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HISTORY
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1991-08-29
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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.
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Note: You can search for a specific word within this chapter
by pressing the [S] key.
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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!
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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.
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In the ten years between 1946 and 1956 television sets in
American homes jumped from a total of 10,000 to 28 million.
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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.
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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.'
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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For the first 19 years Crayola Crayons were produced, they
came in only one color - black.
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chapter end.
ALMANAC 1992 is freeware. Feel free to copy and distribute as
long as all files remain intact & unchanged.