For many years I’ve considered myself a true “foodie”. I’ve always made a point to try damn near anything called food. Of course, that has changed dramatically as I’ve aged. Truthfully, I don’t really miss my entrees of “dog soup” and “cat spring rolls” I once tried in Korea. So, when I started collecting odd facts and trivia, food always seems to be mentioned in some fashion. Here are a few little-known facts about food I’ve collected. How many have your heard before?
What is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box? Bingo.
What is the American name for the British delicacy known as trotters? Pig’s feet.
Under US government regulations, what percentage of peanut butter has to be peanuts? 90%.
Who originally coined the phrase that has been appropriated as the slogan for Maxwell House coffee; “Good to the last drop”? President Theodore Roosevelt
What recipe did Texas ice cream maker Elmer Doolin buy for a $100 from the owner of a San Antonio café in 1933 and later used to make a fortune? The recipe for tasty corn chips that was later marketed as Fritos. He made them at night in his mother’s kitchen and peddled them from his Model-T Ford.
A California winemaker from Napa Valley once named a wine in honor of Marilyn Monroe. What was it called? Marilyn Merlot.
What food product was discovered because of a long camel ride? Cottage cheese. An Arab trader found that milk he was carrying in a goatskin bag had turned into a tasty solid white curd.
Peter Cooper, best known for inventing the locomotive “Tom Thumb”, patented a dessert in 1845. What was it? A gelatin treat that eventually became known as Jell-O when it was marketed in 1897.
In 1867 Emperor Napoleon III had a chemist develop a food product “for the army, navy, and the needy classes of the population.” What was it? Margarine.
What was the drink we know as the Bloody Mary originally called? The Red Snapper, which was it’s name when it crossed the Atlantic from Harry’s New York Bar in Paris.
Have you ever gone to the track and bet on a horse? Have you ever tracked the odds on your horse? It always amazed me that someone actually sat in an office somewhere and computed those odds. No one actually knows what criteria is used or even if they’re accurate but what the hell do I know, I’m not a gambler. Today’s post is going to be more of the same. I found this information quite by accident and I knew immediately that I had to post it. If you think horseracing odds were hard to compute, these are even more ridiculous. You might find them interesting, and I hope you do.
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.
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.
This blog was intended to supply the masses with “everyuselessthing” I could find. There are also thousands of so-called “trivia experts” out there with knowledge of thousands upon thousands of other strange and odd facts. It’s a true challenge for me to search out a few that even the experts may not have heard before. Here are ten items that were new to me, and I hope new to them as well.
The name of the monster in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel was not “Frankenstein” but “Adam”.
According to Ian Fleming’s writings, James Bonds favorite alcoholic beverage wasn’t a vodka martini (shaken not stirred) but bourbon. Of the 317 drinks consumed, Bond drank 37 bourbons, 10 bourbons and branch water, and seven bourbons and soda, but only 19 vodka martinis.
Although the deerstalker hat is almost a trademark of Sherlock Holmes, he never wore one. Nowhere in Sir Arthur Conan Doyles four novels and 56 stories is the hat ever mentioned. The belief that Holmes wore such a hat can be traced to Sydney Paget, an illustrator for Strand Magazine. Paget, who liked deerstalker hats and wore them himself, produced drawings inaccurately depicting Holmes wearing one.
The official name of the bed created by the Murphy Door Bed Company was not called a Murphy Bed but an In-A-Doorbed.
The monkey wrench was named after its inventor, Charles Moncky.
The rock group America was actually formed in England.
The specific English word for a group of kittens is not litter, which can designate animals of different species, but Kittles, or Kindle.
Table tennis was invented not in China but in England, where it was originally played with balls made from champagne corks and paddles from cigar box lids. English engineer James Gibbs introduced the celluloid ball.
The person who invented the electric chair was a dentist. In 1881, Dr. Alfred Southwick, a dentist from Buffalo, New York, saw an intoxicated man touch a live electric generator, which promptly killed him. Thus, the electric chair was born.
