Archive for the ‘strange’ Tag
Today’s history lesson contains a few unusual occurrences as recorded by European media during the last 100 years. They are quirky and strange but nonetheless true. After reading some of these you can understand how we Americans are at times a bit bizarre as well. We get it honestly from many previous generations from the Continent.
- On April 14, 1930, the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky shot himself. In his suicide note he said, “I do not recommend it for others.”
- In 1931 the Spanish tennis player Lily de Alvarez Shop the tennis world when she appeared at Wimbledon wearing a divided skirt (culottes), the forerunner of shorts.
- On October 23, 1933, a temperature inversion trapped fog and smog over London, obliterating the sun and causing total darkness at midday.
- On December 24, 1935, the death of the avant-garde Austrian composer Alban Berg from an insect bite was reported.
- In 1936 King Edward VIII once avoided what he thought might be an awkward interview with his private secretary by jumping out of a window of Buckingham palace and running away to hide in the garden.
- On July 21, 1937, at six o’clock in the evening, all BBC transmitters and post office wireless telegraph and wireless telephone stations in the British Isles closedown for 2 minutes, to coincide with the funeral of Guglielmo Marconi the inventor of the radio.
- On June 1, 1938, the Hungarian playwright Odon von Horvath, who had lived in fear of being struck by lightning all of his life, was killed in Paris when a branch fell on his head during a thunderstorm.
- In 1939 a patent application was lodged for the “Wind Bag”, designed for receiving and storing gas formed by the digestion of foods. A tube linked the rectum led to a collection chamber, while the device was held in place under one’s clothes by a belt.
- In 1940 during the height of the German spy scare, a vicar’s daughter in Winchester reported the British officer billeted with them to the authorities on the grounds of his suspiciously foreign behavior. The man had failed to flush the toilet.
- On July 23, 1943, Eric Brown, blew up his paralyzed father by attaching a landmine to his wheelchair. He later explained to the court that he had not liked his father’s attitude. Brown was eventually declared insane.
I’ve posted about many odd and strange things that have taken place in the United States, and I think it’s only fair that these postings today give our European forefathers credit for some of their weirdness.
BE WEIRD, BE ODD, AND BE PROUD
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What ever happened to all of those “pet rocks” that everyone loved? How about those fine-looking mood rings that were around for a time. Fads come and go and just when you think you’ve heard and seen it all, another bit of Fad strangeness comes along to baffle and amaze us. You might think our recent Fads are cool and awesome, but we are just the tip of the weird iceberg. So, grab your hula hoop and read on. It’s time to look at the past where our love for Fads originated.
1920 – Raccoon Coats
1924 – Flagpole Sitting
1939 – Goldfish Swallowing
1950 – Poodle Skirts
1955 – Coonskin Caps
1959 – Phone Booth Stuffing
1960 – Tie-dyed T-shirts
1970 – Platform Shoes
1973 – Puka Shells
1974 – Streaking
1975 – CB Radios
1976 – Pet Rocks
1980 – Rubik’s Cube
1982 – Smurfs
1983 – Cabbage Patch Kids
1993 – The Macarena
There’s the proof we’ve been looking for. The Fad gene goes all the way back to early cavemen. Did you honestly think that we really invented the “pet rock?” What will be next now that the “Spinner and Fidgit” fads has run out of gas. I hope the next one is a little more interesting.
HOW MANY OTHERS DO YOU REMEMBER?
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I’ll be the history fanatic today offering you a few facts that most people haven’t heard or read about. So, no run-of-the-mill stuff today. I hope you enjoy them.
1900
In Brussels, a young anarchist made an assassination attempt on the Prince of Wales. (Future King Edward VII). His Royal Highness reputedly explained, “Fuck it, I’ve taken a bullet.”, although he was in fact untouched.
1902
So numerous were the mistresses of Edward VII that at his coronation a special pew, known as the “loose box” was reserved for them.
1904
The French physician and psychiatrist, Madeleine Pelletier, A cross-dressing celibate feminist, became a Freemason, joining the Novell Jerusalem lodge.
1905
The 25-stone Chelsea goalkeeper, William “Fatty” Folkes, lifted a Port Vale forward off the ground and hurled him into his own goal. The penalty was awarded against Chelsea.
