Famous people who have died by choking:
- Tommy Dorsey, Nov. 26, 1956 (age 51)
- Jimi Hendrix, Sept. 18, 1970 (27)
- Bon Scott, Feb. 19, 1980 (33)
- John Bonham, Sept. 25, 1980 (32)
- Tennessee Williams, Feb. 25, 1983 (71)
A falling person reaches a top speed of around 120 mph. After that, all falls are equally dangerous: If you survive the lack of oxygen, a fall of 10,000 feet won't necessarily hurt you any more than 2,000 feet.
During World War II, at least three airmen survived free falls of around 20,000 feet without a parachute. All three lost consciousness, and two of them landed in deep snow.
In 1972, a Yugoslavian flight attendant fell from 33,330 feet when terrorists blew up her DC-9 over Czechoslovakia. She broke both legs and was paralyzed from the waist down, but only temporarily.
|W|P|112541510138793888|W|P|Free Falling|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comWhen financier Charles Vance Millar died in Toronto in 1926, he willed his fortune to the woman who had the most children in the next 10 years.
And people took him up on it -- in the end, four women tied at nine births apiece. Each got $125,000.
The period is known as "The Great Stork Derby."
|W|P|112369873270820170|W|P|Great Stork Derby|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe White House has:
- Six stories and 55,000 square feet of floor space
- 134 rooms, including 35 bathrooms
- 412 doors and 147 windows
- 28 fireplaces
- Eight staircases
- Three elevators
- A tennis court
- A bowling lane
- A movie theater
- A jogging track
- A swimming pool
Harry Truman called it "the finest prison in the world."
|W|P|112534163601646152|W|P|And 5,000 Visitors Per Day|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Size was no impediment to Martin Van Buren Bates, a quiet schoolteacher who found that his enormous size (7'11") served him better on the battlefields of the Civil War. The "Kentucky Giant" rose quickly from private to captain in the Fifth Kentucky Infantry; Union soldiers told of a "Confederate giant who's as big as five men and fights like 50."
After the war, Bates was touring Canada with a circus when he met Anna Haining Swan, a woman even taller than he was (8'0"), and they married in London, where Queen Victoria gave them two extra-large diamond-studded gold watches as wedding presents.
Their 18-pound child was stillborn, and they ordered an oversize house custom-built in Ohio, with 14-foot ceilings and giant furniture. "To see our guests make use of it," wrote Bates, "recalls most forcibly the good Dean Swift's traveler in the land of Brobdingnag."
The pair toured again, and lost another son, this one 28 inches tall and weighing 22 pounds. "He looked at birth like an ordinary child of six months," Bates wrote. But "with this exception our lot has been one of almost uninterrupted joy."
When Anna died in 1886, Martin sold the house and married a woman of normal stature, with whom he lived peacefully until he died of nephritis in Seville in 1919.
|W|P|112396560977209810|W|P|Gentle Giant|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comRumored whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa's body:
- Buried in northern Michigan
- Buried under the New Jersey Turnpike
- Buried in an abandoned coal mine near Pittston, Pa.
- Buried in Fresh Kills landfill, Staten Island, New York
- Buried under the end zone at Giants Stadium in New Jersey
- Buried in PJP Landfill in Jersey City, underneath the Pulaski Skyway
- Mechanically converted to cement
- Dissolved in an acid tank used to rechrome car bumpers
- Rendered into fat at a rendering plant
His body has never been found, and in 1982 he was declared legally dead.
Ironically, his middle name was Riddle.
|W|P|112510097344717606|W|P|Jimmy Hoffa's Grave|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe scientific name of the moon is "the moon."
|W|P|112510024050537093|W|P|Green Cheese|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
"Flying may not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price." -- Amelia Earhart
|W|P|112388922130926980|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comAbbreviations used in prescriptions:
- a.c. (ante cibum) - before meals
- ad lib. (ad libitum) - use as much as one desires; freely
- alt. h. (alternis horis) - every other hour
- c (cibos) - food
- D.A.W. - dispense as written
- dc, D/C, disc - discontinue
- e.m.p. (ex modo prescripto) - as directed
- ex aq - in water
- h.s. (hora somni) - at bedtime
- L.A.S. - label as such
- N.K.A. - no known allergies
- noct. (nocte) - at night
- NPO, n.p.o. (non per os) - nothing by mouth
- p.c. (post cibum) - after meals
- p.o. (per os) - by mouth or orally
- s.a. (secundum artum) - use your judgement
- sig - write on label
- s.o.s., si op. sit (si opus sit) - if there is a need
Napoleon Bonaparte described medicine as "a collection of uncertain prescriptions the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind."
