During construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s, 19 workers fell from the structure but were saved by a safety net.
They called themselves the Halfway to Hell Club.
|W|P|112812964078617180|W|P|The Halfway to Hell Club|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comHOW TO TELL DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER BY THE NOSE.
1. Large Noses.�Bonaparte chose large-nosed men for his generals, and the opinion prevails that large noses indicate long heads and strong minds. Not that great noses cause great minds, but that the motive or powerful temperament cause both.
2. Flat Noses.�Flat noses indicate flatness of mind and character, by indicating a poor, low organic structure.
3. Broad Noses.�Broad noses indicate large passage-ways to the lungs, and this, large lungs and vital organs and this, great strength of constitution, and hearty animal passions along with selfishness; for broad noses, broad shoulders, broad heads, and large animal organs go together. But when the nose is narrow at the base, the nostrils are small, because the lungs are small and need but small avenues for air; and this indicates a predisposition to consumptive complaints, along with an active brain and nervous system, and a passionate fondness for literary pursuits.
4. Sharp Noses.�Sharp noses indicate a quick, clear, penetrating, searching, knowing, sagacious mind, and also a scold; indicate warmth of love, hate, generosity, moral sentiment�indeed, positiveness in everything.
5. Blunt Noses.�Blunt noses indicate and accompany obtuse intellects and perceptions, sluggish feelings, and a soulless character.
6. Roman Noses.�The Roman nose indicates a martial spirit, love of debate, resistance, and strong passions, while hollow, pug noses indicate a tame, easy, inert, sly character, and straight, finely-formed Grecian noses harmonious characters. Seek their acquaintance.
From Searchlights on Health: The Science of Eugenics, by B.G. Jefferis and J.L. Nicols, 1920
|W|P|113037669870508350|W|P|Disposition by the Nose|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comJ.B.S. Haldane's "four stages of acceptance" of a scientific theory:
- This is worthless nonsense.
- This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.
- This is true, but quite unimportant.
- I always said so.
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?" -- Abraham Lincoln
|W|P|112813106892788132|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comAmong bad poets, James McIntyre (1828�1906) became known as "the Chaucer of Cheese" for his pastoral odes to Ontario and its dairy culture:
The ancient poets ne'er did dream
That Canada was land of cream,
They ne'er imagined it could flow
In this cold land of ice and snow,
Where everything did solid freeze
They ne'er hoped or looked for cheese.
McIntyre was remarkably bad, but can he compete with the worst of all time? Yes, declared the mayor of Ingersoll: "He was every bit as bad as McGonagall -- and a lot less talented."
|W|P|113027327737955772|W|P|"We have seen thee, Queen of Cheese ..."|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comDonald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
|W|P|113000758332512722|W|P|Donald Duck's Middle Name|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Excerpt from the obituary of Arthur James Caley (1837-1889), the "Middlebush Giant":
The farmhouse of the dead giant was thronged with villagers long before the hour fixed for the funeral. The remains had been placed in a coffin eight feet long and three feet wide. It was covered with cloth and had been specially made for the deceased. After the funeral services were over the coffin was borne on the shoulders of eight sturdy farmers to a wagon which was standing in the road about 100 yards from the house. Undertaker Van Duyn said he could not find a hearse large enough to hold the giant's coffin. The pallbearers had a hard struggle in carrying the remains down the incline leading from the house to the road and when they deposited the coffin in the wagon, beads of perspiration stood out on their foreheads.
Caley measured 7 foot 2 and weighed 630 pounds. He had been a fixture in P.T. Barnum's show, and he remained a sensation even in death: He was originally buried without a tombstone for fear his body would be dug up and put on display.
|W|P|113044630016053902|W|P|The Middlebush Giant|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comCalvin Coolidge was famous for his taciturnity. A dinner guest once bet her friends that she could get him to say at least three words during the meal.