1905
Maurice Garin won the Tour de France, but four months later it was shown that he had traveled some of the route by train rather than by bicycle.
1909
On 12 December, King Leopold II of the Belgians married Caroline Lacroix, a prostitute who had borne him two sons. He died five days later.
1912
As soon as the Titanic went down, the White Star Line, the ship’s owners, stopped the wages of the crew.
1914
On November 4, a British attempt to capture the port of Tanga in German East Africa was repelled when the invaders were attacked by swarms of bees and were obliged to retreat into the sea.
1915
In New York, the French artist Marcel Duchamp submitted a work entitled Fountain to the Salon des Independents, which rejected it. The work comprised a porcelain urinal, signed by “R. Mutt”
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Since reading blogs slows considerably during these hot and sweaty days of Summer, I thought a short list of strange things were just what is needed today. If all of you aren’t reading much in this heat, here are a few more things you probably won’t read.
- For passengers who may not quite get it, American Airlines once printed instructions on their snack packages. “Open packet, eat nuts.”
- A female ferret can die from going into heat and not mating.
- In 1900, the average white woman’s life expectancy was only 48.7 years. For women of color, the life expectancy was 33.5 years.
- Your stomach creates a new mucus layer every two weeks.
- Thomas Edison preferred to do his reading in Braille, and he proposed to his wife in Morse code.
- American go through 12 billion bananas in a typical year.
- Roses are the symbol of the Virgin Mary. Catholic “rosaries” were originally made of 165 dried and rolled rose petals.
- Disney’s Space Mountain roller coaster was the first thrill attraction to be operated by a computer.
- The first time an instant replay was seen on TV was during an Army-Navy football game on December 7, 1963. CBS director Tony Verna masterminded the idea.
- Founding Father George Washington was a distant relation of King Edward I, Queen Elizabeth II, Sir Winston Churchill, and Gen. Robert E Lee.
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In my teens, my 20’s, my 30’s, my 40’s, and my 50’s, my main interest in human bodies mostly concerned women. These day’s I’ve been forced by Mother Nature to look at bodies from a totally different perspective. It’s not near as much fun but it will have to do. As the old familiar quote states: “when given lemons, make lemonade.” Currently I’m a ball busting, pain in the ass lemonade aficionado. Here are some factoids about the human body from my new lemonade making perspective.
- Each square inch of human skin consists of 19 million cells, 60 years, 90 oil glands, 19 feet of blood vessels, 625 sweat glands, and 19,000 sensory cells.
- Man has tiny bones once meant for a tail and unworkable muscles once meant to move his ears.
- Most people by the age of 60 have lost 50% of their taste buds and 40% of their ability to smell.
- The largest cell in the human body is the female ovum, or egg cell. It is about 1/180th of an inch in diameter. The smallest cell in the human body is the male sperm. It takes about 175,000 sperm cells to weigh as much as a single egg cell.
- The human body consists of about 60 trillion cells, and each cell has about 10,000 times as many molecules as the Milky Way has stars.
- Are only part of the human body that has no blood supply is the cornea. It takes its oxygen directly from the air.
- At sea level there are 2000 pounds of air pressure on each square foot of your body area.
- Hydrochloric acid of the human digestive process is so strong and corrosive that it easily can eat its way through the iron of an automobile body. Yet, it does not endanger the walls of the stomach, which are protected by a film of sticky mucus.
- The daughters of a mother who is colorblind and a father who has normal vision will have normal vision. The sons will be colorblind, however.
- The sensitivity of the human eye is so keen that on a clear, moonless night, a person standing on a mountain peak can see a match being struck as far as 50 miles away. Astronauts in orbit around the earth were actually able to see the wakes of ships.
Well, there you have it. I hope all of you enjoy your day and for those senior citizens out there:
“GO MAKE SOME LEMONADE”
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It’s Tuesday but unfortunately it feels a lot like Monday. I have about two hours to kill before a doctor’s appointment and I need to get this posting finished before I go. I thought I’d share with you some truths about people that are a little odd and interesting.
