Trivia Today

[historylover]

Literacy study: 1 in 7 U.S. adults are unable to read this story - A HEADLINE, in USA Today, citing a federal report that estimates 32 million Americans are virtually illiterate


RANDOM TIDBITS

Thomas Jefferson was the only president to walk to and from
his inaugural. He was also the first to be inaugurated at
the Capitol. (1801)

***

The first inauguration to be photographed was James Buchanan's.
(1857)

***

William Taft's wife was the first one to accompany her
husband in the procession from the Capitol to the White
House. (1909)

***

Warren G. Harding was the first president to ride to and
from his inaugural in an automobile. (1921)

***

Calvin Coolidge's oath was administered by Chief Justice
(and ex-president) William Taft. It was also the first
inaugural address broadcast on the radio. (1925)

***

Lyndon Johnson was the first (and so far) only president to
be sworn in by a woman, U.S. District Judge Sarah T. Hughes.
(1963)

 

[historylover]

We are unraveling the safety net to the point where it may not be possible to stitch it back together again - ANTHONY WRIGHT, executive director of Health Access California, a leading consumer advocacy group, on healthcare cuts in several financially troubled states, including Calif.


RANDOM TIDBITS

In 1831, Squire George Osbaldeston rode 200 miles in eight
hours, 39 minutes. Osbaldeston used 20 horses. His
speed/distance record still stands.

***

On December 29, 1945, the record for the slowest time for
a winning horse was set by Never Mind II. During a 2-mile
steeplechase, Never Mind II refused the 4th jump and his
rider gave up and returned to the paddock. Then the rider
was told that all the other horses had fallen or been
disqualified. Immediately he "raced" Never Mind II back
to the field and finished in 11 minutes 28 seconds.

***

The Tetrarch, called by many Englishmen the fastest horse
of all time, was so swift that he couldn't control his legs.
His hind hooves cut and bruised the fetlocks and shins of
his front legs. At the end of his two-year-old season in
1913, during which he was undefeated, The Tetrarch had to
retire because his legs were so badly damaged.

***

Jockey Levi Barlingume, rode until 1932 when, at age 80, he
fell and broke his leg at Stafford, Kans., thus ending the
longest recorded career of any jockey.

***

The owners of the speedstar, Alsab, made one of the finest
deals in history. The horse they bought for $700 earned
$350,015 during its career.

***

History's greatest breeder was Darius of Persia (522-485
B.C.), who had more than 50,000 brood mares. Darius's
horses were half the size of today's.

 

[historylover]

You gotta give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing - JEFF KOLODJAY, one of 155 people aboard a US Airways jet that crash-landed in the Hudson River after apparently hitting a flock of geese during takeoff. All passengers and crew were rescued.


RANDOM TIDBITS

Inauguration Day was originally set for March 4th in order
to give members of the Electoral College from each State
four months from election day to cast their ballots for
president.

***

Weather's greatest impact on inauguration day came in 1841
when William Henry Harrison decided to brave the elements
and deliver the longest inauguration speech ever, an oration
lasting an hour, 40 minutes. Harrison wore no coat, and rode
a horse to and from the Capitol ceremony. He subsequently
caught a cold that developed into pneumonia. A month later,
Harrison died.

***

The warmest January 20th inauguration day came in 1981 when
Ronald Reagan was sworn into office under mostly cloudy
skies. The temperature at noon on this inauguration day was
55 degrees.

***

The shortest inauguration speech was delivered by George
Washington at his second inauguration on March 4, 1793.
The speech totaled 135 words.

***

There have been nine presidents sworn in on days other
than inauguration day — eight following eight presidential
deaths and one after Richard Nixon's resignation.

