Trivia Today

[historylover]

Habits are safer than rules; you don't have to watch them. And you don't have to keep them, either. They keep you: Frank Hall Crane.

RANDOM TIDBITS

On May 15, 1950, Coca Cola became the first product ever to
appear on the cover of Time Magazine. This issue also
featured an in-depth article about the Coca Cola Company.

***

First sold in 1885 at Morrison's Old Corner Drug Store in
Waco, Texas, Dr Pepper is the oldest soft drink in America.
It was soon followed by Coca-Cola (1886), Pepsi-Cola (1898),
IBC Root Beer (1919), 7-UP (1929), Sprite (1961), and
countless other soft drinks that have long since disappeared
from the shelves.

***

IBC Root Beer was developed in 1919 by the Independent
Breweries Company in St. Louis as an alternative to
alcoholic beverages during prohibition.

***

When C.L. Grigg first introduced 7-UP to the world in 1929,
he called it "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda." He soon
changed the name to the much easier to pronounce "7-UP."

***

Born in the hills of Tennessee in the 1940s, Mountain Dew
was originally invented by two brothers, Barney and Ally
Hartman, for use as a mixer with whiskey. Mountain Dew is
actually slang for "moonshine," and some of the early
bottles were even adorned with sketches of a character
called Willy the Hillbilly.

***

When Caleb Bradham first created his own carbonated soft
drink to serve fountain customers at his drugstore, he
called the concoction "Brad's Drink." On August 28, 1898,
Bradham renamed his invention "Pepsi-Cola."

 

[gunslingingbird]

When C.L. Grigg first introduced 7-UP to the world in 1929,
he called it "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda." He soon
changed the name to the much easier to pronounce "7-UP."

7-Up was so named after the number of ingredients in the formula, and the direction in which the bubbles went.

Born in the hills of Tennessee in the 1940s, Mountain Dew
was originally invented by two brothers, Barney and Ally
Hartman, for use as a mixer with whiskey. Mountain Dew is
actually slang for "moonshine," and some of the early
bottles were even adorned with sketches of a character
called Willy the Hillbilly.

I knew moonshine had to be involved with Mountain Dew! That's probably the only way that stuff's actually drinkable. ukey:

 

[historylover]

Cereal is universally appealing. It speaks to the sense of joy and freedom and happiness and indulgence that people feel: David Roth.

RANDOM TIDBITS

In 1941, General Mills introduced Cheerioats as "The
breakfast food you've always wanted." Four years later,
the name was changed to Cheerios.

***

Cap'n Crunch's full name is Horatio Q. Crunch. The character
was invented in 1963, before the cereal was created. Cap'n
Crunch was made in response to a survey of kids who said
they hated soggy cereal. Cap'n Crunch is the No. 1 pre-
sweetened kids cereal in the U.S.

***

Life cereal hit the market in 1961. The famous "Let Mikey
try it" commercial aired from 1972 through '84. It was the
longest-running commercial in television history.

***

Quisp, the saucer-shaped corn cereal, was launched in 1965.
It was reintroduced in 1999 to appeal to the baby boomers
who ate it as kids.

***

In 1937, Wheaties held a contest for most popular baseball
announcer. Ronald Reagan won the contest and a trip to
California. While there, he was asked to do a screen test
for Warner Bros., which kicked off his movie career.

***

Kellogg's Corn Flakes were accidentally invented in 1894 by
Will Keith Kellogg. A Seventh-day Adventist and a vegetarian,
Kellogg was looking for a way to improve the diets of
vegetarian hospital patients. He dried softened wheat and
it turned into thin flakes.

 

[historylover]

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket: Charles Peguy.

RANDOM TIDBITS - Phrase origins

Make no bones about it - A form of this expression was used
as early as 1459, to mean to have no difficulty. It seems
evident that the allusion is to the actual occurrence of
bones in stews or soup. Soup without bones would offer no
difficulty, and accordingly one would have no hesitation
in swallowing soup with no bones.

***

To throw in the towel/sponge - In its original form, to
throw up the sponge, this appears in "The Slang Dictionary"
(1860). The reference is to the sponges used to cleanse
combatants' faces at prize fights. One contestant's manager
throwing in the sponge would signal that as that side had
had enough the sponge was no longer required. In recent
years, towels have been substituted for sponges at fights,
and consequently in the expression too.

***

Fly off the handle - Refers to axe heads, which, in the
days before mass merchandising, were sometimes fastened
poorly to their handles. If one flew off while being used,
it was a dangerous situation ... with unpredictable results.