|W|P|112511008664800822|W|P|Prescription Abbreviations|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comich�thy�ar�chy
n. the domain or rule of fishes
Origins of car company names:
- Cadillac: Named after the founder of Detroit, French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac. Cadillac is a small town in the South of France.
- Daewoo: "Great Universe" in Korean.
- Mercedes: The first name of the daughter of Emil Jellinek, who worked for the early Daimler company around 1900.
- Mitsubishi: "Water chestnut," reflected as a stylized rhombus in the company's logo.
- Pontiac: A Native American Ottawa war leader.
- Subaru: From the Japanese name for the Pleiades (Subaru was formed from a merger of seven other companies).
- Volkswagen: The "people's car."
- Volvo: Latin for "I roll."
Latin proverbs:
- Audi alteram partem � "Hear the other side."
- Credo quia absurdum � "I believe it because it is absurd."
- Errare humanum est; perseverare diabolicum � "To err is human; to repeat error is of the devil."
- Ex nihilo nihil fit � "Nothing comes from nothing."
- Festina lente � "Make haste slowly."
- Gutta cavat lapidem � "Constant dropping wears the stone."
- Mundus vult decipi � "The world wants to be deceived."
- Natura non contristur - "Nature isn't sentimental."
- Quem di diligunt, adulescens moritur � "Whom the gods love dies young."
- Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor � "I see the better way and approve it, but I follow the worse way."
The motto of the Addams Family is Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc -- "We gladly feast on those who would subdue us."
|W|P|112455689984360314|W|P|Latin Proverbs|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
What is this? No one really knows. These servicemen captured it in Laos during the Vietnam War.
Laotians call it a phaya naga and claim it can breathe fireballs. In reality it's probably an enormously overgrown giant mottled eel (Anguilla marmorata).
|W|P|112431090718578075|W|P|Cheese!|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comMore bad poetry, from J.B. Smiley's A Basket of Chips (1888):
The north winds are still and the blizzards at rest,
All in the beautiful spring.
The dear little robins are building their nests,
All in the beautiful spring.
The tramp appears and for lodging begs,
The old hen setteth on turkey eggs,
And the horse has scratches in all four legs,
All in the beautiful spring.
Kalamazoo
On the outskirts are celery marshes
Which only a few years ago
Were as wet as a drugstore in Kansas
And as worthless as marshes could grow,
Well some genius bethought him to drain them
And to add in a short year or two
About eighty-five thousand dollars
To the income of Kalamazoo.
The Michigan Insane Asylum
Is up on the top of the hill,
And some irresponsible crazies
Meander around there at will,
And they frequently talk to a stranger,
And they sometimes escape, it is true,
But the folks are not all of them crazy
Who hail from Kalamazoo.
An actor's "Bacon number" is the number of successive co-stars through whom he can be linked to actor Kevin Bacon (hence the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"). For example, Elvis Presley has a Bacon number of 2: He appeared in Change of Heart (1969) with Edward Asner, who appeared in JFK with Bacon.
Surprisingly, most actors have a Bacon number of only 2 or 3. So far, of all the actors listed in the Internet Movie Database, only one can't be linked at all: Fred Ott, who appeared by himself in two features released in the late 1800s.
Mathematically, Bacon isn't even the most linkable actor—that honor belongs to Rod Steiger. The average Bacon number is 2.955; the average Steiger number is 2.679.
|W|P|112397863615164853|W|P|Bacon's Universe|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
A dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas, April 18, 1935. On Earth these storms are actually relatively minor; on Mars they can last for hundreds of days and cover the entire planet.
|W|P|112383899429549906|W|P|Dust in the Wind|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comAll cultures play games.
|W|P|112509201037292438|W|P|Homo Ludens|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe world's oldest active bank robber was 91-year-old J.L. Hunter, who robbed the First American Bank in Abilene, Texas, of $2,000 in 2003. It was his third robbery in five years.