He told her, "You lose."
|W|P|113027073893626404|W|P|"Silent Cal"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comRACECAR spelled backward is RACECAR.
|W|P|112913186548432103|W|P|Spinout|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
In 1891, Sylvain Dornon walked from Paris to Moscow on stilts. It took him only 58 days.
Stilts were big in Gascony, whose wide plains, few roads, and broad marshes made foot travel difficult, and where shepherds needed to tend widely scattered flocks. The 5-foot stilts of Landes are called tchangues ("big legs"); with a long staff or crook, they turned a shepherd into a giant walking tripod that could cover plains, bush, pools and marshes with equal ease.
Spend enough time up there and you'd get pretty good at it. An experienced stilt-walker could stand, walk, run, hop, even pick flowers. When he wasn't tending his flock he could knit or spin using a distaff stuck in his girdle; some tchangu�s even carried guns or portable stoves.
In 1808, when Josephine went to Bayonne to rejoin Napoleon I, the municipality sent an escort of stilt-walkers to meet her. It's said that they easily kept up with the horses on the return journey, and the tchangu�s amused the ladies by racing, a tradition that continued through the 19th century. On the market days in Bordeaux, peasants would travel up to 20 leagues laden with bags and baskets. Beats a Segway.
|W|P|113035830123522575|W|P|The Stilt-Walkers of Landes|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comUsing only his bare hands and climbing shoes, Alain Robert has climbed more than 70 structures worldwide, including the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sydney Opera House and the 1,668-foot Taipei 101, the world's tallest building.
When he reaches the top, the first thing he does is call his children.
|W|P|112974981363333493|W|P|"Buildering"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe medical term for sneezing is sternutation.
|W|P|112793671007191907|W|P|Sneezing|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFrom Bespin to Yavin, the "Star Wars Hit Probability Equation" predicts the outcome of any battle:
n is the number of "bad guys," x is the number of "good guys," and J is the number of Jedi present (if any).
The equation reads, "The probability of a bad guy hitting his target is equal to the inverse of all bad guys present plus the cube of the number of good guys present (plus one) plus the number of Jedi present (plus one) to the 10th power."
So the presence of a good guy reduces the bad guys' accuracy, and having even one Jedi present is bad news for the Empire.
|W|P|113028858300594284|W|P|Star Wars Hit Probability Equation|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFamous suicides:
- Boudicca
- Cleopatra
- Hannibal
- Seneca
- Nero
- Virginia Woolf
- Ernest Hemingway
- Alan Turing
- Sylvia Plath
- Vincent van Gogh
Ben Franklin wrote, "Nine men in ten are would-be suicides."
|W|P|112941145544209844|W|P|Famous Suicides|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comtec�no�la�try
n. worship or idolization of children
A rhinoceros' horn is made of compacted hair.
|W|P|113003455354936145|W|P|Rhino Horns|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThis July saw the Ninth Annual Wife-Carrying World Championship in Sonkaj�rvi, Finland.
The event, inspired by a proud Finnish history of wife-stealing, involves flinging a woman over your back and sprinting past obstacles to a finish line 253 meters away. Rules:
- "The wife to be carried may be your own, the neighbour's or you may have found her farther afield," but she has to be at least 108 pounds and 17 years old.
- If you drop your wife you're fined 15 seconds.
- The only equipment allowed is a belt worn by the carrier.
The world record is 55.5 seconds, and the winner (Estonia) gets his wife's weight in beer.
|W|P|112983936678772597|W|P|Wife Carrying Championship|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax." -- Albert Einstein
|W|P|113028963686460277|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Earth is the only planet not named after a god.
|W|P|112812997291624465|W|P|Mundane in Every Sense|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Barbie is the ultimate ambassador for girls," says Mattel. That's a little dubious, given her bio. Does this sound like your daughter?
"Barbara Millicent Roberts" attended Willows High School in Willows, Wis., and Manhattan International High School in New York City. She has 38 pets, including cats, dogs, horses, a panda, a lion cub, and a zebra. She also owns numerous cars, including several pink convertibles, and she operates commercial airliners when she's not serving as a stewardess.