***

Pull the wool over someone's eyes - Goes back to the days
when all gentlemen wore powdered wigs like the ones still
worn by the judges in British courts. The word wool was
then a popular, joking term for hair ... The expression
'pull the wool over his eyes' came from the practice of
tilting a man's wig over his eyes, so he couldn't see what
was going on.

***

Pay through the nose - Comes from the ninth-century Ireland.
When the Danes conquered the Irish, they imposed an
exorbitant Nose Tax on the island's inhabitants. They took
a census (by counting noses) and levied oppressive sums on
their victims, forcing them to pay by threatening to have
their noses actually slit.

***

Caught red-handed - For hundreds of years, stealing and
butchering another person's livestock was a common crime.
But it was hard to prove unless the thief was caught with
a dead animal ... and blood on his hands.

 

[historylover]

Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater: Roman Polanski.

RANDOM TIDBITS

Lon Chaney's great skill as a silent film actor came about
as a result of his upbringing. Both of his parents were
deaf-mutes, so he learned to communicate by expressive
pantomime.

***

Hollywood director Steven Spielberg played a cameo role as
the clerk who receives Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi's money
at the end of the Blues Brothers.

***

Max Von Sydow plays Jesus Christ in 'The Greatest Story
Ever Told' and Satan in 'Needful Things', the only actor to
play both parts.

***

Ed Koch, the Mayor of New York in 1984, played himself in
the film, The Muppets Take Manhattan.

***

Ronald Reagan was the only president to have ever worn a
NAZI uniform. (Of course. he wore it as an actor in a
movie)!

***

Both actors that have played 'Mr. Rourke' on the 'Fantasy
Island' television programs have also played a villain on
'Star Trek'.

 

[historylover]

A president's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right: Lyndon B. Johnson.

RANDOM TIDBITS - The United States Secret Service

The Secret Service Division was created on July 5, 1865 in
Washington, D.C., to suppress counterfeit currency. Chief
William P. Wood was sworn in by Secretary of the Treasury
Hugh McCulloch.

***

In 1867, Secret Service responsibilities were broadened to
include "detecting persons perpetrating frauds against the
government." This appropriation resulted in investigations
into the Ku Klux Klan, non-conforming distillers, smugglers,
mail robbers, land frauds, and a number of other infractions
against the federal laws.

***

In 1883, Secret Service was officially acknowledged as a
distinct organization within the Treasury Department.

***

In 1951, Congress enacted legislation that permanently
authorized Secret Service protection of the president, his
immediate family, the president-elect, and the vice
president, if he wishes.

***

In 1968, as a result of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination,
Congress authorized protection of major presidential and
vice presidential candidates and nominees. Congress also
authorized protection of widows of presidents until death,
or remarriage, and their children until age 16.

***

In 2007, protection began for presidential candidate
Illinois Senator Barack Obama in May, the earliest
initiation of Secret Service protection for any candidate
in history. Presidential candidate New York Senator Hillary
Clinton already received protection before she entered the
race due to her status as former first lady.

 

[historylover]

That piece of red, white and blue bunting means five thousand years of struggle upwards. It is the full-grown flower of ages of fighting for liberty. It is the century plant of human hope in bloom: Alvin Owsley.

RANDOM TIDBITS

Flag Day in the United States is celebrated on June 14. It
commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States,
which happened that day by resolution of the Second
Continental Congress in 1777.

***

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that
officially established June 14 as Flag Day; in August 1949,
National Flag Day was established by an Act of Congress.

***

The week of June 14 is designated as "National Flag Week."
During National Flag Week, the president will issue a
proclamation urging U.S. citizens to fly the American flag
for the duration of that week. The flag should also be
displayed on all Government buildings

***

Flag Day is not an official federal holiday, though on June
14, 1937, Pennsylvania became the first (and only) U.S.
state to celebrate Flag Day as a state holiday.

***

Although earlier flags had a British Union Jack or the
motto "Don't Tread on Me," the first flag approved by the
Continental Congress had thirteen stars on a field of blue
and thirteen stripes.

***

It is not known when the flag was first called the "Stars
and Stripes," but the nickname "Old Glory" was applied to
the flag for the first time in 1831 by a sea captain named
William Driver.

 

[historylover]

If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?: Linda Ellerbee.

RANDOM TIDBITS

The earliest known version of the necktie has been found in
the massive mausoleum of China's first emperor, Shih Huang
Ti, who was buried in 210 B.C.

***

Most American and European ties are typically 3 1/4 - 3 1/2
inches in width and standard tie length is 56 inches with
longer ties for taller men measuring 60 inches.

