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Miscellaneous Trivia 3 (holy cow!)

A man by the name of Eratosthenes lived from 276 to 194BC and he accurately measured the radius of the earth to within 1% of the correct value. His answer was 6,350km, and today, with the help of space-crafts and satellites etc, we know it s 6,371km.

Have you ever had a bit of a whinge about our postal services? I personally find them very good, but there were two people in Britain who had every reason to complain about theirs. Doris Honeysett received a letter that was ripped and grubby. Attached to it was a note from the post office apologising for its condition, and explaining that it had been eaten by snails. Another person complained to The Times that they had received a mutilated letter with a note that it had been eaten by swans.

The World Health Organisation announced in 1980 that through vaccinations the dreaded smallpox was finally eradicated from the world. Almost 300 years prior to that a slave in Boston, Massachusetts told a Puritan Minister how Africans would take a drop of liquid from a smallpox sore and put it into a cut on a healthy persons’ arm and they became immune to the disease. Although the person may have gotten slightly ill, they rarely got smallpox. And that is how modern inoculation was born.

Have you ever wondered how the old emperial measuring system came into place? Well the foot was the length of Charlemagne’s foot, which then modified in 1305 to 36 barley-corns laid end to end. The inch was the width across the knuckle on King Edgar’s thumb. The yard was the length from King Henry’s nose this ginertips which is a distance twice as long as a cubit. The mile was measured from 1,000 double steps of a Roman Legionary that was later lengthened by Queen Bess to equal 8 furlongs. The furlong was the length of a furrow a team of oxen could plow before they rested, and an acre is the amount of land a yoke of oxen could plow in one day. The metric system on the other hand is much more precise, it is exactly 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of orange-red light emitted by the Krypton-86 atom, or approximately one-ten-millionth of the length of the longitude from the North Pole to the equator. The meter is exactly 39.37 inches which equals 118 barley corns.

Did you know that in ancient China, towns were often arranged in patterns so that if seen from the air the whole township would resemble a symbolic design or an animal or a symbolic design. Some of the designs included stars, dragons, sunbursts and snakes.

The castor bean plant is the deadliest plant in the world. It is estimated that the protein, ricin which is found in the castor bean plant is as much as 6,000 times more deadly than cyanide.

We’ve made some pretty incredible advances in modern technology in the last 20-30 years including things like the computer and the fax machine. But did you know that the fax machine was actually invented in the 1840s and there was a functioning fax system between Lyons and Paris in France from 1865-1870? Even in the USA photos etc were routinely sent to newspapers over telegraph wires in the 1920s. Maybe we really not advancing as rapidly as we thought!

Which is bigger? Australia or the United States of America? Most people would assume that it’s the USA, but have you ever placed a picture or map of them beside each other? Without Hawaii and Alaska, the USA is only 2% larger than Australia. But one of Australia’s claim to fame is the fact that it is the only nation in the entire world that covers an entire continent.

Do you remember the Lone Ranger program on television? The Lone Ranger’s indian friend Tonto called the Lone Ranger “Kemo sabe” which we thought meant something like good friend. In fact, “Kemo sabe” actually means “white shirt” in Apache or “soggy shrub” in Navajo.

Roy Sullivan of Virginia in the USA is a very rare and very lucky individual. In 1942 Mr Sullivan lost a big toe nail when he was struck by lightning. Then in 1969 he lost his eyebrows when he was struck by lightning again. Mr Sullivan’s shoulder was seared by lightning in 1970 and just for good measure, his hair was set alight in 1972 when struck by lightning yet again.

Can you tell me the address of the Kremlin in Russia or what kind of building it is? The Kremlin is not in fact a building. It is an area of 90 acres that is walled off. Kremlin means something like citadel and was originally the name of the area that was protected. The Kremlin or the protected area in Russia was built in the 15th century.

Pope Eugene III visited Paris in 1147 on a Friday, but as Friday was supposed to be a day of fasting, the Pope issued a decree to make Friday into Thursday, which allowed the population to celebrate his arrival. That means that that week actually had 2 Thursdays in it and no Friday at all!

I’ve mentioned to friends on occasion that some of my fingers are double-jointed, but I’ve found out this can’t possibly be true. It’s a physical impossibility for us to be double-jointed. We can only have one joint in each location. So what about those people who can contort their bodies - how do they do it? Contortionists usually have ligaments which are longer than normal.

