May11

Ponder
Points

So when you think
it’s hot…you call it the ‘dog days of summer’ why? Blame it
on the Romans because they thought the hottest days of the summer
were caused by a star called Sirius, otherwise known as the Dog
Star.

For some reason
I’d always thought they were longer. The average length of the
human intestine is 29 feet.

Took 29 hours to
get from New York to Chicago in 1873.

While I’ve got
your attention on the number 29, that’s the Finnish term for a
hangover. Guess you’d say …”I can’t talk now, I’ve got a
29?” Or maybe it’s just pronounced twenty-nine?

Don’t try this at
home. An ancient cure for whopping cough advised that if you’d
pass a child under the belly of donkey three times, they would get
well in a week.

Weird…in 1995 a
lady in France was arrested after stabbing her new husband with the
knife they used to cut the wedding cake……don’t guess they went
off on a honeymoon.

If you thought the
United sates had had just 2 capitals…. Philadelphia and Washington
D.C., you’d be shy by 7. The others were: Baltimore Maryland,
Lancaster and York Pennsylvania. Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey
and then Annapolis, Maryland.

It’s said that
the volume of water on the earth is the same as it was 3 billion
years ago.

This is kind of
neat…in 1898, Spain declared war on the United States
(Spanish-American War) …the United States responded, but backdated
the resolution by 3 days so it would look as if we entered the war
first.

That pet parrot
belonging to your Aunt Hilda has the ability to exert 350 pounds of
pressure per square inch with its beak. Don’t be sticking your
fingers into that cage.

Couple of facts
about China: lots of Chinese committed suicide by eating at least a
pound of salt.

At Chinese
funerals, one never let their shadow fall inside the coffin of the
deceased, lest it might get trapped inside with the dead person.

Voltaire’s body
was stolen from its tomb in the 1800’s. Wasn’t discovered until
1864. At last report it has never been found. Police have no idea of
who took it or why.

Ok, here we are…a
few weeks ago, I wrote that the fastest an object travels, the
larger it becomes. One of you kind people wrote me and said they
believed I was incorrect….Well, after further study I found that
“an object traveling at the speed of light would SHRINK in
size…..but would increase in WEIGHT”….thus the faster an
object traveled the smaller but heavier it would become. I hope I
finally got this right.

Final point about
the Orient…..the rickshaw was invented by an American named
Jonathan Scobie about 1869. Seems he and his wife were missionaries
in Japan. Jonathan needed some mode of transportation to move his
wife since she was an invalid. Everyone liked it and it soon became
the most popular form of transportation.

You ask…”Are
termites good for anything?” Yes, they are helpful in clearing
forests of fallen timber and rotted wood…..

The last words of
Beethoven are reported to have been…”I shall hear in Heaven.”

Harry Truman’s
middle name was S. No period, just an S. This is not
working….Harry S Truman was correct, not Harry S. Truman. There
that’s correct.

There isn’t any
evidence that pirates ever made anyone actually walk the plank. If
they wanted to get rid of some crewmember for one reason or another,
they’d just throw that person overboard.

So what to do if a
bee stings you? Well, remove the stinger by raking your fingernail
across it in a sideways motion…..do not pinch the area.

Every minute the
world’s population increases by 140 people. 
That’s a net of 140, since 240 are born each minute and 100
die each minute.

Girls born in 1998
can expect to live on the average of 79.4 years……boys can only
look forward to an average of 73.9 years…….

After finding the
info above I looked up the life expectancy for someone in America
born in 1900. A female was expected to live 48.3 years and a male
46.3.

In 1873, it was
impolite to stop and talk with any woman wearing a veil. It was
generally taken as a sign that she did not wish to be recognized.
You were encouraged to treat her as a stranger.

The fictional
detective, Sherlock Holmes was awarded an honorary degree in
criminology.

Only about 1 in
every 1,000 frogs lives to the age of 6 years……

However, the
freshwater mussel can live to be 90 years old.

If you could unwind
the DNA of a single human cell, it would be over 6.6 feet in length.

Although men
colored their hair more than women over 3 thousand years ago, the
trend started to change in the 60’s when safer hair coloring
products came out on the market. Prior to that time, only 7% of
women colored their hair. Today, over 75% do so. The change came
about as a result of creative marketing that made the practice more
acceptable.

The United States
Post Office has only taken in more money than it has spent in 13
years since it was formed in the year 1851. No wonder stamps keep
costing us more……

The principal
ingredients of both bricks and glass are the same….sand….just
plain old sand….

Hinkley, Ohio is
the place to go if you want to celebrate the return of the buzzard
or turkey vulture in March of every year.

I’ll bet you knew
that one 75-watt bulb gives off more light than three 25-watt bulbs.
If you didn’t, now you do.

The Duke of
Buckingham built Buckingham Palace in 1703. It became the residence
of British royalty in 1837.

About 2800 B.C.,
folks didn’t use soap when they took a bath. They used olive oil
and sand and then scraped the mixture off with a tool called a
strigil. The Romans took baths, but added oils to the water, not
soap. About 2000 B.C. soap was used for the healing of wounds not
cleaning.

Pizza was invented
in 1889 when the Queen visited Naples. A restaurant owner prepared
the dish using the colors of the Italian flag….tomatoes for the
red, mozzarella cheese for the white and basil for the green. You
probably didn’t know that the Spanish thought tomatoes were poison
until the middle of the 18^th century.

One out of every 5
doctors in the world is Russians.

Things you always
wanted to know……belly button lint…where does it come from?
Glad you asked. Comes from fuzz from your tee shirts and your
underwear. Sweat causes it to stick to your belly button. If you
stop wearing underwear or sweating, then you’d eliminate the
problem. Not a good choice is it?

There are usually
about 600,000 earthquakes each year that measure under 2.0 on the
Richter scale. Too small to be noticed.

The first Cadillac
cost less than the first Ford when it came out in 1903.

Bet you can’t
find a uniform for a mailman or a train conductor before the Civil
War. Know why? Weren’t any. They refused to wear them since they
felt they were a symbol of servitude like household staff in Europe.

According to
Einstein, one pound of anything if it was converted into energy
would produce 11,400 million kilowatt hours of energy.

Bees need to think
about what I just said above…..to make 1 pound of honey…they
must collect nectar from over 2 million flowers.

The oldest city in
the United States is …(drum roll, please) ..St. Augustine in
Florida, founded in 1565.

Everyone should be
able to figure this one out…what state in the United States
adopted a Broadway musical number as their state song? Come on, you
knew it was “Oklahoma….”

If you want to see
Halley’s comet…you’ll have to wait until 2061. I probably
won’t be there.

To drill an oil
well five miles deep, you just about have to drill seven days a week
for nearly 500 days.

We know that
‘throwing in the towel or throwing in the sponge’ means someone
quit or admitted defeat. Where did it come from?…..Boxing. Used to
be when the boxer’s aides wanted to show that they were through,
they’d throw the sponge or towel into the ring as a signal to stop
the fight.

    ©
Copyright 1998 – 2001 Peary Perry All Rights Reserved