Thursday, March 20, 2008

Origins, About, & Excerpts From The Trivia Files...

Trivia's Origins

Trivia File Labels

Trivial Stuff Administrator

Assistant Demonstrating Proper File Retrieval Procedures

Results Of Improper File Extraction

Containers After Posting Trivia On Blog

Assistant Administrator Disposing Of Used File Data


So now you know just how this worthless information is generated, filed, and properly disposed of. The preceding statement should be filed under 'Useless Information' or disposed of immediately.

And Now The Trivial Stuff:

-Some Eskimos have been known to use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing.
-It is illegal to play tennis in the streets of Cambridge.
-Custer was the youngest General in US history, he was promoted at the age of 23.
-It costs more to send someone to reform school than it does to send them to Eton.
-The American pilot Charles Lindbergh received the Service Cross of the German Eagle from Hermann Goering in 1938.
-The active ingredient in Chinese Bird's nest soup is saliva.
-Marie Currie, who twice won the Nobel Prize, and discovered radium, was not allowed to become a member of the prestigious French Academy because she was a woman.
-It was quite common for the men of Ancient Greece to exercise naked in public.
-John Paul Getty, once the richest man in the world, had a pay phone in his mansion.
-Iceland is the world's oldest functioning democracy.
-Adolf Eichmann (responsible for countless Jewish deaths during World war II), was originally a travelling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Co. of Austria.
-The national flag of Italy was designed by Napoleon Bonaparte.
-The Matami Tribe of West Africa play a version of football, the only difference being that they use a human skull instead of a more normal ball.
-John Winthrop introduced the fork to the American dinner table for the first time on 25 June 1630.
-Elizabeth Blackwell, born in Bristol, England on 3 February 1821, was the first woman in America to gain an M.D. degree.
-Abraham Lincoln was shot with a Derringer.
-The great Russian leader, Lenin died 21 January 1924, suffering from a degenerative brain disorder. At the time of his death his brain was a quarter of its normal size.
-When shipped to the US, the London bridge ( thought by the new owner to be the more famous Tower Bridge ) was classified by US customs to be a 'large antique'.
-Sir Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' cloakroom after his mother went into labor during a dance at Blenheim Palace.
-In 1849, David Atchison became President of the United States for just one day, and he spent most of the day sleeping.
-Between the two World War's, France was controlled by forty different governments.
-The 'Crystal Palace' at the Great Exhibition of 1851, contained 92,900 square meters of glass.
-It was the custom in Ancient Rome for the men to place their right hand on their testicles when taking an oath. The modern term 'testimony' is derived from this tradition.
-Sir Winston Churchill's mother was descended from an American Indian(N.A.).
-The study of stupidity is called 'monology'.
-Hindu men believe(d) it to be unluckily to marry a third time. They could avoid misfortune by marrying a tree first. The tree, his third wife, was then burnt, freeing him to marry again.
-More money is spent each year on alcohol and cigarettes than on Life insurance.
-In 1911 3 men were hung for the murder of Sir Edmund Berry at Greenbury Hill, their last names were Green, Berry , and Hill.
-A firm in Britain sold fall-out shelters for pets.
-During the seventeenth century, the Sultan of Turkey ordered his entire harem of women drowned and replace with a new one.
-Lady Astor once told Winston Churchill 'if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee'. His reply …'if you were my wife, I would drink it !'.
-There are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos.
-The Great Pyramid of Giza consists of 2,300,000 blocks each weighing 2.5 tons.
-On 9 February 1942, soap rationing began in Britain.
-Paul Revere was a dentist.
-Chop-suey is not a native Chinese dish, it was created in California by Chinese immigrants.
-The Russian mystic Rasputin was the victim of a series of murder attempts in 1916. The assassins poisoned, shot and stabbed him in quick succession, but they found they were unable to finish him off. Rasputin finally succumbed to the ice-cold waters of a river.
-Bonnie Prince Charlie, the leader of the Jacobite rebellion to depose of George II of England, was born 31 December 1720. Considered a great Scottish hero, he spent his final years as a drunkard in Rome.
-The Liberal Prime Minister, William Gladstone, was born of the 29th December 1809. Apparently, as a result of his strong Puritan impulses, Gladstone kept a selection of whips in his cellar with which he regularly chastised himself.
-A 'parthenophobic' person has a fear of virgins.
-South American gauchos were known to put raw steak under their saddles before starting a day's riding, in order to tenderise the meat.
-There are 240 white dots in a Pacman arcade game.
-King Solomon of Israel had about 700 wives as well as hundreds of mistresses.
-Urine was once used to wash clothes.
-North American Indian Chief Sitting Bull died on 15 December 1890. His bones were laid to rest in North Dakota, but a business group wanted him moved to a 'more natural' site in South Dakota. Their campaign was rejected so they stole the bones, and they now reside in Sitting Bull Park, South Dakota.
-St Nicholas, the original Father Christmas, is the patron saint of thieves, virgins and the formerly communist Russia.
-Dublin is home of the Fairy Investigation Society.
-Fourteen million people were killed in World War I, twenty million died in a flu epidemic in the years that followed.
-People in Siberia often buy milk frozen on a stick.
-Princess Ann was the only competitor at the 1976 Montreal Olympics that did not have to undergo a sex test.
-Ethelred the Unready, King of England in the Tenth-century, spent his wedding night in bed with his wife and his mother-in-law.
-Coffins which are due for cremation are usually made with plastic handles.
-Blackbird, who was the chief of Omaha Indians, was buried sitting on his favorite horse.
-The two highest IQ's ever recorded on a standard test both belong to women.
-The Tory Prime Minister, Benjamin Disreali, was born 21 December 1804. He was noted for his oratory and had a number of memorable exchanges in the House with his great rival William Gladstone. Asked what the difference between a calamity and a misfortune was Disreali replied: 'If Gladstone fell into the Thames it would be a misfortune, but if someone pulled him out again, it would be a calamity'.
-The Imperial Throne of Japan has been occupied by the same family for the last thirteen hundred years.
-In the seventeenth-century a Boston man was sentenced to two hours in the stocks for obscene behaviour, his crime, kissing his wife in a public place on a Sunday.
-President Kaunda of Zambia once threatened to resign if his fellow countrymen didn't stop drinking so much alcohol.
-Due to staggering inflation in the 1920's, 4,000,000,000,000,000,000 German marks were worth 1 US dollar.
-Gorgias of Epirus was born during preparation of his mothers funeral.
-The city of New York contains a district called 'Hell's Kitchen'.
-The city of Hiroshima left the Industrial Promotion Centere standing as a monument the atomic bombing.
-During the Medieval Crusades, transporting bodies off the battlefield for burial was a major problem, this was solved by carrying a huge cauldron into the Holy Wars, boiling down the bodies, and taking only the bones with them.
-A ten-gallon hat holds three-quarters of a gallon.
-George Washington grew marijuana in his garden.