It’s common knowledge that every fourth year is a leap year, ie there is one extra day in February. Did you know that this is actually not true? This is how it what happens: every fourth year that can be divided by four is a leap year except years ending in 00 that can’t be divided by 400! Although we may have leap-years, this does not make our calendars exactly synchronise with atomic clocks, so leap seconds have to be added to some years as well. I hope that’s made it clearer for you.

You and I know that the funny bone is just another name for the elbow bone don’t we? Well, actually there is not such thing as the funny bone. When you bash your elbow and feel that sharp shock, you are actually hitting your ulnar nerve and not the bone at all.

What are some traditions and superstitions of the performing arts?
* Never speaking last line of play dialogue at rehearsal.
* Never say "Good luck" to a performer. Say "Break a leg!"
* Trip on your first entrance and you'll be lucky.
* Spit into your dancing shoes before putting them on.
* Wigs are unlucky, squeaky shoes lucky.
* Never whistle in a dressing room (since, by whistling, you are summoning the Devil).
* Never put a hat on a bed or shoes on a table.
* It is good luck to have a bad dress rehearsal, as this means the first performance will be good.

Dr Ivan Panin spent 50 years researching the Bible. His Bible investigation and analysis showed that: The each of the number of words in the vocabulary, that begin with a vowel, that begin with a consonant, that begin with each letter of the language's alphabet, that occur more than once, that occur only once, that occur in only one form, that occur in more than one form, that are nouns, and that are not nouns will all divide evenly by SEVEN.
The number of words that are found in only one book of the Bible will divide evenly by SEVEN.
The total numeric value of all the words, and the numeric value of the various forms in which the words occur, will divide evenly by SEVEN.
The number of letters in the vocabulary, that are vowels, and that are consonants, will divide evenly by SEVEN.
The number of names will divide evenly by SEVEN: proper names, male proper names, and female proper names.
The number of promises found in the Bible will divide evenly by SEVEN.
The number of dispensation periods is SEVEN.
The number of generations from Abraham to Jesus Christ will divide evenly by SEVEN.
The Book of Revelation outlines seven judgments and seven plagues that will be made on the Earth and its Peoples.

The city of Levan, in the state of Utah, is "navel" spelled backwards. It is so named because it is in the middle of that state.

On 10 August 2003, a rather amazing thing happened in outer space. No, there wasn’t a new planet discovered or a comet. Rather, there was a wedding on the International Space Station between a Yuri Malenchenko, a Russian cosmonaut and his fiancé Ekaterina Dmitriev, who was in Texas. This was the very first ever space wedding! The two exchanged vows before 200 people via a satellite video hookup through the Johnson Space Centre. A life-size cut-out of the cosmonaut was placed next to his bride as his stand-in during the ceremony, and a friend stood in as his proxy, which is permitted under Texas law. The bride wore a traditional white dress and the groom put on a bow-tie with his flight suit. The two had to wait for about ten weeks for Yuri to return from space before they could start their married life together. So could we say that match was made in heaven?

Court cases can be extremely costly, not just in monetary terms, but in terms of time and the stress it causes. But two companies in New Zealand in March 2003, settled their dispute in a particularly unusual way. Teamtalk Ltd and MCS Digital Ltd had been unable to reach an agreement about right of entry to a mobile radio network, so rather than go into the courts system, they decided that they would obtain a winner in a best-of-three arm-wrestling match! Yes, that’s right – an arm-wrestling match! A representative from the losing company, TeamTalk said, “Sure, losing hurts but not nearly as much as paying lawyers bill.”

Are you a bit obsessive about cheese? Do you have a taste for Swiss? In July 2003, it became possible to lease your very own cow on an Alpine pasture. Customers can pay 380 swiss francs each summer and 40 Swiss cents for every litre of milk that their chosen bovine produces. The farmers Helgay and Paul Wyler, who run the 50 head farm in the Bernese Obserland, offer this service through the Internet. Although the farmers and their staff run the business, the paying customer is expected to work at least one day in the field so that they can earn their Swiss cheese. Each cow provides enough milk to make between 68 and 91kg of cheese. It’s not uncommon for Swiss ranchers to rent out their cows to restaurants who desire customized cheese, but leasing to private individuals is quite rare. I guess you could say, they milk it for all it’s worth.

