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ALMANAC 1992, by Jeff Napier & Another Company BITS OF HISTORY At first this information was organized chronologically, but I think it is more fun just to read it in the random order in which it now appears. Hope you agree... _____________________________________________________________ There are currently over 5 billion people on earth. Within a century the population is expected to double. People who can remember back to 1940 may tell you the world felt less crowded then, and it's true, there were only two people for every four who live today. Around the turn of the century there were only 1.6 billion people. In George Washington's time there were about 750 million people. In the time Jesus lived, there were only about 200 million people on earth, less than those just in the United States today. It is estimated that around 10000 BC the total was only 5 million people. _____________________________________________________________ The ancient town of Bethsaida, lost since biblical times, has recently been discovered. Situated on the north side of the Sea of Gallilee, this may prove to be a very exciting archaeological dig. Test borings indicate that the 20 acre town is full of artifacts. What makes this place particularly interesting is that Jesus was said to have performed several miracles here including restoring a man's sight and materializing food for 5000 hungry people. Wouldn't it be interesting if scientists dug up actual items relating to these events? _____________________________________________________________ Sam Patch was the man known throughout America in the 1820's for leaping from the tops of bridges and waterfalls. He was a professional. Sam made his money like a modern street juggler or magician, by passing the hat. He made as much of a show of it as possible, sometimes jumping into the water with his pet bear. He successfully jumped Niagara Falls, but finally disappeared while attempting a second jump into Gennesee falls, a smaller but still spectacular waterfall in Rochester NY. He jumped from a 100 foot high tower in November, just to make the feat more difficult. Over 6,000 people watched him jump, but none saw him return. Finally, in March of the following year, his body was discovered encased in a block of ice. Kids, if your family happens to be vacationing at Niagara Falls, don't try this trick, unless your parents say it's ok. _____________________________________________________________ In 1905 Albert Einstein wrote his famous Special Theory of Relativity. It was published in a scientific journal that same year, but took many years to gain general acceptance. In fact, it was not proven by actual experiment until 25 years later. Two years after that paper was published, Einstein wanted a job as assistant professor of mathematics. This job required the applicant to submit a thesis paper, so Einstein submitted his Special Theory of Relativity. The university rejected it. _____________________________________________________________ In Ancient Rome, the cure for epileptic fits was to spit on the person having the fit. The theory was that this would disgust the devil and make him leave the victim. _____________________________________________________________ The man who invented Vaseline, Robert Chesebrough, said that he ate one spoonful of it every day. He lived to be 96 years old anyway. _____________________________________________________________ One out of every six draftees for World War II were disqualified due to mental illness. _____________________________________________________________ Everyone knows that gasoline was rationed during World War II, but few know how severely. People were allowed three gallons per week. Tell me, even with a modern, fuel-efficient car, could you get by on that? _____________________________________________________________ 15 million Americans joined the armed forces during WWII. One out of every 50 were women. (300,000) Since so many men were participating in the war, many women did jobs that had previously been considered men's work. It was not uncommon to find female welders, garbage collectors, truck drivers, and general laborers during the early 1940's. _____________________________________________________________ Children across America were trained in school to seek shelter during air raid drills. They were also taught to put thick books on their heads and bite erasers to protect against falling ceilings. _____________________________________________________________ The Pilgrims would have sailed beyond Plymouth Rock, but their beer was all used up. _____________________________________________________________ Paul Revere would have not made his famous (but incomplete) ride, had he not been paid to do so. He was a mercenary. _____________________________________________________________ Chopin, the composer, wore a beard on only the left half of his face, claiming that when he performed at the piano, the other side of his face didn't matter since the audience saw only one side. _____________________________________________________________ For a while in Greenland it was fashionable for women to paint their faces blue and yellow. _____________________________________________________________ When Marie Antoinette became pregnant, many of the fashionable women of Paris started wearing padding over their stomachs. As the pregnancy developed, the ladies wore thicker and thicker pads. When Dauphin was born, the women's fashions all returned to normal dimensions. _____________________________________________________________ George Washington was