Archive for the ‘weird facts’ Tag
- Dominoes originated in Asia around 1100 A.D. They were, and still are, used as a divinatory tool and not just a game of numbers.
- Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are at least 50 years old.
- The egg plant is a member of the thistle family.
- The first city in the United States to fluoridate its water was Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1945.
- The first state in the United States to use the gas chamber was Nevada in 1924.
“Everybody loves you when you’re six feet in the ground.”
John Lennon
- In Los Angeles in 1976, a woman legally married a 20 pound rock with 20 guests present.
- Former United States president Gerald Ford changed his name when he was 22 – a good thing, because his birth name was Leslie Lynch King, Junior.
- John Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman, was a church group leader. It is said that he would lead sing-alongs to the tune of Lennon’s song “Imagine,” during which he would change the lyrics to “Imagine there’s no John Lennon.”
- The Code of Hammurabi in Babylon specified that a merchant could be put to death for diluting beer.
“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many
things that escape those who dream only at night.”
Edgar Allen Poe
🤡🤬🤖
EMBRACE YOUR WEIRDNESS
Cara Delevingne
Ask any foreigner visiting the United States as to our language with its many and varied slang words. It has to be impossible to understand for most of them because truthfully, it’s pretty hard to understand even if you were born and raised here. I’ve noticed in recent weeks while reviewing some British Tick-Tock participants who apparently are as confused about some of our language as I am. For years I’ve collected a huge list of clichés because they intrigue me. Some of them are cute but if you’re not an American you’ll have one helluva time trying to figure them out. Today I’ll share with you a few samples that you’ve heard but probably never knew where they originated. See would just think . . .
SLEEP TIGHT
This term is nothing more than a way of saying “good night and sleep well”. The phrase dates back to when beds were made of rope and straw. It is a shortened form of the expression, sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite.” Before going to sleep at night, people would have to pull the ropes tight in order to have a firm bed to sleep on as the ropes would’ve loosened during the course of the previous night’s sleep. (I’ve actually slept on a rope bed and it’s like a sort of punishment or torture.)
SNUG AS A BUG IN A RUG
This expression dates from the 18th century, although a “snug” is a 16th century word for a parlor in an inn. The phrase is credited to Benjamin Franklin, who wrote it in 1772 as an epitaph for a pet squirrel that had belonged to Georgiana Shipley, the daughter of his friend the Bishop of St. Asaph. Franklin’s wife had sent the gray squirrel as a gift from Philadelphia, and they named him Skugg, a common nickname for squirrels at that time. Tragically, he escaped from Its cage and was killed by a dog. Franklin then wrote this little ditty:
Here Skugg
Lies snug
As a bug
In a rug.
KISS OF DEATH
This phrase derives from Judas Iscariot’s kiss given to Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane before he betrayed him (Luke 23:48 and Matthew 26:49). It’s also known as a “Judas Kiss,” meaning an insincere act of courtesy or false affection. In Mafia circles, a kiss from the boss may indeed be a fatal omen. The phrase is often used today in political or business contexts, meaning that certain associations or actions may prove to be the undoing of a person or organization, or the downfall of a plan or project. (I always thought it referred to several of my former ex-girlfriends.)
CATCH FORTY WINKS
A colloquial term for a short nap or a doze. Just why shutting one’s eye 40 times has come to mean a quick snooze is unclear, but it could have something to do with the fact that the number 40 appears frequently in the Scriptures and was thought to be a holy number. Moses was on the Mount for 40 days and 40 nights; Elijah was fed by ravens for 40 days; the rain of the Flood fell for 40 days, and another 40 days passed before Noah opened the windows of the ark. Christ fasted for 40 days, and he was seen 40 days after his Resurrection. As an aside: A “40” is a bottle containing 40 fluid ounces of malt liquor beer. Street gang members will drink 40’s and will sometimes pour out a little of the beer onto the ground for their dead homies. (Not so holy anymore.)
