April20

    

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Ponder
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Just so you’ll
know…….next time you hear the Star Spangled Banner…..listen
close and see if you hear the following words….United States or
America…would you be surprised to know that they aren’t
mentioned in the lyrics?

Also, you might
want to know that this song wasn’t adopted as the National Anthem
until authorized by Congress in 1931…..that’s some 117 years
after it was written.

I’ve always tried
to capture those moths that fly around in the house…..thought they
were the cause of holes being eaten in my sweaters…..now I find
that these can’t do any harm and the holes are actually caused by
the caterpillar from the moth eggs, not the moth. Well, get rid of
the moth and you get rid of the caterpillar don’t you?

You knew that even
though beavers always lived close to rivers, streams and other
bodies of water, they never eat fish.


Most folks think
that they are safer being at home than anywhere else. Wrong.
Insurance statistics show that more accidents happen in the home
each year than any other location.


Well, here’s one
for you……The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4th,
1776, right? So what was the name of our country at that time? The
United States of America? Wrong. It was the United Colonies of
America. Didn’t get changed to the United States of America until
September 9th of 1776.


Besides Ronald
Reagan, has any other White House occupants acted in a motion
picture? Yep, Nancy Reagan played in several movies under the name
of Nancy Davis and Pat Nixon had small parts in several movies. Her
first full-length movie was called Becky Sharp, released in 1935. 

I love this….the
phrase…”To get one’s goat…” where did it come from? Well,
from horse racing of all places. Often times a goat is placed in a
stall with a nervous horse to calm the horse down. If the goat gets
stolen by a rival owner (to get one’s goat) than the horse gets
more excited and nervous and becomes less of a threat.


So, you’re lying
in bed in your cabin on a cruise. You begin to wonder why portholes
are round. The reason? Well,  the
roundness tends to distribute the stress of the boat as it rises and
falls on its journey. If there were angles at the corners, they
would tend to crack under the constant pull and push of the stress.

Speaking of
ships….ever wonder why ships are referred to as a ‘she’? Well
remember those old wooden ships that had the figureheads carved on
the front. Those were for protection and good luck. They were
usually females or goddesses, thus the ships became feminine in
gender.


In tennis, why do
we call zero scores ..’love’? Comes from France. Tennis first
became very popular over there and a zero on the scoreboard looked
like an egg. Egg in French is l’ouef…but we Americans can’t
pronounce this as well as ‘love’. So now you know. 

I think I wrote
about the number of ridges on our coins. What I forgot to tell you
was why they were there in the first place. Seems it used to be
common to shave off part of the coins and sell the shavings. This
caused merchants to have to weigh coins before accepting them for
sales.  The ridges
allowed merchants to easily identify those coins, which had been
tampered with. Pennies and nickels didn’t have ridges since they
weren’t worth shaving.

Central Park opened
to the public in October of 1858.


So, where is the
Papal Bull and who feeds him? Well, for one, it isn’t an animal. A
bull is an edict issued from the pope. The bull comes from the word
‘bulla’ which means the seal that was placed on these documents.

Lungfish….ever
heard of one? Nope, neither have I. What makes this fish so
different is the fact that it can live out of water is some sort of
suspended animation for up to three years.


“Mary had a
little lamb” and Thanksgiving……so what did they have in
common? Well, the lady that wrote the song, in 1830 was named Sarah
Hale. In addition to being a very successful magazine editor and
writing this famous song, she also campaigned to make Thanksgiving a
holiday.


Could you die from
too much caffeine? Sources say only if you drank about 100 cups over
a time period of 4 or 5 hours. You’d have to be pretty stupid to
do this as well as pretty nervous.


Sharks must keep
swimming to stay alive. They have to travel at a constant speed of
about 2.2 miles per hour to keep enough water through their gills to
provide them with enough oxygen. If you drag a shark backwards, it
will die. Here again, you’d have to be pretty stupid to do this as
well.


Put on a happy
face….takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 to frown….if you want
more exercise, than you know what you have to do……


You’d have better
luck putting flypaper in the center of the room instead of the
corners. Flies don’t like corners.


Back when Queen
Elizabeth was alive…the first one, not the one living
today….spoons were a big deal. You took your own with you when you
went to a banquet.

