Trivia Today

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

Michael Bolton babysat Paula Abdul when she was a child.

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"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" by Roberta Flack
is Paula Abdul's favorite love song.

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Paula Abdul's mom Lorraine enrolled her daughter in dance
lessons when she was nine. Abdul remembers feeling inspired
by Gene Kelly's dancing in Anchors Aweigh and Singin' in
the Rain.

***

Hoop Dreams

Abdul, a broadcasting student at California State
University at Northridge, tries out for the Los Angeles
Lakers Girls cheerleading squad. She's picked out of a
field of 700 and becomes head cheerleader within three
weeks. She quits school to go pro.

***

Five Plus One

At a Lakers game, some members of the Jackson family
notice Abdul's moves on the court and hire her to
choreograph a video for their comeback album, Victory.
The big break leads to more work choreographing videos
for Janet Jackson, Prince, George Michael, Duran Duran
and others.

***

Song and Dance

Using $35,000 of her savings, Abdul records the demos
for her debut album, Forever Your Girl. Her one-two
punch – singing and dancing – fits perfectly within the
MTV zeitgeist. Her No. 1 hit single "Straight Up" wins
four statues at the 1989 MTV VMAs, and Forever Your
Girl stays at No. 1 on the Billboard chart for 10 weeks
and sells seven million copies.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

The Eiffel Tower was the tallest building in the world when
it was completed in 1889. It was built for the World's Fair
to demonstrate that iron could be as strong as stone while
being infinitely lighter.

***

In the Petronas Towers (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), the shape
of the floors is based on an eight-point star, common in
Malaysian Islamic patterns. The towers have so many windows
that window washers take a month to clean each tower!

***

In order to strengthen the John Hancock Center against
Chicago's famous winds, engineers included five enormous
diagonal braces on the exterior walls of the building.
These diagonals block the view from two windows on each
floor.

***

First Interstate World Center (Library Tower) in Los Angeles
is located just 26 miles from the San Andreas Fault and has
been designed to withstand an earthquake of 8.3 or more on
the Richter scale, with a massively reinforced central core
and lighter columns around the perimeter.

***

Called "the father of the skyscraper," the Home Insurance
Building, constructed in Chicago in1885 (and demolished in
1931), was 138 feet tall and 10 stories. It was the first
building to effectively employ a supporting skeleton of
steel beams and columns, allowing it to have many more
windows than traditional masonry structures

***

New York's Citicorp Center (915 feet tall, 59 stories, built
in 1977) was the first U.S. skyscraper to contain a tuned
mass damper in order to control the building's sway

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS - ORIGIN OF STATE NAMES

Connecticut - From an Indian word (Quinnehtukqut) meaning
“beside the long tidal river.”

***

Alaska - Corruption of Aleut word meaning “great land” or
“that which the sea breaks against.”

***

Maryland - In honor of Henrietta Maria (queen of Charles I
of England).

***

Pennsylvania - In honor of Adm. Sir William Penn, father of
William Penn. It means “Penn's Woodland.”

***

Vermont - From the French “vert mont,” meaning “green
mountain.”

***

Minnesota - From a Dakota Indian word meaning “sky-tinted
water.”

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

The Blue Train has run between Cape Town and Pretoria,
South Africa, since 1939 and derives its name from its blue
locomotives, railroad cars, and leather seats. It is still
considered one of the most luxurious trains running, having
been upgraded in 1997 to include televisions and phones in
all of its suites.

***

The French TGV (train a grande vitesse, or high speed train)
is an electric train system. Trains run between Paris and
several other cities, regularly traveling at speeds as high
as 186 mph. A modified TGV set a world speed record in 1990
when it hit 320 mph in trial runs.

***

Running between King's Cross station in London and Edinburgh,
Scotland, the Flying Scotsman was a luxury express train
full of amenities. It featured a hairdressing salon, a Louis
the XVI–style restaurant and bar, and, for a short time, a
cinema coach.

***

The Japanese Shinkansen, or Bullet Train, runs at speeds of
more than 100 mph over special tracks with minimal curves.
In 1997, a newer version of the Bullet Train became the
fastest scheduled train in the world, regularly reaching
speeds of up to 186 mph.

***

The highest railway in the world, the Peruvian Central
Railway is an engineering marvel, climbing 13,000 ft on its
trip from La Oroya to Lima, Peru. The railroad, which
features 66 tunnels and 59 bridges, zigzags across valleys
in order to minimize the steepness of its climb. There is
an onboard doctor who administers oxygen to passengers who
get altitude sickness.

