JULY

Why do status-conscious people want to "keep up with the Jonses?"

My neighbor's SUV intimidates more drivers and pedestrians than does mine. His high-definition projection TV is bigger than mine. He's got a bigger swimming pool. I'm so unhappy. I think I'll burn down his Swedish wood sauna.

Americans take their lifestyle point scores seriously, especially in comparison to their neighbor's. And they've been trying to keep up with the Jonses for a long time. Almost a century ago, commercial artist Arthur Momand moved from New York City to upscale Cedarhurst in nearby Long Island. He compulsively tried to match his new neighbors. When he saw what he was doing he made capital of it and created a comic strip about this way of living. He was going to call it Keeping Up With the Smiths, but changed it to Jonses at the last minute.

By the way, are you still watching videotapes rather than DVD's? And you're not embarrassed?

Source: WHO PUT THE BUTTER IN BUTTERFLY? By David Feldman



Been here and gone

We have lost many colorful bird species to extinction over the past century. The four-colored flowerpecker, which flies no more over the Philippines, is one. The elephant bird, a former native of Madagascar, is another. Ten feet tall and weighing half a ton, it laid eggs over a foot across.

What do you suppose the elephant bird used for a nest, discarded dumpsters?

Source: THE NEW YORK TIMES



Didja Know...
The US state with the lowest divorce rate is Massachusetts?
(Source: MSN)

Why are there 18 holes on a golf course?

Disclaimer: As a golfer I was so shy that I had to take a Dale Carnegie course before I was bold enough to even address the ball. I fell for it when my caddy asked if I wanted to hit the ball with a chicken sand wedge.

Now, the number of holes was established at the famous St. Andrews course in Scotland in the 18th century. With precious little 'fore'-thought, the club first settled on nine holes. At the 9th hole, you turned around and played your way back to number one for an actual total of 18. This was a mess, with long waits to tee off and golf balls flying every which way. Then some linear-thinking fellow figured out it was better to have 18 separate holes bringing you back to the first on the 18th. The club was so prestigious that everyone copied what they did.

Source: EVER WONDER WHY? By Douglas B. Smith



Getting high

New York City, justly famous for its skyscrapers, also happens to boast the highest natural point on the East Coast south of Maine. It's the area known as Todt Hill on Staten Island.

It is said, incidentally, that this most thinly populated of Gotham's boroughs was named when a lookout on the Dutch explorer Henry Hudson's ship peered through the mist and called out, "Ish dat an island?"

Source: THE BOOK OF ANSWERS by Barbara Berliner



Didja Know...
The earth's fifteen tectonic plates move on average about one inch a year, (or, roughly as fast as human fingernails grow)?
(Source: sesameworkshop.org)

Why is Hippocrates considered the father of medicine?

Well it certainly had to be more than just that he was married to its mother.

Unlike Aesop, Homer, and many modern doctors, Hippocrates was a real person, who lived around 400 B. C. It was the medicine of his time that wasn't too real. It was essentially based on the whim of the gods. If your foot was sore, it was because Zeus was sore at you. Hippocrates pioneered the connection of different symptoms with different diseases, recognizing that illnesses had natural causes. He studied them and was able to diagnose and prescribe for his patients.

But let's not get carried away with his modernity. He also believed that there were four basic substances: earth, air, fire, and water. They had counterparts in the four bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, black and yellow bile. These were called "humors." I don't know about you, but I don't find them very funny.

Source: THE HANDY SCIENCE ANSWER BOOK, by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh



...and if you add hot sausage?

Just how poisonous is a poisonous mushroom? Well, the fungus fatality rate from those unfortunate enough to eat the Amanita phalloides is about 50 percent. That rises to approximately 75 percent if you eat it in spaghetti sauce accompanied by my aunt Fran's meatballs.

Source: THE HANDY SCIENCE ANSWER BOOK, by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh



Didja Know...
According to a recent survey, most people say their most productive work day is Tuesday?
(Source: CBS News)

Why are newspaper and magazine articles often "continued" in the back of the publication?

Those of you who are bitter, cynical and generally mistrustful of human nature may suspect that this practice is meant solely to get you to view ads in the middle and back of the publication. Well, you're only partly right.

