9 Thoughts To Ponder

These were sent to me in a email from a friend.  As she said, they are funnier when you're older and have one foot on that banana peel.  :)

9)  Life is sexually transmitted.

8)  Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

7)  Give someone a fish and you feed that person for a day.  Teach someone to use the internet and that person won't bother you for weeks.

6)  Some people are like a Slinky…not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.

5)  Health nuts are going to feel stupid some day, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

4)  All of us could take a lesson from the weather.  It pays no attention to criticism.

3)  Why does a slight tax increase cost you $200 and a substantial tax cut saves you $30?

2)  In the 1960s people took acid to make the world weird.  Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

And the number 1 thought:

Life is like a jar of jalapeno peppers—what you do today might burn your bottom tomorrow.

And as someone recently said: "Don't worry about old age.  It doesn't last long."

What Your Ice Cream Says About You

July is National Ice Cream Month.  And, in addition to that, there are several individual days devoted to ice cream:  July 1 is Creative Ice Cream Flavors Day, July 7 is National Strawberry Sundae Day, July 13 is National Nitrogen Ice Cream Day, July 17 is Peach Ice Cream Day, the third Sunday is July is National Ice Cream Day, July 20 is National Ice Cream Soda Day, and July 23 is Vanilla Ice Cream Day. So, as you can see, the month of July devotes lots of time to ice cream.

For millions and millions of people around the world, ice cream is THE favorite treat.  What used to be the three basics of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry have become what seems like millions of flavors.

And guess what (surprise surprise)—someone did a study of what your favorite flavor says about you.  And also guess what (again, surprise surprise)—I'm going to share that information with you along with some miscellaneous tidbits about ice cream trivia.

If your favorite is chocolate you're more likely to be dramatic, lively, charming, flirtatious, seductive and gullible.

If your favorite is vanilla you're more likely to be impulsive, easily suggestible and an idealist.

If your favorite is strawberry you're more likely to be tolerant, devoted and introverted.

If your favorite is chocolate chip you're more likely to be generous, competent and a go-getter.

If your favorite is chocolate chip cookie dough you're more likely to be ambitious, competitive and a visionary.

If your favorite is rocky road you're more likely to be aggressive, engaging and a good listener.

If your favorite is mint chocolate chip you're more likely to be argumentative, frugal and cautious.

 If your favorite is pralines 'n cream you're more likely to be loving, supportive and prefer to avoid the spotlight.

 If your favorite is jamoca you're more likely to be scrupulous, conscientious and a moral perfectionist.

 If your favorite is rainbow sherbet you're more likely to be analytic, decisive and pessimistic.

Where did ice cream come from?

The true origins of ice cream are unknown, but early versions of iced treats date back to the second century B.C. to Alexander The Great who liked to top snow and ice with honey and nectar.

Ice cream used to be for the rich only.

In the early 1800s, before refrigeration became widely available, ice cream was very expensive.  Only the elite could afford such a luxury.  Today, the average American consumes 48 pints of ice cream a year. [hmmm…a pint is only 16 oz. and there's 52 weeks in a year, so that averages out at a little over 14 oz. a week which is only 2 oz. more than one can of your favorite soft drink per week.  Doesn't seem like so much when you break it down that way. :) ]

Which city and state eats the most ice cream?

According to a survey, Washington D.C. is the most ice cream crazy place in America with its residents eating 85% more than the national average per person.  Rhode Island was in second place and Wisconsin was third.

What is the most popular ice cream flavor?

According to the International Ice Cream Association, vanilla is the most popular flavor at 29% with chocolate second with 9%.

Needless to say, there are lots of flavors not represented on this list of favorites.  I'm a long time chocolate fan, but I came across an ice cream a while back that just blew my mind…Godiva white chocolate raspberry swirl which is something like a million calories per pint  :).

So, there you have it.  My tribute to National Ice Cream Month.

This Day In History—week of Saturday, July 3 through Friday, July 9

On this date in history, these events happened.

July 3, 1608 - Samuel de Champlain founds the city of Quebec.

July 3, 1775 - George Washington takes command of the Continental Army.

July 3, 1806 - The first cultivated strawberry is displayed

 

July 4, 1776 – U.S. Independence Day. The American colonies declare independence from Britain, issuing the Declaration of Independence.

July 4, 1796 -The first Independence Day celebration is held.

July 4, 1803 - President Thomas Jefferson announces the Louisiana Purchase. The price tag: $15Million, about 4 cents per acre.

July 4, 1884 - The Statue of Liberty is presented to the United States in Paris, France.

July 4, 1994 - Hotmail internet email provider begins service.

 

July 5, 1865 – With the emergence of steam-powered road locomotives, Great Britain creates the world's first automobile speed limit law.

July 5, 1937 - Baseball great Joe DiMaggio hits his first grand slam.