***

Traveling between Moscow and Vladivostok, the Trans-Siberian
Express makes the longest regular train trip in the world,
covering 5,778 mi and making 91 stops over the course of
nine days. During the Cold War, Westerners could travel
only in compartments, where they were subject to Stalinist
propaganda played on loudspeakers.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

The most played song on American radio during the twentieth
century was You've Lost That Loving Feeling which was
written by Barry Mann, Phil Spector, and Cynthia Weil.
Although recorded by different artists, the song is the
only one in history to be played over 8 million times on
the radio.

***

"Weird" Al Yankovic received a Bachelor's degree in
Architecture in 1981. He also served as valedictorian of
his high school at age 16.

***

The oldest business in the United States of America is the
cymbal company Zildjian which was founded in Constantinople
in 1623.

***

Janis Joplin's will called for a party for 200 people at
her favorite pub in San Alselmo, California at a cost of
$2,500.00.

***

The five most stolen items in a drugstore are batteries,
cosmetics, film, sunglasses, and Preparation H. One of
Preparation H's main ingredient is shark liver oil. The
oil not only helps shrink hemorrhoids, but will shrink any
tissue.

***

The phrase "Often a bridesmaid but never a bride" actually
comes from an advertisement for Listerine mouthwash. The
text was written by Milton Feasley and first appeared in
1925. The advertisement was so successful that it ran for
more than ten years.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

In September 1752 the Julian calendar was replaced with the
Gregorian calendar in Great Britain and its American
colonies. The Julian calendar was 11 days behind the
Gregorian calendar, so September 14 followed September 2 on
the day of the change. The result was that between September
3 and 13, absolutely nothing happened!

***

The first Roman Calendar (introduced in 535BC) had 10 months,
with 304 days in a year that began in March. January and
February were added only later. In 46BC, Julius Caesar
created "The Year of Confusion" by adding 80 days to the
year making it 445 days long to bring the calendar back in
step with the seasons. The solar year - with the value of
365 days and 6 hours - was made the basis of the calendar.
To take care of the 6 hours, every 4th year was made a 366-
day year. It was then that Caesar decreed that the year
begins with the 1st of January.

***

In 325AD Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman
emperor, introduced Sunday as a holy day in a new 7-day
week. He also introduced movable (Easter) and immovable
feasts (Christmas).

***

The Chinese New Year occurs at the second new moon after
the beginning of the Northern Hemisphere winter, thus
between January 20th and February 20th.

***

The Jewish calendar began 3,760 years before the beginning
of the Christian era. The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah,
is celebrated during September or October of the Gregorian
calendar.

***

Century years can be leap years only when they are divisible
by 400 (e.g. 1600). This rule eliminates three leap years
in four centuries, making the calendar sufficiently correct
for all ordinary purposes.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

On average, 80 people shoot at the Goodyear blimp each
year.

***

The last stagecoach holdup took place in Tennessee on
October 15, 1882.

***

The average age for first time brides is 24.5 years. For
grooms it's 26.5 years.

***

SAY THE WORD

The word 'sabotage' is derived from a French word for shoe.
In France, a sabot is a kind of heavy boot or shoe worn by
workmen. During the Industrial Revolution, when machine-
driven mills were first introduced in France, workers dis-
placed from their jobs by these automata would throw their
shoes into the gear mechanisms, wrecking the engines and
thus sabotaging the business.

***

Punctuation did not come into use until the advent of
printing in the fifteenth century. Before that, words
written by scribes were runtogetherlikethis.

***

The word 'fiasco,' meaning a failure, is derived from the
ancient Italian art of glass blowing. If a Venetian glass
blower made a mistake while creating a fine, delicate
bottle, the ruined vessel was turned into an ordinary
drinking flask, which is known in Italian as a fiasco.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

The thin line of cloud that forms behind an aircraft at
high altitudes is called a contrail.

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In early France the distance a man could walk while smoking
one pipeful of tobacco was called a pipee.

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The central shaft of a bird's feather which bears the vane
or web of the feather is called a rachis.

***

A building in which silence is enforced, like a library or
school room, is referred to as a silentium.

***

The ear-splitting sound produced by the high notes of a
bagpipe is called a skirl.

***

The tendency of the leaves or petals of certain plants to
assume a different position at night is called nyctitropism.
__________________

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

The most common domesticated turkey, the Broadbreasted
White, is so heavy and large-breasted that it can't fly,
run or mate naturally. They must be artificially inseminated.

***

Long before Europeans came to America, the Aztecs had
domesticated turkeys. They used them for food, for religious
sacrifices and the feathers for decoration.

