Here’s a collection of peculiar trivia mixed in with some interesting quotes from somewhat interesting people. It’s a good way to start your somewhat interesting work week. Have fun . . .
“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.” Eleanor Roosevelt
In the spring of 1930, the Senate almost voted to ban all dial telephones from the Senate wing of the Capital, as the technophobic older senators found them too complicated to use.
Commercial deodorant became available in 1888. Roll-on deodorant was an invented in the 1950s, using technology from standard ballpoint pens.
Before Popeye, Olive Oyl’s boyfriend was named Ham Gravy.
Three presidents died on the 4th of July: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Monroe.
The world goes through approximately 1.75 billion candy canes every year.
“The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” Vince Lombardi
Like plants, children grow faster during spring than any other season.
The aboriginal body consists of approximately 71 pounds of intentionally edible meat, not including organ tissue.
British geologist William Buckland was known for his ability to eat anything, including rodents and insects. When presented with the heart of French King Louis XIV, he gobbled it up without hesitation.
Male lions are able to make 50 or more times in a single day. Tell your husband.
It took more than 1700 years to build the Great Wall of China.
“Carpe per diem“– means seize the check – so says Robin Williams
In an ironic twist, Mel Blanc, best known as the voice of Bugs Bunny, had an aversion to raw carrots.
Australian toilets are designed to flush counterclockwise.
Mr. Potato Head holds the honor of being the first toy ever featured in a television commercial.
If you add up all the time you blink during the day, you’d have about half an hour of shut-eye.
John Lennon was the first person to be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
“If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.” Paul McCartney
Being a collector of useless information and all types of odd trivia, I offer for your enjoyment today the following list of really strange occurrences and/or coincidences. I’ve firmly believed for years that there are no such things as coincidences but maybe these will prove me wrong.
The Surete, the French precursor and modern counterpart of the FBI, was founded in 1812 by a man who was once named Public Enemy Number One. Eugene-Francois Vidocq, a thief and outlaw, evaded the police for years, turned police spy, joined the force as a detective, and used his knowledge of crime to establish a new crime fighting organization, the Surete.
The carpenter who built the first stocks in Boston in 1634, a man named Palmer, was the first to occupy them. He was charged with over-billing the town elders for the construction, found guilty, and sentenced to spend a half-hour in the stocks he had recently completed.
To help determine on what floor it should have its offices in one of the two World Trade Center towers, a Japanese company hired a soothsayer to throw dice.
A Harvard student on his way home to visit his parents fell between two railroad cars 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 to the White House to visit his father. The actor was Edwin Booth, the brother of the man who in a few weeks would murder the student’s father.
The celebrated seventeenth-century pirate William Kidd was a wealthy landowner in New York state.
Mark Twain was born in 1835 when Halley’s comet appeared. He predicted he would die when Halley’s comet next returned to scare everyone – and he did, in 1910. The comet returned again in 1986.
U.S. Congressmen expressed surprise on learning in 1977 that it takes fifteen months of instruction at the Pentagon’s School of Music to turn out a bandleader but merely thirteen months to train a jet pilot.
Eleven days before the statute of limitations was to expire on the three-million-dollar Brink’s bank robbery in Boston in 1950, one of the robbers confessed and betrayed his fellow robbers.
During the Gold Rush days in California, Charlie Parkhurst was a stagecoach driver, taking passengers and gold shipments along dangerous roads. Charlie smoked cigars, chewed tobacco, played cards, drank and at one time shot dead two highwaymen. On December 31, 1879, Charlie was found dead at his home. As they were dressing the body for burial it was discovered that Charlie Parkhurst was a woman.
The slave, Henry Brown escaped from Virginia in 1858 by hiding (with a box of biscuits and a bladder of water) in a box that was shipped from Richmond to Philadelphia. There, he popped out into “the free world.” He was forever after known as “Box” Brown.
Here is a message from my new 2023 calendar that specializes in profanity laced sayings.
Any day that starts with a visit to an Oncologist is a day that has to get better. Doctors still give me the willies even after all of my cancer related BS. I got a clean bill of health but I still have to go through their annoying little requirements each time I visit. Screw it, no more doctors talk. Let’s smile just a little with a few retro bumper stickers to get started today. Welcome back to the 60’s and 70’s.
EAT YOUR HEART OUT. I’M MARRIED.