***

Former President Herbert Hoover was unable to fly into
Washington National Airport due to the weather and missed
the swearing-in ceremony. By sunrise, the snowfall had
ended and the skies cleared but the day remained bitterly
cold. An army of men worked all night to clear Pennsylvania
Avenue and despite the cold, a large crowd turned out for
the swearing-in ceremony and inaugural parade.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

The term 揻eather in your cap?came from the American
Indian tradition of obtaining feathers for headdresses.
Birds were captured, some feathers plucked, and the birds
were released. Each feather represented an act of bravery.

***

The fashion of decorating hats with feathers declined in
the twentieth century because too many birds were being
slaughtered for their feathers. This is similar to the
slaughter of elephants in recent years for their ivory tusks.

***

Artist Salvador Dali designed a woman's hat in 1930 that
was shaped like a shoe with the inverted heel pointing
upward. He also designed what he called a 搈ad-cap,?which
was shaped like a mountain peak.

***

Designer Steven Jones created felt hats topped with a
platter of fried eggs, sunnyside up. He also made hats
that were simply metal colanders inverted on the wearer's
head.

***

揂 hat makes all the difference?was a U.S. advertising
slogan used in 1930. For centuries, tradition linked hats
with female status. Married women and mothers were required
to cover their heads with hats as signs of respectability.
Unmarried women went bare-headed.

***

Hats were worn everywhere梚ndoors and out梑y women in the
eighteenth century. They even wore a hat called a baigneuse
in the bathtub.

 

[historylover]

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm - Willa Cather

RANDOM TIDBITS

Volcanoes are vents in the Earth's surface from which
molten rock, debris, and steam issue. About 1,900 volcanoes
are active today or known to have been active in historical
times.

***

Almost 90 percent of volcanoes are in the Ring of Fire, a
band of volcanoes circling the edges of the Pacific Ocean.

***

Most volcanoes occur at plate boundaries, areas where huge
slabs of rock meet in the Earth's lithosphere, or outer shell.
Volcanoes can rise in subduction zones, areas where plates
meet and one is pushed beneath another. Molten rock rises to
the surface and forms a volcano.

***

Intraplate volcanoes are caused by hot spots deep within
the Earth. Magma rises and erupts as lava through cracks
in the Earth's surface, forming volcanoes.

***

Volcanoes can erupt in a combination of ways: explosively
with hard pyroclastic material; explosively with fluid lava
(lava fountains); effusively with hard pyroclastic flows
(clouds of ash and gases); and effusively with fluid lava.

***

Although some volcanoes are considered extinct, almost any
volcano is capable of rumbling to life again. Volcanoes
provide valuable mineral deposits, fertile soils, and
geothermal energy.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

Congressman John Conyers, Democrat from Michigan, first
introduced legislation for a commemorative holiday four days
after King was assassinated in 1968. The bill first
came to a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1979.
However, it fell five votes short of the number needed for
passage.

***

The King Center turned to support from the corporate
community and the general public to make it a paid holiday.
The success of this strategy was cemented when musician
Stevie Wonder released the single "Happy Birthday" to
popularize the campaign in 1980 and hosted the Rally for
Peace Press Conference in 1981.

***

Six million signatures were collected for a petition to
Congress to pass the law, termed by a 2006 article in The
Nation as "the largest petition in favor of an issue in
U.S. history.

***

At the White House Rose Garden on November 2, 1983,
President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal
holiday to honor King.It was observed for the first time
on January 20, 1986. The bill established the Martin Luther
King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission to oversee observance
of the holiday, and Coretta Scott King was made a member of
this commission for life by United States President George
H. W. Bush in May, 1989.

***

In 1990, Arizonans were given an opportunity to vote to
observe an MLK holiday. McCain successfully appealed to
former President Ronald Reagan to support the holiday.
Prior to that date, New Hampshire and Arizona had not
observed the day.

***

One place where this day is observed as important is in the
Japanese city of Hiroshima under the mayor Tadatoshi Akiba,
who holds special banquet at the mayor's office as an act
of unifying his city's call for peace with King's message
of human rights.