***

An estimated 271 million turkeys were raised in the United
States in 2007. The estimate for 2008 is about the same.
In 2007, the turkeys produced weighed 7.9 billion pounds
altogether and were valued at $3.7 billion.

***

The turkey industry employs between 20,000 and 25,000 people
in the United States.

***

The state game bird of Alabama is the turkey. Alabama has
one of the largest per acre populations of wild turkeys of
any state.

***

According to the National Turkey Federation, about 24% of
Americans purchase fresh turkeys for Thanksgiving, and 69%
purchase frozen turkeys.

 

[Jason z]

Random trivia for the day.. What was the name of the original magazine that Hugh Hefner put out before playboy? He ended up changing the name to playboy. What was the name of the Magazine?

 

[historylover]

Random trivia for the day.. What was the name of the original magazine that Hugh Hefner put out before playboy? He ended up changing the name to playboy. What was the name of the Magazine?

:dunno:

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in
November in the United States, and celebrated on the second
Monday in October in Canada.

***

The Plymouth Pilgrims were the first to celebrate
Thanksgiving in the fall of 1621 at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

***

Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor with a magazine, started a
Thanksgiving campaign in 1827 and it was result of her
efforts that in 1863 Thanksgiving was observed as a day for
national thanksgiving and prayer.

***

President Abraham Lincoln established the original date for
our National Thanksgiving Day celebration in 1863.


***

Congress did not declare Thanksgiving a national holiday
until 1941.

***

The First Thanksgiving celebration lasted for three days.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

In 1926, when a Los Angeles restaurant owner with the all-
American name of Bob Cobb was looking for a way to use up
leftovers, he threw together some avocado, celery, tomato,
chives, watercress, hard-boiled eggs, chicken, bacon, and
Roquefort cheese, and named it after himself: Cobb salad.

***

In 1976, the first eight Jelly Belly flavors were launched:
Orange, Green Apple, Root Beer, Very Cherry, Lemon, Cream
Soda, Grape, and Licorice.

***

In 1990, Bill Carson, of Arrington, Tennessee, grew the
largest watermelon at 262 pounds that is still on the
record books according to the 1998 edition of the Guinness
Book of World Records.

***

In 1995, KFC sold 11 pieces of chicken for every man, woman
and child in the US.

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In the United States, a pound of potato chips costs two
hundred times more than a pound of potatoes.

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Laws forbidding the sale of sodas on Sunday prompted
William Garwood to invent the ice cream sundae in Evanston,
IL, in 1875.

***


Among the designs left by Leonardo da Vinci almost 500 years
ago, with notes written backward to be read with a mirror,
were the parachute, life jacket, water pump, swim fins,
well digger, paddle-wheel boat, horseless carriage, sprocket
chain, steam gun, water turbine, lens-grinding machine,
shrapnel, machine gun, airplane, helicopter, submarine and
mass production.

***

The cars on the freeways today would be electrics if Thomas
Edison had had his way. At the turn of the century, he
worked on an improved battery to power an electric car that
would be quiet, light, clean and odorless. By 1909, his new
battery was on the market, but it was too late. Ford's in-
ternal-combustion engine had become king of the road.

***

Jean-Francois Champollion, the French linguist who decoded
the hieroglyphics of the Rosetta Stone, had, in 1801, at
the age of eleven mastered Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Two
years later he had also learned Arabic, Syrian, Chaldean
and Coptic, the Greek-based language of the early Egyptian
Christians. In 1822, Champollion published the paper that
made him famous, "In Regard to the Alphabet of Phonetic
Hieroglyphics" the basis of decoding the story of the
ancient Egyptians.

***

A book of maps is called an atlas because the innovative
sixteenth-century Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator's
book of maps detailing various portions of Europe sported
on its cover a picture of the Greek titan Atlas holding
the world on his shoulders--and this book became known as
the atlas.

***

Ben Franklin wanted the turkey, not the eagle, to be the
U.S. national symbol. He considered the eagle "a bird of
bad moral character" because it lives "by sharping and
robbing."

***

Charles Dickens believed that a good night's sleep was
possible only if the bed was aligned from north to south.
In this manner, he thought, the magnetic currents would
flow straight through the recumbent body.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

Nobody is buried in Grant's tomb. President and Mrs. Grant
are entombed there. A body is buried only when it is placed
in the ground and covered with dirt.

***

The official name of the St. Louis Gateway Arch is "The
Jefferson National Expansion Monument." The Gateway Arch
looks taller than it is wider, but it is exactly 630 feet
by 630 feet.

***

The world's largest art gallery is the Winter Palace and
Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. Visitors would have
to walk 15 miles to see the 322 galleries which house
nearly 3 million works of art.
What makes hot peppers hot?