Newspapers also want to crowd their front page with as many top stories as possible to attract readers, and magazines want you to get the impression that they emphasize content over ads. So both stuff editorial matter up front, where you look first, which necessitates jumping to the back to conclude pieces. Magazines also may use a 4-color process, which provides the best, most vivid color, for just a few pages because it's expensive. If so, they want to start all their articles in those few pages to get you hooked by the "visuals."

Hey, if print ads get you down, there's always non-commercial public TV. Oh no, not another pledge drive!

Source: DO PENGUINS HAVE KNEES? By David Feldman



Thick and thin

Of all the world's most populous countries, Holland is the most densely populated, with close to a thousand people per square mile. Conversely, the area of the Earth most populated by dense people is the apartment across the hall from me, where there's a family of four total nincompoops.

Source: ISAAC ASIMOV'S BOOK OF FACTS



Didja Know...
The first product to have a bar code was Wrigleys gum?
(Source: pogolo.com)

Why do we say that when we put someone in danger, they're in "jeopardy?"

Because danger reminds us of the jeopard, and putting someone in danger is putting them on the spot. It should not be confused with putting someone ON "Jeopardy," in which case the problem is not so much the answer but the question.

Didn't we have enough nonsense New Year's Eve? Entre nous, jeopardy actually comes from the French, jeu parti, meaning "divided play," as in, before I spin the wheel, do you want to put your money on the red or the black? In the original sense, it meant taking a chance, but clearly an even chance (not when I spin the wheel, but that's another matter). Somehow over the years, the sense of it became more sinister, the odds shifted, and jeopardy came to mean the prospect of coming to harm more likely than not. Feeling lucky today?

Source: A BROWSER'S DICTIONARY by John Ciardi



Direct route

You know that common kitchen trash can that you open by stepping on a pedal? It was invented by Dr. Lillian M. Gilbreth, the same person who also invented the electric food mixer.

With the way I cook, I wish she had combined the two so that my mistakes could go right from the mixer to the trash without getting any pots unnecessarily dirty in between.

Source: JUST CURIOUS JEEVES



Didja Know...
The first product to have a bar code was Wrigleys gum?
(Source: pogolo.com)

Just what is a krill?

Sounds like something from a science-fiction film, doesn't it? In fact, one could imagine some good movie titles using the word, such as "The Krill of It All" and "A View to a Krill."

The reality is more prosaic. This is a shrimp-like marine animal, a planktonic crustacean, of which there are 85 species. Some are as small as one-quarter inch, although they often swarm near the ocean surface in huge numbers. They tend to be bright red and when they appear in bunches, sailors call the waters around them "tomato soup."

Ironically, this itty-bitty thing constitutes the main part of the diet of the world's biggest animal, the blue whale. As much as four tons of these little critters have been found in the stomach of one of the behemoths - but without the toast that the whale must have smeared them on.

Source: THE HANDY SCIENCE ANSWER BOOK, by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh



Banana panorama

Bananas began in the Indus Valley, but ancient Greece and Rome appear to have been completely banana-impaired. Bananas did not arrive in the U. S. until 1876, and were not commonly available there until after World War I.

It is thus safe to say that bananas did not cause the decline of Rome nor did they facilitate the growth of early American democracy, apeeling though that possibility may have been.

Source: PANATI'S BROWSER'S BOOK OF BEGINNINGS



Didja Know...
The two-foot long bird called a Kea that lives in New Zealand likes to eat the strips of rubber around car windows?
(Source: pogolo.com)

Why do we have earlobes?

Do yours hang low? Do they wobble to and fro? Can you tie them in a knot; can you tie them in a bow? Can you wiggle them, jiggle them and make people giggle with 'em? Or do you just hang earrings from them, as one dangles a hanger from the rod in a closet?

Earlobes are pieces of fatty tissue, hanging like pendants from the outer ear. It's hard to imagine any function for them other than as an aid to accessorizing your head. But scientists keep trying to come up with what might have been the original purpose for this now vestigial structure. Maybe when we walked on all fours our earlobes were larger and kept dust and dirt from our ear canals. One anthropologist even theorizes that they were used for sexual attraction. "Hey, baby, how about a little 'lobe?'" That's so earotic.

