Trivia Today

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

Swimming as an organized activity goes back as far as 2500
B.C. in ancient Egypt and later in ancient Greece, Rome,
and Assyria. In Rome and Greece, swimming was part of the
education of elementary age boys and the Romans built the
first swimming pools (separate from bathing pools). The
first heated swimming pool was built by Gaius Maecenas of
Rome in the first century BC.

***

Ancient civilizations left ample evidence of their swimming
abilities. Bas-relief artwork in an Egyptian tomb from
around 2,000 B.C. shows an overarm stroke like the front
crawl. The Assyrians showed an early breaststroke in their
stone carvings. The Hittites, the Minoans, and other early
civilizations left drawings of swimming and diving skills.

***

The first municipal pool in the U.S. was built in Brookline,
Mass., in 1887. Soon after that, New York City built public
facilities, then called "baths."

***

In 1928, David Armbruster first filmed swimmers under water
to study strokes. The Japanese also photographed and
studied world-class athletes, using their research to
produce a swim team that dominated the 1932 Olympic Games.
This marked the beginning of research into stroke mechanics.

***
During the Middle Ages, people feared water because they
thought it contained diseases. Swimming was not again
appreciated until the nineteenth century when it became
popular in England. People felt they could finally trust
the water to be free of disease.

***

In 1946 war rationing of material inspired the invention
of the two piece bathing suite, called a "bikini." It was
named for a U.S. nuclear testing site in the South Pacific.

***

RANDOM TIDBITS

During World War II, U.S. pilots began reporting odd balls
of light or shiny metallic spheres that could fly circles
around their planes. These UFOs came to be called Foo
Fighters. British and German pilots also reported seeing
these strange lights, and each side thought that they were
some sort of secret weapon developed by the enemy. The
phenomenon was never explained.

***

The earliest known report of a UFO sighting was by Julius
Obsequens, a Roman writer, in 100 B.C.. He claimed to have
seen "things like ships" in the sky over Italy.

***

The U.S. Air Force conducted a 22-year investigation,
based out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio,
called Project Blue Book which studied evidence for the
existence of UFOs. J. Allen Hynek, Project Blue Book's
lead investigator from 1948 to 1969, investigated hundreds
of UFO reports each year. The official conclusion of the
project was that no evidence of extraterrestrials or
extraterrestrial vehicles existed.

***

In October (some sources say January) 1969, Jimmy Carter
observed a UFO in the skies near Leary in southwestern
Georgia. This unidentified flying object, which appeared
just after dusk, was a single luminous object about 30
degrees above the horizon that Carter estimated to be about
300 to 1000 yards away. Carter and about a dozen other men
watched the object for about 10 to 12 minutes as it hovered,
changed course several times, and eventually disappeared
in the distance.

***

MUFON, or the Mutual UFO Network, was founded on May 31,
1969, shortly after the publication of the University of
Colorado "Condon Report", as a vehicle to promote the
investigation of UFO phenomena.

***

On September 24, 1235, General Yoritsume and his army
observed mysterious globes of light flying loops in the
night sky near Kyoto, Japan. The General's advisors told
him not to worry -- it was merely the wind blowing the
stars about.

 

[Wickedclown]

I don´t know the author´s name but you should check out the book "Britannica & Me". A lot of trivia mixed with a good story.

 

[senob44]

In 1946 war rationing of material inspired the invention
of the two piece bathing suite, called a "bikini." It was
named for a U.S. nuclear testing site in the South Pacific.

From rationing of material, I guess that sure does make sense! And it was named after Bikini Atoll. I always wondered if the names were related.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

Edgar Degas is acknowledged as the master of drawing human
figures in motion. In the early 1870s, the female ballet
dancer became his favorite theme. He sketched from a live
model in his studio and combined poses into groupings that
depicted rehearsal and performance scenes.

***

The Dada school of art, or Dadaism, can be traced back to
Zurich and the poetry of Romanian-born Tristan Tzara. Born
out of the widespread disillusionment created by World War
I, Dada attacked conventional standards of aesthetics and
behavior and stressed absurdity and the role of the
unpredictable in artistic creation. The principles of Dada
were eventually modified to become the basis of surrealism.

