Archive for the ‘Trivia’ Category
After my raucous celebration of Earth Day, I thought a little humor would improve my morning. It’s only right that if I’m having a good morning, I should pass along some of that goodness to you. Here’s a short joke to start things off.
Q. What are the three words men hate to hear during sex? “Are you done?”
Q. What are the three words women hate to hear during sex? “Honey, I’m home.”
I thoroughly enjoyed this joke which made me laugh out loud when I read it. Who doesn’t love sheep?
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A new farmer buys several sheep hoping to breed them. After several weeks he notices that none of the sheep are getting pregnant and calls a local vet for some help. The vet tells him that he should try artificial insemination. The farmer doesn’t have the slightest idea what that means but, not wanting to display his ignorance, only asks the vet how he will know when the sheep are pregnant. The vet tells him that they will stop standing around and will lay down and wallow in the grass when they are pregnant. The farmer hangs up and gives it some thought. He comes to the conclusion that artificial insemination means he has to impregnate the sheep. So, he loads the sheep into the back of his truck, drives them out into the woods, screws them all, brings them back and goes to bed.
In the morning, he wakes up and looks out at the sheep. Seeing as they are all still standing around, he deduces that the first try didn’t take and again loads them into the truck. He drives them out to the woods, screws each sheep twice for good measure, brings them back home and goes to bed.
The next morning, he wakes to find the sheep still standing around. Out of frustration he again proceeds to load them up and drive them out to the woods. He spends all day sheep screwing, and upon returning home falls totally exhausted into bed.
Morning arrives and he can’t even raise himself from the bed to look at the sheep. He asks his wife to look out and tell him if any of the sheep are lying in the grass.
“No”, she says, “they’re all in the truck and one of them is beeping the horn.”
KEEP SMILING PERVERTS
Well yesterday was when the ever-so-lame Earth Day was celebrated. I’ve never celebrated this day the same way I don’t recognize or celebrate Kwanza. All of you so-called “Greenies” out there can get as excited as you’d like but not me. My concern for the environment is ongoing every day and not just on one day. Many people are truly “Green” but they’re in the minority. The majority of citizens when polled all love Earth Day but ask them again a week later. They aren’t quite that serious about it as they’d like everyone to believe. It’s become a social stigma not to beat the environmental drum.
This is a partial repost from April of 2013 to show that my opinions remain unchanged. Here are a few facts about how Earth Day was started and by the POS who was responsible. Read and learn you “Green” fools about one of your demi-gods who cared more for the planet than the life of an innocent women.
I’ve been around since the inception of Earth Day by Ira Einhorn and his half-assed hippy movement and while some of the initial ideas were valid concerning abuses of the environment it has now evolved into a semi-religious movement with goals and political aims that go way too far and are harming the country. Everything green becomes more important than life itself. The movement has no respect about another person’s property rights, their jobs, or the devastating effect many of the stupid EPA laws have had on unsuspecting citizens and businesses.
As in any political movement you must look at the leader for his ideas and credibility. Einhorn to me is just a stone-cold killer who thinks the laws of society don’t apply to him.
Ira Samuel Einhorn, a.k.a. “The Unicorn Killer” (born May 15, 1940), is a convicted murderer, and American activist of the 1960s and 1970s. He is now serving a life sentence for the 1977 murder of Holly Maddux.
How many Earth Days has “Holly Maddux” missed since she was beaten to death by Einhorn, stuffed into a trunk, and stuck in a closet. It took more than twenty years to find, arrest, return him to this country, and convict him.
To quote the murderer: “Underlying the themes of Earth Day is a call for mankind to align itself with nature, and against itself, enlisting human beings to take part in a battle that seeks to place humanity under the control of an enlightened elite, one that values the interests of nature above that of people.
If you’re interested and want more information about Einhorn and Earth Day, just click here to learn more about the case:
IRA EINHORN’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET
OH YEAH – HAPPY EARTH DAY HOLLY
I’ve made it clear over the years that I’m a huge fan of Isaac Asimov. I’ve tried to read as many of his writings as I could find, and his limericks are outstandingly bawdy. He also has another talent which I really appreciate and that was his ability to collect odd facts. It never ceases to amaze me how diverse his level of knowledge became over the years, and it still fascinates me. It was one of my motivations for starting this blog because there are just so many interesting odd and weird facts available and most of them never see the light of day. This blog is my way of bringing as many of those facts as possible to light so you all can enjoy them. Today’s topic of discussion will be the world of entertainment. Where else could you find the appropriate amount of weirdness that Asimov so religiously documented. Here we go.