She dated Ken Carson for 43 years before dumping him to run for president in 2004. (Platform: create world peace, help the homeless, take care of animals.) As experience, her handlers cited "serving in the military, acting as a UNICEF ambassador and being a teacher."
They also said she was "well-rounded." That's for sure: At life size, Barbie would be 5 foot 9 and measure 36-18-33. But it turns out you can be too rich and too thin: According to research by the University Central Hospital in Helsinki, Finland, Barbie would have too little body fat to menstruate.
|W|P|112994389226206640|W|P|Barbie|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comCap'n Crunch's full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch.
|W|P|113020339771829460|W|P|Cap'n Crunch|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
You can start fights among copyeditors by asking them how to punctuate Harry Truman's name.
The 34th president had no middle name -- just the letter S. So the question is, do you add a period afterward? Purists say no, it's not an abbreviation. Pragmatists say yes, if you omit the period then some readers will stop at the "error."
Truman himself usually signed his name with a period, but he once remarked that it should be omitted. That's why, to this day, some newspapers refer to him as Harry S Truman.
|W|P|112861836756678723|W|P|Harry S? Truman|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com142857 is a cyclic number -- you can find its multiples by just rotating its digits in order:
- 142857 × 1 = 142857
- 142857 × 2 = 285714
- 142857 × 3 = 428571
- 142857 × 4 = 571428
- 142857 × 5 = 714285
- 142857 × 6 = 857142
|W|P|Where do you find this stuff!!!
Miss Wendy Eileen|W|P|I love your website! can I add it as a link to my blog please?Michael Jordan has appeared on a Wheaties box 18 times.
|W|P|112994433572847189|W|P|The Breakfast of Champions|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
There's a snack bar in the courtyard of the Pentagon.
It's called the Ground Zero Cafe.
|W|P|112994533996656972|W|P|Pentagon Snack Bar|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comDates of first domestication:
- Sheep, goat, pig: 8,000 B.C.
- Cow: 6,000 B.C.
- Horse: 4,000 B.C.
- Donkey, water buffalo, honeybee: 4,000 B.C.
- Chicken, cat, llama: 3,500 B.C.
- Silkworm: 3,000 B.C.
- Camel: 2,500 B.C.
Dogs, by far, are man's best friend. Some estimates put them with us as early as 150,000 B.C. It's thought that scavenging wolves grew less fearful of humans, and we found they could help with hunting and warn us of approaching enemies. "To his dog, every man is Napoleon," wrote Aldous Huxley. "Hence the constant popularity of dogs."
|W|P|112899725576441531|W|P|Domesticated Animals|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comMel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.
|W|P|113000754868886770|W|P|Irony and Mel Blanc|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comRetrograde analysis involves looking into a chess game's past, rather than its future. Here's an example from Henry Ernest Dudeney (1917):
"Strolling into one of the rooms of a London club, I noticed a position left by two players who had gone. This position is shown in the diagram. It is evident that White has checkmated Black. But how did he do it? That is the puzzle."
The solution is unique. Can you find it?
|W|P|112990484335405005|W|P|Chess Detective Work|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comShortest-reigning popes:
- Urban VII (elected in 1590): 13 days
- Boniface VI (896): 16 days
- Celestine IV (1241): 17 days
- Sisinnius (708): 21 days
- Theodore II (897): 21 days
- Marcellus II (1555): 22 days
- Damasus II (1048): 24 days
- Pius III (1503): 27 days
- Leo XI (1605): 27 days
- Benedict V (964): 33 days
1978 is called the "year of three popes": Pope Paul VI was succeeded by John Paul I, who lived only 33 days. John Paul II succeeded him.
|W|P|112921845117823641|W|P|Shortest-Reigning Popes|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comvi�cam�bu�late
v. to walk about in the streets
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." -- Napoleon Bonaparte
|W|P|112813125031240700|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe Mad Gasser of Mattoon was a mysterious figure who haunted Mattoon, Ill., in the summer of 1944.
