Archive for the ‘columbus’ Tag
After writing this blog for so many years, I tend to write and read everything six times trying to correct my many mistakes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be the norm for other people to edit themselves, even those who are magazine and newspaper editors. It’s commonplace in everyday advertisements to see misspelled words, bad grammar and a general lack of concern for accuracy. It appears that our education system may be partially responsible for some of these issues, and it drives me effing crazy. Here are a few examples of “malaprops” collected from grade school, high school, and college examination papers. What do you think?
- The American colonists won their Revolutionary War and no longer had to pay for taxis.
- The air is thin high up in the sky, down here, it’s fat.
- The flood damage was so bad they had to evaporate the city.
- A horse divided against itself cannot stand.
- The U.S. Constitution was adopted to secure domestic hostility.
- Columbus discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic.
- Brigham Young led the Morons to Utah.
- Socrates died from taking a poison called wedlock.
- The police surrounded the building and threw an accordion around the block.
- To prevent head colds, use an agonizer to spray medicine into your nose.
Here’s one of my favorites:
Achilles’ mother dipped him in the River Stinks until he became immoral.
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READIN, WRITIN, & RITHMATIC
Are you an avid reader? I’ve been one since a very early age and it will continue forever. One of my favorite reads is just about anything ever written by Isaac Azimov. He was a prolific writer as well as a noted intellectual. His areas of interest were many but today I’ll post a few facts he gathered concerning books since we’ve both shared a love for them. Books are great and history is even greater. How can I go wrong posting about the history of books?
- Columbus had with him on his first voyage to the New World a copy of Marco Polo’s book about his 13th century, twenty-two-year odyssey to China and back.
- Twice as many books on religion were published in England as works of fiction in 1870. Sixteen years later, novels far outnumbered religious works.
- The Library of Congress houses over 72 million pieces of research material, including over 16.5 million books and 31 million manuscripts, and costs over $150 million a year to run.
- The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels was ignored in Germany when it was published in 1848, and a Russian translation was suppressed by censors in the 1860’s. It remained a rare pamphlet until it was reprinted in 1872.
- The art of printing from wooden blocks with the characters in reverse was initiated in Buddhist monasteries in China. The oldest surviving printed book that can be reliably dated is a Buddhist text, the Diamond Sutra, made in China in 868 A.D.
- Euclid is the most successful textbook writer of all time. His book Elements dated around 300 B.C. has gone through more than 1000 editions since the invention of printing.
- General Lew Wallace’s bestseller Ben Hur was published in 1880 and was the first work of fiction to be blessed by a Pope.
- America’s first best-selling novelist was a woman, Susanna Haswell Rowson. Although it was a melodramatic work with wooden characters and a hackneyed plot, Charlotte Temple, published in 1791, appealed to popular tastes. It went through more than 200 editions.
- Icelanders read more books per capita than any other people in the world.
- To get her book published, in 1896, Fannie Farmer had to pay publishers Little, Brown and Company the printing costs for the first 3000 copies. The publisher refused to take the risk, saying that women would not buy still another collection of recipes. Ironically, her Boston Cooking School Cook Book eventually became the most popular cookbook of its time and a “gold mine” through the years for the publisher; millions of copies have been sold in dozens of editions.
THANK YOU ISAAC
I feel the need to distribute a little more useless information today. There seems to a never-ending supply which I will happily make available to as many people as possible. Some of this information was also supplied by my all-time favorite writer, Isaac Azimov.
- The foundations of the great European cathedrals go down as far as 40 or 50 feet. In some instances, they form a mass of stone as great as that of the visible building above the ground.
- While Columbus was seeking new worlds to the West, Italian engineers were rebuilding the Kremlin in Moscow.
- The number of possible ways of playing just the first four movies on each side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.
- There were more than 100 distinct ethnic groups in the old Soviet Union.
- The Pacific Ocean fills nearly a complete hemisphere of the Earth’s surface.
- Because of the story in Genesis that Eve had been created out of Adam’s rib, it was widely believed during the Middle Ages that men had one fewer rib than women.
- Immediately after the end of the American Revolution, Congress abolished the United States Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, leaving the Congress itself as the only national government organization. They feared a standing army.
- When Thomas Jefferson became president, in 1801, 20% of the people in the United States were slaves. There were 5 million people in all.
- It was only in 1968 – 43 years after the Scopes “monkey trial” – that the state of Tennessee abolished its anti-evolution law and accepted the doctrine of evolution.