July 5, 1942 - Ian Fleming graduates from a training school for spies in Canada.

July 5, 1946 - The bikini makes its debut at a Paris fashion show.

July 5, 1994 - Jeff Bezos founds Amazon.com.

July 5, 2017 - Volvo is the first car company to announce that by 2019 their automobiles will all be hybrid or battery powered.

 

July 6, 1189 - Richard the Lionheart is crowned the King of England upon the death of King Henry II.

July 6, 1885 - Louis Pasteur creates the anti-rabies shot.

July 6, 1898 - The U.S. Senate votes to annex Hawaii.

July 6, 1933 - In the very first All Star Baseball game, the American League wins 5-2.

July 6, 2016 - Pokémon Go is released.

 

July 7, 1456 - In a retrial, Joan of Arc is acquitted of heresy 25 years after her death.

July 7, 1928 - The Chillicothe Baking Company creates and markets sliced bread. It is heralded as the greatest invention since.... well, since sliced bread!

July 7, 1981 - Sandra Day O'Connor is the first female nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

July 8, 1776 - Colonel John Nixon gives the first reading of the Declaration of Independence to the citizens of Philadelphia, PA.

July 8, 1796 - The U.S. State Department issues the first passport.

July 8, 1889 - The Wall Street Journal is published for the first time.

July 8, 2011 - The space shuttle Atlantis is launched. It is the last launch of the space shuttle program.

 

July 9, 1795 - The U.S. debt is paid off. The total: $2,024,899.

July 9, 1815 - The first natural gas well in the U.S. is discovered while drilling for salt in Charleston, SC.

July 9, 1947 - Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) and Lt. Philip Mountbatten (later Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh) are engaged.

July 9, 1956 - Dick Clark hosts American Bandstand for the very first time.

July 9, 2018 - Starbucks announces it will stop using plastic straws by 2020, saving over 1 billion straws per year.

 

There you have it, This Day In History for the week of Saturday, July 3 through Friday, July 9.

From The Book Of Useless Information—part 3 of 3

This is the final week of my three trivia blogs featuring bits and pieces from The Book Of Useless Information, an official publication of The Useless Information Society with a copyright of 2006.  I'm picking some items at random from the last few sections of the book.  And there is one fact that jumped out at me as being absolutely wrong…I have attributed it to an overlooked typo rather than misinformation.  I'll share this with you at the end of this blog post.

For now…I'll pick up here where I left off last week.

AMAZING DISCOVERIES:  Construction workers' hard hats were invented and first used in the construction of Hoover Dam in 1933.  Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, was afraid of the dark.  A normal raindrop falls at about seven miles an hour.  An inch of snow falling evenly on one acre of ground is equivalent to about 2,715 gallons of water.  A cubic mile of fog is made up of less than a gallon of water.  Meteorologists claim they're right 85 percent of the time.  Buzz Aldrin's mother's maiden name was Moon.  The Apollo 11 had only twenty seconds of fuel left when it landed.  A manned rocket can reach the moon in less time than it took a stagecoach to travel the length of England.  Stars come in different colors—hot stars give off blue light and the cooler ones give off red light.  Earth is traveling through space at 660,000 miles per hour.  By weight, the sun is 70 percent hydrogen, 28 percent helium, 1.5 percent carbon-nitrogen-oxygen, and 0.5 percent all other elements.  A bolt of lightning can strike the earth with the equivalent of one hundred million volts and generate temperatures five times hotter than those found on the sun's surface.  In 1949, Popular Mechanics said computers of the future would weigh no more than five tons.  The shortest commercial intercontinental flight in the world is from Gibraltar in Europe to Tangier in Africa, a distance of thirty-four miles and flight time of twenty minutes.  A large flawless emerald is worth more than a similarly large flawless diamond.  A jiffy is an actual unit of time the equivalent of one-hundredth of a second.

WILD KINGDOM:  A baby blue whale is twenty-five feet long at birth.  In 1859 twenty-four rabbits were released in Australia and within six years the population grew to two million.  Human beings and the two-toed sloth are the only land animals that typically mate face to face.  An estimated 80 percent of all creatures on Earth have six legs.  A square mile of fertile earth has thirty-two million earthworms in it.  The original name for butterfly was the flutterby.  Grasshoppers have white blood.  A single strand from the golden spider's web is as strong as a steel wire of the same size.  Contrary to common belief, reptiles are never slimy, their scales have few glands and are usually silky to the touch.  The gecko lizard can run on the ceiling without falling because its toes have flaps of skin that act like suction cups.  Alligators cannot move backward.  The only continent without reptiles or snakes is Antarctica.  A group of frogs is called an army.  A group of kangaroos is called a mob.  Male monkeys lose the hair on their heads in the same manner as men do.  It is physically impossible for pigs to look up at the sky.  Bats are the only mammals that can fly.  Time and erosion have erased 99 percent of all dinosaur footprints.  Reindeer like to eat bananas.  Moose have very poor vision, some have even tried to mate with cars.  The night vision of tigers is six times better than that of humans.  Jaguars are scared of dogs.  Walking catfish of Florida can stay out of the water for eighty days.  Sharks' fossil records date back more than twice as far as those of the dinosaurs.  Sea otters have the world's densest fur—a million hairs per square inch.