Typically, homeowners would report awakening to a sweet odor, then feeling nausea, dizziness, headaches, breathing difficulty, or a feeling of paralysis. Some saw a tall figure dressed in black fleeing their property after the attack.
Police and citizens patrolled the streets, and the newspapers printed several sensational accounts, but the police never found a suspect. The attacks stopped after Sept. 13, as mysteriously as they had begun.
|W|P|112914794896225257|W|P|The Mad Gasser of Mattoon|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe longest word in the English language is FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION.
It means "the act of estimating (something) as worthless."
|W|P|112957332069246528|W|P|Longest English Word|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Disneyland would fit in Disney World's parking lot.
|W|P|112972967549597013|W|P|No Mickey Mouse Outfit|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn 1945, Betty Lou Oliver plunged 75 stories inside an elevator when a B-25 bomber struck the Empire State Building.
Fourteen people died in the plane crash, but Oliver survived.
|W|P|112974977086548727|W|P|Longest Elevator Fall|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comSomeone make a note, in case we ever run out of power:
In 1990 the Internet Engineering Task Force proposed a way to send Internet messages by homing pigeon.
It was used -- once -- to transmit a message in Bergen, Norway.
|W|P|112889864378486197|W|P|"IP Over Avian Carriers"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Why do landmasses "sag" toward the south pole, like the Sherwin-Williams paint logo?
In 1973 Ormonde de Kay Jr. published a hypothesis.
He called it "the theory of continental drip."
|W|P|112973687010344549|W|P|A New Theory|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comA hapax legomenon is a word that occurs only once in a given body of text:
- NORTELRYE ("education") was used only by Chaucer, and only once.
- AUTOGUOS, an ancient Greek word for "plow," was used only once, in Hesiod.
- FLOTHER, a charming synonym for "snowflake," appears only once in written English before 1900 (in a manuscript from around 1275).
- PIM, a stone weight of about a quarter ounce, appears only once in Biblical Hebrew (1 Samuel 13:20).
HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS appears only once in Shakespeare's works (in Love's Labour's Lost). Probably a good thing.
|W|P|112957411879899852|W|P|Hapax Legomenon|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comWhale songs can travel up to 1,800 miles.
|W|P|112837218533194559|W|P|Whale Song Distance|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
There have been only three periods when five former American presidents were alive at the same time:
- March 4, 1861-Jan. 18, 1862: Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan
- Jan. 20, 1993-April 22, 1994: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush
- Jan. 20, 2001-June 5, 2004: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton
Herbert Hoover lived for 31 years after leaving office; James Polk lasted only three months.
|W|P|112861826269568803|W|P|Living Former Presidents|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comA monkey has one chance in 19,928,148,895,209,409,152,340,197,376 of correctly typing the first 20 letters of Hamlet (ignoring punctuation, spacing, and capitalization).
And Hamlet contains more than 130,000 letters.
|W|P|112948317366146388|W|P|The "Infinite Monkey Theorem"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn the 1924 silent film Three Weeks, Conrad Nagel tenderly picks up Aileen Pringle to carry her into the bedroom.
Lip readers noted that she appears to be saying, "If you drop me, you bastard, I'll break your neck."
|W|P|112862140691040795|W|P|Aileen Pringle|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
For most of its history, Egypt's Great Sphinx lay buried up to its neck in sand. This photo was taken in 1867; it wasn't fully dug out until 1925.
Strangely, we know very little about it. It's one of the world's largest statues, but no one knows who built it, or when, or whose likeness it bears. We're not even sure what it is -- we call it a sphinx, but we borrow that term from Greek mythology. A true sphinx would have the head of a woman.