not America's first president. The first was John Hanson, then came Elias Boudinot, Thomas Mifflin, Richard Henry Lee, Nathan Gorham, Arthur St. Clair, and Cyrus Griffin. George Washington was the first elected by the people. The others were elected directly by the Continental Congress, sort of as fill-in presidents until the nation was cohesive enough to truly elect a president. _____________________________________________________________ President Lincoln himself was in favor of slavery! His party was against slavery, and so he took appropriate actions. _____________________________________________________________ Although most people know that lots of people were killed by atom bomb that was dropped on the city of Hirshima (141,000 people), most don't know that 140,000 people were also killed in one day in Tokyo by conventional bombing. Throughout the war, 220,000 Japanese people were killed by the two atom bombs (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and 600,000 were killed by ordinary bombs. _____________________________________________________________ Oranges used to be popular in England as decoration, much as gourds are today. At that time, however, no one would ever consider eating an orange! _____________________________________________________________ Where did the word QUIZ come from? It was made up by a theater manager in Ireland who developed his claim to immortality by running around one night writing 'Quiz' as grafitti all over Dublin. The next day, everyone was asking everyone else, "What is 'Quiz'?" _____________________________________________________________ David Rich Atchinson (President of the Senate) was president of the United States after James Polk and before Zachary Taylor between noon, March 4, 1849 and and noon, March 5, 1849. This is because Taylor was to take office on a Sunday, but being quite religious, waited until Monday. _____________________________________________________________ All the information in this database is reliably calculated from or based on what others have written. However, you may wish to conduct your own research to make absolutely sure of the facts. _____________________________________________________________ President-to-be Grover Cleveland never fought in the Civil War, even though he was eligible. Being wealthy, he simply hired someone to fight it his place. This was legal at the time. _____________________________________________________________ The German OSS was no more fond of Hitler than the rest of the world. They cooked up a plan to put huge doses of estrogen ('the female hormone') in his food, hoping his characteristics would become more feminine. This might cause his followers to wonder what was happening or who was leading them. The drug seems to have had no effect on his political career. No one knows whether the kitchen help actually managed to sneak the drug into his food. _____________________________________________________________ Adolf Hitler owned 8,960 acres in Colorado. _____________________________________________________________ A student in ancient Athens came up with a way to force himself to stick to his studies that would work quite well even today. He shaved the hair off half of his head. Then when he was tempted to step out, he would remember his appearance, and out of embarrassment would stay home and study instead. _____________________________________________________________ Queen Elizabeth I had lost her teeth, but to keep up her appearance as much as she could, she filled her mouth with cloth when she went out in public. _____________________________________________________________ Until about 150 years ago, right and left shoes were interchangeable. _____________________________________________________________ There used to be a state in America named Kanawha. It was later renamed West Virginia. _____________________________________________________________ After marrying a promising young physician in 1867, Carry Nation was horrified to see her husband destroy his career and finally his life after only two years. He drank himself to death. Mrs. Nation was so outraged at alcohol that she totally smashed up over 30 drinking establishments. This 6' tall woman would enter a bar and with such frenzy that all the male patrons ran in fright; she broke all the bottles and much of the furniture with rocks, bricks and hatchets. _____________________________________________________________ The first riot in the United States occurred in New York City in the year 1788. It was started by a single man. Grave robbers had exhumed his recently deceased wife and her body was probably dissected by young doctors at Columbia College and New York Hospital. A mob built up around this man and they invaded and wrecked dissection laboratories as well as random homes around the hospital. At least eight people died before the two-day riot ended. _____________________________________________________________ At one time George Washington had over 300 slaves. _____________________________________________________________ By 1790, the population of Philadelphia, the largest city in America had grown to 42,444. _____________________________________________________________ President Lincoln had a good organization technique a century before 'organizer' notebooks. He kept a special envelope on his desk labeled, "When you can't find it anywhere else, look in this." _____________________________________________________________ Until he was 51 years old, Abe Lincoln was clean-shaven. _____________________________________________________________ President Nixon was known to his fellow college