So where does the
saying…”Bought the farm” come from? It’s thought that the
dream of a lot of soldiers was to return home and …’buy a
farm’ when they got out of the service. So, when they died, it was
said that they had ..’bought the farm’…..meaning they had
finally obtained their reward and gone to a quieter and more
peaceful place.


That Rx sign on the
front of drug stores comes from the Latin verb meaning ..’recipe
to take.’


While I’m telling
you things…listen to this…the four H’s for the Four H
club…stand for head, heart, hands and health.


In 1949, the German
Volkswagen was introduced for sale here in the States. Only 2 were
sold that year. Guess everyone was still mad.


That statue …the
Thinker by Auguste Rodin….is a statue of the likeness of Dante,
the poet. It wasn’t supposed to be thought of as a man in deep
thought.


Thomas Alva Edison,
the inventor of many things, also invented the electric pen. Just
what is an electric pen anyway?


The theory of
relativity tells us that as the speed of an object increases, the
mass of that object increases as well. Lab tests have proven that
objects that have been accelerated to about 86% of the speed of
light have doubled in weight. The theory could be expanded to say
that an object could eventually go so fast that it would fill the
entire universe. This is still unproven…..as you know….


My weight seems to
get higher the faster I run…maybe I should slow down.


The distance
between San Francisco and Cleveland is about 2,160 miles. If we took
the moon and sat it on the earth, it’d fit just fine in that
space.


How’s this for
different? The National research Council of Canada recently
developed a cannon that can fire 4-8 pound chickens at speeds up to
620 miles per hour. This device is used to test airplane windshields
and other parts of aircraft that are subject to being struck by
flying birds. Test officials also say the cannon will handle
synthetic chickens as well.


Speaking of unusual
cannonballs…..in the war between Brazil and Uruguay in the
1800’s a Uruguayan ship ran out of cannonballs. The captain of the
ship, one Captain Coe loaded the cannons with hard round Dutch
cheeses. The cheeses missed their mark the first few times finally
hit the mainmast and shattered into thousands of pieces. The cheese
shrapnel killed two Brazilian seamen. The captain of the Brazilian
ship gave up.


Phobias you don’t
hear too much about:

           
Amaxophobia- the fear of
riding in a vehicle

           
Skokophobia- the fear of
spies

           
Triakaideaphobia- the fear
of the number thirteen.

The first almanac
is thought to have been written about 1200 BC. Besides the usual
stuff about astrology and the weather..It’s advice for the day
was…”Do nothing at all this day.”


Jack Nicklas the
great golfer, won’t go to a tournament without having three
pennies in his pocket. He always marks his ball with his marker
tails up. Thinks these little things bring him good luck…..


Speaking of famous
people…W.C. Fields…..was alleged to have looking through the
Bible while he was on his deathbed in 1949. It was said that he told
visitors…”I’m looking for a loophole…”


Sending flowers
might not get you the kind of praise you’re looking for…..Basil
means hatred. Yellow roses suggest infidelity and carnations mean
you are disdainful of someone.


Next time you’re
looking for an unusual museum to visit…you could try the Byrd
Antarctic Dog Museum. It’s located in Wonalalcet, New Hampshire.
Dedicated to the memory of dogs that helped explorers through
Antarctica.




The year 1841 was
special in the history of our country for something very
unusual…what was it? Well, it’s the only year that we had three
men sitting as President of the United States. Martin Van Buren was
in office until he was voted out in March of that year. Henry
Harrison became President, but died a short while after his
inauguration due to pneumonia. John Tyler succeeded him after his
death.


Louis the XIV was
said to have taken only three, that’s three baths in his entire
life. Whew.


The Red Sea…is it
really red and why? Yep, afraid so, gets it name from the large
amounts of red seaweed that is found floating on it all times of the
year.


Benjamin Franklin
started a fad in Europe after he published instructions on how
ladies should wear lightning rods on their hats. Seems he wrote
these in his ‘Poor Richards Improved’ almanac in 1753. Oh, yes,
and the women were advised to trail a grounding wire behind them as
they walked.


That old Persian
rug your Aunt Nell gave you….well, send it too me if you don’t
want it. Seems some of them may have as many as 1 million knots for
every 3 square feet. Can last up to 500 years or more.