Source: DO PENGUINS HAVE KNEES? By David Feldman



The sound of silence?

According to the Wall Street Journal, there is one type of job that's in a seller's market even during the current recession: rock 'n roll drummer. There aren't enough of them to go around. Yet between 1996 and 2000, sales of drum sets doubled to 172,970.

Someone has clearly missed a beat somewhere.

Source: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Who was the original Grateful Dead?

No, not them. I don't care if your hippie parents took you to their concerts when you were a baby. Put away that "long strange trip" tee shirt and the Cherry Garcia ice cream. This is about folklore, not free music.

Now don't laugh, but the folktale goes that there was a corpse that needed burying. (You can leave the room any time you wish.) But it was prohibited to put him under. One guy, though, braved the ban and dug the grave to give him a decent burial. The dead person, out of gratitude, secured a bride for his benefactor. Isn't that romantic? I think I'll take my chances with the personals ads.

Source: THE BOOK OF ANSWERS by Barbara Berliner



Getting some things off her chest

Koleen Brooks is the mayor of Georgetown, Colorado. Nothing unusual about that. Well, the former stripper does have a penchant for red leather miniskirts and has been criticized for baring her breasts in a bar within 30 days of taking office.

She also owns a hair salon called Dare 2 Be Different. Maybe she should call it Bare 2 Be Different.

Source: THE NEW YORK TIMES



Didja Know...
China is home to 20 percent of the world's population and consumes 30 percent of the world's cigarettes?
(Source: Ann Landers)

What's the difference between pathos and bathos?

It's a trick question, right? I'm really trying to see if you know the name of the third of the Three Musketeers. O. K., you didn't fall for it. Clearly the first word is about how to get somewhere and the second, how to be clean when you arrive.

All right lexicographers, if you insist. Pathos was an ancient Greek word. It's the arousal of pity or sadness, typically in tragic drama.

Bathos also comes from the Greek and literally means "deep." But it's not deep as in "deep thinker," but rather deep as in the sub-basement of emotions. It's the emotion a soap opera might evoke. Aiming for pathos, it's only pathetic, trite, insincere and overly sentimental. What? Yeah, that's it. Stop whining, you're giving me a headache.

Source: THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH ETYMOLOGY



A problem that needs addressing

The "Zip" in U. S. postal zip codes stands for Zone Improvement Plan. It came into use in 1963. It helps the Post Office deliver more mail in a day than FedEx does in a year. The Post Office also maintains a fleet of more than 200,000 vehicles. Unfortunately, they lack steering wheels, which is why mail is often delivered to the wrong place.

Source: DO FISH DRINK WATER?



Didja Know...
Didja Know... The only 'X'-rated film to win a Best Picture Academy Award was 'Midnight Cowboy?'
(Source: AMPAS.com)

Have brothers ever opposed each other for the nomination for President of the United States?

Well, two pairs of brothers, both active in politics, with one brother in each holding the office of President, come to mind: George and Jeb Bush and John and Robert Kennedy. Fugedaboutit. It ain't them.

While one could hardly call it active opposition, there were two brothers who each received votes for the office at the Republican nominating convention in Boston in 1884. Senator John Sherman, whose name later appeared on a famous anti- trust act, received 30 ballots and his brother, Northern Civil War General William T. Sherman, garnered two votes. The winner, though, was James G. Blaine. But he lost the election to Grover Cleveland and hasn't been heard from since.

General Sherman, by the way, was an experienced campaigner. In the 1860s he blazed quite a trail in Georgia from Atlanta to the sea, kissing no babies but burning many barns and bridges along the way.

Source: POLITICAL PARTIES ed. by Gene Brown



Looney

If you have a green thumb, try moon gardening. The best growing conditions occur between the new and full moon. (Did you really think moon gardening meant turning your scarecrow around and dropping his pants?)

Plants that are dug up with the soil around their roots preserved are said to be "balled-and-burlapped." Hey, in college that was slang for... Well, maybe we shouldn't go there.

