May17

Ponder
Points

In the old days the
butterfly was known as the ‘flutterby’ …makes more sense to me
..How about you?

Those brushes that
artists use called camel-hair brushes….reported to me that they
aren’t made out of camels hair at all…invented by some guy whose
last name was Camel.

Crystals…you know
those that grow……well, they are thought to be the closest
‘live’ things in the mineral kingdom….

When George
Washington died, British naval ships fired 20 gun salutes in honor
of their former adversary.

For ½ of the
population of the entire world…..rice makes up the majority of
their diet.

One of the
world’s first attempts to fly was in 1020 when a monk named Oliver
of Malmesbury made himself a pair of wings and jumped off the tower
of a local abbey. He lived, but broke both legs…..

Everyone thought
Napoleon was short….actually he was 5’6” or so…this was very
average for the time….looked like he was short since he ran around
with a bunch of really tall guys….

The elf owl is the
most abundant owl in Arizona…..now you know….

Auguste Rodin, the
great sculptors froze to death in 1917. He had asked the French
government for permission to sleep in one of the museums but was
rejected. Oddly enough the statues that he donated were kept warm,
but Rodin wasn’t. He died in the winter of frostbite.

No such thing as
catgut being used for musical instrument strings….they use sheep
guts for this….things got screwed up since the Latin name for a
guitar is cithara….the word for these strings are
‘kit-gut’…you can see what happened and how we ended up
getting it wrong…

In the early part
of the nineteenth century the Kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa had
an army of women that numbered over 2,000. They did all right until
1892 when they took on the French Army. They lost.

Horse racing was
outlawed in the United States during World War 2 as being
nonessential to the war effort.

You knew that the
Everglades in Florida is the only subtropical wilderness in the
United States, didn’t you? Covers over 5,000 square miles. Home to
panthers, crocodiles and lots of rare exotic birds.

Elvis made
thirty-three movies…..funny I can’t remember any of them.

Speaking of the
number 33…that’s the number of pounds of rabbit meat eaten by
each person in Naples, Italy. Maybe they call it McBunny or
something?

So, which was
invented first…rockets or eyeglasses? If you said rockets you’d
be right…They came out of China about 1100 or so…glasses came
out of Europe a couple of hundred years later.

If you were looking
for the Capital of Portugal in about 1810….wouldn’t do you any
good to look in Portugal itself…the capital had been moved to Rio
de Janeiro in Brazil. The royal family moved there to escape
Napoleon…Rio was the capital from 1807 until 1821.

Speaking of strange
things with cities and whatnot…you knew that Atlanta was
originally called Marthasville. Marthasville Braves doesn’t
exactly roll off of the tongue does it?

Don’t laugh,
Miami started off as Fort Dallas.

Food stuff…the
reason stuffed eggs are called ‘deviled eggs’ is due to the fact
that when they first became popular they were covered in black
pepper, thus everyone thought they were hot as the fire in hell.

My mom told me to
always cover my head during the winter…was she right? Yep, you
lose about ½ to 3/4^th of your body heat when you go
hatless on cold days.

So what was Irving
Berlins first published song? He wrote “Marie from Sunny Italy”
and published it in 1907. I missed that one. By the way, his real
name was Isidore Baline.

It’s estimated
that there are now about 1.5 million species of plants and animals
living on our planet.

Don’t eat potato
eyes….seems they have a thing inside called glycoalkaloids that
can harm you if you eat too many of them. Potatoes, by the way, are
a member of the nightshade family….yes, the skin does contain
essential fiber and minerals and is good for you.

John Phillip Sousa wrote the “Washington Post March” …named it
for the newspaper called…yep, the Washington Post.

You wouldn’t be
walking around a lot if you were at the bottom of the Mariana
Trench…the pressure on you at that deep is about 11,000 tons for
each square meter. That’s about 36,000 feet below sea level.

A supercilious
person is an ….arrogant person…..comes from the Latin word for
eyebrow..since raising the eyebrow indicates someone who is haughty.

The adult human has
about 650 muscles, 100 joints and 206 bones.

Oh, yes and about
60,000 miles of blood vessels……

We eat more
herrings than any other type of fish…..has about the same amount
of protein as a steak.

Speaking of
fish….ever wonder why we get a slice of lemon with that fish?
Well, it wasn’t to flavor the fish; it was used as a safety
measure…was once thought that if you swallowed a fish bone the
lemon juice would dissolve it.

Almost half of the
world’s population of pigs can be found in China.

Volcano erupted in
Martinique in 1902. Killed over 30,000 residents….only 1 person
escaped …reason why? He was in jail…the thick walls saved him.

In 1977 the
diplomats to the United Nations got 250,000 parking tickets issued
to them by the New York City Police. The ambassador from Guinea
managed to get the most…..he racked up 526.

 Those floats
you see at the Rose Bowl? Well, they use up anywhere from 30,000 to
150,000 flowers and generally take anywhere from 700 to 900 hours to
build one. The parade started in 1890 to show off the flowers and
other blooming plants in the area. The first band was introduced in
1891. Used to be called the Tournament of Roses….now it’s known
as the Rose Parade.

 Washington
D.C. is only 3,675 from the North Pole.

Beer cans didn’t
come out until 1935….beer on the other hand has been around since
about 6,000 B.C. The Greeks used to think that drinking beer caused
leprosy. It didn’t.

So how come a
grapefruit got its name? Not anything like a grape? Well, it’s
just because the fruit hangs down in clusters like grapes. A really
good tree can produce as much as 1,490 pounds of fruit each year.

About ½ of the
population of this country will visit a zoo within the next 24
months. There are about 1,000 zoos worldwide that can be accounted
for as they belong to various organizations.

St. John the Divine
in New York is the world’s largest Gothic cathedral in the world.

At various times
the Coliseum in Rome was filled with water and naval battles were
staged there. These included ships of all sorts with the crews
fighting to the death. This is before television.

 In the
Chinese language, the symbol for trouble represents 2 women living
in the same house. I just write what I read, so don’t get mad at
me. 

Shakespeare’s
play…”The Twelfth Night” was originally called …”What You
Will.”

 Along those
same lines…Emily Dickinson wrote over 900 poems, of which only 4
were actually published while she was alive.

 The longest
recorded attack of hiccups lasted 65 years.

 Cataract
operations were performed in India starting in 1000 BC. If the
surgeon made a mistake and blinded a nobleman, one of his hands was
cut off. If he blinded a slave, he had to pay to replace him.

 Costa Rica, a
country of over 2,000,000 people does not have an army.

 I never heard
this before…Columbus visited England in 1477 and Iceland in 1480.

 Honey has
been known to be used as the center for golf balls as well as for
antifreeze.

    ©
Copyright 1998 – 2001 Peary Perry All Rights Reserved