When asked why he did it, he said he hadn't liked banks since they forced him into bankruptcy.
|W|P|112370622855158480|W|P|J.L. Hunter|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe world's shortest valid will is "Vse zene"—the Czech for "All to wife."
It was written and dated Jan. 19, 1967, by Karl Tausch of Langen, Hessen, West Germany.
|W|P|112370073979452419|W|P|Let's Get This Over With|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comUnless it's a leap year:
- January begins on the same day of the week as October.
- February begins on the same day of the week as March and November.
- April begins on the same day of the week as July.
- December begins with the same day of the week as September.
- No other month begins on the same day of the week as May or June.
This is the world's first successful permanent photograph, "View From the Window at Le Gras," created by Joseph Nic�phore Ni�pce in 1826.
The exposure required eight hours, so the buildings are illuminated from both right and left.
|W|P|112383844144523755|W|P|First Photo|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThis year Mensa accepted a new youngest member. Three-year-old Mikhail Ali of Bramley, Leeds, England, has an IQ of 137; he's one of only 30 members under 10.
But he's not the all-time youngest member -- that's Ben Woods, who was 2 years and 10 months old when he joined in the mid-1990s.
|W|P|112441132608953680|W|P|Smarty-Pants|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIf Wal-Mart were a country, it would have the 33rd largest economy in the world, with a GDP between Ukraine's and Colombia's.
|W|P|112448108257249952|W|P|Size Matters|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Somebody up there hates Siberia.
On June 30, 1908, something huge exploded over the Tunguska River near modern Evenkia. The blast felled 60 million trees over 2,150 square kilometers; it's been estimated at between 10 and 15 megatons. Witnesses described a huge fireball moving across the sky, a flash, and a shockwave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows up to 400 miles away. Afterward, the night sky glowed for weeks.
But, strangely, there was no crater. In fact, a few trees near ground zero were still standing, their branches and bark stripped off. Stranger still, some reports said the skyglow had begun the night before the explosion, and that there had been strange weather and increased seismic activity for days beforehand. And carbon-14 dating of the soil gave a date in the future -- meaning the soil had somehow become enriched with radioactive carbon-14.
What caused the explosion? A meteor? A comet? An asteroid? There's been no conclusive explanation. But, disturbingly, a similar thing happened just three years ago. An explosion in Siberia in September 2002 that measured up to 5 kilotons was accompanied by northern lights, increased radioactivity, and an outbreak of unknown diseases nearby. An expedition the following year concluded that it was a comet, but no one knows for sure.
|W|P|112424433506322245|W|P|Tunguska Redux|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comAdolf Hitler's favorite movie was King Kong.
|W|P|112441608684023441|W|P|The Original, Not the Remake|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe world record for high-speed bicycling keeps going up, of course, but the record for low-speed bicycling has remained unchallenged for 40 years. In 1965, Tsugunobu Mitsuishi of Tokyo, Japan, remained perfectly stationary for 5 hours and 25 minutes.
|W|P|112430704058978662|W|P|No Kickstand|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
"In America sex is an obsession; in other parts of the world it is a fact." -- Marlene Dietrich
|W|P|112383808285436324|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comKim Peek, the basis for Dustin Hoffman's character in the film Rain Man, has memorized 9,600 books.
|W|P|112361809399474361|W|P|Record Reader|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comCritics pan great art:
- Moby Dick: "Raving and rhapsodizing in chapter after chapter ... sheer moonstruck lunacy." (London Morning Chronicle)
- Rigoletto: "The weakest work of Verdi. It lacks melody. This opera has hardly any chance of being kept in the repertoire." (La Gazette Musicale de Paris)
- Cezanne's paintings: "He chooses to daub paint on a canvas and spread it around with a comb or a toothbrush. This process produces landscapes, marines, still lifes, portraits ... if he is lucky. The procedure somewhat recalls the designs that schoolchildren make by squeezing the heads of flies between the folds of a sheet of paper." (Le Petit Parisien)
- Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 1: "The concerto will never be played by anyone on earth. ... Prokofiev wouldn't grant an encore. The Russian heart may be a dark place, but its capacity for mercy is infinite." (The New York Times)
- Buster Keaton's The General: "A mixture of cast iron and jelly." (The New York Times)
- Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo: "Pursues its theme of false identity with such plodding persistence that by the time the climactic cat is let out of the bag, the audience has long since had kittens." (Saturday Review)
Henry Fielding wrote, "Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity then they really are."
|W|P|112424343872686769|W|P|"Gruesomely Bad Taste"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Moscow has the most heavily used metro system in the world, carrying 8-9 million passengers on a normal weekday. It has 170 stations and 12 lines, including an unusual "ring line" that circles the city.