PUT A SOCK IN IT
This is a plea to be quiet, to shut up, to make less noise. It comes from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, when the early gramophones, or phonographs, had large horns through which the sound was amplified. These mechanical contraptions had no volume controls, and so a convenient method of reducing the volume was to stuff a woolen sock inside the horn.
I LOVE WORDS!
*****
“Never miss a good chance to shut up.” – Will Rogers
- Sean Connery once polished coffins for cash.
- There are 27 moons orbiting Uranus. (pun intended)
- More than 29 years after the Japanese surrendered in World War II, Lt. Onoda Hiro was discovered in the Philippines. He refused to surrender until he was ordered to do so by his commanding officer.
- In Sri Lanka, nonverbal signals for agreement are reversed from those in Western countries. Nodding your head means “no” and shaking your head from side-to-side means “yes.”
- A person can’t be a sumo wrestler in Japan unless he weighs more than 154 pounds and is taller than five feet seven inches.
*****
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” – Winston Churchill
- President. James Garfield was shot by an assassin in 1881. Six doctors attempted to treat the wounded president, but several probed the wound with their bare fingers, introducing a fatal infection into his body.
- Lloyds of London Paid out $3,019,400 in insurance claims to the families of the victims who perished in the Titanic disaster.
- Ermal Fraze invented the pop-top aluminum can in 1963, he received U.S. patent number 3,349,949 for the design.
- Approximately 75% of what we think we taste is actually coming from our sense of smell.
- Couples married in the first three months of the year tend to have higher divorce rates than those married in the later months.
*****
“Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.” – Lao Tzu
I’m feeling a little weird today as you’ll see when you read the following post. I always like to have a reasonable amount of weirdness in my life but today I have more than my share. Therefore, I’ll pass the following items on to you to help me shed some of my current level of weirdness. Oh yeah, “You’re welcome.”
- An agoraphobic man who had vowed never to leave his house again after he was assaulted at age 18 decided, after 30 years of self-induced imprisonment, to take a walk outside. But the strain of being outside was too much for him and he suffered a heart attack while strolling along.
- A man was speeding down the highway at 110 mph when he struck the rear of a car, immediately killing the two people inside. The victims? The man’s mother and her elderly neighbor, who she was taking on a leisurely drive to see the town’s Christmas lights.
- Author Morgan Robertson wrote his story of a gigantic luxury ship, the Titan, in 1898. In his fictional tale, the ship, advertised as unsinkable, hits an iceberg and tragic tragically goes down, killing many passengers and crew. In 1912, the real-life ship the Titanic met a shockingly similar fate.
- A man attempting to rob a convenience store in Cherry Hill, North Carolina, thwarted his own plans when he dropped his gun. The gun hit the ground, went off, and the bullet lodged in the robber’s foot.
“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
Edgar Allen Poe
- A wealthy Connecticut woman named Helen Dow Peck believed messages she received from Ouija boards. One day in 1919, the board spelled out that she should leave her entire estate to a man named John Gale Forbes. She did but the only problem was she didn’t know anybody by that name. In fact, after she died in 1956, her lawyer did a search throughout the world and discovered that, despite what all the all-knowing spirits had said, there was nobody with that name.
- Four men dressed like Elvis Presley jumped out of a plane to promote a Boston nightclub opening in 1996. Three of them lived, but one unlucky Elvis died when he caught a gust of wind and was blown out to sea.
“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many
things that escape those who dream only at night.”
Edgar Allan Poe
HUMAN RIGHTS SHOULD INCLUDE WEIRDNESS
As you should be aware I have quite the collection of weird facts I’ve collected over many years and from many sources. As I was cleaning up my old desk top computer yesterday, I found this list of strange and odd facts that hasn’t seen the light of day since 2006. So, let’s take a walk down a very old memory lane.
- A Crocodiles tongue is attached to the roof of its mouth.
- A group of larks is called an exaltation.
- A kangaroo can’t jump unless its tail is touching the ground.