- Not until 1959 was a play by a black woman produced on Broadway. 29-year-old Lorraine Hansberry’s starred in, A Raisin in the Sun, which concerned the problems (comic and serious) of a black family in modern day America. It was highly successful and eventually made into a motion picture.
- The great French actress Sarah Bernhardt was obsessed with death. As a teenager, she made frequent visits to the Paris morgue to look at corpses of derelicts dragged up from the Seine, and she begged her mother to buy her a pretty rosewood coffin with white satin lining. The coffin became part of the Bernhardt legend. Occasionally, she slept in it, and eventually she was buried in it when she died at the age of 79.
- A U.S. television network’s dramatic representation of the trial of Nazi judges was sponsored by the natural gas industry. The word “gas” was excised from the script, but a few “gases” slipped by the censors; those had to be blipped before the program was aired.
- During the pre-Broadway tour of the 1936 musical Red, Hot and Blue, Cole Porter had to do a lot of rewriting. Rather than hire a professional stenographer to take his dictations and transcribe the changes, he used the services of one of the stars of the show, Ethel Merman. Before she went into show business, Ms. Merman had been a secretary. Porter described her as “among the best stenographers I’ve ever had.”
- A tambourinelike instrument used in old time minstrel shows was made from the jawbone of a horse or ass, from which the instrument got its name, “Bones.” When the bone was thoroughly dried, the teeth were so loose they rattled and produced sounds as loud as a castanet. Every minstrel troupe had a “Mr. Bones.”
- Rin Tin Tin, for years the most famous dog in the world, was born to a war-dog mother in a German trench in France during World War I. Deserted when the Germans retreated, the German-shepherd puppy was found by an American officer who just happened to be a police dog-trainer from California. He trained Rin Tin Tin when they returned home. The dog was so intelligent he came to the notice of Warner Brothers Studios, which signed him up for what turned out to be a long career as one of the biggest box office draws of the silent screen era.
I just love these hidden stories and facts and envy Azimov’s ability to research and publish all of them. I’m happy to share them with you and I hope you enjoyed them.
THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES, ISAAC!
To all of the baseball lovers out there, here’s a little trivia that goes back seventy-two years. It’s nice to know that the tradition of the game remains as frustrating and fascinating as ever.
In baseball there is no clock. A pro basketball game lasts 48 minutes while hockey and football games last 60 minutes. But as the old saying goes, a baseball game (or the inning) isn’t over until the final out. A game on May 21, 1952, between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers proved the old saying true.
The first half-inning had lasted one hour. Twenty-one batters had gotten hits and seven walks, and two batters had been hit by a pitched ball. Fifteen runs had scored, and three men were left on base. The following day the New York Times printed some of the records the Brooklyn team had broken in that that first-half inning:
Most runs scored in one inning (15)
Most runs scored in the first inning (15)
Most runs scored with two outs (12)
Most batters to bat in one inning (21)
Most batters to reach base safely in a row (19)
This last record may be the most amazing of all. Only the first batter and the last had not gotten on base safely. The 19 batters in between had all made it – even the man who was put out on the basepaths for the second out. The Times confessed it couldn’t be sure that 19 batters in a row was a record, but if any major league team ever did better, no one remembers the occasion.
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PLAY BALL & GOOD LUCK TO THE PIRATES
When I started this blog many years ago it took me a while to come up with a proper name. Once the decision was made to call it “every useless thing” I was hooked into providing as many weird and unusual facts as I could find. I’ve created a rather large library of totally useless information and it’s my pride and joy. If I’ve calculated properly, I have enough facts and trivia to continue this blog for 10 more years and never repeat the same item twice. I get to find them and post them, and unfortunately you get to read them. Here we go . . .
- Reese Witherspoon has two pet donkeys.
- Keanu Reeves was born in Lebanon.
- The iconic mask used in the 1978 horror film Halloween was a plastic Captain Kirk mask from Star Trek, spray-painted white and with its eyeholes enlarged.