LIFE’S TO SHORT TO FEEL GUILTY
BUMPER STICKERS ARE JUST NOT ENOUGH
I’M SO BROKE I CAN’T EVEN PAY ATTENTION
GOD IS COMING AND SHE’S PISSED OFF
Look Out Ladies – Here I come.
I think I had one or two of those on my 1973 orange Gremlin. I sure miss that car. And just for the hell of it here is a rather lengthy epithet from a fine poet in Wolverhampton, Straffordshire, England. I’m guessing this was written sometime between 1845-1855. It’s obvious that the author was no Longfellow.
It’s hard these days tell tell if what we’re being told is true. Most companies and politicians have developed lying and fake news to new levels of confusion. We spend more time trying to determine if what we’re being told is a lie while the question we originally asked never gets answered. That’s always the grand plan for prevaricators of all kinds, misdirection and the parsing of words and phrases. It’s become an ugly art form for some people. Today’s post contains “true blue” facts collected from my archives with no manipulations or fake and misleading information. Here we go.
The telephone has been one of the most profitable inventions in the history of the United States.
One million threads of fiber optic cable can fit a tube 1/2 inch in diameter.
In 1956, Johnny Mathis decided to record an album instead of answering an invitation to try out for the US Olympic team as a high jumper. It turned out to be a fortuitous choice.
One ounce of pure gold can be made into a wire 50 miles long.
President John Quincy Adams started each summer day with an early morning skinny-dipping in the Potomac River.
America’s modern interstate highway system was designed in the 1950s during the Eisenhower administration. It’s primary purpose was not to enhance casual driving over long distances but to provide for the efficient movement of military vehicles if and when necessary.
The human eye blinks an average of 3.7 million times per year.
Terminal velocity for a human being is approximately 124 mph. To reach this speed, you would have to fall from a height of at least 158 yards or about 1 1/2 football fields.
The Bible contains 32 references to dogs, none to cats.
The word “nerd”comes from Dr. Seuss, who first used the term in his 1950 book If I Ran the Zoo.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this information that has not been edited, exaggerated, or just plain covered in BS. Real truths are much more interesting than most of the nonsense we’re being fed by corporate American and the politicians.
Living in Maine has given me a great appreciation for monitoring the weather. Our winter here starts in late October and extends itself to the end of April, a full six months of snow, sleet, and cold. If you’re not a lover of miserable weather, I recommend you never move here. Today’s posting contains random weather tidbits you haven’t likely heard before. Enjoy!
Lightning strikes the earth of hundred times every second, from the 1800 thunderstorms in progress at any given moment.
Rain contains vitamin B-12.
Observations of increased rain after US Civil War battles led to abortive experiments with weather control. Cannon volleys were fired into the clouds in order to induce rain.
Nearly 100 pollution-filled, weather-beaten years in New York have done more damage to Cleopatra’s Needle – a granite obelisk covered with hieroglyphics – than did 3500 arid years in Egypt.
17 1/2 inches in circumference and 1.67 pounds in weight: that’s the size of the largest hailstone known to have fallen in the United States. It struck during a severe storm at Coffeyville, Kansas, in September of 1970.
In 1816, there was no summer in many areas of the world. In parts of New England, snow stayed on the ground all year. Crops there and in Europe were ruined. Volcanic dust from the corruption of Tomboro in Indonesia that blocked the rays of the sun has been blamed.
In living memory, it was not until February 18, 1979, that snow fell on the Sahara Desert. A half-hour storm in southern Algeria stopped traffic but within a few hours all of the snow had melted away.
Residents in a small village in Scotland schedule their television viewing according to the tides. At low tide, the nearby mudflats absorbed the broadcast “waves”. Thank God for cable.
On June 10, 1958, a tornado was crashing through El Dorado, Kansas. The storm pulled a woman out of her house and carried her 60 feet away. She landed, relatively unharmed, next to a phonograph record titled “Stormy Weather”.
Due to friction with the surface of the planet, the wind retards or accelerates the spin of the Earth very slightly. A peak in the seasonal slowing of the planet is most evident during the northern winter.
Trivia . . . more trivia . . . Here’s some interesting retro trivia from those good old days that we’ve always heard so much about. You can decide if they were as good as we’ve always been told.
Two hundred years ago: For kissing his wife in public on a Sunday after just returning from a three-year voyage, a Boston ship captain was made to sit two hours in the stocks for “lewd and seemly behavior”.
The first Cadillac, which was produced in 1903, cost less than the original model T Ford. Their prices, respectively, were $750 and $875.