- A male emperor moth can smell a female emperor moth up to 7 miles away.
- A man had the hiccups for 69 years.
- A mole can dig over 250 feet of tunnel in a single night.
- A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.
- A noisy restaurant is 100,000 times as loud as a watch ticking, a rock Concert is 1,000,000,000 times as loud. and a shotgun blast 1,000,000,000,000 times as loud.
- A person at rest generates as much heat as a 100watt light bulb.
- A group of owls is called a parliament.
- About 300 million cells die in your body every minute.
- A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
- A quarter has 119 grooves on its edge, a dime has one less groove.
- A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
- A shark can detect one part of blood in 100 million parts of water.
- A group of ravens is called a murder.
- A shark can grow a new set of teeth in a week
- A snail can have about 25,000 teeth.
- A group of toads is called a knot.
- About 3,500 gallons if water is needed to produce one pound of beef.
*****
HAVING A DRINK ON THE BEACH OR ON THE DECK
YOU CHOOSE
I’m really not an educated weatherman but I do know one thing for sure, this rain sucks. I’m so sick of these gray and dreary days that only allow us 15 minutes of sunshine a day before the next downpour begins. It’s no wonder that all those smiling and happy folks in Seattle (sarcasm) are so much fun to be around. They have this kind crap weather on a regular basis and that’s bound to have a derogatory effect on them. With that thought in mind I thought I’d throw some additional Weird Sh*t your way. It won’t stop the rain from continuing but it might make you smile a little.
- Bacon affects the brain in the same way as cocaine and heroin, overloading pleasure centers and requiring increasing amounts to be satisfied.
- New York City is estimated to have at least 8 million rats, or one rat per person.
- In 2006, William Shatner was paid $25,000 from an online casino for a kidney stone he had recently passed.
- Benjamin Franklin almost killed himself while trying to electrocute a turkey.
- In 1799 a vigilante mob hunted down killer Micajah Harpe and placed his severed head on a pike at a crossroads in Western Kentucky still known as “Harpe’s Head”.
- In South Korea, 11% of school-aged youth are considered at high risk for Internet addiction.
- In the winter of 1952-53, Thompson Pass near Valdez, Alaska, got 975 inches of snow.
- Women can go topless in public in New York City as long as they are not charging money for it.
- In 1976, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake killed 23,000 Guatemalans.
- During his 1989 appearance on the TV talk show Larry King Live, Donald Trump asked King, “Do you mind if I sit back a little bit because your breath is very bad. It really is.”
GOTTA GO, MY YARD IS FLOODING
I’m a huge fan of all things weird and unusual. The odder the better. I do know that many people who read my posts sometimes question the information I provide. I won’t say what I’m thinking but “KMA” immediately comes to mind. Anyone who lives with, near, or is part of the human race should realize that the weirder the facts, the more likely they are true. This is a weird, strange and odd planet and no one should be surprised by anything. Here’s my contribution for today.
- Hippopotamus sweat is pink. It’s a combination of clear sweat and reddish hipposudoric acid secreted by the hippo. It helps protect them from sunburn and harmful bacteria.
- Killer whales eat deer. It’s been reported in Alaska that deer are sometimes snatched by the orca’s when they attempt to take a dip in the water.
- Thousands of human beings travel thousands of miles in the Fall to watch leaves die. Weird? Yes. True? Yes.
- Bananas are technically berries. Strawberries and raspberries are not.
- An average size human being could swim through the veins of a blue whale. The average whale’s heart is the size of a car.
- Although the earth is 70% water, just 1% of it is considered drinkable.
- Algae and plankton produce more oxygen than trees.
- There are more trees on earth than there are stars in the Milky Way. Astronomers estimate that there are approximately 200-400 billion stars in the Milky Way, while scientists say the Earth contains 3 trillion trees.
- Marijuana and the hops in your beer come from the same plant family. The Cannabaceae family also contains plants known as hackberries.
