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Trivia ~ Man Made
The ancient Mayans of Central America made rubber out of natural latex 3500 years before the modern process of vulcanization was invented. They played games with rubber balls and used rubber bands to attach axe heads to their handles.
The Mayans made latex, which is the sap of rubber trees (Castilla elastica), into flexible, durable rubber by mixing it with the juice of morning glory vines (Ipomoea alba). The mixture developed molecular cross-links that made the latex elastic, and removed substances that caused the rubber to turn brittle. The resulting rubber was black and bouncy, with a texture like a pencil eraser.
111,111,111 x 111,111,111=12,345,678,987,654,321
Plastic lawn flamingos outnumber real flamingos in the U.S.A
The Library of Congress contains 327 miles of book shelves.
Why are umbrellas so often black?
It would be wonderfully poetic if the color reflected sadness provoked by gray skies, But the reality of it is that the color is nothing more than a byproduct of the way that umbrellas were originally made in the 18th century. The cotton cloth had to be waterproof. This was accomplished by soaking it in an oil that left the fabric with the characteristically grave color. Custom and tradition being what they are, that color became the "natural" one.
Coca-Cola was originally green.
Why is one side of aluminum foil shiny, while the other is always dull?
One is tempted to speculate on the cosmic connections of this conundrum. For example, one side of the moon always appears to be bathed in light; the other obscured in darkness. Some people are born with high IQ's, others just plod along. Ying and yang, alpha and omega --nature always seems to be of two minds.
On the other hand, the actual reason for the wrapping on your leftover chocolate layer cake looking so appealing from the outside but dull once you unwrap it is quite down to earth. Sheets of aluminum are pressed flat into foil by putting them between heavy rollers, two sheets at a time. The outside surfaces in direct contact with the polished rollers pick up a shine, while the inner surfaces, facing each other, are condemned to permanent dullness. The consolation is that the dull side is the one from which you can lick the icing - not that you would do something so uncouth.
Why do the lapels on men's sports coats have notches cut into them?
I'm sure that a Ph.D. student in anthropology is somewhere working on a dissertation that suggests that this custom is rooted in ancient male chauvinist pigism. Just as gunslingers in the Old West put notches on their gun handles to mark their kills, ancient cavemen notched the collar on their one-piece, genuine fur wrap-arounds to indicate how many women they had clubbed, conquered and dragged back to the cave. The custom must be unconsciously echoed in the design of modern jackets.
But we know better. Well before down-filled and Gore-Tex-lined overwear was available over the Internet, men used to turn up their jacket collars to ward off the cold. But collars big enough for this task would never have lain fashionably flat when not turned up. Notching the collar solved the problem, and with that design tweak civilization moved up a notch.
Centuries ago, English was mostly spoken by a few million people in the British Isles, and there were a few local dialects such as Irish English. But in the last century, the language has exploded across the world and diversified, picking up many words and pronunciation styles from local tongues.
Measured by the number of people for whom English is their first language, 72% speak American English and 16% use British English. 6% use Canadian English, 5% use Australian English and 1% use New Zealand English. There are also dozens of minor dialects, including Caribbean, South African, (Asian) Indian, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh.
Even within American English there are significant regional differences. Boston English is different from the language spoken in Atlanta, and Chicago English is different from both of them.
Plug Holes...Always good advice, but not the topic here
Ever look at the end of an electric plug prong? There are holes in each prong, why?
The holes are there to mate with spring-loaded pins found in some of the better-made wall sockets. These pins help the plug make a good connection, and help keep the plug from falling out of the socket.
Ever seen CAR-RT-SORT on a piece of mail? Ever notice that it is often found on a piece of junk mail? Well, there is a reason for this.
CAR-RT-SORT is short for Carrier Route Presort and represents a special class of mail. To qualify for this classification, mail must be arranged so that it can be given to the appropriate mail carrier without any sorting by the post office. Each piece of mail must be part of a minimum of ten pieces for that particular carrier. If there aren't ten pieces, the mailer must pay the rate for Presorted First-Class Mail--which is more expensive but requires only that the mail be arranged in ascending order of ZIP code.
The song with the longest title is "I’m a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama with my Honolulu Mama Doin’ Those Beat-o, Beat-o Flat-On-My-Seat-o, Hirohito Blues" written by Hoagy Carmichael in 1943
The kite's tail is quite pleasant to watch don't you think? Beyond this basic appeal, the tail of a kite (a diamond shaped one at least) serves another excellent purpose: It acts as a stabilizer (much like
the tail of a plane works). Without the tail, the kite would roll and spin until it crashed into the ground.
Fixfax
In Europe and America through the 19th century, the punishment for certain crimes was to pillory the perpetrator in public. A wooden apparatus secured their necks and hands, forcing the miscreants to remain in one spot while people stared at them, called them names, or even threw things at them. It was not fun.