The bathhouse in the late medieval town became the habitat for loose women and lecherous man as family life deteriorated. The medieval word for bathhouse, “stew,” has come down in English as a synonym for brothel.
The average married woman in 17th century America gave birth to 13 children.
One-third of all automobiles in New York City, Boston, and Chicago in 1900 were electric cars, with batteries rather than gasoline engines.
In 1909, Annette Kellerman, the Australian swimming star, appeared on a Boston beach wearing a figure- fitting jersey bathing suit with sleeves shortened almost to her shoulders and trousers ending 2 inches above her knees. She was arrested for indecent exposure.
Life expectancy at birth for Americans was 34.5 years for males and 36.5 years for females when George Washington became president in 1789.
As late as 1890, nearly 75% of Americans had to fetch their mail from a post office. A community had to have at least 10,000 people to be eligible for home delivery, and most people then lived in towns or on farms.
The Puritans, considering buttons a vanity and used only hooks and eyes.
In colonial days it was legal to smoke tobacco in Massachusetts only when the smoker was traveling and had reached a location that was 5 miles away from any town. In 1647 Connecticut passed a law forbidding social smoking and limiting the use of tobacco to once a day, and then only when the smoker was alone in his own house.
I had so much fun yesterday I thought I’d continue with more interesting but totally useless information. Enjoy.
The worlds largest pancake was cooked in England measuring 15 meters in diameter, weighed 3 tons, and contained approximately 2 million calories.
“Lucifer” is Latin for “light-bringer”.
One twenty-fifth of the energy released by an incandescent light bulb is light. The rest is heat.
A “rusticle” is a rust formation similar to an icicle. It occurs under water when wrought iron rusts, as on shipwrecks.
One ton of iron will produce a ton and a half of rust.
The fly of a pair of jeans is the fold of cloth over the zipper, not the zipper itself.
Twinkies are 68% air and 32% Twinkie stuff, which means you can pack three Twinkies in the same space taken up by only one.
Throughout it’s lifetime, an elephant goes through six sets of teeth. The elephant starves to death once the sixth set of teeth falls out.
The Spanish exclamation “Ole!” commonly heard at bullfights and flamenco dances, comes from Allah, meaning “Praise be to God”.
The average lifespan of an NHL hockey puck is 7 minutes. Those that don’t fly into the stands are removed because they warm up from friction and bounce on the ice. Game pucks are chilled to -10 degrees Fahrenheit for maximum performance. They are kept in a freezer in the penalty box.
Any day is a good day to be told the truth. How’s that for words to live by? Some of these topics will definitely pique your interest. Sometimes the weirder the facts the truer the statements. See what you think.
Let’s try some sports:
The infamous Bill Buckner of Red Sox fame had more career hits and Ted Williams.
During World War II, so many NFL players were fighting in the war that the rival Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers temporarily teamed up to form the “Steagles”
Walter Payton once threw a touchdown pass, caught a touchdown pass, and ran for a touchdown in the same game.
Legend has it that Hall of Fame baseball player Wade Boggs once drank 107 beers in one day while traveling with the team.
The only team to score 3 touchdowns in under 1 min. in the NFL is the New England Patriots. And they’ve done it twice.
Now for little sci-fi:
It takes 200 million years for the sun to make one orbit around the galactic center.
In order for the earth to become a black hole, its entire mass would have to be compressed into a space less than an inch in diameter.
The sun makes up over 99% of the solar system’s entire mass.
Venus spends backwards and no one knows why!
Every planet in the solar system could fit in the space between Earth and the moon. Even if you count Pluto.
When Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, she was condemned for two crimes: witchcraft and wearing men’s clothing.
Two dozen American states considered impotence legal grounds for divorce.
At any time, .7 percent of the world’s population is drunk.
The King of Diamonds in a standard card deck was designed after Julius Caesar. King of Spades for King David, King of Clubs for Alexander the Great, and King of Hearts for Charlemagne.
A flink is a group of 12 or more cows.
In a single day, one cow discharges enough methane to fill 400 one-liter bottles.
A standard pencil could draw a 35-mile-long line before it runs out of lead (graphite).
The average life span of a goldfish living in the wild is 25 years.
Approximately 500 pounds of Silly Putty are produced every day.
The Guinness World Records book is considered the most commonly stolen volume from libraries around the world. In the United States the Bible is the most shoplifted book.
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