Source: THE HANDY SCIENCE ANSWER BOOK



Didja Know...
Didja Know... In the 100 years since its inception, there have been 19 years where there has been NO recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize? During World War I and II, there was one recipient: The International Red Cross Committee, which won in 1917 and 1944.
(Source: Nobel.se)

Who invented the modern lottery?"

There are lots of references to lottery-like activities in the Bible, and the Romans used them to sell property. In the United States today, lotteries finance education. I got an education from my state's lottery. Many losing tickets have taught me that I have a better chance of winning at the track.

The people of Renaissance Florence are credited with developing the modern public lottery, run by the state to finance its operations without raising taxes, and paying off the winners in cash. With the formation of a united Italy in the mid-19th century, that new nation-state also became the first country to run a national lottery.

My local diner holds a lottery with the prize of a free turkey dinner. In truth, you take a chance whenever you eat there.

Source: PANATI'S BROWSER'S BOOK OF BEGINNINGS by Charles Panati



Oh, sweetie

Honey keeps almost forever on the shelf. It's probably the most long lasting of any food and has been found in a still edible state after sitting for centuries in Egyptian tombs dating back to the Pharaohs.

Remember that the next time you're tempted to tell YOUR honey that he or she is spoiled rotten.

Source: JUST CURIOUS JEEVES



Didja Know...
During World War One, the preferred lubricant for aircraft engines was castor oil? Unfortunately, the engines also sprayed considerable quantities of the oil, a common remedy for constipation, back into the cockpit, where the pilots would ingest it and develop, uh, 'intestinal distress.'
(Source: Bajajusa.com)

Is there any kind of "lucre" besides "filthy lucre?"

What kind of a detergent do you suppose they use in money laundering? We can certainly hope that it does not harm the environment, but one thing is for sure: it doesn't work. It never seems to get the stains out of filthy lucre.

Lucre evolved from the Latin word, lucrum. It just means money or profit. So why is it always described as unclean? How else should we collect our pay -- in ears of corn? That's just the point. Filthy lucre dates back to an agricultural society when land, livestock and crops were the measure of wealth. Money as a means of exchange was abstract, unnatural, and evil. Maybe deep down we still believe that because the expression has stuck. Lucre is never clean.

It's a good thing I'm the down and dirty type. When payday comes, slip me the dough, Joe; pay me with that bill, Phil!

Source: A BROWSER'S DICTIONARY by John Ciardi



Anatomy of the motor mouth

The only bone in your body not attached to another bone is the hyoid, in your throat, where it supports your tongue. When you use it in the process of speaking you are accessing the part of your brain known as Broca's area.

That explains compulsive talkers. Their tongue has cut loose from everything else and their thoughts are coming from a place that's Broca.

Source: THE BOOK OF ANSWERS by Barbara Berliner



Didja Know...
Economic studies estimate that Project Apollo returned five to seven dollars to the United States' economy for every dollar invested in it?
(Source: NASA)

Why is the guy who leads the football team called a "quarterback?"

Because on the first day of training camp he put a dollar bill in the $.75 Coke machine, didn't get change, and compulsively complained about it ever afterward, earning this derisive nickname?

Of course not. The name comes from the way football teams lined up when the game was just catching on over a hundred years ago. In the backfield, the furthest behind the offensive line, was a lone fullback. In front of him, closer to the line, were the two running backs, known as the halfbacks. The guy in the backfield to whom the center snapped the ball was closer yet to the offensive line. I guess this is like a Scholastic Aptitude Test question, but given what you've been told so far, what would YOU call him?

Whaddaya you mean, you'll pass?

Source: WHO PUT THE BUTTER IN BUTTERFLY? By David Feldman



Look twice - it ain't rice

It's an old custom at weddings to throw rice at the newlyweds as they emerge from the church. But don't assume it's rice they've given you to throw. At many churches they hand out birdseed because the stuff lands on the steps and it's cheaper to have the birds clean up afterward.

This proves it, cynics might conclude: marriage is for the birds.

Source: JUST CURIOUS JEEVES



Didja Know...
The inclusion of hockey in the Olympic Winter Games was initially a condition imposed by managers of the indoor rink in the host city, Antwerp, who would not allow their arena to be used for figure skating unless hockey was also featured ?
(Source: The Sporting News)

How do they stage movie animal fights?