***

The necktie can be traced back to the time of the Thirty
Years' War (1618–1648) when the small, knotted neckerchiefs
worn by Croatian mercenaries attracted the interest of the
Parisians. The garment, which gained the name "Cravat,"
started a fashion craze in Europe where both men and women
wore pieces of fabric around their necks.

***

In 1715, another kind of neckwear, called "stocks" made its
appearance. Stocks were initially just a small piece of
muslin folded into a narrow band wound a few times round
the shirt collar and secured from behind with a pin. It was
fashionable for the men to wear their hair long, past
shoulder length.

***

Ironically several ties have been named after the romantic
poet, Lord Byron, who seldom wore any sort of neck cloth.
The first Byron was a big floppy bow in white, brown or
black appeared in the 1820s. In the 1840s, a Byron was made
of string or narrow ribbon, while after the 1860s it was a
large, often readymade bow.

***

The industrial revolution created a need for neckwear that
was easy to put on, comfortable and would last an entire
workday. The modern necktie, as is still worn by millions
of men today, was born. The English called it the “four in
hand” because the knot resembled the reins of the four
horse carriage used by the British upper class.

 

[historylover]

Any man can be a father but it takes someone special to be a dad: Anne Geddes.

RANDOM TIDBITS

In 1910, Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington,
organized the first Father's Day celebration on June 19,
her own father's birthday. The mayor of Spokane and the
governor of Washington state officially support the event.
Dodd's father, a farmer and Civil War veteran, had been a
single father to six young children after the death of his
wife.

***

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge publicly supported plans
for a national Father's Day. Two years later, the National
Father's Day Committee met for the first time in New York
City.

***

The first presidential proclamation honoring fathers was
issued in 1966 when President Lyndon Johnson designated
the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. Father's Day has
been celebrated annually since 1972 when President Richard
Nixon signed the public law that made it permanent.

***

Father's Day is the fifth most popular card-sending holiday,
with an estimated $100 million in card sales.

***

There were an estimated 159,000 "stay-at-home" dads in 2008.
These are married fathers with children under 15 years old
who have remained out of the labor force for more than one
year primarily so they can care for the family while their
wives work outside the home.

***

There are an estimated 64.3 million fathers across the
nation today!

 

[historylover]

That's something I've noticed about food: whenever there's a crisis if you can get people to eating normally things get better: Madeleine L'Engle.

RANDOM TIDBITS

The Double Truffle Hamburger at DB Bistro Moderne in
Manhattan will cost you a whopping $99. The burger contains
three ounces of rib meat mixed with truffles and foie gras
stuffed inside seven ounces of sirloin steak and served on
a Parmesan and poppy seed bun, with salad and truffle
shavings.

***

The $1,000 Luxury Pizza, a 12-inch thin crust, is the
creation of Nino Selimaj, owner of Nino's Bellissima in
Manhattan. Orders must be placed 24 hours in advance for
this pie covered with six different types of caviar that
need to be specially ordered. The pie is also topped with
lobster, creme fraiche, and chives.

***

At $1,000, the Grand Opulence Sundae at New York's
Serendipity certainly lives up to its name. Made from
Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream covered in 23-karat edible
gold leaf and drizzled with Amedei Porcelana, the world's
most expensive chocolate, this indulgence is studded with
gold dragets and truffles and topped with dessert caviar.

***

At $2,600 per pound, Chocopologie by Knipschildt Chocolatier
of Connecticut is the world's most expensive box of
chocolates. The company also sells a dark chocolate truffle
with a French black truffle inside for $250. These pricey
treats are available on a preorder basis only.

***

The von Essen Platinum club sandwich at the Cliveden House
Hotel near London is the world's most expensive sandwich
at $197. Weighing just over a pound, the sandwich is made
of the finest ingredients, including Iberico ham cured for
30 months, quail eggs, white truffles, semi-dried Italian
tomatoes, and 24-hour fermented sourdough bread.

***


Nicknamed "The Zillion Dollar Lobster Frittata," the world's
most expensive omelette comes stacked with caviar and an
entire lobster encased within its eggy folds - and will set
you back $1,000. The omelette is the creation of chef
Emilio Castillo of Norma's restaurant in New York's Le
Parker Meridien Hotel.

(www.howstuffworks.com)

 

[Born2Jizz]

You sir, are a walking encyclopedia.:bowdown::bowdown::bowdown:





Or you are really good at Copy/Pasting, LOL jk

 

[StanScratch]

Seriously, historylover, this continues to be one of my favorite threads.

 

[historylover]

Seriously, historylover, this continues to be one of my favorite threads.

Every time I get too tired or too busy to post I usually just think of people like you. It's very helpful for me to think, "Fans are out there..."