According to legend, this came about when Stalin's coffee cup left a ring on one of the blueprints. Historians dispute this account—but on maps, the ring line is always printed in brown.
|W|P|112383874128005575|W|P|Mass Transit|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFamous tall women:
- Janet Reno - 6'3"
- Venus Williams - 6'1"
- Ann Coulter - 6'
- Geena Davis - 6'
- Allison Janney - 6'
- Elle MacPherson - 6'
- Brooke Shields - 6'
- Uma Thurman - 6'
- Tyra Banks - 5'11"
- Famke Janssen - 5'11"
- Anna Nicole Smith - 5'11"
- Sigourney Weaver - 5'11"
- Naomi Campbell - 5'10"
- Diana, Princess of Wales - 5'10"
- Jenna Elfman - 5'10"
- Daryl Hannah - 5'10"
- Queen Latifah - 5'10"
- Charlize Theron - 5'10"
- Liv Tyler - 5'10"
- Serena Williams - 5'10"
aeg�ro�tat
n. a note excusing a student's sickness
Until 1999, Abe Lincoln was the only person to appear on both the front and back of the same United States coin (he's just barely visible on the back of the penny, sitting in his memorial):
Now George Washington can claim the same honor with the release of New Jersey state quarter, whose reverse shows him crossing the Delaware River:
More than 70 percent of Seinfeld episodes contain a reference to Superman.
|W|P|112415646259840321|W|P|Jerry!|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"I remember Tallulah [Bankhead] telling of going into a public ladies' room and discovering there was no toilet tissue. She looked underneath the booth and said to the lady in the next stall, 'I beg your pardon, do you happen to have any toilet tissue in there?' The lady said no. So Tallulah said, 'Well, then, dahling, do you have two fives for a ten?'"—Ethel Merman
|W|P|111884949317272396|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The United States sees 1 parachuting fatality per 80,000 jumps. "There are old jumpers and there are bold jumpers," says a maxim, "but there are no old, bold jumpers."
|W|P|112383850827826899|W|P|Geronimo!|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe five most expensive items sold on eBay (as of 2002):
- A Grumman Gulfstream II jet (sold for $4.9 million)
- A 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card ($1.65 million)
- Diamond Lake Resort in western Kentucky ($1.2 million)
- Shoeless Joe Jackson's "Black Betsy" baseball bat ($577,610)
- A round of golf with Tiger Woods ($425,000)
An anonymous seller from Brazil once offered a decommissioned aircraft carrier. There were no takers.
|W|P|112310459427736952|W|P|Going Once ...|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe average Fortune 500 CEO is 6 feet tall—3 inches taller than the average American man.
Of the 43 U.S. presidents, only five have been more than an inch below average height.
|W|P|112396769698114397|W|P|Heightism|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The 2004 tsunami arrives in Thailand. Its total energy equaled about 5 megatons of TNT, more than twice the total explosive energy used in all of World War II, including the two atomic bombs.
|W|P|112383788927475332|W|P|Tsunami|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comGeographically extreme McDonald's franchises:
- Northernmost: Rovaniemi, Finland
- Southernmost: Invercargill, New Zealand
- Easternmost: Gisborne, New Zealand
- Westernmost: Western Samoa
The lowest McDonald's, 1,299 feet below sea level, is in the Israeli village of Ein Bokek, near the Dead Sea.
|W|P|112316362759146320|W|P|Nothing at the North Pole|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comMany people consider this the worst poem ever written in the English language—"A Tragedy," by the minor Pre-Raphaelite poet Theophilus Marzials. It was published in 1874, in his collection The Gallery of Pigeons:
|W|P|112309265181150835|W|P|Bravo!|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comDeath!