First, what you see is not what you get. Movie animal fights are to fighting what "professional wrestling" is to wrestling: the fix is always in.

The closest you might see to an actual fight is when two animals that have gotten to know each other are allowed to mix it up for a couple of seconds, not long enough to cause damage. Several cameras shoot the scene from varying angles and the "fight" is produced in the post-production editing room. The fight may also be simply the product of trick photography. For example, the two animals fight with their trainers in separate scenes and the trainers are later edited out when the scenes are combined.

Or one real animal might fight with a dummy. Come to think of it, I suppose they could have an animal and a "professional" wrestler fight – the ultimate in fix'n and fake'n.

Source: THE STRAIGHT DOPE by Cecil Adams



Hot process, cool cats

Low-alloy steel is made through a process called BOP – Basic Oxygen Process. I dig it, man. Crazy!

Pewter, from which many fancy utensils are made, is mostly common tin. Despite its name, it has no distinguishing odor.

Source: THE HANDY SCIENCE ANSWER BOOK



Didja Know...
Christmas trees are edible? Many parts of pines, spruces and firs can be eaten: The needles are a good source of Vitamin C; pine nuts and pine cones are also a good source of nutrition.
(Source: About.com)

What was the first computer virus?

We can trace the germ of the idea to John von Neumann, the father of the computer program. In the late 40s, he came up with the notion of a program that could reproduce itself.

In the 60s, when time-sharing on large computers was still common, two programmers at the Bell Labs invented a routine that could steal time on the machine from other programmers. By the early 80s, several harmless programs that we would recognize as computer viruses had been demonstrated on Apple computers.

With self-replication and the potential ability to cause mischief in place, the stage was set for real digital deviance. In 1985, the EGABTR virus, disguised as a graphics program, was spread via email. It wiped out everything on a hard disk, leaving only the message, “Arf, arf, Gotcha!” Oh, you dog.

Source: www.digitalcraft.org



It’s raining . . . you know what

There’s been a pet population explosion in the U. S. over the past two decades. There were 54 million dogs and 44 million cats in American homes in 1981. Today, tabby is on top, with more than 75 million cats to upwards of 60 million dogs.

There’s been a corresponding increase in animal TV shows, which is why some remotes now have a paws control.

Source: www.sfgate.com



Didja Know...
The nations that have produced the most Tour de France winners since 1980 are Spain and the USA? Both nations have produced two riders each who have combined to win a total of six Tours. (Source: LeTour.com)

What are "The 12 Days of Christmas," and what about that song?

"Two turtle doves, three French hens," what is this, some kind of exotic birdhouse? And when the heck are they going to get that damned partridge out of that pear tree?

Well, "lords-a-leaping," we sure do like to sing this nonsense. Some people even think that it's a secret code devised to teach English Catholic kids about their religion when Catholics were persecuted there centuries ago. No external evidence has ever surfaced to prove this, nor do the lyrics support the claim. We do know that the song first surfaced in an English children's book in the 18th century and may have originated in France.

As for the "12 Days" themselves, in the 6th Century A. D. The Second Council of Tours proclaimed the sanctity of the period from Christmas to the Epiphany, the January 6th feast day celebrating the visit of the Magi. That's 12 days - count 'em.

Source: THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA



Armed and dangerous

Abraham Lincoln and Paul Revere were related by marriage. Lincoln's father was a cousin of two of Revere's sons-in law.

You know, I've never understood Paul Revere's ride. "Two arms, two arms, the British are coming!" he warned. Hey, I have two arms and I'm not British.

Source: ISAAC ASIMOV'S BOOK OF FACTS



Didja Know...
The fear of beautiful women is called "caligynephobia?"
(Source: Phobialist)

In the expression "kith and kin," what's a kith?

From the context, which is relatedness, it obviously means something less than, or at least other than kin. So it's certainly not about kithin' cousins. That's no great loss, since it's not terribly exciting to kith your cousin.