- “Red Tape” the rigid application of regulations and routine, resulting in the delay in getting business done, got its name from the color of the tape that was commonly used to tie official papers. The term was in use as early as 1658.
Well, for all of you trivia lovers out there you’ve just received your daily fix of totally useless information. My supply never seems to run low and more will definitely follow.
ENJOY YOUR WEEK
I’m a lover of history, and I’m absolutely crazy about obscure historical trivia facts. I’ve collected quite a few over the years and I’m going to begin today with what I hope will be a number of postings with more of these little tidbits. Enjoy!
- “Take this script,” Rudyard Kipling said to the nurse who cared for his firstborn child, “and someday if you are in need of money, you may be able to sell it at a handsome price.” Years later, when the nurse was actually in want, she sold the manuscript of the first Jungle Book and lived in comfort for the rest of her life.
- After writing the runaway bestseller Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe was bombarded with hate mail. Out of one package that she received fell the ear of a slave.
- The author of the best-known document in the United States, and perhaps in the world, published only one book. Thomas Jefferson’s answers to a set of 23 questions about the American continent, circulated in 1780 by the French emissary François Marbois, appeared as Notes on the State of Virginia.
- Walt Whitman was dismissed from his clerical post in the Indian Bureau of the Department of the Interior when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, read a portion of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and deemed it “pernicious poetry”.
- Heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney lectured on Shakespeare at Yale University.
- The electric automobile self-starter, which was perfected in 1911 by Charles F Kettering, made it possible for women to drive without the companion previously needed for cranking the engine.
- In the early 1860s, a New York firm offered a prize of $10,000 for a satisfactory substitute for ivory in the manufacture of billiard balls. The prize was won by an American inventor, John Wesley Hyatt, who devised for the purpose what came to be known as celluloid. It was the first synthetic plastic.
- Somewhere out there in space, amid all of the junk, is the Hasselblad camera dropped during a spacewalk by the United States astronaut Michael Collins. It will orbit the earth indefinitely.
- A manned rocket reaches the moon in less time than it took a stagecoach to travel the length of England.
- In 1930, Ellen Church recruited seven other young nurses to work 5000 feet above the Earth. They were the first airline stewardesses, flying on Boeing’s San Francisco to Chicago route, a trip that, in good weather, took 20 hours and made 13 stops.
WHO DOESN’T LOVE HISTORICAL TRIVIA?
As I promised a week or so ago, if I found any interesting tidbits of useless information and trivia, I would pass them along to you. I have a few here that are obscure, a little strange, but as best I can determine accurate. Read them and remember them because you never know when you might get caught up in a vicious game of Trivial Pursuit. A number of these items were researched by the late great Isaac Asimov. He was one of the smartest men alive in his day and had a habit of collecting and researching odd tidbits of information. Enjoy!
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Drilling an oil well 5 miles deep requires drilling night and day, seven days a week, for as long as 500 days.
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The total population of the earth at the time of Julius Caesar was 150 million. The total population increase in two years on earth today is 150 million.
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During the next minute, 100 people will die 240 will be born. The world’s population problem increases by a 140 people per minute.
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Many years ago a Harvard student on his way home to visit his parents fell between two railroad cars at the station in Jersey City, New Jersey, and was rescued by an actor on his way to visit his sister in Philadelphia. The student was Robert Lincoln, heading for 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The actor was Edwin Booth the brother of the man who a few weeks later would murder the students father.
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There are 2,500,000 rivets in the Eiffel Tower.
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There is a salt mine in the Polish town of Wieliczka, near Cracow, that has been in operation for nearly 1000 years.
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While Columbus was seeking new worlds to the West, Italian engineers were rebuilding the Kremlin in Moscow.
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There are more than 100 distinct ethnic groups in the Soviet Union.
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Every cubic mile of seawater holds over 150,000,000 tons of minerals. There are 350,000,000 cubic miles of seawater on the planet.
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It was proposed in the Rhode Island legislature in the 1970’s that there be enacted a two dollar tax on every act of sexual intercourse.
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Morocco was the first country to officially recognize the United States in 1789.
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Some Eskimos use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing.
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In 1978, more than 1000 deer were accidentally killed in Connecticut by automobile drivers. Only 948 were killed by hunters.
Well there you have it. More useless information for you to cram into your brain so you can amaze your friends and family and possibly win a few bar bets. More to come I’m sure.
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