Now don't you wonder how you ever survived without knowing all of that? Until next time, take care.

16 comments:

The Guy Who Writes This said...

-Paul Revere was a dentist. I think he was a silver smith. George Washington grew hemp.

Mike S said...

Guy, cross-checked these several ways with same results.
1)During the 1760s Revere produced a number of political engravings and advertised as a dentist at the time he was active in the Sons of Liberty.
2)Marijuana was the primary crop grown by George Washington at Mount Vernon, but was grown for the hemp rather than the drug(?).
I try to check several sources before printing. Revere was also silversmith and a bell maker.

Cherie said...

So many wise-cracks bubbled up in my head as I read this, but they floated away with each new piece of trivia. Now I'm left smiling.

I may be a bubble head, but at least my brain is bigger than Lenin's!

(I think......!)

Me. Here. Right now. said...

So, Mike. I've been wanting to ask you, and I'm sure that Guy would support me in this. What's your "coming of age" story?

Hugs, Lori

Anonymous said...

Lots of stuff in here that I already knew, but had tried to forget for years. Thanks for bringing it all up again. Lucky for me I old & forget easier now.

fishwithoutbicycle said...

My office building is in Hell's Kitchen. Ironically it's a cool neighborhood :-)

Anonymous said...

You are a wise and generous man to share all this. I'm even more amazed that I'm reading through it all.

Mike S said...

Sandy, calling me wise and generous for sharing this is like praising a packrat for clearing out all the old magazines in his house:)

Anonymous said...

Hey, packrats need praise too! I work for someone who is the biggest packrat ever, I think. When he starts cleaning things out, I praise him, congratulate him, tell him how proud he should be for coming out of his paperwork. He mournes for days after, saying I made him do it. Then I praise him some more!

Mike S said...

I drive SWMBO crazy, still got stuff I've been using since the 50s & 60s. Then there's the 'new' things from the 70s and up:)

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's time to start a museum Mike. Maybe you could make some money and save all your stuff too! Isn't that how the rock-n-roll hall of fame started?

Thanks for letting me kid with you. Cheered me up.

Mike S said...

Sandy, was kinda thinking of asking a good friend of mine to show me a bit about e-bay and try selling stuff there, if I can bear to part with any of it. She once told me I probably wasn't an e-bay type person as I'm a bit of a dinosaur:)

Unknown said...

As an aside--
One of the woman with the highest IQ is Marilyn vos Savant, who is married to Dr Robert Jarvik, inventor of the artificial heart.

Mike S said...

Tim, that one I knew, I've been meaning to look up the other one, but my reminder seems to be in my copious notes to myself, somewhere:)

Mike S said...

Now that's plain weird! The scrambled letters spelled 'injun' on my last comment!!

Unknown said...

How come my scrambled letters didn't spell mick?????? :)