students as "Iron Butt." _____________________________________________________________ During Richard Nixon's very first case as a lawyer, in representing a client in court trying to recover a bad debt, he lost. He was then sued by the client for inept handling of her case. _____________________________________________________________ In 1968 Liechtenstein held a vote to determine whether women should be allowed to vote. Women were allowed to participate only in this vote, because until then women were not allowed to vote, and the result of the vote was that women were not allowed to vote. _____________________________________________________________ The letter Q is from the old word for monkey - see the tail? The letter H is from fence, and M could be water (waves). _____________________________________________________________ In Europe in the 1500's translating the Bible was a dangerous undertaking. There was strong public opinion that the Bible should not be translated into common languages, but left in original Hebrew and Greek so that only educated church officials could read it. _____________________________________________________________ Before we dropped the atom bombs on Japan, the allies had already destroyed over 2 million buildings. _____________________________________________________________ The first words spoken after the Enola Gay (the plane was named after the pilot's mother) dropped the bomb that killed Hiroshima, were uttered by the co-pilot who looked back at the huge mushroom cloud and said, "My God, what have we done?" _____________________________________________________________ The Rosetta stone was a slab covered with hyroglyphics found in Egypt, that once deciphered, led to the unlocking of many more ancient Egyptian mysteries. The prominent Egyptologist who first managed to read it was 17 years old at the time. _____________________________________________________________ In 1811 and 1812, three monstrous earthquakes, probably measuring a full 10 on the Richter scale, struck in America. They did not happen in San Francisco, or even the remote mountains of California, but in the remote hills of the middle latitude, eastern United States - Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky. The reason few people know of these earthquakes is because none of them caused much destruction to man-made structures, since there were few structures nearby to damage. Is it safer to live in the eastern United States than California? Many scientists say no. Every state in the Union has had earthquakes. _____________________________________________________________ Japan had suffered another huge disaster just a short time before the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. In Tokyo and Yokohama almost a tenth of a million people died at noon on September 1, 1923 as a giant earthquake leveled the cities and set everything on fire. _____________________________________________________________ Sideburns, the whiskers adorning the side of a man's face got their name from a Civil War general, who wore an exaggerated version of the style, shaving only his chin. Interestingly, the man's name was not General Sideburn, but General Ambrose Burnside. _____________________________________________________________ In the mid 1770's David Bushnell, an inventive guy, created the world's first attack submarine. Using whiskey barrel technology, he make a water-tight clamshell shaped vehicle with room enough (barely) for one man. The thing, nicknamed the Turtle, was placed in New York Harbor one night containing Sgt. Ezra Lee, a 45-year old man who was stronger than the frail inventor. He had two hand-operated propeller vanes, one for forward travel, the other for directional control. Sgt. Lee cranked his way toward the British flagship of Admiral Richard Howe. David Bushnell provided for instrument guidance in the underwater darkness, even though it was 1776 and electric lighting was still 100 years into the future. Inventor Bushnell's solution was ingenious. He lit the primitive instruments, a compass and a depth gauge, with foxfire, a moss that glows in the dark. Still, navigation was difficult, because it was cold in the Turtle, and therefore the foxfire was dim. Ezra Lee missed the battleship entirely and cranked himself out to sea. Realizing his error just in time, he cranked furiously against the tide and finally arrived under the ship. Now it was time to do his dirty work. The plan was to turn a crank mounted in the ceiling of the Turtle, which would screw an eye-hook into the underside of the Eagle. Attached to the hook was a bomb. After several attempts at attaching the bomb, Ezra finally realized it couldn't be done. The ship was probably coated in copper plating to keep barnacles from growing on the ship, and the hook wouldn't drill into the ship. (Historians are not sure about why the bomb couldn't be attached, this is their theory.) Dawn was coming, and Sgt. Lee had to get away quickly before he would be discovered. Again, he cranked furiously, but some sailors on the ship saw him and he was in trouble. He released the bomb, which floated to the surface and blew up harmlessly. But it saved his life. The ship's men had never seen anything like the Turtle and weren't even sure it was a human-invented thing. It might be a monster, or a monster's creation. After the little explosion, they were truly afraid. And Ezra Lee sailed to safe harbor, his submarine was opened, and he was safe. This was the first and last submarine voyage of the 18th century. David Bushnell was quite fascinated with inventions and explosive things in particular and