Plop.The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop.
Above, beneath.From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top.
Plop, plop.
And scudding byThe boatmen call out hoy! and hey!
All is running water and sky,And my head shrieks—"Stop,"
And my heart shrieks—"Die."* * * * *
My thought is running out of my head;
My love is running out of my heart,
My soul runs after, and leaves me as dead,
For my life runs after to catch them—and fled
They all are every one!—and I stand, and start,
At the water that oozes up, plop and plop,
On the barges that flop
And dizzy me dead.
I might reel and drop.Plop.
Dead.And the shrill wind whines in the thin tree-top
Flop, plop.* * * * *
A curse on him.
Ugh! yet I knew—I knew—
If a woman is false can a friend be true?
It was only a lie from beginning to end—My Devil—My "Friend"
I had trusted the whole of my living to!
Ugh; and I knew!
Ugh!
So what do I care,And my head is empty as air—
I can do,
I can dare,
(Plop, plop
The barges flop
Drip drop.)
I can dare! I can dare!And let myself all run away with my head
And stop.Drop.
Dead.
Plop, flop.Plop.
|W|P|That would be fun to say:"drop.
dead.
plop."
A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
"A sense of obligation."
—Stephen Crane
|W|P|112324033416960894|W|P|"A Man Said to the Universe"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comA valid English sentence that ends with five prepositions:
"Mommy, what did you bring the book I didn't want to be read to out of up for?"
|W|P|112387568041921859|W|P|Quintuple Bugbear|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."—J. Paul Getty
|W|P|111878179188102832|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Firefighter John McColgan "just happened to be in the right place at the right time" to take this photo on Aug. 6, 2000, while fighting a 100,000-acre blaze in Montana's Bitterroot National Forest.
He was standing on a bridge over the East Fork of the Bitterroot River, and shot the photo with a Kodak DC280 digital camera.
The elk were gathering at the river, he says. "They know where to go, where their safe zones are. A lot of wildlife did get driven down there to the river. There were some bighorn sheep there. A small deer was standing right underneath me, under the bridge."
|W|P|112383815155784341|W|P|Bitterroot Blaze|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe Tower of London is pretty crowded even when it's empty. Reportedly it's haunted by the ghosts of the following people:
- Thomas Becket
- King Edward V
- Richard, Duke of York
- Anne Boleyn (headless)
- Lady Jane Grey
- Sir Walter Raleigh
There's also a troupe of ghosts who re-enact the execution of Margaret Pole, the Eighth Countess of Salisbury, as well as phantom troops and a lady in mourning who has no face. Sounds like a lively time.
|W|P|112361912298996261|W|P|Boo Again!|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.como�po�ro�po�list
n. a fruit seller
Willie Sutton did not rob banks "because that's where the money is."
He never said that—he credits it to "some enterprising reporter who apparently felt a need to fill out his copy."
Why did he rob banks? "Because I enjoyed it. I loved it. I was more alive when I was inside a bank, robbing it, than at any other time in my life. I enjoyed everything about it so much that one or two weeks later I'd be out looking for the next job. But to me the money was the chips, that's all."
In any case, Sutton certainly knew what he was doing. Between the late 1920s and his final arrest in 1952, he robbed 100 banks of $2 million.
He would bring a gun, but he prided himself on never using it. "You can't rob a bank on charm and personality," he said.
|W|P|112370600435454993|W|P|Willie Sutton|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comOne "smoot" is five feet seven inches, or about 1.7 meters.
It's named for Oliver R. Smoot, an ill-starred MIT pledge whose fraternity brothers rolled him head over heels to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge in October 1958.
The bridge measured "364.4 smoots plus one ear." The markings are repainted each year by the incoming pledge class of Lambda Chi Alpha.
Ironically, Smoot later became chairman of the American National Standards Institute.
|W|P|112345610846831486|W|P|"Halfway to Hell"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comA will, handwritten in a book of kitchen recipes by Margaret Nothe, a Philadelphia housewife, in 1913:
Chili Sauce Without Working
4 quarts of ripe tomatoes
4 small onions
4 green peppers
2 teacups of sugar
2 quarts of cider vinegar
2 ounces ground allspice
2 ounces cloves
2 ounces cinnamon
12 teaspoons saltChop tomatoes, onions and peppers fine, add the rest mixed together and bottle cold. Measure tomatoes when peeled. In case I die before my husband I leave everything to him.
