Tuesday, May 06, 2008

More from the trivial facts files......

Since I seem to have

I've been doing a lot of this.

But, as I still read a lotta this

and spend time doing this

I end up collecting

which get stuffed in places like

and

So I called in my crack 'Fact Checking Team' to do this

and appropriately dispose of the bad info

and leave me with something like

and I can use the good stuff like this:

MORE ABSOLUTELY USELESS INFORMATION

-The women of the Tiwi tribe in the South Pacific are married at birth.
-When Albert Einstein died, his final words died with him. The nurse at his side didn't understand German.
-St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was not Irish.
-The lance ceased to be an official battle weapon in the British Army in 1927.
-St. John was the only one of the 12 Apostles to die a natural death.
-Many sailors used to wear gold earrings so that they could afford a proper burial when they died.
-Some very Orthodox Jews refuse to speak Hebrew, believing it to be a language reserved only for the Prophets.
-A South African monkey was once awarded a medal and promoted to the rank of corporal during World War I.
-Admiral Lord Nelson was less than 1.6 meters(5'2.5")tall.
-John Glenn, the American who first orbited the Earth, was showered with 3,529 tons of ticker tape when he got back.
-Some Native American Indians used to name their children after the first thing they saw as they left their tepees subsequent to the birth. Hence such names as Sitting Bull and Running Water.
-Catherine the First of Russia, made a rule that no man was allowed to get drunk at one of her parties before nine o'clock.
-Queen Elizabeth I passed a law which forced everyone except for the rich to wear a flat cap on Sundays.
-In 1969 the shares of the Australian company 'Poseidon' were worth $1, one year later they were worth $280 each.
-Julius Caesar wore a laurel wreath to cover the onset of baldness.
-Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour during World War II, left school at the age of eleven.
-At the age of 12, Martin Luther King became so depressed he tried committing suicide twice, by jumping out of his bedroom window.
-It is illegal to be a prostitute in Siena, Italy, if your name is Mary.
-The Turk's consider it considered unlucky to step on a piece of bread.
-The authorities do not allow tourists to take pictures of Pygmies in Zambia.
-The Dutch in general prefer their french fries with mayonnaise.
-Upon the death of F.D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman became the President of America on 12 April 1945. The initial S in the middle of his name doesn't in fact mean anything. Both his grandfathers had names beginning with 'S', and so Truman's mother didn't want to disappoint either of them.(expanded from previous post)
-Sir Isaac Newton was obsessed with the occult and the supernatural.
-One of Queen Victoria's wedding gifts was a 3 meter(118") diameter, half ton cheese.
-Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never phoned his wife or his mother, they were both deaf.
-It was considered unfashionable for Venetian women, during the Renaissance, to have anything but silvery-blonde hair.
-Queen Victoria was one of the first women ever to use chloroform to combat pain during childbirth.
-Peter the Great had the head of his wife's lover cut off and put into a jar of preserving alcohol, which he then ordered to be placed by her bed.
-The car manufacturer Henry Ford was awarded Hitler's Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle. Henry Ford was the inventor of the assembly line, and Hitler used this knowledge of the assembly line to speed up production, and to create better and interchangeable products.
-Atilla the Hun is thought to have been a dwarf.
-The warriors tribes of Ethiopia used to hang the testicles of those they killed in battle on the ends of their spears.
-On 15 April 1912 the SS Titanic sunk on her maiden voyage and over 1,500 people died. Fourteen years earlier a novel was published by Morgan Robertson which seemed to foretell the disaster. The book described a ship the same size as the Titanic which crashes into an iceberg on its maiden voyage on a misty April night. The name of Robertson's fictional ship was the Titan.
-There are over 200 religious denominations in the United States.
-Eau de Cologne was originally marketed as a way of protecting yourself against the plague.
-Charles the Simple was the grandson of Charles the Bald, both were rulers of France.
-Theodor Herzi, the Zionist leader who was born on May 2 1860, once had the astonishing idea of converting Jews to Christianity as a way of combating anti-Semitism.
-The women of an African tribe make themselves more attractive by permanently scaring their faces.
-Augustus II, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, seemed to have a prodigious sexual appetite, and fathered hundreds of illegitimate children during his lifetime.
-Some moral purists in the Middle Ages believed that women's ears ought to be covered up because the Virgin May had conceived a child through them.
-Some Hindus don't like dying in bed, they prefer to die beside a river.
-While at Havard University, Edward Kennedy was suspended for cheating on a Spanish exam.
-It is a criminal offence to drive around in a dirty car in Russia.
-The Emperor Caligula once decided to go to war with the Roman God of the sea, Poseidon, and ordered his soldiers to throw their spears into the water at random.
-The Ecuadorian poet, José Olmedo, has a statue in his honour in his home country. But, unable to commission a sculptor, due to limited funds, the government brought a second-hand statue. Of the English poet Lord Byron!
-In 1726, at only 7 years old, Charles Sauson inherited the post of official executioner.
-Sir Winston Churchill rationed himself to 15 cigars a day.
-On 7 January 1904 the distress call 'CQD' was introduced. 'CQ' stood for 'Seek You' and 'D' for 'Danger'. This lasted only until 1906 when it was replaced with 'SOS'.
-Though it is forbidden by the Government, many Indians still adhere to the caste system which says that it is a defilement for even the shadow of a person from a lowly caste to fall on a Brahman ( a member of the highest priestly caste).
-In parts of Malaya, the women keep harems of men.
-The childrens' nursery rhyme 'Ring-around-the-Roses' actually refers to the Black Death which killed about 30 million people in the fourteenth-century.
-The word 'denim' comes from 'de Nimes', Nimes being the town the fabric was originally produced.
-During the reign of Elizabeth I, there was a tax put on men's beards.
-Idi Amin, one of the most ruthless tyrants in the world, before coming to power, served in the British Army.