Do you like hot, humid, and sticky weather? Do you really and truly love having everything you own covered in green pollen? I’ve spent most of my life dreading the arrival of Spring and Summer and hay fever season. I have no known allergies to food or medicines but the one allergy I do have is the worst, Pollen. I spent many summers playing baseball in all kinds of weather and suffered through pollen attacks every year. Over the years doctors have tried every medicine known to man to help me with this allergy with absolutely no positive results.
Just as an example, I cut the grass yesterday, and I was partially incapacitated for a couple hours after I was done because I couldn’t catch my breath, and I couldn’t stop sneezing. I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of people out there with the same allergy and they have my sympathies because no matter what you’re told nobody has a clue on how to properly deal with it. I guess that’s why the company that makes Benadryl has done so well through the years. I have a large jar of Benadryl in my nightstand and for about two weeks every Spring I eat them like jellybeans (and sleep a lot).
The only good thing that comes out of this allergy is my ability to sneeze 20-25 times a day. This might sound a little weird, but I love sneezing. I had a dear friend explain to me many years ago that one sneeze equals approximately 1/8 of an orgasm. So, if I sneeze 24 times a day I get three free orgasms, no charge. You know what they say, when life gives you free orgasms, smile and enjoy them. Here are a few things you might also want to know about sneezing . . .
The Greeks believed if you sneeze to the left, bad luck was in your future. If you turn to the right during the sneeze, you will prosper.
Ancient people believed a sneeze could give you an advantage in an argument. If your opposer believed evil spirits escaped the body during a sneeze, you could easily ‘spook‘ him by sneezing near him. This would throw him off guard and help you win the argument.
Good luck is in your future if you sneeze when going to bed. But don’t sneeze on your partner. Otherwise, good luck or not, you will not have a partner for long.
If you feel a sneeze coming on, but you don’t sneeze, watch out! That means you are going to lose someone or something dear to you.
There are some ‘cures’ for sneezing. Press your upper lip hard and recite the alphabet backwards. No particular alphabet is recommended.
You can stop a sneeze just by pressing on your lip, just below your nostrils. That apparently deactivates the sneeze mechanism.
Every culture has the custom of invoking some god or spirit after a sneeze. The “God Bless You” originated with the Christians. But it’s a carryover from the Romans who took to invoking Jupiter to preserve them every time they sneezed.
A Zulu child is taught to say “Grow.” To the Zulus, sneezing is a sign of good health. In Persian culture, everyone in the presence of someone who sneezes prays. The Arabs avoid sneezing entirely by washing out their noses with water each evening.
Sneezes have even inspired a rhyme. It even matters what day of the week you sneeze. Here’s the rules . . .
Seventy percent of Swedish women claim to have participated in a threesome.
Every year more than 11,000 Americans hurt themselves trying out bizarre sexual positions.
The average person spends two weeks of their life kissing.
Forty-six percent of women say a good night’s sleep is better than sex.
Elvis Presley called his penis “Little Elvis.”
The sperm count of American men is down thirty percent from thirty years ago.
Americans spend more money each year at strip clubs than that all the theaters and classical concert halls in the country combined.
In ancient Greece and Rome dildos were made out of animal horns, ivory, gold, silver, and even glass.
Only thirty-one percent of men admit to looking at other women when in the company of their spouse or girlfriend. Their partners say the figure is actually closer to sixty-four percent.
In ancient Rome, men found guilty of rape had their testicles crushed between two stones as a punishment.
And here’s one of my all-time favorite sexual facts: Four popes have died while participating in sexual acts.
It seems that almost everyone is obsessed with their body image and that’s understandable considering the wide range of odd, shaped bodies we see every day. Even though there are so many variations, the functions and organs of the body are all too similar. Here are a few trivia facts about our bodies. They can be a thing of beauty or not and they can be a bit disgusting or not. Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder.
Did you know that approximately 1 in every 18 men have a third nipple. People who have the condition will sometimes suffer from atelophobia, the fear of being imperfect. Celebrities Tilda Swinton, Carrie Underwood, Lily Allen, and Mark Wahlberg have third nipples. Mark Wahlberg’s third nipple was airbrushed out of his famous Calvin Klein underwear ad.