A Pennsylvania probate court found it valid.
|W|P|112370083809912254|W|P|Season to Taste|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Urville is a city of 14 million inhabitants that exists entirely in the mind of Gilles Trehin, a French autistic savant.
Trehin began creating plans at the age of 12, using Lego blocks and model airplanes. Today, at 33, he has drawn extensive maps and landscapes of his creation, as well as inventing a culture and a detailed history going back to the 12th century B.C., when he imagines the city was founded by the Phoenicians.
Today, in Trehin's mind, Urville is the third largest city in the developed world, behind Tokyo and New York, and boasts 87 cinemas, 42 cabarets, 174 public swimming pools and European offices of I.B.M., Sony, Citybank, Olivetti, and Siemens.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge," wrote Albert Einstein. "Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
|W|P|112342190174189371|W|P|Society of Mind|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comA desperate letter from Edgar Allan Poe to his Philadelphia publishers, Aug. 13, 1841:
Gentlemen,—I wish to publish a new collection of my prose Tales with some such title as this—
"The Prose Tales of Edgar A. Poe, Including 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue.' The 'Descent into the Maelstr�m,' and all his later pieces, with a second edition of the 'Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.'"
The "later pieces" will be eight in number, making the entire collection thirty-three—which would occupy two thick novel volumes.
I am anxious that your firm should continue to be my publishers, and, if you would be willing to bring out the book, I should be glad to accept the terms which you allowed me before—that is—you receive all profits, and allow me twenty copies for distribution to friends.
They turned him down in three days flat. A century later, at a 1944 auction, the letter itself fetched $3,000.
|W|P|112319357131356539|W|P|Po' Poe|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comSomething huge is lurking in the South Pacific.
An eerie "bloop" was picked up by a Navy hydrophone around 50�S, 100�W in 1997. It matches the audio profile of a living creature, but it would have to be vastly larger than even a whale, scientists say.
Was it a giant octopus? A kraken? For now, no one knows.
|W|P|112345602355621601|W|P|Bloop|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
"Liver-Eating Johnson" had the coolest nickname in the Old West—cooler, perhaps, than the truth warranted.
The "mountain man" was actually born in New Jersey around 1824. He deserted the Navy after the Mexican-American War and lit out for Wyoming, where he trapped, hunted and supplied cordwood to steamboats.
The legend starts in 1847, when the Crow tribe killed his Indian wife and he launched a personal war that lasted 20 years, in which, supposedly, he would cut out and eat the liver of each man he killed.
Did he really? Who knows? But it made a good story, and Johnson's stature began to grow—literally and figuratively. His Civil War records put him at less than 6 feet tall, but local yarns soon said he was 6 foot 6.
After serving the Union Army as a sharpshooter, he spent the 1880s as a deputy sheriff in Leadville, Colo., and a town marshal in Red Lodge, Mont. He died in 1900.
But a century later the nickname was still working. The 1972 Robert Redford film Jeremiah Johnson was based in part on his life—and Redford even served as one of the pallbearers when Johnson's body was reburied in Cody, Wyo., in 1974.
|W|P|112345591950553625|W|P|What's in a Name?|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com |W|P|Howdy,Johnston's story in Crow Killer is mostly tall tales. He was quite a character. I am putting together the real story this year and next after years of research.
dormannelson@sbcglobal.net
Hangmen have determined that it takes 1,260 foot-pounds to dislocate the human cervical vertebrae. They calculate the necessary drop by simple division: A person weighing 112 pounds (50.8 kg) must fall 11'4" (3.43 m).
|W|P|112320359606832176|W|P|Good to Know|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comMusicians with perfect pitch:
- Julie Andrews
- Mariah Carey
- Nat King Cole
- Bing Crosby
- Jimi Hendrix
- Paul Shaffer
- Frank Sinatra
- Barbra Streisand
- Yanni
In the United States, about 1 person in 10,000 has active absolute pitch.
|W|P|112342172311224294|W|P|La, a Note That Follows Sol|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Yes, that's a real dog, and no, the photo isn't doctored. During World War II the Soviets experimented with "anti-tank dogs," dogs that were trained to run under enemy tanks with explosives strapped to their backs.