devoted his mental efforts to the war, but his creations never made any serious contributions. Once, some soldiers found a strange barrel floating in the water. They rowed out to it in a little boat and pulled it out of the water. On the contraption they found gears turning. This would be unusual by today's standards, but truly weird back in 1776. At about the time they made this observation, the time bomb exploded, killing three of the men and injuring some others. It was supposed to have floated up to a place where several enemy ships were docked and blow them up, but the men intercepted it. This was the only of Mr. Bushnell's inventions that came anywhere close to working right. _____________________________________________________________ During the Vietnam war, China planted opium all over Vietnam hoping American soldiers would find it, and thereby reduce their own effectiveness. _____________________________________________________________ The word "boredom" was created in a book by Charles Dickens in 1852. _____________________________________________________________ One theory about the demise of the Mayan culture is that by clearing large areas of forest where they lived, they inadvertently changed their own climate enough to put themselves out of business. About 20 years from now this story might sound terribly familiar. _____________________________________________________________ The guy who got the very first heart pacemaker implant, Arne H.W. Larsson, in 1958, is still alive today. Nowadays, pacemakers are implanted with local anesthetic, but when he got his, it was about as traumatic as the first heart transplant was in 1969. _____________________________________________________________ In the 1850's, some people used to chew paraffin wax the way we chew gum today. _____________________________________________________________ Until 1958 you could mail a first-class letter for 3 cents! _____________________________________________________________ Mozart's full name was Johan Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart, Amadeus was just what people called him. His father called him Woferl. _____________________________________________________________ History of the piano - Its immediate predecessor was called a clavichord. The volume of a clavichord, like a harpsichord, cannot be controlled, the loudness of each note is the same. However, the pitch of the notes of a clavichord change depending on whether the player presses the keys hard or light. Hit a key hard and the pitch goes up! The forte-piano was a considerable improvement, because the volume was adjustable depending on how hard the player hits the keys. Later the name evolved to pianoforte, which in Italian means "soft-loud" and finally piano. _____________________________________________________________ Mozart started playing the piano at age three but not formally until age 4. It was his choice. He started interfering with his sister's lessons so he could learn more. By age four he could learn a minuet within 30 minutes! _____________________________________________________________ One of Mozart's performing tricks, which he performed from the age of 6, was to cover a keyboard with cloth so that the keys couldn't be seen, and then play music perfectly anyway. _____________________________________________________________ Until the late 18th century, symphony conductors would play the violin or clavier (piano) while simultaneously leading the orchestra. _____________________________________________________________ Until the late 18th century, orchestra musicians always played at the same volume - there was no piano, forte, crescendo, etc. _____________________________________________________________ In the year 1675 King Charles hired a man for a big job. John Flamsteed life's work was to make a catalog of stars for ship's navigators. He was a good astronomer, but a hopelessly slow mathematician. When he died, 44 years later, the catalog was not yet finished, but it wouldn't have mattered, because by then navigational technology changed and his system would have been useless. _____________________________________________________________ Around the year 1348 so much of Europe was afflicted with a killer disease called 'black plague' that the survivors abandoned the practice of burying people, and just threw them into the Rhone River. _____________________________________________________________ In 1666 a great fire leveled 80% of London, but it actually saved thousands of lives. At that time there was another major pandemic of 'black plague.' The fire sterilized much of London, and spread of the disease was stopped. _____________________________________________________________ When the famous Koh-i-noor diamond was given to Queen Victoria in 1850, she had it cut down until only about 3/4 of an ounce was left. This is because she felt it didn't show enough color. _____________________________________________________________ We've come a long way in a short time. I was reading a book published in 1976 that was extolling the virtues of technological miniaturization. One of the great feats pointed to by the book was a television with only a 5" screen. Now, in 1991, we have them with less than 1" screens, such as the monitors in camcorders. _____________________________________________________________ The world's first Farris wheel was built in Chicago for the Columbian Exposition in 1893. Modern Farris wheels are just little-bitty things compared to that one. It was taller than 50 men standing on each other's shoulders (as tall as a 10 story building) and each "chair" was a coach