STATISTICS:  It would take more than 150 years to drive a car to the sun.  More than 10 percent of all the salt produced annually in the world is used in winter to de-ice American roads.  Most fatal car accidents happen on a Saturday.  The world record for carrying a milk bottle on your head is twenty-four miles.  You're more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than a poisonous spider.  About 6 percent of murdered American men are killed by either their wife or girlfriend…or their wife who caught them with their girlfriend.  Experienced waitresses say that married men tip better than unmarried men.  You are more likely to get attacked by a cow than a shark.

And on the last page of The Book Of Useless Information, it says:  approximately 97 percent of all statistics are made up.  :)

And back on the first of these three trivia blogs, that error I said I caught?  It was in the first section of HALL OF FAME.  It said, "In 1812, after being shot in the chest, Theodore Roosevelt finished a speech he was delivering before he accepted any medical help."  The incident is true, but Teddy Roosevelt wasn't even born until 1858.  The reality is that it happened on October 14, 1912, a century later.  As I said, certainly nothing more than a typo that no one caught. 

From The Book Of Useless Information—part 2 of 3

This is the second week of my three weeks of trivia blogs featuring bits and pieces from The Book Of Useless Information, an official publication of The Useless Information Society with a copyright of 2006.  I can't personally vouch for any of these facts as I have not verified them. :)

So…I'll pick up here where I left off last week with the next few categories.

AROUND THE HOUSE:  A deck of cards should be shuffled seven times to properly play with them. Playing cards in India are round. On the new U.S. $100 bill, the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10. The Australian $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 notes are made of plastic. More people use blue toothbrushes than red ones. Alaska has more outhouses than any other state (and if any of you have ever watched the television series Buying Alaska, you'll be very much aware of this). There are more Barbie dolls in Italy than there are Canadians in Canada. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

HISTORY'S MYSTERIES:  A old Virginia law on the books requires all bathtubs to be kept in the yard, not inside the house. Persia had a pony express many years before Christ where riders delivered mail across Asia Minor. Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the death of their cats. When some mummies were unwrapped, the bandages were a total of 1.5 miles in length. In ancient Greece, women counted their age from the day they were married. The Roman goddess of sorcery, hounds, and the crossroads is named Trivia. The Chinese ideogram for trouble depicts two women living under one roof. On July 28, 1945, a B-25 bomber airplane crashed into the 79^th floor of the Empire State Building. Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States in 1789. In 1890 New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote. In London in the 1700s, you could buy insurance against going to hell.

ROAM IF YOU WANT TO:  The Frankford Avenue Bridge built in 1697 in Philadelphia crosses Pennypack Creek and is the oldest U.S. bridge in continuous use. In Washington, D.C., no building can be built taller than the Washington Monument. There are more than six hundred rooms in Buckingham Palace. The full name of Los Angeles is El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula (no wonder it's often referred to simply as LA). Harvard uses Yale brand locks on their buildings and Yale uses Best brand locks. It is forbidden to fly aircraft over the Taj Mahal. Central Park opened in 1876 and is nearly twice the size of the country of Monaco. The San Diego Zoo has the largest collection of animals in the world.

HOLY MATTERS:  The color of mourning in Turkey is violet, while in most Muslim countries and China it's white. In the early eighteenth century 2/3 of Portugal was owned by the Church. The youngest pope was eleven years old. Snow angels originated from medieval Jewish mystics who practiced rolling in the snow to purge themselves of evil urges.

BUSINESS RELATIONS:  Japan's currency is the most difficult to counterfeit. The largest employer in the world is the Indian railway system, employing more than a million people. The sale of vodka makes up ten percent of Russian government income. In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

THE SPORTING GOODS:  A baseball has exactly 108 stitches. Bank robber John Dillinger played professional baseball. In 1936 American track star Jesse Owens beat a racehorse over a one hundred yard course…and the horse was given a head start. It takes three thousand cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs. Before 1850, golf balls were made of leather and stuffed with feathers. Boxing is considered the easiest sport for gamblers to fix. Tug-of-war was an Olympic event between 1900 and 1920. Professional hockey players skate at an average speed of 20 to 25 miles per hour. Karate originated in India.

Next week is the third and final week of my trivia blogs.  Make sure to stop by and see what other bits of useless information I have for you.