- The S. S. Minnow of Gilligan’s Island fame was named after former chairman of the FCC, Newton Minnow, who considered television to be a “vast wasteland.
- The maiden name of Betty rubble from the Flintstones show was Betty Jean McBricker.
- To complete the pair, the maiden name of Wilma Flintstone was Wilma Slaghoopel.
- In the United States, the last year that somebody officially died of “old age” was 1951 That’s the last year “old age” was listed on death certificates. It’s now referred to as death by “natural causes.”
- Robert Williams is the first known person to be killed by a robot. He worked at a Ford automobile factory and was struck in the head by a robot in 1979.
- Amalie Auguste Melitta Benz was the un-famous inventor of the coffee filter.
- The first mechanically sliced loaf of bread was sold under the famous Wonder Bread brand in 1930.
AND THE BEAT GOES ON
I’ve had a relationship for more than fifty years with the criminal justice system in this country. Starting as a cop, then a private investigator, a corporate Loss Prevention specialist, and eventually working for the State of Maine in the Judicial Branch. I’m fascinated with all aspects of the profession which includes collecting odd bits of trivia which I’ll share with you today.
- The world’s first police detective was Eugene Françoise Vidocq. The Frenchman founded the plainclothes civil police unit, the Brigade de la se Surete, in 1812.
- C. Auguste Dupin was the world’s first fictional police detective. Edgar Allen Poe used Eugene François Vidocq as a model for his character C. Auguste Dupin in the 1841 short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which is considered to be the world’s first detective story.
- The act of hanging, drawing, and quartering was not abolished in England until 1870.
- Sheraton Hope and Ormond Sacker were the original names of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous crime-fighting duo, Sherlock Homes and Dr. John Watson. They first appeared in a novel called “A Tangled Skein.” Doyle ultimately changed the novel’s title to “A Study in Scarlet” when it was officially published in 1887.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has sold more books than J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien combined.
- One in four convicts ultimately exonerated by DNA evidence confessed or pled guilty to crimes they did not commit.
- Until 1998 it was a valid defense against rape or sexual battery in Mississippi to claim that the female victim was not chaste in character.
- From the 11th to the 18th centuries criminals were executed in southeast Asia by being crushed by an elephant.
- A real-life member of Scotland Yard, Inspector Charles Frederick Field, was friends with author Charles Dickens and introduced Dickens to many of London’s criminal haunts. Dickens later featured the inspector in his 1851 short story “On Duty with Inspector Field.”
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL POLICE
I think today I’ll keep this post rather short. I’m actually celebrating the fact that after two and half days of having no electric, no Internet, no phone service, and just generally cold and crappy weather, the storm has ended, and things are beginning to normalize. This ice storm destroyed most of southern Maine by damaging trees, adjacent homes, and dangerous conditions for any traveling. We have trees down everywhere and there’s still a few hundred thousand people in Maine with no power. I guess I got lucky that my street was repaired only after we sat in the dark and cold for two days. This is the second such storm in as many months totaling eight solid days of no utilities Internet, power, etc. etc. etc. It just brings home the fact that we rely on technology for damn near everything. Unfortunately, it’s also the first thing to fail.
I’ll probably be spending a great deal of time in the next few days trying to clean up the property because in my backyard alone I have three trees down and they have to be removed. I know that sounds bad but compared to most of the neighbors in this area I got off with minor damage. I thought I had all of the contingencies covered with storm preparation by installing a generator to carry the load when the electric goes out. Unfortunately, when the generator was supposed to kick in and turn on the electric it failed to work. Trying to find service people during a storm crisis is ridiculously difficult but I did get lucky. I made one call requiring that I travel 2 miles from my house, stand on my car roof and wave my hands in the air to get a signal in the midst of all this chaos. I guess I have to believe in miracles because within a half an hour of making that call, I returned home to find the electrician, his son, and a truck load of parts in my driveway. They dismantled my generator and immediately corrected the problem. As I write this, I’m still amazed. Things like that almost never happen but I’m certainly glad they did.
After all of that aggravation the power was fully restored this morning and now the cleanup begins. I hope and pray there are no more surprise spring storms showing up. Nothing good comes of these storms except if you own a Home Depot or Lowe’s, then you’re making a damn fortune. More to come in the next day or so and hopefully I can get this blog back to normal by then. Meanwhile . . . .