And that's the truth, I hope. So, until doing this

leads to getting one of these

so I can enter a story in this

Take care and stay safe.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are just too funny. I think you win the award for searching and finding the most things on the web.

deanna said...

Thanks for all the facts. It made me feel better to have just washed the car. :o)

Natalie said...

ok...just to clarify. the turks probably do think it is unlucky to step on bread, but there is more to it than that. turks don't throw bread away. they bag it up and leave it hanging on the fence or other places for someone who needs it to take it. i don't know if it is because it is wasteful, or because bread is life, or because it is just unlucky. i've heard all three. i just know that whenever i have bread to get rid of i bury it in my trash so that the doorman doesn't think poorly of me!

Mike S said...

Sandy, I love spreading smiles when I can.

Deanna, I've a car that rarely sees soap, so if yer lookin' fer something to do.....

Natalie, thanks! As you've probably noticed, I LOVE trivia!! Can't get too much, and one of my favorite ways to relax is to dig up stuff like this. That, and nice folks like you who contribute to my collection:)

Anonymous said...

Mike, More info I've known or never needed to know. I knew about the Indian custom of naming their children. Hence the great war chief from our part of S.D. Two Dogs Humping.

Unknown said...

"-St. John was the only one of the 12 Apostles to die a natural death."

He's dead??????????? I thought he was running for President on the Republican ticket. Well, that explains alot.

Mike S said...

George, Yup, pity the poor kid saddled with 'Dog Pissing On Tree":)

Tim, aren't you confusing him with 'Saint Ronald of Reagan'? I think the guy running is simply 'John the Lesser' of the 'Arizona Beer Peoples'. And I do mean 'simply'!!:)

Fiesty Charlie said...

I am with you on the writer's block! I am having a spell of it myself...

Good post of trivia, I learned a couple of things from that and can now file it away to pull out on a rainy day!

Mike S said...

Fiesty, there's loads more where those came from. I seem to gather them faster than I can use them:)