***

Edvard Munch painted "The Scream" after a walk with two
friends during which he sensed an "endless scream passing
through nature". To describe this experience, he developed
an exciting, violent, and emotionally charged style that is
recognized by most critics as leading to the birth of
German Expressionism.

***

Frida Kahlo--who began painting while recovering from a
serious road accident at the age of 15--sent her early work
to the painter Diego Rivera, whom she later married. Her
works are often shocking in their stark portrayal of pain
and the harsh lives of women.

***

"Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" was the
most famous painting of Georges Seurat, founder of the 19th-
century French school of Neo-Impressionism whose technique
for portraying the play of light using tiny brushstrokes of
contrasting colors became known as Pointillism. This painting
inspired a Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim entitled
Sunday in the Park With George.

***

While studying at the Academy of Ancient Art in the Medici
Palace, Michelangelo not only developed his genius as a
sculptor, but also excited the wrath of his rival,
Torregiano, who struck him with a mallet, crushing his nose
and disfiguring him for life.

***

RANDOM TIDBITS

Between 20,000 and 60,000 bees live in a single hive. The
queen bee lays 1,500 eggs a day and lives for up to 2 years.
The drone, whose only job it is to mate with the queen bee,
has a lifespan of around 24 days - they have no stinger.
Worker bees - all sterile females - usually work themselves
to death within 40 days in summer, collecting pollen and
nectar. Worker bees fly up to 14km (9 miles) to find pollen
and nectar, flying at 24km/h (15 mph).

***

A worker bee communicates her floral findings by performing
a dance on the honeycomb. The orientation of her movements
and the frequency of her vibrations indicate the direction
and distance of the flowers.

***

Flowers are pollinated mostly by bees; up to one third of
all plant pollination on earth are by bees. In short, this
means that one in every three spoons of food you put in
your mouth was a direct result of the work done by bees.

***

Bees do not have ears, but they have an excellent sense of
smell with chemoreceptors in their antennae. Bees see
colors differently than we do. They are insensitive to red
but detects ultraviolet light which is invisible to us.

***

The worker bees defend the hive. The muscular barbed stinger
quickly saw into the skin of the invader and the venom pouch
begins to contract rhythmically to pump venom into the
intruder.

***

Bees can be used to detect landmines. Tiny radio plates the
size of a rice grain will be attached to honey bees to
detect antipersonnel landmines, of which there are about
100 million in 70 war-torn countries. The tiny radio plates
are engraved with serial numbers to keep track of the bees,
which are being conditioned to develop a preference in
addition to nectar, in this case TNT, or any other material
that releases metamphenamine. Special spectrometers that
can "smell" TNT are placed in movable beehives to indicate
landmines in specific areas. Bees that "smell" of explosives
can then be tracked to the landmine. The bees won't detonate
the landmines.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

In 1832, U.K. representative B.H. Hodson, while living in
Nepal, claimed to have seen the Abominable Snowman attack
his servants. Hodson described the creature as a "wild man
... covered in long, dark hair, and had no tail". This is
generally considered the first report of the Abominable
Snowman made by a Westerner.

***

The National Hockey League's New Jersey Devils are named
after The Jersey Devil, a legendary creature who has
reportedly been sighted by numerous New Jersey residents
for almost three centuries, but whose description has
changed dramatically over the years. Originally described
as a demonic child with hooves, bat wings, a forked tail,
and the head of a horse, the creature has since been
described as a flying lion, a green alien-like monster,
and a faceless hairy creature.

***

In the summer of 1816, while visiting the poet Lord Byron
at his villa near Lake Geneva in Switzerland, Mary Shelley
created the character of the Frankenstein monster. During
this visit, stormy weather forced the party to spend most
of their time indoors. To pass the time, some of Byron's
other guests read from a volume of ghost stories. One
evening, Byron issued a challenge -- that each of his
guests should write a ghost story of their own. Mary's
story, which was inspired by a dream, eventually became
her most famous literary work -- the novel Frankenstein.

