at reawakening the past will include questions of Science facts from the 1970’s. The answers will be posted below.
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THE CONCORDE
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EVERYONE LUVS SCIENCE
__________ was one of two Soviet cosmonauts who took part in the Apollo-Soyuz mission.
How fast could the Concorde jets fly?
What year did Amtrak begin service?
By 1972, __________ percentage of American homes had color TV’s?
What year was smallpox eradicated?
The first Apple Computer available on the market was the __________.
Amtrak immediately cut the number of passenger train routes from ___________ to __________.
In what country was the last reported naturally occurring case of smallpox?
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and __________ are the founders of Apple.
The Apollo-Soyuz used mission allowed the Soviets/Russians to build the __________.
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THE MIR
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Answers
Alexi Neonov or Valeri Kubasov, Mach 2.02 or 1330 mph, 1971, 50%, 1977, Apple I, 366 to 184, Somalia, Ronald Wayne, the Mir space station.
Once again my searching through online used-book stores has paid off. I know how much most of you enjoy these quizzes that I occasionally post, so here’s another. This quiz concerns a decade I remember well, the 1970’s. I was living in Columbus, Ohio and working as a private investigator. It was a wild and crazy time that should be remembered because everything seemed much freer and easier than we have it these days. From what I can determine this quiz was created by a gentleman named Bill O’Neill. I scored a measly 6 correct out of ten and I’m forced to hang my head in shame. Let’s see how some of you do. As always the answers will be below.
1. What year did the blockbuster film Star Wars hit the theaters?
2. The Keep On Truckin’ cartoon/meme was first written by _____________?
3. What was the name of the New York City disco club that became world-famous in the 70’s?
4. _______________was the “inventor” of the pet rock?
5. What old sci-fi character inspired George Lucas to write Star Wars?
6. Who was the television producer who created many “socially conscious” sitcoms in the 1970’s?
7. What was one of the problems with 8-track tapes ______________?
8. What band performed the hit disco tune “Get Down Tonight”?
9. Who was one of the two veteran British actors who had a role in Star Wars?
10. What was Star Wars’ budget?
Answers
1977, Robert Crumb, Studio 54, Gary Dahl, Flash Gordan, Norman Lear, The tracks would change mid-song, KC and the Sunshine Band, Peter Cush or Alec Guinness, $11 million.
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