As you are all aware collecting strange facts and stories is my life. It was also a hobby of one of my favorite writers, Isaac Asimov. I’ve mentioned him many times through the years because he was not only a prolific writer but a huge collector of obscure information. Today’s post will be information he collected about the deaths and actions of some interesting individuals. You need to remember that while he collected a lot of information, he was also a big history buff as well. Much of his information concerns people well-known from many years ago. See what you think.
The city morgue in the Bronx, New York, has been so busy at times that next of kin are required to take numbers like they’re in a bakery and then wait in line for their body identification call.
Through the door and windows, would-be assassins poured 73 bullets into Leon Trotsky’s bedroom in his fortresslike house in Mexico City. Thanks to a moment’s warning, Trotsky and his wife escaped unscathed by hiding under the bed. Later in the same year, which was 1940, Trotsky was slain by one man, using an ice pick, who worked himself into the confidence of the old Russian revolutionary. The assassin went by the alias Jacques van den Dreschd, but his true identity remains unknown to this day.
Someone maliciously shouted “Fire” at a copper miners Christmas party in Calumet, Michigan, in 1913. Panic ensued and 72 lives-mostly children’s-were lost.
Calumet Fire Disaster
Stephen Decatur, US naval hero of the Tripoli campaign and of the war of 1812, was challenged in 1822 to a dual by a fellow officer, Commodore James Baron, who was seriously nearsighted. To accommodate his opponent, Decatur agreed to exchange shots at only 8 paces. The duel began and Baron then killed him.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), The Elizabethan champion of the scientific method, died in pursuit of a better way of preserving food. He caught a severe cold while attempting to preserve a chicken by filling it with snow and later died.
George Eastman (1854-1932) was born poor and had little chance for schooling. Thanks to the profit of the company he founded, Eastman Kodak, he was able to contribute over $100 million to various educational institutions. Eastman committed suicide rather than spending his last years in loneliness and without the prospect of further accomplishments.
President Garfield Assassination
Alexander Graham Bell devised a metal locating tool to help find the assassin’s bullet in President James Garfield in 1881. The capture device was workable, but didn’t work on this occasion because no one had thought of removing the steel spring mattress the president was lying on. Metal, it turned out, interfered with the devices search. The unsanitary methods used in attempting to locate the bullet caused infection to spread throughout Garfield’s body and he died shortly thereafter.
Here are the final words of a favorite: Oscar Wilde
Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone it’s time to get back to the basics of what this blog is all about, “Every Useless Thing”. To quote an authority, Bertrand Russell, “There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.” Since I totally agree with that statement, I really don’t need to say much more except enjoy this collection of useless knowledge.
There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
The herb nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
Pearls melt in vinegar.
Volleyball is the most popular sport at nudist camps.
The buttons on a man’s jacket cuff were originally intended to stop manservants from wiping their noses on the sleeves of their uniforms.
Watching TV uses up to 50% more calories than sleeping.
On average, a drop of Heinz tomato ketchup leaves the bottle at a speed of 25 miles per year.
At any given moment, there are some 1800 thunderstorms somewhere on planet Earth.
No piece of paper can be folded in half more than seven times.
Pollen lasts forever.
20% of the people in the whole history of mankind who have lived beyond the age of 65 are alive today .
Six out of every seven gynecologists are men.
Strawberries have more vitamin C than oranges.
If a pack-a-day smoker inhaled a weeks’ worth of nicotine, they would die instantly.
The human body is an amazing organism. It can create miracles by healing itself to survive unbelievably nasty injuries. That doesn’t change the fact that it can also be truly disgusting as we all know. Today’s Thanksgiving post will review some gross facts about the human body and the things that it has the ability to produce after eating a turkey and all the side dishes. A little gross but what isn’t. This should be on your mind as you chow down on your big meal today. LOL
URINE
The average person produces approximately 3 pints of urine a day. In the normal adult the bladder rarely holds more than about 3/4 of a pint of urine, with the urge to urinate coming at the 1/2-pint mark. More than one pint causes pain and an intense urge to urinate immediately.
FUN FACT: In Roman times gladiators would brush their teeth with urine and then gargle with it too. They believed it was good for their gums.
SPIT
Most people produce approximately 8 cups of spit a day. It’s produced by three sets of salivary glands around the mouth area. That works out to about 50,700 pints produced in the average human lifetime. Thats enough to fill a couple of large swimming pools.