***

Famed Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa once told of
a legendary humanoid creature that supposedly lived in
South America. Producer William Alland overheard the story,
and it became the inspiration for The Creature From the
Black Lagoon (1954). The Creature is considered by many
critics to be Universal's last great classic monster, and
it spawned several sequels including Revenge of the Creature
(1955) and The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).

***

The Dracula legend is generally believed to have evolved
from the life of Vlad Tepes or Vlad the Impaler, a Prince
of Wallachia (in Romania) who lived from 1431 to 1476. Best
known for the cruelty of his reign, he was greatly disliked,
but he served as a sort of buffer between Europe and the
Ottoman invaders, and this made him key to the European
defense. He fulfilled this purpose well, killing so many
Turks that the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II laid siege on Vlad's
castle himself.

***

In Greek mythology, the story of Lycaon serves as one of
the earliest examples of the werewolf legend. According to
one version of the story, Lycaon was transformed into a
wolf as punishment for eating human flesh. According to
another version, he served up his own son Nyctimus, offered
the dish of human flesh to Zeus on the altar of mount
Lycaeus, and was immediately turned into a wolf by the
disgusted god. This gave rise to the legend that a man was
turned into a wolf at each annual sacrifice to Zeus Lycaeus,
but if he refrained from eating human flesh for ten years
he would regain his human form.

 

[senob44]

The Jersey Devil!! Woot! Woot!

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS ABOUT DINOSAURS

Although there have probably been dinosaur discoveries
dating back thousands of years -- there are, for instance,
references to "dragon bones" found in ancient China -- the
first documented dinosaur discovery took place in 1676 when
a jawbone and teeth were unearthed in Oxford, England. In
1824, famed paleontologist William Buckland (1784-1856)
finally named this first dinosaur Megalosaurus. Megalosaurus
was a large meat-eater that stood up to 30 feet tall and
weighed about 1 ton.

***

In 1877, a paleontologist named Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-
1899) discovered a new species of dinosaur with he named
Apatosaurus, meaning "deceptive lizard." Two years later,
he discovered what he believed to be another species of
dinosaur. He named this one Brontosaurus, meaning "thunder
lizard." When later paleontologists examined the two fossils,
however, they determined that both skeletons belonged to the
same animal class, one being an adult and one being a juvenile.

***

Stegosaurus means "covered lizard" in Greek. This dinosaur
had a double row of protective plates covering its back and
tail. In addition to acting as a protective covering, these
plates may have operated as a sort of cooling device -- wind
flowing between the plates would have helped lower the body
temperature of a Stegosaurus on hot days.

***

The Argentinosaurus, an herbivorous sauropod and quite
possibly the largest animal ever to walk the earth, is
believed to have reached lengths of up to 150 feet and
weighed as much as 110 tons. Only fragmentary remains have
been discovered, but using their knowledge of related
dinosaurs, scientists have been able to estimate the size
of these specimens of Argentinosaurus.

***

The Brachiosaurus, a herbivore, used its giraffe-like neck
to graze in the tops of trees. It is believed to have
reached heights of up to 42 feet, lengths of 82 feet, and
weights in excess of 90 tons. Once considered the largest
known dinosaur, it has since been surpassed by the likes
of Argintinosaurus and Sauroposeidon.

***

Dinosaurs are believed to have become extinct about 65
million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period. We
know of their existence today because of fossilized remains.
It is impossible to know for sure what caused this sudden
mass extinction, but the prevailing theory is that a massive
meteor struck the earth about that time causing drastic
climate changes and thus the extinction.

 

[Facetious]

At this time, what percentage of all American investment assets are not FDIC Insured ?


Highlight Answer

Approximately 40 %

source - www.clarkhoward.com

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS ABOUT LITERATURE

In 2000, Gao Xingjian, author of Soul Mountain and The
Other Shore, became the first Chinese writer to be awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature. His novels and plays have
been banned in China since 1986.

***

Ba! Ba! Black Sheep was one of several working titles
Margaret Mitchell used for her most famous novel, Gone With
the Wind. She also considered the titles Tote the Weary
Load, Bugles Sang True, Not In Our Stars, and Tomorrow is
Another Day before finally settling on a phrase that she
had used in the critical scene where Scarlett returns to
Tara and asks, "Was Tara still standing? Or was Tara also
gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia?"