Unfortunately, the Soviets trained the dogs by putting food under their own tanks, which led to some Three-Stooges-style hijinks on the battlefield. In 1942, an entire Soviet tank division was chased into retreat by its own dogs. Serves 'em right.
|W|P|112345587935311159|W|P|Arf!|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comA man goes to an exotic tropical island for a vacation.
As his boat nears the island, he notices the constant sound of drumming. As he gets off the boat, he asks one of the natives how long it will go on.
The native looks about nervously and says, "Very bad when the drumming stops."
At the end of the day, the drumming is still going, and it's starting to get on the man's nerves. So he asks another native when the drumming will stop.
The native looks as if he's just been reminded of something very unpleasant. "Very bad when the drumming stops," he says, and hurries off.
After a couple of days with little sleep, the traveler is finally fed up. He grabs the nearest native, slams him up against a tree, and shouts, "What happens when the drumming stops?!!"
The native says, "Bass solo."
|W|P|111835005644896282|W|P|Rimshot|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comRONALD WILSON REAGAN is an anagram of INSANE ANGLO WARLORD.
|W|P|112320376077153367|W|P|Oh|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
"It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I just beat people up."—Muhammad Ali
|W|P|111886747505922155|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comEric II of Denmark styled himself Eric the Memorable.
No one remembers why.
|W|P|112327574749635915|W|P|Next!|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIdentities assumed by Ferdinand Waldo Demara (1921-1982), "The Great Impostor":
- sailor
- civil engineer
- sheriff's deputy
- assistant prison warden
- doctor of applied psychology
- hospital orderly
- lawyer
- child-care expert
- monk (Benedictine and Trappist)
- editor
- cancer researcher
- teacher
- surgeon
- hospital priest
When asked for his motivation, he said, "Rascality, pure rascality."
|W|P|112309934694971430|W|P|Hey, Wait a Minute ...|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Every child who has the use
Of his senses knows a goose.
See them underneath the tree
Gather round the goose-girl's knee,
While she reads them by the hour
From the works of Schopenhauer.
How patiently the geese attend!
But do they really comprehend
What Schopenhauer's driving at?
Oh, not at all; but what of that?
Neither do I; neither does she;
And, for that matter, nor does he.
—Oliver Herford
|W|P|111878773973143166|W|P|"Some Geese"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comExcerpt from a letter sent by serial killer Albert Fish to a victim's mother, November 1934:
On Sunday June the 3 —1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese—strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her.
On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said Yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them.
When all was ready I went to the window and Called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma.
First I stripped her naked. How she did kick—bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body.
The police traced the letter to Fish, and they found Grace's skull buried in his garden.
|W|P|112293964217269149|W|P|"My Dear Mrs. Budd ..."|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comma�ri�tu�ri�ent
adj. eager to marry
BULLSEYE|W|P|Well alrighty then!
The French Romantic poet G�rard de Nerval had a pet lobster, which he would walk through Paris on a blue ribbon.
He said he regarded lobsters as "peaceful, serious creatures who know the secrets of the sea and don't bark."
|W|P|112308629447220466|W|P|Here, Boy!|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comAmerican building designers often skip the number 13 when numbering their floors, because 13 is considered an unlucky number.
The Chinese are similarly superstitious—they omit the fourth floor, because the word "four" sounds like "death" in Mandarin.
|W|P|112320252113867014|W|P|Floor?|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comSoap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome is the tendency of child characters on soap operas to age unnaturally quickly, so they can be included in more adult storylines.
This can lead to complications that even Einstein would admire. On The Young and the Restless, the character Colleen Carlton was born in 1991; 10 years later she was 14. Even more impressive, her uncle, Billy Abbott, born in 1993, reached his 16th birthday in six years. He had overtaken her, aging six years faster in the same amount of time.
I guess boys grow faster than girls.
|W|P|112309996793077250|W|P|SORAS|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
If you think you're a packrat—cheer up.
In 1929, brothers Homer and Langley Collyer holed up in a Harlem townhouse and basically set the all-time record for reclusive hoarding. They kept to the house during the day, and at night Langley fetched their water from a park four blocks away, dragging home abandoned junk.