 

[historylover]

When you see the Earth from space, you don't see any divisions of nation-states there. This may be the symbol of the new mythology to come; this is the country we will celebrate, and these are the people we are one with - Joseph Campbell.


RANDOM TIDBITS

The first inaugural ball in Washington, DC, was held on
March 4, 1809, on behalf of James Madison, the fourth
president. It was held at Long's Hotel on Capitol Hill.
Dancing started at 7 p.m. The U.S. Marine Band, which
provided the music, has become a traditional feature at
inaugurations.


***

The inaugural ball for James Buchanan was held in a building
on Judiciary Square built for the occasion for $15,000. Six
thousand guests drank $3,000 worth of wine and devoured 400
gallons of oysters, 60 saddles of mutton, four saddles of
venison, 125 tongues, 75 hams, 500 quarts of chicken salad,
500 quarts of jellies, 1,200 quarts of ice cream, and a four-
foot high cake.

***

An electric lamp hanging over the doorway to the 1881
inaugural ball of James A. Garfield, held at the Smithsonian
Institution, was a novelty and intrigued the guests. John
Philip Sousa conducted the U.S. Marine Band, which was one
of two bands to entertain at the ball.

***

To accommodate all the guests, the number of balls has
proliferated. Dwight Eisenhower had four balls, John Kennedy
had five, Richard Nixon six, and Jimmy Carter, seven.

***

During Ronald Reagan's inauguration in 1981, 40 million
jellybeans were eaten at the eight inaugural balls, which
were televised by cable TV to inaugural parties around the
nation. Reagan had begun nibbling his signature jellybeans
in the 1960s when he quit smoking.

***

The weather was so cold during the second inauguration of
Ulysses S. Grant that the valves on the band's musical
instruments froze during the ball, and guests danced with
their coats on.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

Alfred Butts, the inventor of SCRABBLE, was an unemployed
architect living in New York in the 30's when he began
devising a word game using letters printed on small
cardboard squares. The game originally had no board and was
called Lexiko.

***

Butts made a few sets to sell to friends but it went
unnoticed until 1948 when James Brunot thought it might
have commercial possibilities. He and his wife began
making the game in their home in Newtown, Connecticut.
They settled on the name SCRABBLE.

***

The game did not take off until 1952 when the owner of
Macy's store, who had played the game while on vacation,
told the toy department to stock it. Soon, other toy stores
were doing the same.

***

The standard set in the fifties cost $3 but Brunot devised
a deluxe version with white plastic tiles which cost $10.
These plastic tiles eventually became the norm. The wooden
tiles, which were manufactured of maple in Bavaria, had a
grain in the wood that players could memorize to help them
pick the letters they needed.

***

An expert SCRABBLE player can regularly score more than
400 points while it has been calculated that it's
theoretically possible to score as many as 4,153 points in
a single game.

***

Today there are versions of the game in French, Dutch,
Italian, Spanish, Russian and Arabic, each with its
particular set of letters. In French there are fifteen E's
and the Q is not worth much due to its frequency in that
language.

 

[gunslingingbird]

About fucking time you posted on this thread! :glugglug:

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

In the U.S., bingo was originally called "beano". It was a
country fair game where a dealer would select numbered
discs from a cigar box and players would mark their cards
with beans. They yelled "beano" if they won.

***

The game's history can be traced back to 1530, to an Italian
lottery called "Lo Giuoco del Lotto D'Italia," which is
still played every Saturday in Italy. From Italy the game
was introduced to France in the late 1770s, where it was
called "Le Lotto", a game played among wealthy Frenchmen.

***

The Germans also played a version of the game in the 1800s,
but they used it as a child's game to help students learn
math, spelling and history.

***

New York toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe renamed it "bingo"
after he overheard someone accidentally yell "bingo"
instead of "beano". He hired a Columbia University math
professor, Carl Leffler, to help him increase the number
of combinations in bingo cards. By 1930, Leffler had
invented 6,000 different bingo cards.