I repped you in thanks.

---------------------------------------------------

We believe that electricity exists, because the electric company keeps sending us bills for it, but we cannot figure out how it travels inside wires: Dave Barry.

RANDOM TIDBITS

Electricity travels at the speed of light - more than
186,000 miles per second!

***

A spark of static electricity can measure up to three
thousand (3,000) volts. A bolt of lightning can measure up
to three million (3,000,000) volts – and it lasts less than
one second.

***

Electricity always tries to find the easiest path to the
ground. It can be made from wind, water, the sun and even
animal manure.

***

The first power plant – owned by Thomas Edison – opened in
New York City in 1882. One power plant can produce enough
electricity for 180,000 homes.

***

Thomas Edison didn’t invent the first light bulb – but he
did invent one that stayed lit for more than a few seconds.

***

Benjamin Franklin didn’t discover electricity – but he
did prove that lightning is a form of electrical energy.

 

[historylover]

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly: Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller.

RANDOM TIDBITS

Monarch butterflies journey from the Great Lakes to the
Gulf of Mexico, a distance of about 2,000 miles, and
return to the north again in the spring.

***

Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less
than 86 degrees.

***

Many butterflies can taste with their feet to find out
whether the leaf they sit on is good to lay eggs on to be
their caterpillars' food or not.

***

Some moths never eat anything as adults because they don't
have mouths. They must live on the energy they stored as
caterpillars.

***

Butterflies and insects have their skeletons on the outside
of their bodies, called the exoskeleton. This protects the
insect and keeps water inside their bodies so they don’t
dry out.

***

Some Case Moth caterpillars (Psychidae) build a case around
themselves that they always carry with them. It is made of
silk and pieces of plants or soil.

 

[historylover]

The danger of the past was that people became slaves. The danger of the future is that they may become robots: Erich Fromm.

RANDOM TIDBITS

Elektro, the world’s first humanoid robot, debuted in 1939.
Built by Westinghouse, the seven-foot-tall walking machine
“spoke” more than 700 words. Elektro later appeared in the
1960 B movie Sex Kittens Go to College.

***

Robot comes from the Czech word 'robota' which means
'forced work or labor'.

***

The first known case of robot homicide occurred in 1981,
when a robotic arm crushed a Japanese Kawasaki factory
worker.

***

Chris Melhuish of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory created
robots that use bacteria-filled fuel cells to produce
electricity from rotten apples and dead flies. The goal:
robots that forage for their own food- essentially they
wouldn’t need humans to survive.

***

Australian researchers are trying to build a micro robot
that would mimic the swim stroke used by E. coli bacteria.
It would be injected into a patient so it could take a
biopsy from the inside.

***

Winebot, built by Japan’s NEC System Technologies and Mie
University, can ID scads of different wines, cheeses, and
hors d’oeuvres...up to a point. It recently mistook a
reporter’s hand for prosciutto.

 

[historylover]

A kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out the years: Rupert Brooke.

RANDOM TIDBITS

“Kiss” is from the Old English cyssan from the proto-
Germanic kussijanan or kuss, which is probably based on
the sound kissing can make.

***

On July 5-6, 2005 a couple in London locked lips for 31
hours, 30 minutes, and 30 seconds, making it the longest
kiss ever recorded.

***

The Four Vedic Sanskrit texts (1500 B.C.) contain the the
first mention of a kiss in writing.

***

The Romans created three categories of kissing: (1) Osculum,
a kiss on the cheek, (2) Basium, a kiss on the lips, and
(3) Savolium, a deep kiss.

***

Kissing is good for teeth. The anticipation of a kiss
increases the flow of saliva to the mouth, giving the
teeth a plaque-dispersing bath.

***

Kissing may have originated when mothers orally passed
chewed solid food to their infants during weaning. Another
theory suggests kissing evolved from prospective mates
sniffing each others’ pheromones for biological
compatibility.

 

[historylover]

The horse through all its trials has preserved the sweetness of paradise in its blood: Johannes Jensen.

RANDOM TIDBITS

Emerging 60 million years ago, the first horse was called
Eohippus (The Dawn Horse) and was tiny, weighing only 12
pounds and standing just 14 inches high. In contrast to
the modern one-toed horse, the Eohippus had four toes on
its front feet and three on its hind feet.

***

Horses that seem wild today (such as Mustangs) are
actually feral horses, usually descendants of horses that
were imported to America from Spain in the sixteenth
century. The only true wild horse is the Asian Wild Horse.

***

After horses became domesticated around 4000 B.C., many
Indo-European cultures regarded horses as a supreme
sacrifice to their gods and often ritually entombed horses.
People in the Caucasus practiced horse sacrifice as late
as the 1800s.