- Tattoos have apparently been around for a very long time. In 1990, the frozen and well-preserved remains of a Bronze Age man was found between Austria and Italy in the Alps. The so-called “Iceman”, as he was dubbed, is believed to be more than 5000 years old, and he clearly had a series of lines tattooed on his lower back, ankles, knees, and foot. Possibly the very first “tramp stamp”.
- The human head is a quarter of our total length at birth but only an eighth of our total length by the time we reach adulthood. It’s too bad this doesn’t apply to other body parts.
- Food typically travels from the mouth, through the esophagus, and into the stomach in just 7 seconds. Just so you know, it works for beer as well.
- At age 77, New Yorker Clarence Kinder won $50,000 on the state lottery on a Thursday night – and died from a heart attack the following day. A 24-hour success story.
- The British royal family changed its name from “Sax-Coburg and Gotha” to “Windsor” in 1917, during World War I, because it sounded too German. My only comment is “Who cares?”.
- The brain requires more than 25% of the oxygen used by the human body. That certainly explains a lot about a few of my friends who I’m sure use a lot less tan 25%.
- On September 13, 1859, California Senator David Broderick established a record that is unlikely to ever be broken or repeated, for that matter. He became the only sitting US senator to be killed in a duel. That’s what I call “term limits.”
- The founder of the Smithsonian Institute, James Smithson, who in 1826 willed $508,318 to the United States to “create an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge’. Strangely enough, he never set foot in the United States. He was apparently smarter than he once looked.
ENJOY YOUR TUESDAY/MONDAY
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Yesterday I posted a few tidbits concerning sexual weirdness laws still being enforced here in our country. With weirdness being the operative word, I thought I would continue with a few more obscure and weird facts that you may not be aware of. It seems that the list grows longer and longer each year.
- The first step on the moon by astronaut Neil Armstrong was made with his left foot.
- More Americans choke on toothpicks than on any other item. Ballpoint pens are running a close second.
- The “gag” rule was instituted in the Senate in 1836 so the Senators would not have to accept, debate, or vote on anti-slavery petitions.
- Fingernails grow faster on your dominant hand.
- Tickling requires surprise. Since you can’t surprise yourself, you can’t tickle yourself, either.
- Fifteen million blood cells are produced and destroyed in the human body every second.
- The human body has enough fat to produce seven bars of soap.
- Investor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Warren Buffett began his illustrious career by collecting and selling lost golf balls.
- Over a lifetime, an average human being spends approximately 6 months on the toilet.
- Ironically the official motto of the state of New Hampshire, printed on its license plates, is “Live Free or Die”, and those license plates are made at a state prison.
This quote belongs to Nancy Reagan and is one of my favorites.
“I think more people would be alive
today if there were a death penalty.”
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Today I’m feeling a little odd which means I’m going to take a trip down the weird road. Here are few strange and weird facts which you may have heard before, but I doubt it.
- Diabetes can lead to high levels of sugar in the urine. Before simple tests for sugar levels were available, doctors would taste their patient’s urine to see if it was sweet!
- The belief that a person can cause bad luck for someone else simply by looking at them is known as the “evil eye.”
- One evil theory to explain why a dunked witch would not float was that witches deliberately ate foods that made them fart. The gas would build up in their guts, making them lighter than air, so they could fly.
- In Europe in the Middle Ages, it was believed that there were over 7 million demons in the air, which could be inhaled or swallowed and would cause disease or make a corpse turned into a vampire.
- The human eye can see only about 3000 stars on the clearest night, even though there are more than 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone.
- The first rock music taken into space is thought to be a Pink Floyd tape taken to the space station Mir in 1988 by French astronaut Jean-Loup Chretien. Perhaps it was The Dark Side of the Moon.
- According to a 1991 survey of Americans, 2% reported experiences that indicated they might have been abducted by aliens. This would mean that one in 50 Americans have been abducted – that’s over 5 million, at the rate of 2740 per day! Skeptics point out that this would mean the skies over America must be full of hundreds of alien spaceships every night.
- Elephants are also among the world’s most potentially dangerous animals, capable of crushing and killing any other land animal, from rhinoceros and lions to humans. It is thought they may kill up to 500 people every year.