which could hold 40 people. Between May 1st and November 1st, 27 million people were treated to wonderful treats of modern science at the exposition such as brilliant electric night lighting by George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla. _____________________________________________________________ One of Leorardo da Vinci's less known but very effective inventions was stink bombs mounted on arrows. _____________________________________________________________ The Puckle Gun is a weapon with two distinctions. It was not only the first machine gun (1722) but also the weirdest. It could fire two types of bullets. When semi-enemies were to be shot, round bullets were used, but if the enemy was truly hated, the more destructive square bullets were used. _____________________________________________________________ During World War II, Hitler commissioned Ferdinand Porsche, designer of the Volkswagen and many other cars, to design the biggest, heaviest tank possible. The thing was water-tight and so could traverse water. It could cross a river, not by floating, but by crawling across the floor of the river, underwater. The problem with this tank is that it was so heavy it literally demolished the streets and foundations of nearby buildings as it passed due to its weight and vibration. _____________________________________________________________ Noting that after military battles the weather frequently turns rainy, early scientists tried to recreate the effect. The cause of the rain after a battle is that the droplets form around the smoke and dust particles in the air. But the early rainmakers thought it was because the sky was shocked by the explosions and their horrendously noisy but mostly unsuccessful attempts at rainmaking involved shooting cannons into the air or carrying explosives aloft in balloons. _____________________________________________________________ One of the first streetcars in San Francisco was made to look like a horse, so its high speed (8 mph) and noisy characteristics would not frighten horses pulling carriages and carts. _____________________________________________________________ The first car tires were evolved from an invention by John Dunlop, a veterinarian. In those days (1888), doctors and vets had to make their own gloves from liquid rubber. He adopted the technology to make air-filled tires for his son's tricycle. _____________________________________________________________ People didn't really understand early telephones. Therefore one advertisement stated: "Its employment necessitates no skilled labor, no technical education, and no special attention." This was in contrast to so much home equipment of the era. If you had a camera, for instance, you had to have your own darkroom to develop your pictures. You needed to know chemistry to mix your own developing chemicals. There was no one to send your film (actually individual plates) to for development, you had to do it yourself. Later, Kodak developed a model of camera in which you could send the film to the factory for developing, but the film was sealed into the camera. You had to send the whole camera to Kodak to get your pictures developed. Still later, when automobiles were invented, you didn't get one unless you felt yourself rather competent in mechanical work, because repairs were constantly necessary. Often you had to repair your car several times in one trip. I talked with one old timer who told me about a 100-mile trip in a tin lizzy in which he had to stop 7 times to patch flat tires. _____________________________________________________________ In the 1700's some people had tooth transplants, having donors' teeth jammed into sockets in their own jaws. Later, Waterloo teeth, extracted from dead soldiers after the battle of Waterloo in 1815 were made into dentures. _____________________________________________________________ The first typewriter patented in America was called, "Burt's Family Letter Press." _____________________________________________________________ Dr. David Livingston ("Dr. Livingston, I presume"), the famous explorer of Africa, was found dead not in his deathbed, but kneeling against it in the position of prayer. _____________________________________________________________ "Housewarming parties" have their origin in Scotland, where embers from the fireplace of an old home were carried to start the fire in a new house. _____________________________________________________________ There are some old superstitions that were quite seriously heeded in their time. Among them: Never eat a dinner with 13 people seated at the table. Never cut off both ends of a loaf of bread - because the Devil will jump from the bread and 'fly all over the house.' Other old superstitions: Do not wear red and green at the same time. People with red hair bring about unlucky circumstances. Always pick up a comb from a table with its teeth facing away from your body. Never watch a child sleep or you will be risking the death of that child. _____________________________________________________________ It was once the custom in Wales that young mens' hands should be kept busy when they came courting. Therefore, they were required to carve spoons for their young ladies' parents. Some of the wooden spoons were very ornate with birds carved into the handles and links of wooden chain extending from the end of the handles. _____________________________________________________________ A Scottish study commissioned way back in 1868 discovered that 90% of brides were pregnant the day of their weddings. This was quite shocking at the