In 1942, when they missed a mortgage payment, the police investigated but couldn't get past a solid wall of junk behind the front door. In 1947, when rumors surfaced that Homer had died, a team of seven men finally began excavating the foyer, which was choked with old newspapers, folding beds and chairs, half a sewing machine, boxes and parts of a wine press. A patrolman broke into the second floor and spent two hours crawling through packages and newspaper bundles before he discovered Homer, dead in a bathrobe, his head on his knees. The recluse had been dead only 10 hours, so the smell was coming from somewhere else.
Authorities began unpacking the house. Among other things, they found baby carriages, rusted bicycles, a collection of guns, gas chandeliers, the folding top of a horsedrawn carriage, three dressmaking dummies, a kerosene stove, thousands of books about medicine and engineering, human organs pickled in jars, a clavichord, two organs, the chassis of an old Model T, a horse's jawbone, an early X-ray machine, and more than six tons of newspapers, magazines, and wood. After several weeks of searching, they found Langley 10 feet from his brother. He had been crushed in one of his own booby traps.
In total, police and workmen took 136 tons of garbage out of the house, including 14 pianos and more than 25,000 books. It was eventually torn down as a fire hazard.
|W|P|112308650596023961|W|P|Clean Your Room|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comNearly one in eight American workers has been employed by McDonald's.
|W|P|112305147101855405|W|P|Big Mac|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comSteven Spielberg was rejected by USC's film school—three times.
|W|P|112310014670481337|W|P|Don't Call Us|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The Cadillac Ranch is a public art installation in Amarillo, Texas: Ten junker Cadillacs are buried nose-first in the ground, at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
What will future archaeologists make of this?
|W|P|112308669801410363|W|P|Shut Up, Bruce|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"How can one conceive of a one-party system in a country that has over 200 varieties of cheese?"—Charles de Gaulle
|W|P|111834473777461660|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comI never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.
That's "Purple Cow," written in 1895 by Berkeley drafting instructor Gelett Burgess. It grew so popular that it began to haunt him; eventually he wrote "Confession: And a Portrait Too, Upon a Background That I Rue":
Ah yes, I wrote the Purple Cow,
I'm sorry now I wrote it.
But I can tell you anyhow,
I'll kill you if you quote it.
A note found stuffed in a vase in a Massachusetts thrift store.
More at Found Magazine.
|W|P|112269181870584649|W|P|Find of the Week|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comRelationships among U.S. presidents:
- James Madison was the half first cousin twice removed of George Washington.
- Zachary Taylor was the second cousin of James Madison.
- Grover Cleveland was the sixth cousin once removed of Ulysses S. Grant.
- Theodore Roosevelt was the third cousin twice removed of Martin Van Buren.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the fourth cousin once removed of Ulysses S. Grant, the fourth cousin three times removed of Zachary Taylor, and the fifth cousin of Theodore Roosevelt (although his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, was a niece of Theodore).
- Harry S. Truman was the great-great-great nephew of John Tyler.
- Richard Nixon was the seventh cousin twice removed of William Howard Taft and the eighth cousin once removed of Herbert Hoover.
- George H.W. Bush was the fifth cousin four times removed of Franklin Pierce, the seventh cousin three times removed of Theodore Roosevelt, the seventh cousin four times removed of Abraham Lincoln, and the eleventh cousin once removed of Gerald Ford.
Toad734|W|P|Dont forget that G.W Bush is GHW Bush's sonTo stop hiccups, swallow 1 teaspoon of ordinary table sugar dry.
According to the New England Journal of Medicine, this works immediately in 19 out of 20 people.
|W|P|112274472736080520|W|P|Guaranteed|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
"Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards."—Astronomer Fred Hoyle
|W|P|112274490125668781|W|P|Walking on Air|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFaux pas around the world:
- Arab countries: Eating with the left hand.
- China: Giving someone a timepiece as a gift.
- Czech Republic: Shaking hands while wearing gloves.
- France: Giving chrysanthemums to the host.
- Romania: Giving an even number of flowers.
- Thailand: Touching someone on the head.
In Thailand it's also improper to step over or stand on bills or coins. They bear the face of the king, who is highly revered.
|W|P|112217466868998864|W|P|Oops|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com