Did you know that the Loch Ness Monster might have relatives in Asia? Many locals in North Korea have been reporting sightings of up to twenty mysterious and unknown creatures in Lake Tianchi. These sightings have been going on for over a century. It was reported that in 1993, a huge creature resembling a buffalo leapt out of the water with an enormous roar and tried to attack three people. One of the people shot the monster six times and it roared again before disappearing back into the water. In a later sighting, the creature was described as looking a bit like a human but with a protruding mouth, large round eyes and a 1.2 to 1.5 metre long neck. A white ring separated its neck and body and it had smooth, grey skin.

In July 2003, a German automobile driver crashed his car because of a pair of underpants. Apparently the underpants were flung out of a van, and they went through the air and landed on the other driver’s face and he became blinded. The car driver then smashed into the back of the vehicle in front of him. Fortunately no one was hurt in the crash. Police then went in search of the owner of the underpants for failing to stop at the scene of an accident.

The original 1949 ENIAC computer, took up an area the size of a full city block. Today, a silicon chip 0.64cm square has the same capacity. Interestingly, a computer system that cost $100,000 in the 1970’s could be replaced by a computer chip that today costs only about $10.

Why is it that many people complain about eye-strain or sore eyes caused by the radiation emitted from computer screens? According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, neither our eyes or our sight can be harmed by using a computer or video terminal. Our eyes get sore because they have to work harder when viewing objects up close. This is particularly true with computer screens when people often move in too close.

Walter Hunt created a number of inventions including a fire engine gong, a stove that burned hard coal, a forest saw and a machine to spin flax. Although his inventions worked, he could not make a living from his devices. In 1849 Walter invented something new to repay a fifteen dollar debt to his friend. He coiled a 20.3cm piece of brass wire at the centre and put a shield at one end. He took out a patent on his invention, and then sold the rights to it for four hundred dollars. With his money, he paid his debt to his friend and still had lots to spare. I guess he probably thought it was a good deal. Hapless Walter’s creation became an incredible success, and the new owner of the patent made millions of dollars from it. Walter Hunt had invented the safety pin.

A young girl by the name of Rebecca Shroeder created an invention and beat NASA to the punch. At the age of ten, Rebecca wanted to be able to write in the dark. She tried different methods including using bioluminescence which is what fireflies emit. Eventually she came to use phosphorescence, which is a substance that glows after being exposed to light. She patented her invention, and with time, continued to improve on it. By the time Rebecca had reached the ripe old age of twelve, she’d created the “Glo-Sheet”, and both NASA and the US Navy became interested in buying her invention. NASA at first they thought that she’d been employed by them, when they had been working on a similar project, until they found out her age.

An amazing discovery was made by scientists at McMaster Uniersity in Canada. They found that Albert Einstein’s brain was different to the average person. The area of the brain thought to connected to mathematical reasoning, known as the inferior parietal region, was found to be 15 percent wider on both sides of Einstein’s brain. The normal intelligence measure ranges from 85 to 115, and Einstein was one of the 1% of the population that has in IQ over 135.

If a baby is born at exactly midnight, what birthday is the child given? There are a couple of different choices. Some proponents claim that the day starts at 12.00am and finishes at exactly 11.59pm. Technically the child is actually not born on either day at all. Ultimately the parent or the medical staff has the right to choose which day is appropriate.

The most frequently played song on US radio in the twentieth century was written by Barry Mann, Phil Spector and Cynthia Weil. It was played over eight million times. And the name of the song was “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling”.

The State Senate in the USA in 2002 passed a bill to issue special number plates for a limited time in Rhode Island. The unique number plates were to be issued to commemorate the birthday of a famous toy created by Pawtucket, a toy company in Rhode Island. The number plates were issued to celebrate Mr Potato Head’s 50th birthday! He was no dud spud, because half of the fees were to go to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. In the past other US states issued special number plates to raise funds for cancer awareness and Scouts groups and to honour college alumni or football teams.

There was a restaurant in Berlin in 2002 which made its patrons eat in the dark, and even hired blind waiters to guide them around. Called “Unsicht-Bar” which means invisible in German, it employed a majority of unsighted staff who guided customers to their tables. The restaurant was kept completely dark and the patrons were asked only whether they wanted a meat, vegetarian or fish dish. At the end of the meal, which lasted an average of three hours, the clients were then told what they had been eating. So what was the purpose in creating such a unique restaurant? “To have an extraordinary experience of tasting, feeling and smelling,” said the owner.