Actually, kith originated in Anglo-Saxon times, about 900 AD, as cyth, meaning knowledge or information, as well as the place you came from or were most familiar with. Just a century later, it began to take on a meaning similar to today's. It was used to describe those people most familiar to you. By the 14th century it had been yoked to kin in the expression, kith and kin, which came to mean "friends and relatives."

Kith, by the way, is related to the "couth" in uncouth, which means lacking knowledge, crude, not kith, which I guess makes them kin - in my family, at least.

Source: DICTIONARY OF WORD AND PHRASE Origins by William and Mary Morris And OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY



Butter fingers

Among the few species of bats that are carnivores, the greater noctule bat is unique. Never mind clams on the half- shell, this creature is said to capture and eat birds on the wing as they fly across the Mediterranean Sea. Scientists say they have learned about this behavior by studying the bats' droppings.

Well if they drop them, how can we say that the bats ate the birds?

Source: BBC



Didja Know...
More than 50 billion aspirin tablets are consumed worldwide each year?
(Source: Bayer Corp.)

Why might you put up your dukes if someone hits you?

Some people think that "punch out" means using a time clock at the end of the workday. To others, it's personally delivering the knuckle sandwich that you believe someone has ordered and deserves

There are various old and colorful terms relating to a fistfight - "fisticuffs," for example - but "putting up your dukes" is the most colorful. What's so noble about, well, uh, duking it out? In fact, the term does have a noble origin. It comes from Frederick Augustus, Duke of York and son of King George III of England. Fred had a way of finding trouble. First, he created a stink with an ill-considered duel, and then he took up boxing in the early 19th century when it was considered totally disreputable. Consequently, boxers began to call their fists the Dukes of York, which eventually got shortened to dukes.

Source: WHO PUT THE BUTTER IN BUTTERFLY? By David Feldman



Hotcha!

In 1938, jazz musicians Slim Gaillard and Slam Stewart had a novelty hit record called "Flat Foot Floogie With the Floy Floy." In the 1981 film "Atlantic City," Burt Lancaster nostalgically remarked that in the late 30s, "Atlantic City had floy floy coming out of its ears . . ."

Turns out the jive song title means a prostitute with venereal disease. I was also going to tell you about "hubba hubba," but now I don't think we should go there.

Source: THE NEW YORK TIMES

How many flowers decorate a Rose Bowl Parade float and how are they attached?

"Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose," wrote Gertrude Stein. If she had gone on like that for a whole book – and judging from this sample, she may have had a repetition compulsion – she would have had as many roses as one sometimes finds on a Rose Bowl Parade float.

Would you believe those floats carry 30,000 to 150,000 roses? To water them you would probably have to hire a cloud seeder. Each float consists of a cocoon-like structure in which a layer of plastic is placed over a steel and chicken wire frame. Volunteers work hundreds of hours during Christmas week to get the flowers onto the plastic. That part is low- tech: they use glue.

There's certainly one benefit from doing this volunteer work besides civic pride: you're guaranteed to come out smelling like roses.

Source: DO FISH DRINK WATER? By Bill McLain



About the size of it

Money is the measure of all things. A dollar, for example, is 6 1/8 inches by 2 5/8 inches. Put whatever you want to measure against the long side and you have a cheap ruler. Similarly, a penny's diameter is about ¾ inch and can be used to estimate other diameters when placed against the object to be measured.

Caution: Stretching a dollar or pinching pennies invalidates these numbers.

Source: THE HANDY SCIENCE ANSWER BOOK



Didja Know...
Koala bears eat nothing but eucalyptus leaves?
(Source: AbsoluteTrivia)

Why do people promise to eat their hat?

To cap their food budget? For a peak experience? And that's just off the top of my head.

But now for the results of my research. In medieval England, hat was spelled "hatte." This would be a useless bit of pedantry unless the word had some food connection, as well. But it did. There was a popular pastry filled with meat called hattes. And why was it so called? Because it was shaped like a _ _ _. Aw c'mon, you can fill it in! The expression evolved as a bit of a pun, but also with the literal meaning that you're so sure that what you're asserting is true that you will devour something truly indigestible if it isn't.

Hey, this expression is old hat. If you want to impress me, promise to eat your hat while it's still on your head.

