Entries Tagged 'Trivia' ↓

Via CBJ, some 1500s trivia. Unverified, but interesting enough:

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man o f the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water..

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying It’s raining cats and dogs.

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, Dirt poor.

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying a thresh hold.

(Getting quite an education, aren’t you?)

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, bring home the bacon. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock a person out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They we re laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a ….dead ringer..

Let’s pause to consider our underused word of the day. Back it bring can we, together pull all we if. Did that last sentence confuse you? On going what’s understand you once it of jist the get you’ll, there in hang. Actually, mine’s not entirely correct; the keyboard cannot type mirrored characters, and I’m treating words, not letters, as units. Exploring worth concept similar a it’s, hell the what but. So check it out and have fun with it:

WORD:
boustrophedon

PRONUNCIATION:
(boo-struh-FEED-n, -FEE-don)

MEANING:
noun: A method of writing in which lines are written alternately in opposite direction, from left to right, and right to left.

ETYMOLOGY:
From boustrophedon, literally ox-turning, referring to the movement of an ox while plowing a field, from bous (ox) and strophe (turning). It’s the same strophe that shows up in catastrophe (literally, an overturning) and apostrophe (literally, turning away, referring to the omission of a letter.

NOTES:
In such writing, each letter on the alternate lines was written as in a mirror image or rotated 180 degrees. We still do many things boustrophedonically, such as mowing the lawn, vacuuming the floor, etc. In many computer printers, such as dot-matrix and inkjet, the print head usually moves in the boustrophedon mode (though thankfully doesn’t print letters mirrored or rotated).

(andreas via wordsmith.org: source)

Uncle Eddie and Auntie Mary’s first great-grandson (and Pudge’s first grandson) crashed the party this weekend, Saturday, May 17th, 2008. Noah Edward Camarena, 6 lbs. 15 ozs. He and his mom are doing great.

If my math is correct, that makes this little guy my third cousin once removed. To add a little piece of boxing trivia to the story, he’s also the second cousin once removed of Oscar De La Hoya. Noah’s dad’s mother and Oscar’s mother are sisters.

An overview of the desktop publishing revolution, including some of the big software players, some technical information, and a brief timeline of publishing dating back to 25,000 B.C.

The Final Jeopardy blog posts a video clip of the show’s final question every day. Cool.

Via ESPN:

1. Walk
2. Intentional walk
3. Hit by pitch
4. Dropped 3rd strike
5. Failure to deliver pitch in 20 seconds
6. Catcher interference
7. Fielder interference
8. Spectator interference
9. Fan obstruction
10. Fair ball hits ump
11. Fair ball hits runner
12. Fielder obstructs runner
13. Pinch-runner
14. Fielder’s choice
15. Force out at another base
16. Preceding runner put-out allows batter to reach first
17. Sac bunt fails to advance runner
18. Sacrifice fly dropped
19. Runner called out on appeal
20. Error
21. Four illegal pitches
22. Single
23. Game suspended with runner on first, that player is traded prior to the makeup; new player is allowed to take his place

I must poke at this one for a couple seconds, pointing out that not all of these are legitimate “ways” per the scorecards. I can actually only count eight ways; all of the 23 listed above would officially be recorded as one of the following: Hit, Base on Balls, Hit by Pitch, Error, Fielder’s Choice, Catcher’s Interference, Dropped Third Strike, and (up for debate) Pinch Runner.

Rebuttals welcome.

The other day over Cuban food we were polling people in the restaurant to see if anybody could recall the street address in the classic sitcom, I Love Lucy. It’d be impossible for me to eat Cuban food in New York and not think of Ricky Ricardo.

We finally looked it up this week and learned that in that fictional world, the Ricardos and Mertzes live at 623 East 68th Street in Manhattan. That would theoretically be the north side of the street; if you look out their window, you’d be looking south.

Matt just pointed out that 68th Street ends at the 500 block. That puts our friends right in the middle of the East River.

Interesting fact: The highest opening play in Scrabble is MUZJIKS for 128 points.

I’ve honestly forgotten much of this valuable information. But seriously, soak it in. A good refresher. From 1979:

How many changes to Wikipedia, at the least, have been traced to the CIA since June, 2004? 310.

What is the estimated annual revenue of panhandlers in the Las Vegas Metropolotian area? $24,000,000.

How many of the world’s five most valuable companies in 2006 were Chinese? None. How many in 2007? Three.

Approximately how much do Americans lose each year by not redeeming gift cards? $8,000,000,000.

Source: Mike Harper

The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”

“Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.

Almonds are members of the peach family.

The symbol on the “pound” key (#) is called an octothorpe.

The dot over the letter ‘i’ is called a tittle.

Ingrown toenails are hereditary.

The word “set” has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

“Underground” is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters “und.”

There are only four words in the English language which end in”-dous” tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.

The longest place-name still in use is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronuku-
pokaiwenuakitanatahu, a New Zealand hill.

Los Angeles’s full name is “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula” and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, “L.A.”

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

In most advertisments, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

Alfred Hitchcock didn’t have a belly button.It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.

Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.

Donald Duck’s middle name is Fauntleroy.

Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.

Steely Dan got their name from a sexual device depicted in the book ‘The Naked Lunch’.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

The Ramses brand condom is named after the great phaoroh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.

There is a seven letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, “therein” the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.

Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

John Larroquette of “Night Court” and “The John Larroquette Show” was the narrator of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra’s “Its A Wonderful Life”

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of it’s mouth.Then the frog uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach’s contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.

Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.

The male gypsy moth can “smell” the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away.

The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.

The name for Oz in the “Wizard of Oz” was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence “Oz.”

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

‘Stewardesses’ is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.

To “testify” was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.

The combination “ough” can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all “A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.”

The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning “containing arsenic.”

Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

The word “Checkmate” in chess comes from the Persian phrase “Shah Mat,” which means “the king is dead”.

The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of lore when the engines were pulled by horses.The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.

Here’s a comprehensive list of phobias, some real, some probably not.

Turns out I’m not the only one who suffers from arachibutyrophobia, also known as the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.

Mathematics tells us that there are over two trillion methods of feeding a lace through six pairs of eyelets on an average shoe. Here are 33 of ‘em.

How well do you know the United States? Take the quiz.

I scored 80%. A solid B student in U.S. History, I guess. I feel really embarrassed about the Susan B. Anthony one. English and Math were always my better subjects.

My answers below: =continued=