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.
IT'S TRIVIA POST TIME
~El Salvador is the only nation named for Jesus Christ.
~Henry VIII of England decreed wearing a beard a taxable offense to the crown.
~Einstein's first published scientific paper was about drinking straws. In particular, he looked at the capillary forces acting on a drinking straw. It was in 1901 and it was an important point in his life. He had graduated the year before from the Polytechnic in Zurich, where he met his future wife, the program's only female student. That year, he also earned Swiss citizenship. But his job search went badly and he ended up working as a patent examiner.
~The line "make my day" actually appears in the 1983 movie "Sudden Impact," not in "Dirty Harry," although Clint Eastwood is playing Harry.
~The tiny town of Hibbing, Minn., has a lot to be proud of. The Greyhound bus line, for example, was founded there to shuttle people to Alice, Minn. But in addition to that, many hometown boys have gone to fame and glory. In sports, you have Roger Maris and Kevin McHale. There is Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Charles Manson, and wine guru Robert Moldavia. Last but not least, Bob Dylan lived there from age 7 to age 18.
~Lots of French people were born in Paris, of course, but so were some people you might not have guessed, such as Sweden's King Oscar I, director Roman Polanski, writer George Sand, actor Herve Villechaize, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, fashion designer Oleg Casino, composer Paul Dukas, Bush advisor Karen Hughes, rock star scion Jade Jagger, actor Emma Watson and talk-show host Kathie Lee Gifford.
~Neptune was discovered in 1846, but it still hasn't finished a complete orbit around the sun since its discovery. That won't happen until 2011. Incidentally, because of Pluto's strange orbit, from Jan. 21, 1979, to Feb. 11, 1999, Neptune became the furthest planet from the sun. It has resumed that position, now that Pluto has been demoted to the kids' table of planets.
~Aluminum is now considered one of the "poor metals", but it was once considered more precious than gold, so much so that Napoleon III used it to make knives, forks and plates for his honored guests.
~July 1st is Canada Day, but originally it was called Dominion Day, because Britain promoted some of its colonies to a semi-independent status called "dominion." Now that Canada is fully independent, the July 1 holiday is called Canada Day, but many older, grumpier Canadians insist on calling it Dominion Day, with all its anglocentric connotations.
~It'd be enough that Sarah Josepha Hale badgered Lincoln into creating Thanksgiving. That alone would earn her a footnote place in American cultural history, but she also published "Mary Had a Little Lamb," about the real Mary Sawyer and her pet. As the editor of Godey's Lady's Book, she was also an influential voice for 19th-century feminism and abolitionism.
~ The word 'flashlight' was coined American Electrical Novelty & Manufacturing Company in 1898. The company later changed its name to Eveready. "Flashlight" came from the nature of batteries and bulbs at the time. They had very short life spans, therefore, it was common practice to switch the light on for a few seconds at a time only, just long enough to light up what you needed to see. It was this on-off 'flashing' that led to the name.
~In 1915 Eveready cemented its place as the #1 flashlight maker after developing batteries and bulbs that allowed the light to shine for over an hour of use.
~In December 1953, Marilyn Monroe appeared, fully dressed, on the cover of the debut issue of Playboy
~Oddities of Victoria Day in Canada. Unlike Australia, India and every other bit of the old British Empire, including Britain itself, Canada still commemorates a monarch who has been dead for a century. Mostly, they open their cottages or have barbecues. In Quebec, they find it so odd that the date is known as Patriots Day, in honor of an 1837 rebellion ... against Victoria.
~Alfred E. Neuman of 'Mad' magazine was known as both Mel Haney and Malvin Koznowski before he was named for the nerd on the Henry Morgan radio show. That character, in turn, was named for the real-life composer and arranger for such movies as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "The Grapes of Wrath." His face is somewhat more mysterious: when 'Mad' was sued over it, it asserted that the image came from various materials dating back to 1911. So basically 'Mad's' response was, "What? Me worry?"
~The 1973 model of the AMC Gremlin, the first American subcompact, came with an option for nylon "blue jeans" seat covers.
~Since sound travels through helium nearly three times faster than it does through air, inhaling it makes you sound all squeaky. What's actually happening is that the pitch of your voice is changing due to sound speed. Normally, the amount of vibration in the vocal folds affects your voice's pitch, and the amount of air in your vocal tract influences timbre.
~Shaun (as in the famous style of cooking) Province in China roughly translates as "area of four rivers and gorges."
~In 1911, Paul Langevin, a married scientist, was sued for divorce when his wife found out about his alleged affair with Marie Curie. By that time, Pierre Curie was dead, killed not by his experiments with radioactive materials, but by a horse-drawn cart that ran him over on a rainy Parisian day. Interestingly, today, the respective grandson and granddaughter of Paul and Marie, Helene Langevin-Joliot and Michel Langevin, eventually married each other.
~The Colorado mining town of Telluride, now known for its film festival, also has a place in scientific history, as it is where George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla demonstrated alternating current, thanks to the world's first AC hydroelectric plant.
This sparked the current wars between the pair of them and Thomas Edison, who had been backing direct current. The resulting high drama and skulduggery would make a great movie.
~Born in the Faeroe Islands, a Danish comedian named Jacob Haugaard promised the voters better weather and more money for beer, not to mention a right to impotency. With an evident sense of humor, the Danes elected him in 1994 to their Folketing parliament. Most joke parties don't do as well. Canada's "Rhinoceros Party" folded under the weight of onerous election eligibility requirements, but Britain's "Official Monster Raving Loony Party" carries on.