time. _____________________________________________________________ There was a time and place where plain old potatoes fetched over $1000 per pound. Until the mid 16th century, Spaniards had never seen potatoes and for a while it was assumed that they had aphrodisiac qualities. _____________________________________________________________ As you know, it was common for ship captains to give their misbehaving sailors 24 lashes with a cat 'o nine tails. Some sailors learned to avoid this horrible punishment after a night of drinking by having a crucifix tattooed on their backs. _____________________________________________________________ Until recent times, a common Hindu custom, called suttee was performed when a husband died. The wife would walk into the funeral pyre and burn to death to be with her husband. _____________________________________________________________ California belongs to Great Britain. In 1579 Sir Francis Drake landed near Laguna Beach and met with the Indians who lived there. They thought he was a god and gave him all their land. He made a brass plaque decreeing California as property of the Queen. In 1933 a man found the plaque in the sand and took it home as a piece of scrap metal that he might be able to use to fix a car or something. Four years later, still having no idea that the plate with the faint old English lettering was anything of value, he junked it on the beach north of San Francisco. Then another man found it and took it to his home for possible car repair material. Fortunately, he had experts examine the lettering and discovered it was England's deed to California. _____________________________________________________________ Several years before the sinking of the Titanic, author Morgan Robertson wrote a novel called, "Futility." It was about a giant 'unsinkable' oceanliner that slid against an iceberg on its maiden voyage and sank. The name of the fictional ship was the "Titan." _____________________________________________________________ The head of National Cash Register Company once smashed up a cash register on stage with an axe because he thought the salesmen attending his meeting weren't paying attention. _____________________________________________________________ A few days before he was shot to death, Abraham Lincoln told a friend, Ward Hill Lamon, of a disturbing dream he had. Mr. Lamon wrote it down, and so this historical account exists. In his dream, Lincoln wandered through the White House and heard many invisible people sobbing. Looking for the source of the trouble, he came upon a dead man in the East Room. He asked a guard who had died and was told it was the President. A few hours before he died, he told another friend, William H. Crook, "I believe there are men who want to take my life...And I have no doubt they will do it...If it is to be done, it is impossible to prevent it." A few hours before John F. Kennedy was shot to death, he told his friend, Ken O'Donnell, "If somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?" When Lincoln died, President (Andrew) Johnson took his place. When Kennedy died, President (Lyndon) Johnson took his place. _____________________________________________________________ The governor of New York in 1702 was a transvestite who frequently wore womens' clothing in public. Some people assumed that when the Queen of England asked him to represent her in the colonies, he took her order literally. _____________________________________________________________ Did you know that the words "assassin" and "hashish" are related? Sure enough. In the 1200's a group of religious fanatics developed who were named the "Hashshishin" because of their habitual use of hashish. They also had the nasty custom of killing their neighbors and through time the name of their tradition has been evolved to "assassination." _____________________________________________________________ The word "book" comes from "bok" meaning "beech." The first books in Europe were written on thin slabs of beech wood. _____________________________________________________________ The word candidate roughly translated into Latin means a person dressed in white. _____________________________________________________________ The word "deliberate" translates roughly in Latin to balance, or weigh on a scale. "Libra" means scale. This is where the abbreviation for pound comes from. (lb.) _____________________________________________________________ The original meaning of the word fee was cow, an ancient trading medium that is not used much any more because it is not convenient to carry cattle your pocket. _____________________________________________________________ Hitchhiking was originally a technique in which two people rode one horse. One would ride the horse a short distance, tie it to a tree, then start walking. The other person would arrive at the horse on foot and then ride it a ways past the first rider (now walking), then tie it up and start walking. Soon the first person would get to ride the horse again, etc. _____________________________________________________________ The word "pamphlet" loosely translates into "loved by all" in Greek. _____________________________________________________________ In Latin, "perfume" translates to "through smoke." _____________________________________________________________ In Greek, "school" translates to "leisure." _____________________________________________________________ The Shell Oil company, huge oil conglomerate, was started by the owner of the Shell Shop in London, England. It was a small store that sold jewelry boxes decorated with sea shells. He started dealing in oil on the