VOMIT
In humans very often after one person begins vomiting, it triggers vomiting in others (emetophobia). Compared to other animals, humans are relatively light on vomiting. Big vegetarian whales vomit every 7-10 days to help get rid of anything inedible they may have swallowed by accident. Dogs not only vomit frequently, but they’ll also eat their own vomit. Probably the most vomitus animals, however, are cows, who digest otherwise in edible grass by regurgitating it into their mouths, chewing it for a bit, and then swallowing it over and over again.
FUN FACT: Emetophobia is the fear of vomiting and of being around others who are vomiting. It is the fifth most common phobia according to the International Emetophobia Society.
SNOT
Snot is a defensive function, stopping for example germs, dirt and pollen from getting into your lungs. The average person produces approximately 1/2 pint of snot per day. When you sneeze, up to six pints of air is blasted out of your lungs at approximately 100 miles per hour, along with any germs you may be carrying at the time. Sneezing is also the main way that illnesses like colds and flu are spread among humans.
FECES
If you add up all the time spent eating and drinking by an average human over the course of their entire life, it comes to approximately 5 years. This adds up to 33 tons of food, which is equivalent to eating six entire elephants. Unfortunately, what goes in must come out. Most of that mass is water that you lose through sweating, breathing, and peeing, or carbon that you breathe out in the form of carbon dioxide, while a lot of the rest goes into making new bits for your body that need replacing. The result is that during your lifetime you will produce a pile of feces about the size of a car.
FUN FACT: According to the World Toilet Organization, the average person visits the toilet approximately 6-8 times a day, or 2500 times a year, and spends three years of their life sitting on the toilet.
I thought today I’d make a quick comment about some of the responses I received to my Inappropriate Humor dirty jokes post. For those of you out there that don’t read everything, that’s why I rated the post an “R”, and I put warnings in the graphics to keep it out of the hands of kids or the blind, dumb, and stupid non-readers. It never occurred to me that there were adults out there who would respond to humor like a bunch of babies. So, to all of you prudes out there, just get over it. If you don’t like what I post, stop reading the blog and go elsewhere. You won’t be missed.
This post is filled with pearls-of-wisdom posted at one time or another by that very famous writer and philosopher, Anonymous. Celebrities and politicians are forever looking for soundbites to get little attention, but Anonymous could care less about offending anyone. Here are fifteen quotes you may enjoy but if your one of the overly sensitive minorities I recommend you leave my blog now and go read the Bible . . . .
“Churches welcome all denominations, but most prefer fives and tens.“
“And an optimist is someone who thinks the future is uncertain.“
“There are few problems in life that wouldn’t be eased by the proper application of high explosives.“
“Physics lesson: When a body is submerged in water, the phone rings.“
“Is sex better than drugs? That depends on the pusher.“
“Until I get married, I was my own worst enemy.“
“Monogamy leaves a lot to be desired.“
“There is nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won’t aggravate.“
“Christmas is Christ’s revenge for the crucifixion.“
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.
I’m reasonably sure that most of us are familiar with the saying “Kilroy was here.” I’m also sure that most of us (especially non-military folk) haven’t a clue where it came from and how it’s managed to survive since its creation early in World War II. Here’s part of that story . . .
The exact creation of this image has never been discovered. It began appearing early in World War II and was found on ships, railroad cars, bunkers, fences, the occasional fighter plane, bombs, and the occasional torpedo.
In 1946, just after the war ended, the American Transit Association began a search for the real Kilroy and offered a real trolley car as the prize. Approximately 40 men tried to claim the prize, which was eventually awarded to 46-year-old James J. Kilroy of Halifax, Massachusetts. The judges thought that his story was the most convincing. During the war, Kilroy was an inspector at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, that produced ships for the military effort. Kilroy discovered that he was being asked to inspect the same ship bottoms and tanks again and again, so he devised a way to keep track of his work. He used a yellow crayon and wrote “Kilroy was here.” in big block letters on the hatches and surfaces of the ships he inspected. The same ships then made their way overseas with Kilroy’s inscriptions intact. Also, over the course of the war, 14,000 shipyard employees also enlisted, most of whom went overseas as well. No one knows who first decided to imitate the crayon scrawled words, but before long, soldiers saw them everywhere. It became common practice for the first soldier into a new area to pull out a piece of chalk and let those behind him know that Kilroy had already been there too.
True or not James J. Kilroy story convinced the judges and won the contest. What did he do with the trolley car? Kilroy had a big family, so he attached a 50 foot long, 12-ton trolley car to his house and used it as a bedroom for six of his nine children.