No one knows what the ancient Egyptians called it, but its Arabic name, Abu al-H�l, translates as "Father of Terror." Maybe we should cover it up again.
|W|P|112956285801391930|W|P|Riddle of the Sphinx|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com Snowbear|W|P|Fasinating site; bookmarking for more readings...love the picsLarge countries get the most attention, but the picture changes when you adjust for size:
- Highest GDP: United States
- Highest GDP per capita: Luxembourg
- Largest military: China
- Largest military per capita: Vatican City
- Most expensive military: United States
- Most expensive military per capita: Israel
- Most Olympic medals: United States
- Most Olympic medals per capita: Australia
- Most Cannes Palmes d'Or: United States
- Most Cannes Palmes d'Or per capita: Denmark
- Most Nobel Prizes: United States
- Most Nobel Prizes per capita: Iceland
- Most startup companies: United States
- Most startup companies per capita: Israel
Twelve percent of American 20-year-olds are left-handed, but only 5 percent of 50-year-olds and fewer than 1 percent of people over 80.
Does this mean that more lefties are being born today? Or that older generations were forced to switch hands? Or that southpaws die sooner? No one knows.
|W|P|112837194619300331|W|P|Left-Handedness and Age|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself." -- Charlie Chaplin
|W|P|111884977308468597|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comColor values of Crayola's most popular crayons:
- Black: #000000
- Blue: #0066FF
- Brown: #AF593E
- Green: #01A368
- Orange: #FF681F
- Red: #ED0A3F
- Violet: #8359A3
- Yellow: #FBE870
STRESSED spelled backward is DESSERTS.
|W|P|112913192942779815|W|P|A Sign From God|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Statues aren't the only mystery on Easter Island. Tablets found on the island bear a mysterious script, known as rongorongo, that has never been successfully deciphered.
Some scholars have pointed out similarities between the strange characters and the prehistoric script of the Indus Valley in India, 6,000 miles away, but others dispute this.
The islanders themselves give eager and varying accounts to archaeologists and historians, and perhaps they themselves don't know. Some say that rongorongo means peace-peace, and that the documents record treaties, perhaps with visitors to the island.
So far, none of the attempts at translation have withstood peer review.
|W|P|112899718893264956|W|P|Rongorongo|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comsag�it�ti�po�tent
adj. having great ability in archery
German arithmetician Zacharias Dase (1824-1861) once multiplied two 100-digit numbers in his head. It took him 8 hours 45 minutes.
Karl Gauss estimated that even a skilled mathematician, using pencil and paper, would require fully half that time.
|W|P|112785238694311706|W|P|The Best of Times|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Wander too far away from the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and you might disappear forever.
Herman Mudgett, an enterprising serial killer, built a row of three-story buildings near the Chicago fair and opened it as a hotel. Guests discovered -- too late -- that it was a maze of more than 100 windowless rooms, where Mudgett would trap them, torture them in a soundproof chamber, and then asphyxiate them with a custom-fitted gas line.
Then he'd send the bodies by chute to the basement, where he'd cremate them or sell them to a medical school.
This went on for three years, until a fire broke out and police and firemen discovered the trap. No one knows how many people Mudgett killed; he confessed to 28, but estimates go as high as 200.
He was hanged in Philadelphia in 1896.
|W|P|112899427172447058|W|P|An Early Serial Killer|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comAmericans think of the song "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" as a patriotic anthem -- which is ironic, because everyone else does, too. We stole the tune from the British, who know it as "God Save the Queen," and the same melody has served as the national anthem of Denmark, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, and Liechtenstein.
When England met Liechtenstein in a Euro 2004 qualifying football match, they had to play the same music twice.
|W|P|112899807440649258|W|P|An All-Purpose Anthem|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." -- Yale economist Irving Fisher, Oct. 16, 1929
|W|P|112906250653529782|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
At 120 feet, the Wright Brothers' first flight would fit inside a modern Boeing 747.
In the economy section.
|W|P|112899451260373529|W|P|Jumbo Jet 2|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com E|W|P|I love your site.Curious how a new book was selling, Oscar Wilde wired his publisher:
?