Source: EVER WONDER WHY? By Douglas B. Smith



One toke over the line

A 10,000-year-old cave painting in Ariege, France, is thought to depict the earliest example of musical theater. It shows a man in a buffalo mask strumming on a stringed instrument while flinging himself around with abandon among a herd of reindeer.

First musical theater? Sounds more like the first use of hallucinogenic drugs.

Source: PANATI'S BROWSER'S BOOK OF BEGINNINGS



Didja Know...
Mozart once composed a piano piece that required a player to use two hands and a nose in order to hit all the correct notes?
(Source: AbsoluteTrivia)

What do you call this, "#," and why?

When the operator at the end of an endless telephone menu of nightmarish complexity tells me to "press the pound key," I call it &@#@*&##!! That will teach you to play tic-tac-toe with my valuable time! Pound key? I'll smash it!

Ok, I'm calm now. First, it's the "pound key" only in the U.S. In Britain, where a pound key produces the sign for their currency, the # is known as a hash, hash mark, or hash sign, from the French, hacher, to cut or draw lines.

In the U. S., # may mean, "number." For proofreaders, it's "space." It's a pound key because groceries used to indicate the price per weight of an item as $3.00 per #. Finally, # became an "octothorpe" at the Bell Labs, where geekspeaking techies were accustomed to turning English into hash.

Source: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL



Will that be cash or ...

Invented in India, the game of chess was called al-schah-mat or, "The King is Dead," by the Arabs. The Arabic name eventually evolved into our term, "checkmate." Then there's the other theory. "Checkmate" is what Australians who play chess for money and lose say when asked how they're going to pay.

Source: FABULOUS FALLACIES



Didja Know...
America's favorite cookie is ... the Oreo?
(Source: Nabisco.com)

Why are naps refreshing?

Because they allow you to grab free music from other people's computers ... Whoops, sorry, wrong word! We're talking zzzz's, not mp3's. You're not a napster if what you're grabbing is just a little shut-eye.

Many people think naps are just for kids, but we adults need a little nappy-poo, too. In fact, our bodies crave some late afternoon beddy-bye. It's as natural to us as ... as eating pizza, I guess. In fact, napping at that time is virtually hard-wired into our biology. We need it and deeply desire it, yawn. It's just that now we answer the call of naptime with the 3:30 pm coffee break.

Ignoring this biological need can make us inefficient, and on the road can cause accidents from inattention. To prevent such calamities, one expert has called for "prophylactic napping." There you go: safe sleep.

Source: WHY THINGS ARE & WHY THEY AREN'T by Joel Achenbach



Is that what they mean by "gray matter?"

Rats! I missed Mickey Mouse's birthday. Mickey debuted on November 18, 1928 in the cartoon, "Steamboat Willie." For Walt Disney, Mickey was something of a rodent renaissance after Disney had failed with "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit."

"I had a mouse in the back of my head," Disney said of his inspiration. He must have looked pretty funny.

Source: THE BOOK OF DAYS



Didja Know...
The Harlem Globetrotters were never actually based in Harlem?
(Source: Harlem Globetrotters)

Did anyone invent nachos, and how did they get that name?

Could the etymology of nachos possibly take us to the Spanish word nacho, meaning "flat-nosed?" You must be kidding – or congested. How about the Tex-Mex slang word nacho, meaning "naturally, of course?" That ain't it, either.

Than why call melted cheese and jalapeno peppers on tortillas anything but "heavenly?" Wait. How about "nacho" as the nickname for Ignacio? Burrrrrrito, we hit the target! Let us give thanks to Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya, who in the 1940s was the chef at the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, a Mexican border town near Eagle Pass Texas. There, in 1943, in a savory stroke of genius, he invented his namesake dish.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest use of the word in print dates from 1949, in which someone remarks that "nachos make one romantic." Think about that next time you have a date with your hot tamale.

Source: THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY NEWS (from the Oxford website)



Out of many, one

If Alexander Hamilton had gotten his way, our office would be located in the United State of America. That's not a typo. At the time of the writing of the Constitution, Hamilton preferred to drop the division of the country into states.

Now I know why he dueled with Aaron Burr. Hamilton must have accused him of being borderline.