Just as an aside, I can’t tell you how many times when I was in the Army both here in the US and overseas, I discovered very quickly that “Kilroy was (already) here.” It was scrawled everywhere. Once while in Korea I was climbing through a deserted gun emplacement in the hills near Inchon. There was old graffiti on the walls from some Turkish soldiers which I couldn’t read and right next to them was a huge “Kilroy was here!” Most recently and most poignant was this magazine photo taken at the home of Osama bin Laden just after his capture.
TRUTHFULLY, I CONFESS TO PLACING “KILROY” ON A FEW THINGS MYSELF.
As you can imagine, I am continually on the lookout for anything humorous. Sometimes I get lucky and find a gold mine and other times I find myself severely disappointed. Recently I was out surfing sites for anything I could find, and I stumbled upon a book of 1001 one-liners, short jokes, and puns. I admit a preference for bawdy humor, but I thought I’d take a chance, and I bought this book. I’ll withhold my opinions, and you can decide whether I got taken or not.
I used to think an ocean of soda existed, but it was just a Fanta sea.
I like to drink my brandy neat but sometimes I take my tie off and leave my shirt out.
I must’ve eaten too much salmon. I just ran up an escalator that was coming down.
A sandwich walked into a bar. The bartender said, “Sorry we don’t serve food in here.”
My girlfriend told me she’s leaving me because I keep pretending to be a Transformer. I said, “No, wait! I can change.”
I heard a rumor that they were giving away horse manure at a local fair, so I went down there to check it out. It was bullshit.
I’ve been taking Viagra for my sunburn. It doesn’t cure it but during the night he keeps the sheets off my legs.
Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
My favorite exercise is a combination of a lunge and a crunch. It’s called lunch.
A man entered a local newspapers pun contest. He sent in 10 different puns in the hope that at least one of the puns would win. Unfortunately, no pun in 10 did.
There you have ten questionable jokes. I really believe I got taken on this purchase.
Here’s one of the few that I actually enjoyed:
I just saw a large singer with a laptop. It was a Dell.
Q. What’s better than a rose on your piano? A. Tulips on your organ.
A young woman goes to church to confess her sins to the priest. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” “Tell me all of your sins, my daughter.” “Oh, Father, last night my boyfriend made hot, passionate love to me seven times,” she says. The priest thinks about this long and hard and says, “Go home and take seven lemons and squeeze the juice into a tall glass and drink it.” “Will this cleanse my soul of all my sins?” “No,” the priest says, “but it will certainly wipe that smile off your face!”
A businessman boards a flight and is seated next to an absolutely gorgeous woman. He notices that she’s reading a manual about sexual statistics. He asks her about it, and she replies, “This is a very interesting book! It says that American Indians have the longest penises, and Italian men are the best in bed. By the way, my name is Jill. What’s yours?” “Tonto Tortolini, nice to meet you.”
Q. What did the two lesbian frogs say to each other? A. We do taste like chicken!
A woman enrolls in nursing school and is attending an anatomy class. The subject of the day is involuntary muscles. The instructor, hoping to perk up the students a bit, asks her if she knows what her asshole does when she’s having an orgasm. “Sure,” she says. “He’s at home taking care of the kids.”
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.
I can tell that today is not going to be a fun day. First of all, this is a “change of season” month, and I find from years of experience that “change of season” months usually suck. The clouds are gray, the sky is gray, the garden plants are all dead, all the “cool” birds have headed south for the winter, and I’m hip deep in effing leaves. Here’s my good survival tip for living in Maine. You must always and I do mean always have an electric blanket somewhere nearby for heat emergencies at this time of the year. Last night I earned a “7” out of ten on my electric blanket. I was awakened at 5:30 a.m. not for my normal bathroom visit but because my teeth were chattering so loud, I was waking up the cat. I’m just not ready for this crap weather and the coming winter. Maybe it’s just old age creeping up on me which tends to be happening more and more these days.
As the years go by, I’ve given a lot of thought to my final days, and I’ve discovered that only two things really matter at that point. If you want to leave some sort of legacy all you need to do is leave two things: a self-written epithet for your headstone or (for you urn people) a really cool quote for your final words. Today’s post is a list of the final words of a few well-known people. Some are profound and some are not, you be the judge.
H. G. Wells (1866-1946) stated to his nurse: “Go away. I’m all right.”
Brigham Young (1801-77) stated “Amen”.
George Washington (1732-99) stated to his doctor, “Doctor, I die hard, but I’m not afraid to go.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) “Please put out the light.”
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) “Drink to me.”
Elizabeth I (1533-1603) “All my possessions for a moment of time.”
So how would you all like to have a homework assignment. If you’re so inclined, send me your epitaph and last words and hopefully by then I’ll have mine done and will I’ll post them.
everyuselessthing.com 