He got this reply:
!|W|P|112903236749616437|W|P|The World's Shortest Telegram|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
In 1963, Peter Reyn-Bardt killed his wife and buried her in a peat bog in Cheshire County, England. Twenty years later, when a body was discovered, he assumed he'd been caught and turned himself in.
He should have waited. An investigation showed that the body was not his wife's, but that of an Iron Age man who had died two millennia earlier and been eerily preserved in the cold acid bog.
They convicted Reyn-Bardt anyway.
|W|P|112899137965763203|W|P|"The Lindow Man"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Vatican City has the highest per capita crime rate of any nation on earth.
|W|P|112906826669392798|W|P|Vatican City - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe King and I has never been performed in Thailand.
|W|P|112899841436789997|W|P|The King and I|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comOn the morning of Feb. 8, 1855, residents of Devon, England, awoke to find a series of prints in the snow. Resembling cloven hooves, the "devil's footprints" ran through the countryside for more than 100 miles, largely along straight lines and seemingly unimpeded by rivers, haystacks and other obstacles.
Some attribute the prints to hopping mice, whose jumps can leave hooflike marks, but they'd have to be pretty ambitious mice -- the tracks covered more than 100 miles, topping houses and high walls. On the other hand, no one has offered a better explanation.
|W|P|112837198127864410|W|P|The Devil's Footprints|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Pearl Harbor as seen from a Japanese attack plane.
"I can run wild for six months," Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had predicted. "After that, I have no expectation of success."
|W|P|112903476693920821|W|P|Japan's View of Pearl Harbor|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com oz|W|P|WOW, that is something I had never seen before, and I have a passion for WWII photographyThe elephant is the only animal with four knees.
|W|P|112903236172584829|W|P|Elephant Knees|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comPaul McCartney's working lyrics for "Yesterday":
Scrambled eggs
Have an omelette with some Muenster cheese
Put your dishes in the wash bin please
So I can clean the scrambled eggs
Join me do
There's a lot of eggs for me and you
I've got ham and cheese and bacon too
So go get two and join me do
Fried or sunny side
Just aren't right
The mix-bowl begs
Quick, go get a pan, and we'll scramble up some eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs
Scrambled eggs
Good for breakfast, dinner time or brunch
Don't buy six or twelve, buy a bunch
And we'll have a lunch on scrambled eggs
"The song was around for months and months before we finally completed it," John Lennon remembered. "We made up our minds that only a one-word title would suit; we just couldn't find the right one. Then one morning Paul woke up and the song and the title were both there, completed. I was sorry in a way, we'd had so many laughs about it."
|W|P|112899308660816630|W|P|Original Lyrics for "Yesterday"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
What's the largest living thing in the world? It depends:
- Savannah elephants get up to 26,400 pounds, and of course some land dinosaurs were far larger.
- In the ocean, the blue whale can reach 100 feet and weigh 150 tons. It's thought to be the largest animal that's ever lived.
- There's a fungus in Oregon's Malheur National Forest that fills 2,200 acres, but technically it's not one individual organism.
- Likewise, there are some stands of aspens that grow from one gigantic root system. One covers 200 acres and weighs an estimated 6,600 tons.
- Australia's Great Barrier Reef stretches for 2000 kilometers -- it's not a single creature, but it's certainly the world's largest "superorganism."
- The overall winning candidate is probably this tree, California's "General Sherman." It's 274 feet tall and 36 feet thick at the base, with a trunk volume of 1,487 cubic meters.
The largest bacterium ever discovered, by the way, is Thiomargarita namibiensis -- it grows to 0.75 mm in diameter, which means you can see it with the naked eye. Eww.
|W|P|112834935257962855|W|P|Largest Organism|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comsu�pel�lec�tile
adj. of the nature of furniture
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -- Douglas Adams
|W|P|112813105158340688|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
This is Eutyches, a young boy who died in Egypt during the Roman Empire. How do we know this? Because this portrait was stuffed inside his mummy.
This was actually a common practice in the Fayum region of ancient Egypt, and it's given us some of the best-preserved paintings from ancient times.