From The Book Of Useless Information—part 1 of 3

While looking for something in one of my bookcases, I came across a book I had forgotten about…a book I purchased several years ago—The Book Of Useless Information, an official publication of The Useless Information Society.  It has a 2006 copyright date (as in 15 years ago which means some of this information could have been superceded).

I'm a long time (as well as big time) trivia fan.  In fact, I've done several blogs over the years about trivia.  I immediately became distracted and started randomly flipping through the book.  Half an hour later I was still standing in front of the bookcase thumbing through the pages.

I decided to share some of this useless information with you.  The contents of the book are broken down into thirteen categories which I'm going to break up into three blogs, this week and continuing over the next two weeks.  I'll share a few items from each category.

I did discover one error while thumbing through the pages.  I think it could more accurately be called an oversight, a typo that an editor missed, rather than an actual error in research.  I'll share that with you at the end of the third of this series of trivia blogs.

HALL OF FAME:  Thomas Jefferson anonymously submitted design plans for the White House, they were rejected.  Andrew Jackson was the only president to believe that the world is flat.  James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other—simultaneously.  Gerald Ford was once a male model.  Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.  Adolph Hitler was Time magazine's Man Of The Year in 1938 (keep in mind that Time magazine awards that position to the person they feel has had the most impact on the news which is not the same thing as someone to be admired).  The shortest British monarch was Charles I, who was four-feet nine-inches tall.  When young and impoverished, Pablo Picasso kept warm by burning his own paintings.  Christopher Columbus had blond hair.

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT:  Tom Hanks is related to Abraham Lincoln.  Tommy Lee Jones and Vice President Al Gore were freshmen roommates at Harvard.  Elizabeth Taylor appeared on the cover of Life magazine more than anyone else.  Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.  In high school, Robin Williams was voted the least likely to succeed.  Mick Jagger attended the London School of Economics for two years.  Parker Brothers prints about $50 billion worth of Monopoly money in a year, more than the real money issued annually by the U.S. Government.  Kermit the Frog is left-handed.  Peanuts is the world's most read comic strip.  Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.  Alfred Hitchcock never won an Academy Award for directing.

THE LITERARY WORLD:  During his entire lifetime, Herman Melville's classic Moby Dick sold only fifty copies.  Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at the age of nineteen.  Tom Sawyer was the first novel written on a typewriter.  Arthur Conan Doyle never had Sherlock Holmes say "Elementary, my dear Watson."  The word cop came from the English term Constable On Patrol.  The most used letter in the English language is E with Q being the least used.  The oldest word in the English language is town.  The only fifteen letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.  Bookkeeper is the only word in the English language with three consecutive double letters.  In England in the 1880s, pants was considered a dirty word.  Polish is the only word in the English language that, when capitalized, is changed from a noun or a verb to a nationality.

ON THE MENU:  On average, there are 178 sesame seeds on each McDonald's Big Mac bun.  Coca-Cola was originally green.  A full seven percent of the Irish barley crop goes to the production of Guinness beer.  The first man to distill bourbon whiskey was a Baptist preacher in 1789.  Almonds are a member of the peach family.  You use more calories eating celery than there are in celery itself.  The oldest known vegetable is the pea.  Tomatoes and cucumbers are fruits.  There is no such thing as blue food, even blueberries are purple.  The only food that does not spoil is honey.

This is only a small sampling of the first four sections of the book.  Anyone have any interesting trivia bits that fall within these four categories?

Next week I'll continue with some samples from the second group of four sections.  And the week after that I'll do the final five sections. 

A New Senior Citizen Exam

With the baby boomer generation now firmly entrenched in the realm of the senior citizen, it's not surprising that a new test has been devised to determine their mental acuity.

Below are ten questions. In order to pass the test, you only need to get four of them correct. Answer the questions without scrolling down to the answers listed at the bottom of this post…and no fair asking Google to give you the answers.

Remember…you must answer four of the ten correctly to pass the test. Pencils ready?  You may begin now!

1)  How long did the Hundred Years' War last?

2)  Which country makes Panama hats?

3)  From which animal do we get cat gut?

4)  In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?

5)  What is used to make the type of brush called camel's hair?

6)  The Canary Islands in the Pacific Ocean are named after what animal?

7)  What was King George VI's first name?

8)  What color is a purple finch?

9)  Where are Chinese gooseberries from?

10)  What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?

Okay…there's your list of questions. Have you finished writing down your answers for all ten questions? Great! Now you can move on to the answers.

Remember…you must have answered a minimum of four correctly to pass this test.

1)  One hundred and sixteen years

2)  Ecuador

3)  Sheep and horses

4)  November

5)  Squirrel fur

6)  Dogs

7)  Albert

8)  Crimson

9)  New Zealand

10)  Orange

So…how did you do?