***

A Catholic priest from Pennsylvania approached Lowe about
using bingo as a means of raising church funds. When bingo
started being played in churches it became increasingly
popular.

***

By 1934, an estimated 10,000 bingo games were played weekly,
and today more than $90 million dollars are spent on bingo
each week in North America alone.

 

[sleazystevie]

Great thread. Keep the trivia coming!

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

According to anthropologist Louis Leakey, most predators
avoided feasting on humans because our body odor was "too
repugnant." Guess it's a good thing we can be stinky!

***

Egyptians were the first to popularize the idea of applying
scents to armpits, usually using cinnamon and other spices
that wouldn't turn rancid in the heat.

***

The first modern brand of antiperspirant, EverDry, hit
drugstores in 1903. The original formula was so acidic that
it regularly ate through clothing.

***

Aoki, a Japanese company known for its menswear, has
developed a deodorant suit that supposedly absorbs sweat
and neutralizes odors all over the body.

***

Aluminum chloride, the ingredient that blocks glandular
openings and prevents sweating, is notorious for turning
T-shirts yellow. So, blame your antiperspirant for your
pit stains, not your body.

***

Medical science has found no conclusive evidence that
absorbing aluminum chloride through the skin can lead to
memory loss or slurred speech.

 

[gunslingingbird]

According to anthropologist Louis Leakey, most predators
avoided feasting on humans because our body odor was "too
repugnant." Guess it's a good thing we can be stinky!

I knew there was a reason why I haven't bathed since Saturday! I worked a Duran Duran show last night, and I think they have a song called "Hungry Like The Wolf." I figured that if I smelled like 3-day-old shit they'd take their hunger elsewhere.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

Since it is shaped like a red heart, the strawberry has
been used as the symbol for Venus, the Goddess of love.
Some believe that if you share a double strawberry with
someone of the opposite sex by breaking it in half, the
two of you will fall in love.

***

The belief that a strawberry shaped birthmark is the sign
of a witch led many to believe that Queen Anne Boleyn, the
second wife of HenryVIII, was a witch.

***

The strawberry is the first fruit to ripen in the spring.
It is the only fruit to contain seeds on its outside.

***

The three major varieties of the strawberry are June
bearing, Everbearing, and day neutral.

***

California and Florida are the two top producers of
strawberries in the United States. California produces over
one billion berries annually.

***

The overall sweetness of the strawberry is related to the
weather conditions while growing.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS eek::eek

Anne Boleyn, second wife to Henry VIII of England, is
commonly believed to have had 11 fingers. Historians believe
that she did have an extra finger or at least some sort of
growth on her hand that resembled an extra finger.

***

Major league baseball pitcher Antonio Alfonseca has six
fingers on each hand, but he claims the extra fingers do
not affect his pitching, as they do not usually touch the
ball. In most cases of polydactylism (extra fingers or
toes), the extra digit has only limited mobility, or cannot
be moved at all, and is often surgically removed shortly
after birth.

***

Actor Mark Wahlberg has a third nipple on the left side of
his chest. Early in his career, he considered having it
removed, but he later came to accept it. Around 2 percent
of women and slightly fewer men have a supernumerary nipple,
although they are often mistaken for moles.

***

In 2006, a boy named Jie-Jie was born in China with two
left arms. Although all three of his arms looked normal,
neither left arm was fully functional, and, when he was two
months old, doctors in Shanghai removed the one closest to
his chest after tests revealed it was less developed.

***

Francesco Lentini, who was born in Sicily in 1889, was born
with three legs, two sets of genitals, and an extra foot
growing from the knee of his third leg -- the remains of a
conjoined twin that had died in the womb. Rejected by his
parents, he was raised by an aunt, then in a home for
disabled children before moving to America when he was
eight.

***

Josephene Myrtle Corbin, born in 1868, was a dipygus,
meaning that she had two separate pelvises and four legs.
She could move all of the legs, but they were too weak to
walk on. She married a doctor with whom she had five
children. Legend has it that three of her children were
born from one pelvis, and two from the other.

