May4

Ponder
Points

So how did we come
to think of a ‘clue’ as a hint for something? Well, it’s easy
the word clue actually means a ball of yarn…if you remember in the
old fable.. A fellow by the name of Theseus figured out how to
escape from the labyrinth by unraveling a ball of yarn as he went
in.

Besides being a
great poet…Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was also known as having
been the first American to have installed plumbing in his home.

The two smallest
countries in the world at this time are the nations of Monaco and
the Vatican. Both are less than one square mile in area and thus are
smaller than Central park in New York City.

You do realize that
every 15 seconds or so, someone is digging a hole in a road
somewhere in Britain? It bothers me that someone actually keeps
track of this kind of stuff.

The average
American spends 27 minutes a day reading a newspaper.

Those shoes on your
feet…yes, the ones on your left foot and your right foot…well,
until King George IV ordered different shoes for each of his feet,
you could only buy shoes that could be worn on either
foot…..started a trend that is still here.

Don’t ever look
for any photos on the front page of The Wall Street
Journal…..There won’t be any.

Head
on over to Marysville, California if you are inclined to attend
their annual Prune Festival.

In 1984, in the
town of Hunt, Texas a 4-year-old poodle named Leo saved the lives of
his owners. It seems two of the children were out playing when they
stumbled onto a rattlesnake. Leo placed himself between the snake,
received 11 bites to the head.. But survived….

Bet you didn’t
know that actor Michael Douglas once worked at a service station
pumping gas.

If you didn’t
know that then you probably didn’t know that Madonna was fired
from her job at a New York Dunking Donut shop for throwing jam at
one of the customer.

So you got a white
elephant gift from someone…where’d this term come from anyway?
Came from the country of Siam. Seems the old kings over there
figured out a way to punish people that offended them without making
it seem that they were doing so. They’d give the poor soul a rare
albino elephant…it would be a great insult to turn down a gift
from the King. Thus the person committing the offense would be stuck
with a gift he didn’t want or one that he couldn’t afford to
maintain.

The only animal in
the world without any natural enemies is the great white shark.

Forgot to tell you
that Siam, now called Thailand is the only Asian country that has
never been ruled by a European power. Perhaps those elephants had
something to do with it.

I didn’t know the
weasel and the ermine are the same. Seems in the winter when it’s
coat is white, then it’s a ermine….in the summer after it
changes back to brown, then it becomes a weasel ……never heard of
anyone buying a weasel coat have you? 

Never one to let
his handicap get in his way…a fellow named Matthew Buckinger 
(1674-1722) of Nuremberg, Germany was a quadriplegic who made
his living as a juggler. Old Matthew was married several times and
fathered 11 children. He became an excellent musician and was able
to play the flute, bagpipes and trumpet. Supported himself in these
various artistic talents even with his handicaps. 

It was Oscar Wilde
that said…”It’s a very sad thing that nowadays there is so
little useless information.”

Pretty smart people
the Spartans…..when they wanted to send something in code,
they’d write the message on a long strip of paper…..then this
would be wound around a staff of various sizes……the person
receiving the message had a staff of the same exact size. When it
was rolled back onto his staff the message was clear…anyone else
trying this would only read garbage.

The only person
ever to run for President of the United States from prison was
Eugene Debs in 1920. He had been jailed for sedition. Still he
received almost 1,000,000 votes or 3.5 % of the total votes cast.

Things you might
not have noticed…….The Mona Lisa doesn’t have any
eyebrows…..the fashion at that time was to shave them off.

Antarctica is the
only continent that doesn’t have any land above sea level……

Kids toys called
Legos……got that name from the Danish words…leg godt….which
as you know means…’play well’.

Jimmy carter was
the first United States President to have been born in a
hospital…all the others were born at home.

Everyone knows that
Albert Nobel was the inventor of dynamite. You might not know he was
also the inventor of plywood….

Ever notice that
the high sugar cereals are always placed at the eye level of
children? Now you will.

The meaning of the
word …”Mississippi” is …big river…..what else could it be?

Why does Mickey
Mouse only have four fingers?

The blue-green
algae that flamingos eat is what causes their feathers to turn
pink…..

The word hi-jack
comes from a term used during the prohibition…..seems it was
common when a place was being held up for the gunman to yell out
“High, Jack” to indicate that everyone should raise their hands
over their head….

The most widely
sung song in English is …”Happy Birthday to You”. This was
adapted from the song..”Good Morning to You” by Mildred and
Patty Hill. Good for them.

1894 baseball rules
designated that home plate was 60 feet and 6 inches from the edge of
the mat embedded in the pitchers mound. Until then the distance had
been 50 feet.

The flight recorder
on airplanes commonly known as the black box isn’t…it’s orange.

Think about this
next time you light up….the average smoker who smokes a package of
cigarettes a day inhales a ½ cup of tar into their lungs each
year……

While I’m on this
subject….The average smoker…will smoke a average of 10,500
cigarettes a year …the heavy smoker will suck on about 40,000 a
year…..

Cut the head off of
a cockroach and it can still live for several days…..

The expression
…”To fly off the handle” refers to someone who is angry and
chops wood so fast that the handle flies off of his ax. 

Florence
Nightingale, the famous hospital reformer never went anywhere that
she didn’t have a pet owl in her pocket……odd wasn’t it?

In 1903 the New
York Times wrote an article that stated that “time and money spent
in airship experiments are wasted dollars..” This was a week
before the Wright brothers first flight….

In 1864, the
sheriff of Idaho Territory, name of Henry Plummer chased bad guys
during the day…at night he led a group of robbers and
murderers….seems he got away with being the area’s most wanted
man for some time…they eventually caught him and hung him….

Wedding dresses
worn during the American Revolution were red instead of white…In
honor of the war going on at the time.

A horse race over
an obstacle course is called a steeplechase, right? The term came
from England after a group of foxhunters decided to race their
horse. They challenged each other to ride in straight line towards
the steeple on a distant church. Now of course, it just means a race
over an obstacle course.

While we’re on
words….The word sheriff comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word called
shire reeve. This was an official title of a man appointed by the
king to collect taxes and enforce the law.

The Romans often
made statues with heads that could be removed so they could be
replaced with some other notable from time to time.

As you can also
guess, the month of July was named for the Roman, Julius Caesar. The
month of August was named for Augustus Caesar, who else?

The average person
eats and drinks about 2,000 of stuff each year…We might want to
cut down on some of this.

Shakespeare has no
living descendants.

To combat the
plague in the 14^th century, it was thought that if you
let birds fly around the room, they would inhale the poison in the
air and keep the vapors in motion….they also believed that letting
pigs sleep next to you would help cure plague. These did not work.

Take this to the
pump…a car driving 57 miles an hour gets about 2/3 the mileage
from a gallon of gas as does the car driving 50 miles per hour.

Now this is a
point, which makes me wonder how they know? There are more insects
in a square mile of rural land than there are people on this planet.
Who figured this out and who counted them?

    ©
Copyright 1998 – 2001 Peary Perry All Rights Reserved