***

Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis both died on November 22, 1963,
but their deaths were overshadowed by a more sensational
death that day: the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

***

Anne Sexton wrote To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960),
Transformations (1971), and The Death Notebooks (1974), as
well as Live or Die (1967) for which she won the Pulitzer
Prize. In 1974, despite a very successful writing career,
she lost her lifelong battle with depression and, at the
age of 46, committed suicide.

***

One of Tennessee Williams greatest plays, Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof, contains characters named "Big Daddy" and "Big Mama."
These roles were played in the original Broadway production
by Burl Ives and Mildred Dunnock.

***

Nikolai Gogol's most celebrated play was The Inspector
General (1836), a comedy which told the tale of a young
civil servant who finds himself stranded in a small town,
mistaken for an influential government inspector. A
masterpiece of dramatic satire, The Inspector General is
universally respected as one of the greatest plays of the
Russian theatre.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

There are many theories about the birth of our solar system.
The Tidal Theory (or Chamberlain-Moulton Theory) suggests
that a passing star pulled dust and debris from the forming
Sun, leaving a string of debris that eventually formed the
planets.

***

Mercury & Venus are the only planets in our solar system
without moons. Saturn has the most moons, with more than
twenty.

***

Discovered by James Christy in 1978, Pluto's moon is named
Charon. With a diameter of 728 miles, Charon is just under
half the size of Pluto. Due to this very small difference
in size, some scientists consider Pluto and Charon to be a
double planet.

***

Syzygy is the condition when three celestial bodies are
arranged in a straight line--as, for example, when the Sun,
Moon, and Earth are aligned during solar and lunar eclipses.

***

The Apollo program was a manned U.S. space program that
eventually put 12 men on the Moon. The first Apollo mission
to circle the Moon was Apollo 8, and the first to land was
Apollo 11. Apollo 13 never landed because of an accident en
route that required the spacecraft to return to Earth after
swinging around the far side of the Moon. The last Apollo
mission to land on the Moon was Apollo 17.

***

Comets have three main parts: the nucleus, the coma, and
the tail. The coma consists of gases and dust around the
nucleus.

***

RANDOM TIDBITS ABOUT SCIENCE

Many plants and animals are capable of producing visible
light. The scientific term for this phenomenon is
bioluminescence.

***

Sperm Whales have the heaviest brain of any living animal.
The average Sperm Whale's brain weighs more than 20 pounds
which is about 4 times heavier than the average human brain.

***

Influenza killed 43,000 American servicemen mobilized for
World War I, representing nearly 40 percent of U.S. military
casualties.
In 1983, the first genetically engineered organism, a
tobacco plant designed to be resistant to certain
herbicides, was grown in Wisconson.

***

In 2004, on the island of Flores in Indonesia, a team of
Australian and Indonesian researchers discovered the
remains of a hobbit-sized human. Remarkable, these
researchers determined that this new species of human lived
as recently as 13,000 years ago, shattering the long-held
belief that Homo sapiens have had the planet to themselves
for the past 25,000 years.

***

The idea of the atom was first introduced by Leucippus of
Miletus around 450 B.C.. Leucippus and his pupil,
Democritus, theorized that all matter was composed of
atoms, or bits of matter too small to be seen. The word
"atom" comes from a Greek word, "atomos", meaning
uncuttable.

 

[gunslingingbird]

Sperm Whales have the heaviest brain of any living animal.
The average Sperm Whale's brain weighs more than 20 pounds
which is about 4 times heavier than the average human brain.

Yes, but, proportionally, their brain is tiny. Sure, their brain weighs 4 times that of a human's, but how many times more than the weight of an average human does an average sperm whale weigh? (By the way, I heard that that is senob's favorite kind of whale.)