***

Though most horses live for 25-30 years, the oldest horse
on record is “Old Billy,” who was a barge horse born in
England and lived to the age of 62. The first year of a
horse’s life is roughly comparable to 12 human years.

***

Horses have five highly developed senses: taste, touch,
hearing, smell, and sight. They also have an enigmatic
sixth sense, heightened perception, which is very rare in
humans.

***

The eyes of a horse are larger than most other animals',
and they can move independently, giving the horse a
shallow panoramic vision. Because its lenses are inflexible,
a horse will focus on an image by moving its head to direct
light rays to the central part of the retina. Horses can
also see in color.

 

[historylover]

The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate: Joseph Priestly.

RANDOM TIDBITS

The world's first e-mail message was sent in 1971 by Ray
Tomlinson.

***

Unsolicited email earned the name "spam" because it
resembled a Monty Python skit where a chorus of Vikings
drowned out other sounds by singing "spam, spam, spam."

***

The time spent deleting SPAM costs United States businesses
$21.6 billion annually.

***

Thirty-five billion e-mails are sent each day throughout
the world.

***

During Bill Clinton's entire eight year presidency, he
only sent two e-mails. One was to John Glenn when he was
aboard the space shuttle, and the other was a test of the
e-mail system.

***

Seventy seven percent of Yahoo! Mail poll respondents said
they are more aggravated by weeding through spam than they
are by cleaning a dirty toilet.

 

[historylover]

Cereal is universally appealing. It speaks to the sense of joy and freedom and happiness and indulgence that people feel: David Roth.

RANDOM TIDBITS

In 1941, General Mills introduced Cheerioats as "The
breakfast food you've always wanted." Four years later,
the name was changed to Cheerios.

***

Cap'n Crunch's full name is Horatio Q. Crunch. The character
was invented in 1963, before the cereal was created. Cap'n
Crunch was made in response to a survey of kids who said
they hated soggy cereal. Cap'n Crunch is the No. 1 pre-
sweetened kids cereal in the U.S.

***

Life cereal hit the market in 1961. The famous "Let Mikey
try it" commercial aired from 1972 through '84. It was the
longest-running commercial in television history.

***

Quisp, the saucer-shaped corn cereal, was launched in 1965.
It was reintroduced in 1999 to appeal to the baby boomers
who ate it as kids.

***

In 1937, Wheaties held a contest for most popular baseball
announcer. Ronald Reagan won the contest and a trip to
California. While there, he was asked to do a screen test
for Warner Bros., which kicked off his movie career.

***

Kellogg's Corn Flakes were accidentally invented in 1894 by
Will Keith Kellogg. A Seventh-day Adventist and a vegetarian,
Kellogg was looking for a way to improve the diets of
vegetarian hospital patients. He dried softened wheat and
it turned into thin flakes.

 

[historylover]

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket: Charles Peguy.

RANDOM TIDBITS - Phrase origins

Make no bones about it - A form of this expression was used
as early as 1459, to mean to have no difficulty. It seems
evident that the allusion is to the actual occurrence of
bones in stews or soup. Soup without bones would offer no
difficulty, and accordingly one would have no hesitation
in swallowing soup with no bones.

***

To throw in the towel/sponge - In its original form, to
throw up the sponge, this appears in "The Slang Dictionary"
(1860). The reference is to the sponges used to cleanse
combatants' faces at prize fights. One contestant's manager
throwing in the sponge would signal that as that side had
had enough the sponge was no longer required. In recent
years, towels have been substituted for sponges at fights,
and consequently in the expression too.

***

Fly off the handle - Refers to axe heads, which, in the
days before mass merchandising, were sometimes fastened
poorly to their handles. If one flew off while being used,
it was a dangerous situation ... with unpredictable results.

***

Pull the wool over someone's eyes - Goes back to the days
when all gentlemen wore powdered wigs like the ones still
worn by the judges in British courts. The word wool was
then a popular, joking term for hair ... The expression
'pull the wool over his eyes' came from the practice of
tilting a man's wig over his eyes, so he couldn't see what
was going on.

***

Pay through the nose - Comes from the ninth-century Ireland.
When the Danes conquered the Irish, they imposed an
exorbitant Nose Tax on the island's inhabitants. They took
a census (by counting noses) and levied oppressive sums on
their victims, forcing them to pay by threatening to have
their noses actually slit.

***

Caught red-handed - For hundreds of years, stealing and
butchering another person's livestock was a common crime.
But it was hard to prove unless the thief was caught with
a dead animal ... and blood on his hands.