It appears today will be a slow day. Gray skies, rainy, and just chilly enough to let us know that snow is on the way soon. With that depressing thought in mind I’ll be lazy and post some little known facts you may not have heard before.
The first soda can was developed in 1938 by the Continental Can Company for the ginger ale drink Clicquot in Massachusetts. RC Cola was the first soft drink company to nationally distribute soda in cans in 1954.
In 1968, the Navy spent $400,00.00 in a study of Frisbees in wind tunnels, using cameras and computers. The results were never published.
Dr. Joseph Bell inspired the character of Sherlock Holmes. In 1877 when Arthur Conan Doyle was studying to be a doctor, Bell was one of his professors. Dr. Bell had excellent deductive abilities when observing people.
The state of Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw Indians words: “okla” meaning people and “humma” meaning red, so the state’s name literally means “red people”.
To satisfy President Ronald Reagan more than 24 thousand pounds of jelly beans were ordered by the White House during his two terms in office.
On July 11, 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr shot and killed the Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey.
James Madison stood only 5’4′. He was also the lightest president weighing in at just a 100 pounds.
On April 11,1912, pinstripes appeared on the uniforms of the Highlanders, who were the forerunners of the New York Yankees.
In 1872 the Equal Rights Party nominated Victoria Claflin Woodhall for the Presidency. This was at a time when, nationwide, women were not allowed to vote.
Aldous Huxley published his novel Brave New World in 1933. George Orwell followed in 1949 with “1984”of a society run by the Thought Police and Big Brother.
It’s said that most geniuses are borderline crazy. Herre are a few facts that might interest you.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain was born in 1835 in the year when Haley’s Comet could be seen from Earth, and fulfilling his own death prophecy, he died in 1910, the next time the comet cycled near the Earth, 76 years later.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York City hung Henri Matisse’s painting Le Bateau upside down for 47 days before an alert art student noticed the error.
Poet Ezra Pound wrote The Pisan Cantos while imprisoned in a U.S. army camp in Pisa, Italy. He had been arrested for treason because he had broadcasted Fascist propaganda from Italy during World War II. Eventually judged insane, Pound spent 12 years in a Washington D.C. mental hospital before finally returning to Italy.
Novelist Edgar Allan Poe was once a student at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Poe flunked out in a particularly spectacular way. An order came for all cadets to show up for a full-dress parade “wearing white belt and gloves, under arms.” He followed the order all too literally, appearing wearing nothing but a belt and carrying his gloves under his naked arms.
EZRA POUND
Robert Lewis Stevenson (1850-1894) wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a book of 60,000 words, during a six-day cocaine binge. He was also reported to have been suffering from tuberculosis at the time.
British writers Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis both died on November 22nd, 1963, the day of John Kennedy’s assassination.
American author Norman Mailer once stabbed his wife and then wrote a novel about it called An American Dream.
Both William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes, who was considered by some to be Shakespeare’s literary equivalent, died on the same day: April 23, 1616.
When I woke up this morning, I immediately decided to ignore Christmas for a few more days. The decision was caused by a combination of things but primarily due to the last 25 Christmas Rom-Com’s I had to watch at the insistence of my better half. One more passionate but interrupted kiss and I will run screaming from the room. Let’s just amuse ourselves for a little while longer before the Christmas elf makes the next 2 weeks a green and red nightmare.
The insults “moron, “idiot”, “imbecile,” and “cretin” were all once official medical diagnoses.
The penis of a Barnicle may reach up to 20 times its body size.
The highest possible legal score on a first turn in Scrabble is given by the word “muzjiks,” scoring 128 points. The world record for the highest score on a single turn is “quixotry” for 365 points.
The FBI had a 1427-page dossier on Albert Einstein.
“Queueing” is the only word in English with five consecutive vowels.
A cow burps up to 280 liters of methane per day.
Two thirds of the world’s people never seen snow.
Woodrow Wilson is the only president to have had a PhD.
Aldous Huxley died on the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
From a height of 3 kilometers, it takes 30 minutes for a snowflake to reach the ground.
In the United States, 12% of women with MBAs are divorced or separated, compared with 5% of men with MBAs.
In any given day, more people in India travel by train then by plane in the entire year.
One American in 6500 is injured by a toilet seat during their lifetime.
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport is larger than Manhattan.
Ladders are dropped on Los Angeles freeways more than any other item.
Every year, an average of 12 Japanese tourists in Paris have to be repatriated due to severe culture shock.
“Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) was a writer, philosopher, and intellectual. He wrote nearly fifty books, both novels and non-fiction work, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. He is well known for his 1932 work, A Brave New World. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times and was elected Companion of Literature by The Royal Society of Literature in 1962. Huxley was also a humanist and pacifist.