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

"Great Gig in the Sky" is one of the few Pink Floyd songs
to use a female vocal. Their engineer, Alan Parsons,
brought in a singer he knew named Clare Torry who provided
the hauntingly beautiful improvised vocal on the song.
Thirty years later, she would sue Pink Floyd over rights
to the song.
***

U2's "Angel of Harlem" was written about Billie Holiday, a
Jazz singer who moved to Harlem as a teenager in 1928. She
had a difficult childhood which affected her life and
career, but she went on to play a variety of nightclubs
and became famous for her spectacular voice and ability to
move her audience to tears.

***

Although there were earlier publicity stunts involving
records sprayed with gold lacquer, the actual award
recognized today as a Gold Record was first awarded to
Perry Como in 1958 for his recording of "Catch a Falling
Star".

***

John Lennon played "I Saw Her Standing There" at Madison
Square Garden on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1974, when
he took the stage at an Elton John concert. It was the
last song Lennon would ever perform for a paid audience.

***

The melody for Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender" is based
on "Aura Lee", a ballad written in 1861 by W.W. Fosdick
and Geo R. Poulton. RCA Records received over 1 million
pre-orders for "Love Me Tender", making it the first
single to ship as a gold record before it was released.

***

Pete Best was the original drummer for the Beatles,
performing with the band during its formative years in
the early 1960s. He was replaced by Ringo Starr only a few
days before The Beatles recorded their first hit single,
"Love Me Do."


***********************************************************

RANDOM TIDBITS

The first TV interview was made with Irish actress Peggy
O'Neil in April 1930. The first daily broadcast was started
by the BBC in November 1936.

***

The first TV commercial was a 20-second ad for a Bulova
clock, broadcasted by WNBT, New York during a game between
the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies in July
1941. Bulova paid $9 for that first TV spot.

***

The first regular TV soap was DuMont TV's A Woman to
Remember, which began its run in February 1947.

***

The first televised sporting event was a Japanese elementary
school baseball game, broadcast in September 1931.

***

The world's first TV news helicopter was introduced by KTLA
Channel 5 in Los Angeles on 4 July 1958.

***

The video recording machine was invented by the Ampex
corporation of California in 1956. The first video recorder,
the Ampex VR1000, stood 3 feet, three inches, and weighed
as much as a small car: 1,466 pounds.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS ABOUT PEOPLE

Lady Peseshet of Ancient Egypt (2600-2100 BC) is the world's
first known female physician.

***

Adriaan van der Donck was the first and only lawyer in New
York City in 1653.

***

When Alexander Graham Bell passed away in 1922, every
telephone served by the Bell system in the USA and Canada
was silent for one minute.

***

Leonardo da Vinci could write with the one hand and draw
with the other simultaneously.

***

The 17th-century French Cardinal Mazarin never traveled
without his personal chocolate-maker. (I need to get myself
one of those!)

***

Winston Churchill was a stutterer. As a child, one of his
teachers warned, "Because of his stuttering he should be
discouraged from following in his father's political
footsteps."

 

[gunslingingbird]

Leonardo da Vinci could write with the one hand and draw
with the other simultaneously.

President James Garfield would often entertain his friends by taking a Biblical passage and simultaneously writing it in Latin with one hand and in Greek with the other.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

In 1812, Louis becomes blind, the result of an accident
while playing in his fathers shop.

***
Louis Braille was fifteen (1824), when he developed a
system of reading and writing by means of raised dots.

***

Braille generally consists of cells of 6 raised dots
conventionally numbered and the presence or absence of
dots gives the coding for the symbol.

***

LEGAL BLINDNESS

Having between zero and 10% of normal visual acuity in
both eyes (20/200 vision or less) and/or 20% or less of
normal peripheral vision in both eyes. In other words,
the person, while wearing glasses, can see less at 20
feet than a person with normal vision can see at 200 feet.

***

See the light

Vision and eye health problems are the second most
prevalent, chronic, health care problems in the United
States population, affecting more than 120 million people.

***

Cataracts

About 5.5 million U.S. residents have cataracts severe
enough to cause vision problems, with about 400,000 new
cases developing annually. This leads to about 1.35 million
cataract surgeries each year

***********************************************************

RANDOM TIDBITS

Grand Cayman is the largest of the three Cayman Islands
and contains George Town, the capital.