The Scots had their own word for this device. They called it a "fixfax," from "flachs," the German word for neck tendons. Today a fixfax is appropriate punishment only if your office fax machine breaks down again on Friday afternoon, just after the repair person departed, and you would have had a done-deal in Denver if only you could have delivered a document on deadline.
In 1996, at a remote Egyptian oasis called Bahariya, a man was crossing the desert on his donkey when the animal stumbled. Its foot had fallen through the sand, revealing a hole into a previously unknown Egyptian tomb.
As law required, the area was cordoned off so that archaeologists could examine the find. It turned out to be one of the most significant discoveries ever made from the Greco-Roman period of Egyptian history, from 332 BC until the fourth century AD.
Hundreds of mummies were buried there, along with thousands of artifacts including coins, statues, and even board games. It is an ancient graveyard revealing much about life in the declining centuries of the Egyptian civilization.
Dry ice is actually carbon dioxide gas that is compressed until it is liquefied and then frozen. The nifty thing about dry ice is that it changes back to a gas without becoming a liquid, which is where the "dry" part comes into play.
When I fly into LaGuardia airport, the tag on my bag says "lga." Makes sense. When I fly into Newark airport, it says, "nwk." Again, pretty sensible. So why, when I fly into Chicago's O'Hare airport, does the tag say, "ord."
The Army and the Douglas Aircraft company built and operated a military airport at "Orchard Place" during World War II. This airport was in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.
After the war, the airport was deeded to the city and became known as the Chicago Orchard Airport. Hence, "ord." The name was later changed to O'Hare to honor "Butch" O'Hare, a war hero from Chicago who's father was apparently murdered by the mob.
There are more telephones than people in Washington D.C.
Americans were really hit hard by the new federal income tax in 1914. That first year they paid an average of forty-one cents per person. In truth, the tax rates were so graduated at that time that only one person out of a hundred actually had to pay any at all.
Gee, those were the good old days: low taxes, tuberculosis, no social security, polio epidemics, do your laundry by hand, and an average life span under fifty...
A number of toy buyers wouldn't touch Barbie when she made her debut in 1959, considering her to be too adult. Barbie's creator, Ruth Handler, later admitted: "The toy buyers didn't care for Barbie at first. And many of them did not order the doll. They did not think mothers would buy a doll with breasts."
Correction Fluid
The brainchild of Bette Nesmith Graham, mother of former Monkee Michael Nesmith, In the 1950s, Mrs. Nesmith was a typist. One day, she brought with her to work a small brush and a bottle of white paint which she used to correct her typos. She shared her "Mistake Out" with other secretaries, and was soon approached by an office supply company to market her invention.
It was offered to IBM in 1956 under the brand name "Mistake Out." When they rejected it, Bette changed the name to "Liquid Paper" and set up her own cottage industry, using the family kitchen as a laboratory and the garage as a bottling plant. By the end of 1957, she was selling 100 bottles of liquid paper a month. In 1979, sold the rights to the Gillette Company for $47.5 million.
In August of 1920, the first airplane to fly from New York to Alaska arrived in Nome. It was a sign of things to come when their luggage was diverted to Omaha.
Why do they turn off the cabin lights on planes before takeoff?
I could understand it if they did that whenever they served food, airline cuisine being what it is. Or when someone is airsick. Who wants to look at THAT? It would even make sense to dim the lights to save a few pennies on electric power. But for takeoffs? Why?
All the better for you to see the sights outside, folks. There's nothing technical about it, and it's that simple. At night, especially, the lights are quite pretty, particularly once you're airborne and you can see them sparkle all over the city. You say you're sitting in an aisle seat? Crane your neck.
So why don't they do blackouts for landings? Because people then are more concerned with getting their stuff together for departure. And how else would you see the attendants' insincere smiles when they thank you for flying with them?
The Liberty Bell, on view today in Philadelphia, did not ring out American independence on July 4, 1776, but rather on the 8th. The "Province Bell," as it was then called, was rung summoning citizens to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence. Anyone who says otherwise is cracked.
In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
There was no single inventor --and it definitely had nothing to do with Hollywood movie stars. But shades of Tinsel Town, the first sunglasses – were used to hide behind.
Thirteenth century Chinese judges didn't worry about being recognized. But they did care, in the interests of being even-handed, about hiding their reaction to trial testimony. They didn't want people to follow their eye movements so they wore smoked-tinted quartz spectacles to conceal them.
Our modern, widespread use of sunglasses to keep out the glare, however, stems largely from pilots in the 1930s, who began to wear them to shield their eyes from the sun. Civilians quickly emulated the aviators. Some even adopted sunglasses for fashion as well as protection, hoping to make their social life take off.
The umbrella was invented in Mesopotamia, in 1400 B.C. It was used for shade, which is why its name is umbrella, derived from the Latin word for a shade, umbra.