A German engineer by the name of Matthias Knigge designed a very unusual desk in 2002, called “The Job-N-Nod”. It was designed for all office workers of the world that need a little nap of an afternoon. The desk, while looking like any other ordinary desk, converts into a giant pillow when a small button is pressed underneath. The button turns on a fan which blows up the internal orange airbag. The airbag then exudes through an open panel on the top of the desk.

Can you imagine sitting down to a nice dinner with your spouse, as Carlos Suarez and Yesenia Reyers were doing in Hollywood, Florida, when all of a sudden, a bulldozer came crashing through the back of their house! A portion of the roof collapsed, and the bulldozer reversed and then struck the house again. By this time, the neighbours, as well as the house occupants, managed to get the bulldozer driver to stop. Although there were some homes nearby that had been scheduled to be torn down, the bulldozer had gone to the wrong home. Fortunately no-one was injured, and the contractor promised to repair all of the damage after the debacle. Boy, I’ve heard of bringing the house down, but that’s ridiculous!

Marinus Boogaerts was a Dutch truck driver who was on his way home where he was going to hold a party to celebrate one million kilometres of accident-free driving. That’s a pretty fantastic achievement isn’t it? "After driving nearly a million kilometres without having one single accident I wanted to celebrate," said Boogaerts. Unfortunately Marinus had to cancel the party, because he had an collision while returning home. Luckily no-one was injured, although Marinus’ pride took a beating.

When I was growing up, the old imperial system of measurement was still current and didn’t change until I was in primary school. So consequently I think of my height in both feet and metres. Now the new metric system is standard across the world which is a good thing when you consider the mile. A mile in England is 1,609 metres while a traditional mile in Ireland is approximately 2,048 metres. On the other hand me wee Scottish laddies and lassies, a Scottish mile used to be 1,814 metres (although this measurement is now obsolete). The nautical mile is 1,852 metres long and there have been different measures for miles in other countries and counties including, London and Yorkshire, and there were Roman miles, Italian miles, metric miles for athletics and even Admiralty miles. I guess you could say there were miles of miles and the miles were miles apart.

For 43 years, the Disney company banned its theme-park employees from wearing moustaches. The reason Walt Disney banned moustaches (even though he wore one himself) was that he wanted to distance his staff from appearing like common carnival people, otherwise known as “carnies”. The ban was finally reversed in March 2000, but the grooming code at the theme parks still prohibits piercings, strange hair colours, beards and goatees.

So how did people tell time in the olden days? One interesting method which was devised in nineteenth-century Europe was "Flower Clocks". These were quite unique and attractive and were set up in formal gardens. Twelve flowers beds were arranged to form the shape of a clock, with each flower bed representing one hour. Then in each flower bed, particular species of flowering plants were set out that were known to close or open at certain hours. What a lovely idea. But how practical were they? On a sunny day, the flower clock could be accurate to within half an hour.

These are signs from businesses on their vehicles or buildings:
- on a plumber's truck there was a sign: We repair what your husband fixed;
- then over a pizza shop there was the poster: 7 days without pizza makes one weak;
- a muffler shop displayed: No appointment necessary. We hear you coming;
- on the door of a plastic surgeon’s office: We can help you pick your nose;
- on the door of a maternity room: Push…Push…Push;
- a plumbing company’s trucks in Pennsylvania had the sign: Don't sleep with a drip. Call your plumber;
- in a veterinarian's waiting room: Be back in 5 minutes. Sit! Stay!;
- then there was the poster at the optometrist’s office: If you don't see what you're looking for, you've come to the right place.

Do you think that life sometimes gives you too many knockbacks? Then perhaps you might be interested in learning about Milton Bradley. In 1854 he enrolled in the Lawrence Scientific School at Cambridge because he wanted to be a scientist. Unfortunately his parents moved two years later, and he had to leave the school. Later on he gained employment as a draftsman for die Wason Locomotive Car Works, but he wanted to work as lithographer. Eventually he was able to purchase a press and brought it back to Springfield and soon got his first major project – he was to produce photographs of the Republican’s candidate Abraham Lincoln. He pressed thousands of pictures, but by the time the photos could be used, and Lincoln had won the election, Lincoln had grown a beard and didn’t look like the photos any longer. Nobody bought them, and just when Bradley thought things couldn’t get worse, the American Civil War struck. He thought his business was going to fail completely when an inventor brought Bradley a new gamed called “The Checkered Game of Life”. He printed 45,000 copies of it, and the game became a hit. By 1868, Milton Bradley was the foremost producer of games in America. Although the “Game of Life” has changed and evolved over the years, it remains a popular game to this day.