The answer is a chemical compound called Capsaicin, which
is found in the inside wall of the pepper and in its white
lining. Capsaicin is odorless and tasteless, except for the
hot, tangy sensation it yields. The true flavor of a pepper
comes from its outer walls.

***

Rocoto (spicier than habanero): This capsicum pubescens
is a fireball of unbelievable proportions. Generally not
available outside of Latin America, since its fragile
fruit is grown only in high altitude, cool climates, it
comes in green, yellow, and red globes, about 2 x 2
inches, and has a hairy stem.

***

Red and yellow bell peppers are much sweeter than green.
Although they started out as green peppers, they were left
on the plant to ripen for a much longer period of time.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

The word “wed” is derived from the ancient Greek word
for “pledge.”

***

Just before her wedding a Bulgarian bride will toss a
dish filled with wheat, coins and a raw egg over her
head. If the dish breaks it signifies good luck to come.

***

In Mexico, it is customary during the vows for a white
ribbon or for a rosary, called a “lasso,” to be draped
around the necks of the newlyweds to symbolize their
joining together.

***

Caribbean Traditions

Traditional wedding cake, the “Black Cake,” with the
recipe handed down from mother to daughter and improved
upon by each succeeding generation. The basic ingredients
of an Island wedding cake include a pound of flour, a
pound of brown sugar, a pound of butter, and a pound of
glazed cherries, raisins, prunes, currants, and a dozen
fresh eggs.

The cake is traditionally served with a Hard Rum Sauce
and all of the dried fruits are soaked in rum in a crock
pot for anywhere from two weeks to one year.

***

Traditional Lithuanian Marriage

First there is the matchmaker who puts the couple together
and arranges the dowry, then there is the wedding ceremony
itself which consists of several very specific customs,
and finally there is what is called in Lithuanian the
atgriztai, or the coming back, during which the bride and
groom return to the bride’s parent’s home, where the bride
is now welcomed as a guest rather than as a member of the
family.

***

Twelve Symbols

The twelve symbols of life important in African culture
may be administered as part of the wedding ceremony.
These are wine, wheat, pepper, salt, bitter herbs, water,
a pot and spoon, a broom, honey, a spear, a shield, and
a copy of the Bible or the Koran. Each one represents a
different aspect of the love and strength which unites
two families.

 

[gunslingingbird]

Rocoto (spicier than habanero): This capsicum pubescens
is a fireball of unbelievable proportions. Generally not
available outside of Latin America, since its fragile
fruit is grown only in high altitude, cool climates, it
comes in green, yellow, and red globes, about 2 x 2
inches, and has a hairy stem.

I tried a pepper in Mexico that was definitely spicier than any habanero I've ever tried, but I don't think it was the one you're talking about. The one I'm talking about was about 2x2 centimeters. They were tiny little fuckers, but just one little pepper was enough for a whole pot of soup to be nearly inedible. Oh, and the stems weren't hairy.

 

[belgianass]

I tried a pepper in Mexico that was definitely spicier than any habanero I've ever tried, but I don't think it was the one you're talking about. The one I'm talking about was about 2x2 centimeters. They were tiny little fuckers, but just one little pepper was enough for a whole pot of soup to be nearly inedible. Oh, and the stems weren't hairy.

I've eaten one of these in the philippines, it was called "harang" over there and yes it was fucking hot ... but totally worth it ... as they say you can get addicted to eat peppers because of something in your brains that produces some kind of things that makes you like pepper (kinda like a drug) ... yeah you can see i'm not good in scientifically mumbo-jumbo ...

 

[historylover]

I tried a pepper in Mexico that was definitely spicier than any habanero I've ever tried, but I don't think it was the one you're talking about. The one I'm talking about was about 2x2 centimeters. They were tiny little fuckers, but just one little pepper was enough for a whole pot of soup to be nearly inedible. Oh, and the stems weren't hairy.

Thanks for the comments, GSB.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

Nairobi, Kenya, in Africa, is the world's center for
tourist safaris.

***

You can find the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka,
where Buddhists built a temple to honor Buddha's tooth.
Every year great festivals are held here.

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The date palms in Oman, in the Mideast, are so valuable,
the country keeps a list of who owns which trees.

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In North Korea, nursery schools run by the government are
called palaces.

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The home of the yodel is in the Swiss Alps, where cow
herders first yodeled to call from the mountains to the
meadows. Yodelerfests are held yearly in Engelberg,
Switzerland.

***

An ancient monastery in Glastonbury, England, is said to be
the burial place of King Arthur and the sword Excalibur.

 

[assholebythedoor]

do you have anything on early century sailors.