***

The national tree is the Silver Thatch Palm and the na-
tional flower is the Wild Banana Orchid.

***

The Grand Cayman Islands are 3 islands - Grand Cayman the
largest is separated from Cayman Brac and Little Cayman
by some 80 miles.

***

British

The Cayman Islands were colonized from Jamaica by the
British during the 18th and 19th centuries. Administered
by Jamaica since 1863, they remained a British dependency
after 1962 when the former became independent.

***

What's it mean?

The name 'Cayman' derives from the Carib word for croc-
odile and appeared in the log of Sir Francis Duke , the
first English visitor to the islands, in 1586.

***

National motto: 'HE HATH FOUNDED IT UPON THE SEAS'

The national flag is blue, with the flag of the UK in the
upper hoist-side quadrant and the Caymanian coat of arms
on a white disk centered on the outer half of the flag.
The coat of arms includes a pineapple and turtle above a
shield with three stars (representing the three islands)
and a scroll at the bottom bearing the national motto.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS

James Buchanan was the only bachelor president.

***

William Taft was the largest president at 6 feet 2 inches
tall and 326 pounds.

***

James Madison was the shortest president at 5 feet 4 inches.

***

Andrew Johnson #17

He was the first president to be visited by a queen. Queen
Emma of the Sandwich Islands came to America on August 14,
1866. Johnson was buried beneath a willow he had planted
himself with a shoot taken from a tree at Napolean's tomb.
His head was rested on a copy of the Constitution.

***

Woodrow Wilson #28

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1920 for his efforts in
seeking peace after World War I and supporting the League
of Nations. A flock of sheep was raised on the White House
lawn during Wilson's term. The wool was used to raise
money for the Red Cross during World War I.

***

Dwight D. Eisenhower #34

Eisenhower was the first president of all 50 states and the
first president to appear on color television. He was also
responsible for putting 'under God' into the Pledge of
Alliegence.

 

[historylover]

RANDOM TIDBITS ABOUT BRIDGES

The highest bridge in the world can be found in the Ladakh
valley between the Dras and Suru rivers in the Himalayan
mountains. The valley lies at an altitude of about 18,379
ft above sea level on the India side of Kashmir. Called the
Baily Bridge, it is only 98 ft long, and was built by the
Indian Army in August 1982.

***

The bridge that stands highest over water is the Royal
Gorge Bridge over the Arkansas River in Colorado. Built in
1929 for $350,000, it spans 1,053 ft above the water.

***

The largest bridge in the world is the 8,25 miles long
Trans Bay Bridge which links San Francisco to Oakland. It
was built in 1936 at a cost of $77 million.

***

The world's largest natural bridge is the Rainbow Bridge,
tucked away among the rugged, isolated canyons at the base
of Navajo Mountain, Utah. From its base to the top of the
arch, it reaches 290 ft - nearly the height of the Statue
of Liberty - and spans 275 ft across the river. The top of
the arch is 42 ft thick and 33 ft wide.

***

The world's busiest bridge is the Howrah bridge across the
river Hooghly in Calcutta. In addition to 57,000 vehicles
a day it carries a huge number of pedestrians across its
1,500 ft long 72 ft wide span.

***

The longest bridge in the world is the Pontchartrain bridge
in New Orleans with a total length of 24 miles. It was
completed in 1956. The most expensive bridge is the Seto-
Ohashi-Kojima bridge in Japan. At 8,21 miles long, it was
built in 1988 at a cost of $8.3 billion.

 

[gunslingingbird]

The largest bridge in the world is the 8,25 miles long
Trans Bay Bridge which links San Francisco to Oakland. It
was built in 1936 at a cost of $77 million.

:1orglaugh $77 million dollars to build it! CalTrans probably gets at least that much each month from the fucking $4 dollar toll that they charge to cross the fucking thing! Oh, by the way, in our neck of the woods we simply call it the Bay Bridge.

 

[Jason z]

did u know it is illegal to have sex with a porcupine in florida? lol..

 

[bombardier52]

did u know it is illegal to have sex with a porcupine in florida? lol..

I bet their aren't many repeat offenders