If you have an accident in your vehicle, you usually report the details to your insurance agent. Consider Leon Henriksen and his wife who had lost their home in a fire in January. Then in March 2003, they were out enjoying a relaxing Sunday drive, when their vehicle was wrecked after a large object fell on it. I’m sure the insurance company had difficulty believing them when they went to make their insurance claim. Their car had been crushed when a 350kg moose had fallen off a cliff above them.

The Hoover Dam is quite an enormous dam. It is certainly not the largest in the world, but it is made of 3,981,268m3 of concrete. So how much concrete is that? That is enough concrete to make a monument 929m3 wide and 4.023km high. Is that still too difficult to imagine? It’s taller than the Empire State Building. Or if the concrete was made into a highway that was 4.9m wide, it would easily stretch between Perth and Brisbane which would make it about 4,500km in length.

Who says that we don’t have heroes anymore? In London in May 2003, a do-gooder, dressed in a brown cape was seen rushing about and performing good deeds. Several residents in Kent and Sussex were assisted by the brown crusader who scared off some ruffians and returned a handbag to a woman. An elderly gentlemen was assisted by the hero who frightened a group of youths chasing him. The caped hero also returned a purse to another woman. "If only there were more people around with this kind-hearted spirit," she said.

To decrease pollution and improve fitness, workers in Norway in May 2003 were being offered cash to ride their bicycles to work. It paid municipal employees approximately 55c for every kilometre they cycled during working hours (but doesn’t include the ride to and from work). In southwest Norlay, Hans Ivar Soemme, the leader of a “Healthy City” project said, "We want healthier employees and less sickness absence." Each year they hjold a “Bicycle to Work” campaign to encourage more Norwegians to adopt a healthier lifestyle.

We often refer to shoe or bootmakers as cobblers, but cobbler more correctly refers to people who repair shoes, rather than people who make shoes. The correct expression for someone who makes shoes is "cordwainers" which originated in Spain. The word “cordovan” came from Spain and refers to a reddish leather produced there in earlier times. So a person who worked in cordovan or red leather, became known as a cordwainer.

A rather interesting ingredient in toothpaste and ice-cream is called carrageenan. It’s used to control crystal growth in ice-cream and as a suspending agent in foods, liquids and pharmaceutical products. Carrageenan can be found along the coasts of North America and Northern Europe and is commonly known as Irish moss. Carrageenan is in fact a purple, edible seaweed. So next time you clean your teeth, just remember that your brushing with seaweed. Thank goodness it doesn’t taste or smell like seaweed!

Have you ever seen chef’s on television with those tall white hats? The hat is called a “toque” and in Europe during the 16th and 18th centuries, the toque or chef’s hat came in a variety of shapes. The chefs wore hats shaped like berets and others wore ones like stocking caps, and some even wore pointy hats with tassels. It became a tradition in the 18th century for the more superior cooks or chefs to wear taller hats to show their importance amongst the staff in the kitchen.

In January 2002, Clare McCarthy had her stolen watch worth US$16,000, returned to her after Scotland Yard recovered it four years later, when they raided a theft ring. The London woman had a lovely surprise though as the thieves had inlayed her watch with dozens of diamonds, and the watch had tripled in value.

What is the size of a single cell, has six strings and is about 50 nanometers or 100 atoms wide, and 10 micrometers long? No, this is not a riddle. It is the world’s smallest guitar and was created by researchers at Cornell University who used crystalline silicon to make it. This is just a demonstration of some of the early stages of new technology for electro-mechanical devices of the future.

An invention created in 2003 offers promise for less plastic, non-biodegradable landfill and a rather interesting way of keeping food fresh for longer. The creation was edible food wraps, engineered by the US Dept of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in Albany, California. Formed from the puree of vegetables or fruit, the edible wraps are more environmentally friendly than aluminium foil or plastic wrap.

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