- The mantis shrimp is a delicacy in China, where it is used in a dish known as “pissing shrimp” because the mantis shrimp urinates itself when put in a cooking pot.
- Emetophobia is a fear of vomiting or of being around others who are vomiting. It is the fifth most common phobia according to the International Emetophobia Society.
Well, that fills my quota for today of the weird and odd. As always more to come.
WHO DOESN’T LOVE WEIRD?
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I really love spending time on the internet. The amount of information available for viewing is mind-boggling to say the least. I stumbled onto a website recently filled with information on the sexual habits of animals which told me way more than I ever wanted to know about how insects and slimy things have sex. It did make me think, what about people? What kind of strange, dumb, or interesting things could I find out about us?
I began a diligent search to collect well-known, little-known, and quite possibly unknown facts about human sexuality. The amount of that available information was even more incredible than what I was able to find on animals. I accumulated a list of some of the things I thought were truly interesting and not just bizarre and strange. I just thought it might be fun to spice things up a little on this blog and at the same time distribute a little sexual trivia you may not have heard before. Hold your applause it may not be as good as you’re thinking.
* * *
- During any given period, women who read romance novels have a tendency to have twice as many lovers as those who don’t.
- -321 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which sperm banks store donor semen. At this temperature, semen can be stored indefinitely,
- In one hour, the average sperm can swim 7 in.
- The testes increase in size by 50% when a man is sexually aroused.
- Hetrosexual anal sex is something 43% of women have experienced.
- During an average man’s lifetime, he will ejaculate approximately 17 liters of semen, which amounts to about half a trillion sperm.
- It takes two tablespoons of blood to get the average man’s penis erect.
- The penalty for masturbation in Indonesia is decapitation.
- 75% of Japanese women own a vibrator. The average worldwide is 47%.
- 22% of American women aged 20 gave birth while in their teens. In Switzerland and Japan, only 2% did so.
* * *
Well there you have a collection of 10 sexual facts collected from here and there and everywhere. I have to admit I did learn a few things I didn’t previously know about our sexual proclivities and I guess that’s a good thing. I also know I would have been beheaded at age 11 if I’d been born in Indonesian. This was only a small portion of the facts I discovered. More to come . . .
BON APPETIT
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I am not now or ever have been considered a religious person. I’ve read as much information as I could find on almost every major religion over the years. It was my vain attempt to convince myself one way or the other that such a thing was necessary in my life. I accomplished my goal but it left me with volumes of information on religions both interesting and some not so much. Today I’ll post some strange but true religious trivia and you can do with it what you will.
- The temple of all faiths: Birla Temple in New Delhi, India, includes separate areas for worship for every known religion.
- It was not until the fourth century that the church (Christianity) began to celebrate the feast of Christmas.
- The first Bible printed in America in 1663 was a translation into the Algonkian language.
- The word “and” appears 46,277 times in the King James version of the Bible.
- Hijmar, a holy man of Benares, India, held his left arm in the same position for 12 years.
- The first book digest: Dubash Meghji, of Zanzibar., ate one page of the Koran each day for thirty years.
- Each year Shia Muslims in Ahmadabad, India, mourn the death of Imam Husain, a descendant of the prophet Mohammad, by whipping themselves with knife-tipped chains.
- In 1993, Israel’s telephone company offered a service for people to fax messages to God, to be placed in the Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall.
- Forty nuns at a convent in Stetyl, the Netherlands, have maintained a continuous prayer in their chapel for ninety-eight years.
- The people who worship a nail: The Maria Gonds of Chandra, India, pray only to a 12 inch spike.
- In 1685 a church bell from a Protestant chapel in France was whipped and burned after being charged with “inflaming the hearts of heretics”.
- Prayer stones addressed to Egyptian god Ra and sold to worshippers in Ancient Egypt had large ears engraved on them – so Ra would be sure to hear their messages.
- In 1992 a historic church in Melle, France, installed a juke box that plays Gregorian chants, Tibetan mantras, and Jewish liturgical music.
And last but not least:
- Ancient Egyptian priests in 450 b.c. trained baboons to sweep out their temples.
CAN I GET AN AMEN?
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