- Samuel L. Jackson once held Martin Luther King Sr. hostage. During his college days, Jackson was part of a group that held the Morehead College Board of Trustees hostage. MLK Sr. was one of them.
WEIRD BUT TRUE
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
With all the hullabaloo around the holiday season, I thought a little dose of weird and odd trivia would be just the thing. Trivia is always good for taking the mind off of stressful activities and might even give you a reason to laugh a little. Here we go . . .
- Fingernails grow four times faster than toenails.
- The first of the five senses to go with age is smell.
- More boys than girls are born during the day; more girls are born at night.
- The strongest muscle in the body is the time.
- If you yelled for eight years, seven months, and six days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
- When we blush, I stomach lining also turns red. Women blink nearly twice as often as men do.
- On a square inch of our skin, there are 20 million microscopic animals.
- If you fired continuously for six years and nine months, enough wind would be produced to equal the energy of an atomic bomb.
- The average human eats eight spiders in his or her lifetime at night Erie it
- It takes just 1 min. for blood to travel through the whole human body.
- Volleyball is the most popular sport at nudist camps.
- There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
- Only one person in 2 billion will live to be 116 or older.
- The average person’s heart beats 36 million times a year.
- Right-handed people live on average, nine years longer than left-handed people.
Well, there you have it. A little weirdness to add to your holiday spirit and possibly distract you for a little while. I hope all of you are prepared for Christmas because there are only:
7 SHOPPING DAYS LEFT
As you all know, I collect weird, unusual, and strange facts. Over the years my collection of weird facts has grown so large that I feel the need to share them with you just so someone other than me can enjoy them. Here are just ten of them that I’d like to pass along. It’s giving me something to do on this cold, rainy, and dreary day in Maine. I can feel winter sneaking up on me and I’m not sure I ready for the frigid cold weather and snow. Here we go . . .
- Two 1903 paintings were sold at auction for $590,000 – the paintings were in the famous “Dogs Playing Poker” series.
- Actor Burt Reynolds was originally cast to play Hans Solo in the first Star Wars film. He dropped out just before filming started.
- 7% of Americans claim they never bathe at all.
- The number of U.S. college students studying Latin is three times the number studying Arabic.
- If you could drive to the sun at 55 mph it would take you about 193 years.
- Everyone has his or her own unique odor identity, or “smelly fingerprint”.
- 10% of the world’s volcanoes are in Japan. Among them, 108 have erupted in the last 10,000 years, 50 in the last 100 years, and 36 are currently active.
- There are approximately 250,000 sweat glands in a pair of feet, and they excrete as much as half a pint of moisture each day.
- Each domestic cow emits about 105 pounds of methane a year.
- It takes your mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, gallbladder, pancreas and liver just to digest a glass of milk.
Now that the weird facts list has been completed, I thought you might enjoy a little humor. Being a former police officer this joke made me laugh out loud. Any cop can tell you that things like this actually do occur and they always helped to break up a slow work day. Enjoy!
There was a middle-aged guy who had just bought a Mercedes 2000 convertible. He headed down the road, flooring it up to 80 mph and enjoying the wind blowing through what little hair he had left. “This is great,” he thought, and floored it some more, only to hear a siren and see the flashing lights of a State Police car in his rearview mirror. “I can get away from him no problem,” thought the man, and he stepped on it again until he was flying down the road at over 100 mph. Then he thought, “What am I doing? I’m too old for this kind of thing,” so he slowed and pulled over to the side of the road to wait for the officer to catch up with him. The pursuing officer pulled in behind the Mercedes, got out, and walked up to the man. “Sir,” he said, looking at his watch, “my shift ends in 30 minutes and today is Friday the 13th. If you can give me one good reason why you were speeding that I’ve never heard before, I’ll let you go.” The fellow looked at the patrolman and said, “Last week my wife ran off with a State Trooper and I thought you were bringing her back.”
The patrolman said, “Have a nice day.”
THERE ARE DAYS WHEN I STILL MISS POLICE WORK
everyuselessthing.com 