Whitcomb Judson, who invented the zipper in the 1890s, sought to publicize his new device by displaying it at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. But fairgoers wanted to see Little Egypt, the hootchie-coothie dancer, not zippers.
Judson made the mistake of emphasizing the zipper as a new way to fasten things. He should have worked from the other direction, touting his invention as something that would allow people to get out of their clothes faster than ever.
Why do light bulbs come in odd-sized wattages, such as 40 and 60 watts?
Well the bulbs may have changed, but those odd wattage numbers have remained pretty steady since the commercial development of the tungsten filament in 1907. That's when the 40-, 60- and 100-watt models came on the market. The best explanation for these seemingly random numbers is that the light they emitted roughly corresponded to that produced by the standard-sized gas lamps then in use. A little familiarity helped people accept the new technology.
It's like when PC's were introduced. The keyboard suggested the typewriter, and Windows crashing reminded users of how they would have to crumble up and discard the paper if they made too many errors.How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
Just one, but it has to REALLY want to change."
The Grammy Awards were introduced to counter the growing 'threat' of rock music?
There is over 1,525,000,000 miles of telephone wire strung across the USA.
CDs got a bum rap when they debuted in the early 1980s. Their life span was estimated at 10 or so years by authorities such as Scientific American magazine. They foresaw some sort of “rot” wasting away the pitted surface, making them unplayable – my kids music, I can only wish! They were obviously wrong. The companies that make the discs now claim a century of spin for them. Take your vitamins and maybe you’ll be here to find out.
Then again, what are you going to play them on in the 22nd century? Eight-track tapes, anyone? Laser videodiscs are now useless, even with tomato sauce, cheese and anchovies.
Purple was the emperor’s color in ancient Rome. It came from shellfish and it took 250,000 crustaceans to make an ounce of Tyrian purple, as the dye was called. The emperor had a monopoly and anyone making it on the sly could be executed.
It was a color to "dye" for, hue know.
One 75-watt bulb gives more light than three 25-watt bulbs.
Ivory soap didn't always float. Proctor and Gamble's famous product began life in 1878 as White Soap. It smelled good, had a rich, white color, and sunk like a stone if you let go of it in the bathtub.
Then the guy who ran the machine that mixed White Soap's ingredients neglected to throw the off switch one afternoon when he took his lunch break. The soap that resulted had more air in it. The lighter bar floated, consumers loved it, and the rest is history.
I just thought you should finally know the real story – a matter of history coming clean, so to speak.
In 1985, 340,000 people in the U. S. used what then passed for cellphones. Last year, it was 128 million. The average phone is used for 18 months, and then replaced. We will soon be discarding 130 million cellphones annually.
And the landfills? They'll probably ring out with junk phone calls.
I bet you fasten your seatbelt on airplanes. It's a good way to insure that you do not become part of a human slingshot. But if it's so important to be strapped in, why don't the airlines add a shoulder strap to the one that restrains you at the waist? Well, where would such a strap for an aisle seat be anchored? The one in your car is fastened to the floor and the wall. Second, shoulder straps in cars are there to protect against sudden stops. If you ever experience that on a plane, no strap is likely to save you.
In fact, turning all of the seats on the plane backwards would provide the same protection that shoulder straps would offer. I suspect this hasn't been done because airlines do enough things backwards as it is.
In 1892, John Pusey, invented something he named the matchbook. He had the right idea, but had it backwards, as he placed the striking surface for the match on the inside of the book of 50 matches, so when one match was struck, the remaining 49 also ignited!
The Diamond Match Company intervened and saved the day, they purchased the patent to the matchbook, moved the striking surface to the outside of the cover where it belonged, and marketed the revamped match as the "safety match."
Originally a kilt was one large rectangular piece of material that was 15 feet by 3 feet wide. That way it could be used as a kilt or a pair of draperies...
...A kilt should never be worn below the middle of the knee. No, that would make the men look sissy.
175 people are needed to assemble the approximate 500 tons of equipment for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus-- the "Biggest Show on Earth."???
Early hand-held lights used carbo-zinc batteries that did not last very long. To keep the light burning required that the user turn it on for a short time and then turn it off to allow the battery to recover. That's how they became known as a "flashlight."
Salt helped build the Erie Canal. A tax of 12.5 percent on New York State salt, plus tolls charged for salt shipments, paid for nearly half of the $7 million construction cost.
Pi has been calculated to 2,260,321,363 digits.
The billionth digit in Pi is 9.
The first 100 digits of Pi are:
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716
93993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679.
In 1967, the American Typers Association invented a new punctuation mark that was a combination of the question mark and an exclamation point called an “interrobang.” It was intended to be used to express incredulity or disbelief. It however never caught on with the general public, and faded away.
As bits of trivia are presented on my e-mail list I will add them here. See them first by sending an e-mail to twotreestrivia-subscribe@topica.com
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