STAY WARM AND DRY AND PRAY FOR SPRING TO ARRIVE
A young playboy took a blind date to an amusement park. They first went for a ride on the Ferris wheel. When the ride was over, she seemed somewhat bored. “What would you like to do next?” he asked. “I want to be weighed,” she said. So, the young man took her over to the weight guesser. “112 lbs,” said the man at the scale, and he was obviously right. Next, they took a ride on the roller coaster. After that, he bought her some popcorn and cotton candy, then asked what else she would like to do. “I want to be weighed,” she said again. I really latched onto an odd one tonight, thought the young man, and using the excuse that he had developed a headache, he took the girl home. The girl’s mother was surprised to see her home so early, and asked, “What’s wrong, dear, didn’t you have a nice time tonight?” “It was “Wousy,” said the girl.
Q. Why is air a lot like sex?
A. Because it’s no big deal unless you’re not getting any.
When Ralph first noticed his penis was growing longer and staying erect longer, he was delighted, as was his wife. After several weeks his penis had grown to twenty inches. Ralph became quite concerned as he was having problems dressing and even walking. So, he and his wife went to see a prominent urologist. After an initial examination the doctor explained to the couple that, though rare, Ralph’s condition could be fixed with corrective surgery. “How long will Ralph be on crutches?” the wife asked anxiously. “Crutches? Why would he need crutches?” responded the doctor. “Well,” said Ralph’s wife coldly, “you are going to lengthen his legs, aren’t you?”
Q. What’s the difference between a lesbian and a Fritz cracker?
A. One’s a snack cracker, and the others a crack snacker!
I JUST WANT TO BE HAPPY . . .
AND MAYBE A LITTLE NAKED AS WELL
I hope all of you had an enjoyable Easter holiday. With that in mind I thought I’d offer up a little religious history and trivia. While I’m not all that religious I certainly enjoy anything concerning history whether it be mythological or factual. Enjoy.
- The egg has become the symbol for Easter because it began as an ancient symbol of new life and considered a fitting symbol for the Resurrection.
- A Bible published in London in 1632 became known as the Wicked Bible. It was called that because the word “not” was missing from the seventh commandment, making it “Thou shalt commit adultery.”
- Few people know that one of the most famous structures in Greek mythology was built by a man named Epeius. It was the Trojan horse.
- A bird was credited with saving Rome from attack by the Gauls in 390 B.C. The bird was a goose and according to legend its honking alerted the Romans to a night raid by the Gauls.
- The political-religious movement, Rastafarianism, is named after former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie who at his coronation was titled Ras Tafari.
- The Vatican’s Sistine Chapel was named after Pope Sixtus IV who had it built as a private papal chapel.
- When the American Foundation for the Blind recorded the entire 774,000-word King James version of the Bible in 1944, it took 84 1/2 hours.
- The King James version of the Bible was the common source for a number of clichés; “Salt of the earth”, “Feet of clay”, and “Apple of my eye”.
- The seven cardinal virtues are prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice, faith, love, and hope.
- The seven deadly sins are pride, covetousness, lust, gluttony, anger, envy and sloth.
And here is a bit of bonus trivia concerning Pope John Paul II. His talents extended beyond the realm of his calling. He was also a gifted writer and musician. His 1979 record album, “At the Festival of the Sacro Song” sold over 1 million copies.
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IT’S EASIER TO PREACH TEN SERMONS THAN TO LIVE JUST ONE
I stumbled upon a book of limericks some months ago and finally took the time to read through it. Bear in mind that the writers of these limericks are now 57 years older, and many have sadly passed away. Let me bring a few of their limericks back to life if only for a moment for you to enjoy them. These are selections related to our loving pets and other lovable animals.
There was a young man who was bitten
By 42 cats and a kitten,
Cried he, “It is clear
My end is quite near,
No matter, I’ll die like a Briton.
A cat in despondency sighed,
And resolved to commit suicide.
He got under the wheels
Of nine automobiles,
And after the last one he died.
There was a young man from the city,
Who met what he thought was a kitty.
He gave it a pat,
And said, “Nice little cat!”
And they buried his clothes out of pity.
One day I went out to the zoo,
For I wanted to see the old gnu,
But the old gnu was dead,
They had a new gnu instead,
And that gnu, well, he knew he was new.
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HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND
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