Artists would paint the portraits on wooden panels, using hot, pigmented wax, and they've survived remarkably well in the region's dry heat.
CAT scans show that the portraits match their mummies in age and sex, and they're strikingly naturalistic, though reportedly a little formulaic.
Many, like Eutyches, were children, a sad mark of the era's low life expectancy.
|W|P|112836948251021707|W|P|Fayum Mummy Portraits|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comDorothy Parker wrote:
Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
Ogden Nash responded:
A girl who is bespectacled|W|P|112871688773400157|W|P|Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
She may not get her nectackled
But safety pins and bassinets
Await the girl who fassinets.
By coincidence, John Ritter died in the same hospital in which he was born.
|W|P|112796129640654800|W|P|John Ritter's Hospital|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Good luck delivering a letter in Baarle-Nassau. The Dutch municipality contains 24 Belgian exclaves -- "islands" of Belgium "floating" in the Netherlands.
Worse, those islands contain islands: The 24 Belgian exclaves contain seven Dutch exclaves. Bring a map.
|W|P|112774876919916666|W|P|A Postman's Nightmare|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comObscure holidays:
- Pi Day (March 14, or "3/14")
- Pi Approximation Day (22 July, or "22/7")
- No Pants Day (the first Friday in May)
- National Talk In Elevators Day (the last Friday in July)
- National Underwear Day (August 11)
- International Orgy Day (September 3)
- International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19)
- Ask a Stupid Question Day (September 28)
- October Fool's Day (October 1) (the Southern Hemisphere's version of April Fool's Day)
- Mole Day (6:02 on 10/23) (ask a chemist)
The first Friday the 13th of the year is "Blame Someone Else Day."
|W|P|112847648780374070|W|P|Obscure Holidays|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comERIC CLAPTON is an anagram of NARCOLEPTIC.
|W|P|112860776425999628|W|P|Clapton Anagram|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The United Kingdom has 59 million people and 67 million credit cards.
|W|P|112812994671335886|W|P|The World's Most Card-Intensive Country|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com Miss Wendy Eileen|W|P|ABSA... thats a South African bank...You can hypnotize a chicken by holding its head against the ground and drawing a line straight outward from its beak.
Most chickens will stand immobile and stare at the line for about 30 minutes. One remained hypnotized for 3 hours 47 minutes.
|W|P|112822271202792420|W|P|Chicken Hypnotism|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com |W|P|my friend's story regarding chickens http://oneear.blogspot.com/2005/12/chicken-spectacles.html
"Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act." -- Truman Capote
|W|P|112813114672366948|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Finders keepers.
These amber panels, backed with gold leaf and mirrors, once dressed an entire chamber in the Catherine Palace near Saint Petersburg. More than a decade in the making, they covered 55 square meters and contained more than six metric tons of amber. Some called them the eighth wonder of the world.
The Nazis took them during World War II, but after that they disappeared. Postwar rumors have put them in bunkers, in mines, in submarines, in lagoons. One stone mosaic turned up in 1997 in West Germany, and its fellows were found in K�nigsberg Castle, where the Nazis had secreted them. But the rest of the "Amber Room" has simply disappeared -- lost in a fire, still hidden, or safe in the hands of a lucky, and quiet, treasure hunter.
|W|P|112837125567835236|W|P|The Amber Room|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn 1878, paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope discovered the partial vertebra of a new species of dinosaur near Morrison, Colo. It was in poor condition but enormous, 7.8 feet high.
If it really existed, that would make Amphicoelias fragillimus the largest dinosaur ever discovered, up to 200 feet long and weighing as much as 185 tons, the equivalent of a land-dwelling blue whale.
Cope packed up the vertebra and sent it by train to a New York museum, but apparently it crumbled into dust on the way. All that remain are Cope's description and a line drawing. Oh well.
|W|P|112836946389257205|W|P|A Land-Dwelling Blue Whale|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comCary Grant once received a telegram from a journalist:
HOW OLD CARY GRANT?
