Soldier’s uniforms if you’ll recall, from your history books or movies, those in use up until the Napoleonic wars were bright and colorful. They changed after this time period with the advent of guns and better firearms. Colors weren’t so important in the days when you were fighting very close to your enemy with a sword. At longer distances, you were easier to identify thus the coming of drab colors for the military.
Along the same line concerning fashion..why are judge’s robes always black’ Well, they weren’t until the death of Queen Mary in 1694. They were changed to black in her honor and weren’t ever changed back to their previous colors.
The US Food and Drug Administration reports that 2 out of every 5 women in this country dye their hair. How did they get this information’ I’ve never had any woman admit this to me.
We just celebrated the holiday called .Festum Stultorium. What you’ve never heard of it’ Why it’s been around since early Roman days. We know it as ‘ April Fools Day.’
Virginia Dare’sounds like some exotic dancer doesn’t she’ Nope, she was the first American born child of English parents in the year 1587. Happened at the Roanoke Island Colony. Nobody knows what happened to those folks. They just disappeared.
When we see clocks in advertisements the hands are generally set at 10:10.or 8:20′ it was thought that this was in honor of the time that Lincoln died, but not true. Lincoln died about 7:30 the morning after he was shot. The hands are set in these positions to allow the name of the manufacture to be seen.
The only President of the United States to ever achieve the position of Eagle Scout’ was (drum roll) ‘ Gerald Ford.surprised surely you know that the toy logs that have amused kids for so many years were named after another president.if you said Lincoln Logs’ you’d be right.
The female reindeer is the only animal that has antlers.
John Hancock was the only member of the Continental Congress to actually sign the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The rest of the signatures came some time later. It wasn’t completely signed until August 2nd of 1776.
Labor day was first observed to mark the unofficial end of summer was first observed in 1894.
Speaking of holidays. When is National Whiners day’ The day after Christmas. Who thought this one up and do we really need it’
When we purchased Louisiana from Napoleon for some 15 million and change. We didn’t have any money to spare. So Jefferson borrowed the loot from bankers in England, Holland as well as France.
Bet you didn’t know that some locusts have lived in the ground as grubs for as long as 15 years before becoming an adult. Then when they do mature, their life span is only a few weeks or so.
Charles Dickens would only sleep in beds that were aligned from north to south. He believed that the magnetic currents of the earth would flow through his body better in this position.
One lighting bolt can generate a temperature of about 30,000 degrees. Compare that to the 6,000 degrees found at the surface of the Sun.
Glenn Morris won the 1936 Decathlon in the Olympics in Berlin. He then went on to play Tarzan in a movie called ‘ Tarzans Revenge’ which was released in 1938. Only film he ever made.
Something I’d never thought about’ only 5% of all species of mammals are monogamous.
The only Galaxy that we can see with our naked eye is Andromeda. It’s about 2 million light years away and contains some 200 billion stars. We can see it best in November.
One Benjamin Banneker had never seen a clock in 1774. He built one from scratch that ran for many years. Banneker was best known for being the surveyor of the District of Columbia.
Canada has the dubious distinction of being the only host country of not winning a Gold medal when the Olympics were held in Montreal in 1976.
The word Sequoia and facetious both are among a handful of words in our language that use all 5 vowels. What other ones can you think of’
The term Making the bed where did it come from’ Well, in ancient Rome the custom was to stuff cloth sacks with straw. The straw was pulled out each morning to dry and then stuffed into the sacks later on. Thus the beds had to be ‘ made.
If you were sitting on the shore of the Miami River, where do you think you’d be’ Well, you wouldn’t be in Miami, Florida since the Miami River flows through Dayton, Ohio of all places.
Since we’ re on facts about places’ what continent has no mold or mildew’ Well, the continent of Antarctica, of course.
If you think you can outsmart your opponent in a game of chess you might want to consider this fact there are 318,979,564,00 possible ways that the first 4 moves can be made. You’d better study hard.
Found some stuff about Presidents that I thought was of interest:
None of our Presidents have been an only child..all had siblings.
Julia Grant, the wife of U.S. Grant was cross-eyed. She wanted to have an operation and get this corrected. He refused since he liked the way she looked.
So, I’ll bet you didn’t know that the Old Chisholm trail (named for Jesse Chisholm) had its busiest year in 1871. More than 700,000 head of cattle were driven from San Antonio, Texas to Abilene, Kansas. Took 5,000 cowboys to get this accomplished.
Makes me wonder how long that many cattle would last in today’s fast food market.
Along those same lines, the latest count on chickens is at 3.5 billion. This makes them the largest breed of domesticated bird in the world.
Something to think about Easter Sunday is calculated to fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon after March 21st. Has something to do with the vernal equinox.
You might recall that Thomas Jefferson was an inventor as well as President. He invented a tool called the moldboard plow in the late 1700’s. Busy fellow that Thomas.
You can draw a line more than 35 miles with the average lead pencil. This same pencil will let you write more than 50,000 words in English. Course you have to sharpen it from time to time.
I’ll bet you didn’t know this.if you had a set of scales and fixed them so that one was in the dark and the other one in the sunlight. The one exposed to the sunlight will slowly sink, as it is ‘ heavier. Pressure from sunlight is calculated as 2 pounds per square mile on the earth’s surface.
You think you’ve got rain problems’ Try living in Calama, which is close to the Atacama Desert in Chile. Never has rained there.
Next time you go outside and you get bite by a mosquito remember this.a mosquito has 47 teeth.
Jobs you may want to check into..there are more professional tea tasters in the world than there are wine tasters. You’d better like tea if you were going to apply.