Source: ISAAC ASIMOV'S BOOK OF FACTS



Didja Know...
The real name of Scooby-Doo's sidekick, Shaggy is (drum roll, please) Norville Rodgers?
(Source: ABC Sports Online/Britannica.com)

If you send a letter to another country, who pays that country to deliver it?

Sometimes the mail service is so bad, one is tempted to cry uncle. If you live in the U. S., that's who pays this bill: Uncle Sam

Just as there is a balance of payments in foreign trade between your country and every other -- the amount your imports exceed or fall short of exports - so there is a similar balance for mail. If your country has been sending more mail to another nation than it has been receiving from it, your country pays for the excess service. They don't count each letter; it's calculated by weight: so many dollars per kilogram.

Just because the payments are balanced doesn't mean that the people who send this mail can be described in the same way. If the junk mail I get goes abroad - ads for tooth implants that play mp3 music files - they must think we've gone off the scale.

Source: WHY DO DOGS HAVE WET NOSES? By David Feldman



Pure gold

Pure gold has no practical value whatsoever. It's too soft to do anything with it and has to be diluted, or alloyed, like iron, to make it workable -- typically with copper.

Martin M Goldwyn, in his book How a Fly Walks Upside Down, recounts a suggestion from a student that pancake flour and popcorn would make the perfect alloy. The popcorn would flip the pancakes over as it cooked.

Source: HOW A FLY WALKS UPSIDE DOWN



Didja Know...
Scooby-Doo's "real" name is Scoobert? The name itself was inspired by Frank Sinatra's scat refrain, ("doobie-doobie-doooo") from his rendition of "Strangers in the Night."
(Source: ABC Sports Online/Britannica.com)

Do turkeys really drown by looking up when it rains?

A species synonymous with stupidity, that communicate by going "gobble, gobble," certainly has a problem with public perception.

Typical is the barnyard canard that when it rains, turkeys look upward, open their mouths to gape and drown. What do you think they are, a, uh, bunch of turkeys? They don't do it. The probable source for this legend is the few young turkeys that sometimes do die in a heavy downpour. They're covered with down but are not yet protected by the adult turkey's protective outer feathers. Their down gets wet, becomes ineffective and they die from the cold.

Criticizing this bird is like engaging in a, uh, turkey shoot. For instance, the birds today are bred to have plump breasts, which have been likened to footballs. It keeps them from "mounting," and they can't reproduce. See, first we call them stupid, now we complain that they can't score.

Source: JUST CURIOUS JEEVES by Jack Mingo and Erin Barrett, & THE NEW YORK TIMES



Same old service

The first airline passenger flight took off for Tampa from St. Petersburg on January 1, 1914. The plane carried one passenger on the 36-mile trip that was to run twice daily for four months.

The passenger arrived safely. So did his baggage – in Bombay.

Source: THE BOOK OF ANSWERS

Have any married couples been launched into space?

On the 1950s TV show, "The Honeymooners," bus driver Ralph Kramden often promised his wife, "Alice, you're gonna go to the moon!" Neal Armstrong beat her to it.

In 1992, a real married couple did go into space -- together. Astronauts Jan Davis and Mark Lee were preparing for an 8-day mission aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor. During their training they secretly married and by the time they revealed it the flight was drawing near. They were permitted to go but NASA scheduled them on opposite 12-hour shifts. Since astronauts are above it all, so to speak, it's hard to say who worked days and who, nights.

By the way, if you and your sweetie are thinking you, too, would like to really get away from it all, fuhgedaboutit. NASA now nixes space spouses.

Source: THE HANDY SCIENCE ANSWER BOOK compiled by The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh



Oh, %#$#@

"A curiosity-breeding little joker" is how Mark Twain described the typewriter. His Life on the Mississippi (1883) was the first book-length manuscript published that had been written on one of the new machines.

It's rumored that a Twain's descendant wrote the first novel on a windows based computer. After losing a chapter when the machine crashed, she is said to have called the computer a #@*#@$ little *$%#@.

Source: JUST CURIOUS JEEVES



Didja Know...
The psychedelic guru Timothy Leary's five favorite movies were: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, The Meaning Of Life and Trading Places
(Source: Timothyleary.com)