He wired back:
OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?|W|P|112861136503106802|W|P|Cary Grant's Age|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
On Nov. 14, 2002, this image was discovered during restoration of a church's exterior wall in Malta, Austria. It's part of a 14th-century fresco depicting Saint Christopher, who is often shown accompanied by fabulous creatures.
Draw your own conclusions.
|W|P|112836951591326501|W|P|A Medieval Mickey Mouse|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFormer Argentine president Juan Per�n is buried in Buenos Aires. In 1987, someone broke into his tomb and stole his hands.
No one knows why.
|W|P|112838028619600042|W|P|Juan Per�n's Hands|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comsti�ri�cide
n. the falling of icicles from a house
One more reason not to mess with Leonardo da Vinci -- he designed this armored tank at the Ch�teau d'Amboise around 1516.
|W|P|112766927783419313|W|P|Da Vinci's Tank|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comA secret hoard of $20 million in gold and silver lies buried somewhere near Roanoke, Va. That's according to a coded message left by adventurer Thomas Jefferson Beale in the 1820s:
I have deposited in the county of Bedford, about four miles from Buford's, in an excavation or vault, six feet below the surface of the ground, the following articles, belonging jointly to the parties whose names are given in number "3," herewith:
The first deposit consisted of one thousand and fourteen pounds of gold, and three thousand eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited November, 1819. The second was made December, 1821, and consisted of nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold, and twelve hundred and eighty-eight pounds of silver; also jewels, obtained in St. Louis in exchange for silver to save transportation, and valued at US$13,000.
The above is securely packed in iron pots, with iron covers. The vault is roughly lined with stone, and the vessels rest on solid stone, and are covered with others. Paper number "1" describes the exact locality of the vault, so that no difficulty will be had in finding it.
Unfortunately, no one has been able to decipher paper "1" or "3", and a hundred years' digging has turned up nothing.
Is it a hoax? Who knows? The unsolved ciphers are here, if you'd like to try.
|W|P|112742029304493689|W|P|The Beale Ciphers|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe Clan Kerr of Scotland were mostly left-handed. They built their castles with counterclockwise staircases, so that left-handed swordsmen would be better able to defend them.
|W|P|112842562094646347|W|P|Clan Kerr's Staircases|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
"There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them." -- Sylvia Plath
|W|P|112812970304087768|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comBrad Pitt, who played Achilles in the film Troy, tore his Achilles tendon during production.
|W|P|112796145109582618|W|P|Brad Pitt and Poetic Justice|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn the UH-1 Iroquois helicopter, a hexagonal nut holds the main rotor to the mast. If it were to fail in flight, the helicopter's body would separate from its rotor.
Engineers call it the "Jesus nut."
|W|P|112774871605074282|W|P|Truth in Advertising|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. Photographer George Lawrence mounted a camera on a kite and flew it 2,000 feet over the ruins.
Of the city's 400,000 residents, the quake killed 3,000 and left 225,000 homeless. For a time, Bank of America founder Amadeo Giannini met customers at a plank set across two barrels.
|W|P|112812981600703048|W|P|San Francisco Earthquake Photo, 1906|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIf an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go and commit siouxeyesighed.
-- Charles Follen Adams
|W|P|112808946267574158|W|P|"An Orthographic Lament"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comDuring the French Fourth Republic, Ferdinand Lop ran for president proposing to ban poverty after 10 p.m.
He lost.
|W|P|112774895663990495|W|P|Ferdinand Lop|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
No two bridges in Central Park are identical.
|W|P|112812986151137807|W|P|Bridges in Central Park|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comHollywood's Walk of Fame actually contains two stars marked Harrison Ford.
The first is for a silent film actor who retired in 1932.
He's little remembered today -- so far his namesake has outgrossed him by $5.6 billion.
|W|P|112782257358552467|W|P|Harrison Ford(s)|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comsi�na�pis�tic
adj. consisting of mustard