If you have a fear of facial hair, you could be suffering from pogonophobia. In ancient times beards were a sign of strength and wisdom and were only cut or sheared off as punishment or if someone was in mourning.
Were you aware that your left lung is slightly smaller than your right. It’s to allow room for your heart.
Did you know that women need more sleep at night than men. Women need an extra hour of sleep but sometimes don’t get it. Not getting that extra hour is believed to be one reason why women are more susceptible to depression than men.
My cat’s hairballs creep me out. I discovered recently that human beings can also have hairballs and they’re even more disgusting than the cats. The largest human hairball ever removed from the body measured 15 inches in diameter and weighed 10 pounds. The patient also happened to suffer from a condition called trichophagia (the eating of one’s own hair).
The heart is life. Over the course of a lifetime the human heart beats 3 billion times. Your heartbeat mimics the music you listen to and can trigger physiological changes that increase or decrease your blood pressure. The heart is a massive blood pump circulating blood through an average body every 23 seconds or approximately 4000 gallons of blood each day.
Over the last three years I’ve been forced by circumstance to become somewhat knowledgeable about the medical profession and its many practices. It’s not something I ever wanted to know but fear is a great motivator. It motivated me to do a great deal of research to find out exactly what all my health problems were and suggested remedies. The following 10 items will give you a short education on trivia concerning the medical profession that you might find interesting. It’s much better to read them in a blog posting than in person.
The first contraceptive diaphragm – centuries ago – were citrus rinds – halves of oranges for example.
Male embryos, fetuses, and babies have a higher incidence of morbidity than females. Correspondingly, there is a higher rate of language disability among boys than girls.
Ketchup once was sold as a patent medicine. In the 1830s it enjoyed a measure of popularity in the United States as Dr. Miles Compound Extract of Tomato.
Victims of disease -people and animals – are buried underground, and yet the soil remains fairly free of disease germs. Germs are destroyed by the bacteria and other microscopic organisms living in the soil.
For every ounce of alcohol you drink, it takes an hour to regain full driving faculties, that is, normal, alert, clearheaded reactions. If you have 5 ounces of alcohol around 8 PM, you should not drive until at least 1 AM the following day.
Influenza was so named because the cause of the disease was supposedly the evil “influence” of the stars. This “influence” was believed also to be the cause of plagues and pestilences.
Opium frequently was used as a pain killer by army doctors during the U.S. Civil War. By the end of the war, according to conservative estimates, 100,000 soldiers were addicted to opium – at a time when the total population of the country was only 40 million.
In 1777, George Washington had the entire Continental Army – then 4000 men- vaccinated. This action was considered controversial at the time because few American doctors believed in vaccination. It may have saved the Army as a fighting force.
The use of antibiotics did not begin in this century. Early folk medicine included the use of moldy foods or soil for infections. In ancient Egypt, for example, infections were treated with moldy bread.
About 8 ounces of lamb’s blood were injected into the veins of a dying boy, temporarily restoring him, in the first blood transfusion on record. It was performed in 1667 by Gene Baptiste Dennis, physician to King Louis XIV of France.
As you’re probably aware I collect weird and odd trivia. I stumbled upon a book by a Mr. Russ Kick titled “50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know”. It’s a collection of somewhat obscure facts collected by Kick. I’ll list ten of the facts from the book without the accompanying lengthy explanations provided to prove his points. Some facts appear outrageous, but it seems his research was well done. If you want to check his facts, then you’ll need to find and buy the book or do some lengthy research online.
Barbie is based on a German sex doll
Fetuses masturbate
George Washington embezzled government funds
Scientists are re-creating the highly lethal 1918 Spanish Flu virus
Several thousand Americans were held in Nazi concentration camps during WW2
Well over 300,000 tons of chemical weapons have been dumped into the sea
Men have clitorises
Native Americans were once kept as slaves
James Audubon killed all the birds he painted
The Environmental Protection Agency lied about New York’s air quality after the 9/11 disaster.
everyuselessthing.com 