 

[gunslingingbird]

Major league baseball pitcher Antonio Alfonseca has six
fingers on each hand, but he claims the extra fingers do
not affect his pitching, as they do not usually touch the
ball. In most cases of polydactylism (extra fingers or
toes), the extra digit has only limited mobility, or cannot
be moved at all, and is often surgically removed shortly
after birth.

My high school French teacher had an extra toe. She would show it off by wearing open-toed shoes. It was fucking gnarly! Then came the news that she would be missing the next 2 weeks of school because she was getting her "calcium deposit" removed. Calcium deposit, my ass! That thing had a fucking nail and everything! :eek:

Josephene Myrtle Corbin, born in 1868, was a dipygus,
meaning that she had two separate pelvises and four legs.
She could move all of the legs, but they were too weak to
walk on. She married a doctor with whom she had five
children. Legend has it that three of her children were
born from one pelvis, and two from the other.

This woman would be any pervert's dream come true! I mean, you could have a threesome just with two people! Or you could also test your accuracy by alternating between holes. Also, why not fuck her and eat her out at the same time? Oh, the possibilities are endless. :1orglaugh

 

[historylover]

This woman would be any pervert's dream come true! I mean, you could have a threesome just with two people! Or you could also test your accuracy by alternating between holes. Also, why not fuck her and eat her out at the same time? Oh, the possibilities are endless. :1orglaugh

You're on the right board GSB...because you're perverted!

I do have to give you a :bowdown: and rep for your "accuracy test" suggestion.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

Mother's Day can be traced back to ancient Greece, when the
Greeks held festivals honoring Rhea, the mother of the gods.

***

The ancient Egyptians celebrated the goddess Isis, who was
considered the mother of the pharoahs. Romans also honored
Isis by celebrating for three days.

***

Anna Jarvis is recognized as the founder of the Mother's
Day holiday in the United States of America. On May 12,
1907, two years after her mother's death, she held a
memorial to her mother and thereafter embarked upon a
campaign to make "Mother's Day" a recognized holiday. She
succeeded in making this nationally recognized in 1914.

***

President Woodrow Wilson helped celebrate the first
national Mother's Day in 1914. As the holiday became more
commercialized, Anna Jarvis filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvannia
to try to stop the commercialization. She failed.

***

The official flower for Mother's Day is the carnation. Red
carnations are for mothers still living, while white
carnations are to honor those that have passed away.

***

Mothering Sunday is held on the fourth Sunday of Lent, or
three weeks before Easter, in the UK and Ireland. In South
America, most countries celebrate Mother's Day on the
second Sunday of May as well. Argentina celebrates it in
October because it is in the southern hemisphere and spring
is in October.

 

[gunslingingbird]

Mothering Sunday is held on the fourth Sunday of Lent, or
three weeks before Easter, in the UK and Ireland. In South
America, most countries celebrate Mother's Day on the
second Sunday of May as well. Argentina celebrates it in
October because it is in the southern hemisphere and spring
is in October.

In Mexico it's celebrated on May 10th.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

At the age of 26, Michelangelo began sculpting his
monumental statue of David. He finished it seventeen months
later, in January, 1504.

***

Although construction of the Notre Dame Cathedral in
Strasbourg started in 1015, it was not until 1439 that the
spire was completed.

***

The Hoover Dam is 726 feet tall and 660 feet thick at its
base. Enough rock was excavated in its construction to
build the Great Wall of China.

***

The estimated weight of the Great Pyramid of Egypt is
6,648,000 tons.

***

The great Gothic cathedral of Milan was started in 1386,
and wasn’t completed until 1805.

***

The largest stained-glass window in the world is at Kennedy
International Airport in New York City. It can be seen on
the American Airlines terminal building and measures 300
feet long by 23 feet high.