~General Electric helped found RCA in 1919, when it reorganized American Marconi as part of a patriotic effort to secure U.S. Navy radio communications. RCA in turn yielded NBC, one of the first great networks.
In fact, RCA was so big that GE was forced to let it go in the 1930s, only to buy it back in 1986, only to get rid of it again. The only bit of the RCA empire that GE kept was NBC, which is why GE is often the butt of jokes on NBC's "30 Rock."
~The 'V' in 'DVD' stands for 'Versatile', NOT 'video' as is commonly believed.
~If you are in the nosebleed seats of a big-enough stadium and the concert is being broadcast, it is technically possible to hear it on a radio before you hear it live, as the sound is turned into radio waves, which travel faster.
~If your high school reunion were being held on Reunion Island, you'd be headed to the Indian Ocean. Just as Hawaii is part of the United States, Reunion is part of France, which also makes it the outermost region of the European Union and the furthest east.
When the euro came online, the first one was used to buy some fruit in Reunion.
~In 1882, while mass murderer Jesse James was standing on a chair fixing a picture, he was shot in the back of the head by Robert Ford, so that Ford could collect a $10,000 reward. Ten years later, Ford was killed in a tent saloon as he turned to face Edward O'Kelley, who blew him away with both barrels of his shotgun. And 12 years after that, O'Kelley was killed while trying to shoot a policeman.
~In 1943, Ignacio Anaya was serving the wives of some U.S. airmen at his restaurant in Piedras Negras, Mexico,when he improvised fried tortilla chips topped with melted cheese and jalapenos.
Since he was nicknamed Nacho, that became the name of the food, too. And since Piedras Negras is on the Texas border, the dish spread quickly through Texas and from there to the rest of North America.
~French novelist Pierre Boulle had been a secret agent in Southeast Asia during World War II and used the experience to write "The Bridge on the River Kwai." The movie version won him an Oscar for the screenplay, even though he somehow managed to write it without speaking any English. (It was actually written by two blacklisted writers.) Boulle also, weirdly, wrote "Planet of the Apes," which also became a hit movie.
~Cardinal Jamie Sin of Philippines actually WAS a Roman Catholic Cardinal.
~As the story goes, Buddha called the animals of the world to his side, but only 12 showed up. In their honor, he named a year for each of them. Traditionally, Chinese years were numbered, not A.D. or B.C., but based on the number of years the current emperor had been in charge. When the emperor was deposed in 1912, years were numbered for the Republic. In 1949, the 38th Year of the Republic, the communists switched to the Western system.
~Some say that Chinese explorer Zheng He might well have discovered Europe, if a nervously conservative imperial court hadn't called him home. On his return, explorer Zheng brought back a ki-lin, or unicorn. Actually, it was a giraffe. Incidentally, Zheng He appears to have been a Muslim. And today, China celebrates July 11 as Maritime Day in his honor.
Until next time, be well and stay safe.
First task was to go into my 'deep storage' vault to retrieve the needed material.
of a 'staffer' on a beach someplace? So, until next time, take care & be well.
-Radio towers are always painted with alternating red and white stripes. If the tower is over 700 feet tall, every stripe is 100 feet high. If it's under 700 feet, the tower will always have seven stripes. The top stripe on a tower is always red.
-There are 1,783 diamonds on the Britain's Imperial State Crown. This includes the 309-carat Star of Africa.
-Gene Simmons, of the shock-rock group Kiss, earned a B.A. in education and speaks four languages.
-The three-toed sloth of tropical America can swim easily, but it can only drag itself across bare ground.
-The Ruby-throated Hummingbird's wings beat at over 60 times per second, its heart beats aproxximately 1260 times per minute, and it completes one in-out breathing cycle 250 times per minute.
-The word 'verb' is a noun.
-There are over 2,000 species of firefly averaging one inch/2.54cm in length and having an average lifespan of 2 months in the wild.
-A 'phthisiologist' specializes in the study & treatment of tuberculosis.
-The nation of Chile's name is from an Indian word, Tchili, meaning 'the deepest point of the earth'.
-Sunbeams that shine down through clouds are called crepuscular rays.
-Most landfilled trash retains its original weight, volume, and form for 40 years.
-In 1984 the state of New York became the last of the United States to put photographs on drivers' licenses.
-The pyramids in Egypt contain enough stone and mortar to construct a wall 10 feet high and 5 feet wide running from New York City to Los Angeles.
-The liver stretches across almost the width of the body, occupying a space about the size of a football. It weighs more than 3 lbs.
-There is a town in Sweden called "A" and a town in France called "Y."
-Mike is a slavedriver and a cheapskate!
-The first color photograph was made in 1861 by James Maxwell. He photographed a tartan ribbon.
-In September, 1962, the Beatles recorded their first single 'Love Me Do' for the Parlophone label. The rest, so they say, is history.
-The pyramids in Egypt contain enough stone and mortar to construct a wall 10 feet high and 5 feet wide running from New York City to Los Angeles.
-In the 1900 Sears Roebuck company catalog, a piano cost $98.00 - FOB Chicago.
-According to purist Italian chefs, ingredients that should never appear on an authentic Italian pizza include bell pepper, pepperoni, or chicken.