side. _____________________________________________________________ Sherlock Holmes was modeled after a real person, Dr Joseph Bell, a famous surgeon and lecturer of author A Conan Doyle's time. Dr Bell was known for highly tuned powers of observation, often pointing out to medical students to pay attention to seemingly trivial details and often able to expose patients' lies. Dr. Bell said that any observant doctor could often tell exactly what part of the body a patient was going to start talking about. Elementary. Knowing of Doyle's use of his character, when a listener once told Dr. Bell that he sounded like Sherlock Holmes, he replied, "I am Sherlock Holmes." Sherlock Holmes was named after an acquaintance of Dr. Doyle, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Dr. Doyle was an eye doctor who could not make ends meet, since medical specialties were still rather rare in 1880's England, so he took up writing in order to pay his bills. _____________________________________________________________ Men's jackets button up with the left side overlapping the right so the clothing will not be in the way when the man has to quickly draw a sword or gun. Women's clothing buttons the other way to facilitate easier breast feeding. _____________________________________________________________ Note: You can search for a specific word within this chapter by pressing the [S] key. _____________________________________________________________ Do you remember the video business in the year 1981. It was only 11 years ago. An inexpensive VCR sold for $1200, movies rented for $4.95 each! _____________________________________________________________ Evidence is mounting which indicates that the dinosaurs disappeared off the earth 66 million years ago due to a catastrophic impact. A huge asteroid, renegade planetoid or rock of some sort smashed into the earth creating a huge dust storm and change in weather. Furthermore, new evidence suggests it wasn't the first time. Paleontologists have now found signs in the rocks that another huge impact extinguished thousands of species 200 million years ago. For evidence they are using radioactive testing of thin layers of sediment which may be the fallout of dust from the impact, changes in the species counts in differing layers of rock, abrupt changes in the rock itself that have been laid down, studies of microorganisms' fossils, and changes in flora of the era such as opportunistic ferns that suddenly flourished after their enemies died out. These occurrences of huge things smashing into the earth may not all be history. It could happen again, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. On October 30, 1937, a planetoid called Hermes, came closer than 1/4 million miles to earth. This is closer than the moon. If it had been much closer than that, the earth's gravity could have sucked it in, wiping out whatever city it may have landed on, kicking up such a dust storm that the weather could have become colder for hundreds of years, and possibly wiping out the buildings and connection of civilization with all the resultant earthquakes. _____________________________________________________________ In the ten years between 1946 and 1956 television sets in American homes jumped from a total of 10,000 to 28 million. _____________________________________________________________ Sir Isaac Newton's mom didn't think education was necessary for farming, the business she wanted him to take up, so he had to quit school. _____________________________________________________________ King Henry VIII of England, long known for his many wives and culinary gluttony, died at age 56, probably from scurvy, a condition of dietary deficiency. It was fashionable in his time for wealthy people to eat mostly meat, and very little vegetables, because 'vegetables were for peasants.' _____________________________________________________________ Until about 1980, almost all false teeth contained a small amount of uranium. Without it, the teeth would look a bit dull compared to real teeth. After 1980, non-radioactive chemicals were found that can match natural tooth brightness. _____________________________________________________________ In the 1940's, all the young girls crowded the stage and fainted over a popular singer, just like they did in later eras over Elvis Presley, The Beetles, and now modern singers. Who was it then? Frank Sinatra. _____________________________________________________________ Sometime around 1776 the house that George Washington grew up in burned down. Archaeologists have recently found the remains near Fredericksburg, Virginia, under another home, which was buried under yet another home which had been built on top of that. _____________________________________________________________ The Erie County Public Library has had half of Mark Twain's original manuscript of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" since the late 1800's, but where was the other half? It has been discovered just this year. Almost like a cliche, it was found in an old trunk in an attic. This attic belonged to the late James Fraser Gluck, who was a benefactor of the library while he was alive. Evidently, Twain sent the manuscript to him for the library, but he held half of it to complete reading at home, then forgot about it. _____________________________________________________________ For the first 19 years Crayola Crayons were produced, they came in only one color - black. _____________________________________________________________ chapter end. ALMANAC 1992 is freeware. Feel free to copy and distribute as long as all files remain intact & unchanged.