by Bill McLain
Comic strip dog Marmaduke and cartoon character Scooby Doo are both Great Danes.
The first muppet that Jim Henson created was Rowlf the dog.
The only dog to ever appear in a Shakespearean play was Crab in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
The very first seeing-eye dog was Buddy, a German shepherd.
Every box of Cracker Jack popcorn has a picture of Sailor Jack and his dog Bingo.
In 1957, the first dog traveled in space aboard the Russian satellite Sputnik 2. The dog’s name was Laika, which means “the barker.”
DID YOU KNOW?
In 1901 the first model of the Victor Talking Machine Company was a machine with a single-spring motor, a wooden tone arm, and an outside mounted horn. From these humble beginnings came the now famous Radio Corporation of America, or RCA.
In addition to being a leading supplier of radios, RCA transmitted the first radio photograph, the predecessor of today’s facsimile machines, across the Atlantic Ocean in 1924. Just two years later RCA, General Electric, and Westinghouse formed the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).
RCA’s president David Sarnoff did not stop with radio. He envisioned every home equipped with not only a sound-receiving device but a screen mirroring the sights of life. Some mechanical televisions had already shown crude pictures. An engineer, Vladimir Zworykin, had produced an “iconoscope” camera and a “kinescope” receiver.
Sarnoff met with Zworykin and asked how much money and time it would cost to develop a system that could be sold. Zworykin replied that it would take $100,000 and a year and a half.
Ten years and $50 million later, Sarnoff introduced television at the 1939 world’s fair and a new industry was born.
What is the average number of flowers used on a Rose Parade float? (A rose by any other name is still a rose.)
The number of flowers on a float in the annual Pasadena, California, Rose Parade varies depending on both the size and complexity of the float. A float will have anywhere from 30,000 to over 150,000 flowers. It takes 700 to 900 hours of labor to apply the flowers to each float.
Float builders start with a custom-built chassis and engine. They construct a framework of steel and chicken wire that is sprayed with plastic. The process is called “cocooning” because the sprayed frame resembles a cocoon. The plastic is painted in the colors of the flowers that will be applied at the last minute.
Every square inch of the entire float must be covered with flowers, leaves, seeds, or bark. Between Christmas and New Year’s Day, an army of volunteers glues the flowers to the floats, sometimes one petal at a time.
FACTOIDS
A single Rose Parade float is decorated with more flowers than an average florist will use in five years.
Most floats are now built by professional companies and take almost a year to build.
In 1902 the first football game associated with the Rose Parade saw Stanford University so mauled by the University of Michigan that Stanford quit after the third quarter when the score was 49-0. The following year, the Tournament of Roses committee decided to hold Roman-style chariot races instead of a football game. Football did not return until 13 years later.
Each Rose Parade features over 300 horses and riders. A variety of horse breeds are represented, including Andalusians, Peruvian pasos, Bashkir curlies, golden palominos, and miniature horses.
The first marching band was the 20-member Monrovia Town Band in the 1891 Rose Parade. Today 400-member marching bands are quite common. Over 200 bands compete to be one of the 22 bands participating in the parade.
DID YOU KNOW?
In 1890, former residents of the East and Midwest wanted to show off the mild winter weather in their new home of Pasadena, California. At a meeting of the Pasadena Valley Hunt Club, Professor Charles F. Holder said, “Here our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear. Let’s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise.” Because of all the flowers, he suggested the festival be called the “Tournament of Roses.”
As the festival became more popular, it included marching bands and motorized floats and, in 1900, ostrich races, bronco busting, and a race between a camel and an elephant. (Believe it or not, the elephant won the race.)
From a simple beginning, the Tournament of Roses Parade, known as the Rose Parade, has grown to over a million spectators lining the streets to watch. In addition, an estimated 425 million television viewers in over 100 countries watch the parade, making it one of the largest such events in the world.
Before refrigeration was invented, where did the iceman get the ice he delivered to homes during the summer? (The iceman cometh.)
If large blocks of ice are stored in well-insulated buildings and covered with sawdust, the ice can last for most of the year without melting. Years ago it was common practice during the winter to cut large blocks of ice out of a frozen pond and store them in an “icehouse.” The ice was cut into smaller blocks for delivery and transported to families in the neighborhood.
Few people realize that transporting ice around the world was once an extremely lucrative business. Schooners transported ice from Alaska to other parts of the country as well as to Mexico, Central America, and South America. Ice from New England was shipped to the West Indies and other parts of the world.
In the mid-1800s, ice distributors in Seattle and San Francisco wanted harder and thicker ice and an Alaskan company invested heavily in the ice trade by ordering seven new steamers to haul the ice. Each winter the company cut about 10,000 tons of ice from a local lake. A crew of 150 to 200 people cut the ice, moved it into an icehouse, and covered it with sawdust to keep it from melting. The following summer the ice was transported by steamer to the distributors.
A typical New England icehouse was built next to a pond or lake and was framed using 2-by-10 pine or spruce studs. An inner wall was built 10 inches from the outer wall and the space between was filled with sawdust for insulation. A layer of sawdust was also spread on the floor. The ice was normally cut into 250-pound blocks. When the icehouse was full, all the ice was covered with either sawdust or hay. Because of the insulation the ice melted very slowly and lasted almost all year.
In the 1870s new refrigeration techniques made manual cutting of ice from lakes obsolete. As a result, the once flourishing world ice trade melted away.
FACTOIDS
One ice business that has not melted is that of creating ice sculptures. Many ice sculptures are created by chefs to adorn banquet tables, but there are also worldwide competitions. Although not well publicized, ice sculpture competition is part of the Olympics Culture and Art Festival. To qualify for the Nagano Winter Olympics, Steve Brice and Kevin Roscoe created a 2.5-ton ice sculpture called Moment of Truth. It depicted a man fighting a lion and included an intricate net made of ice.
For those who do not want to spend years learning the art, numerous companies sell fiberglass molds. You simply fill them with water, freeze them, and peel off the mold to reveal your “sculpture.” Prices range from $40 for a onetime-only mold of a heart or horn of plenty to over $1,500 for a reusable mold of a sailfish that is 3.5 feet long.
DID YOU KNOW?
Another form of ice, called dry ice, is really not ice at all but is compressed carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide has the unique property of changing directly from a solid to a gas. Dry ice can be purchased as either rectangular or square blocks, or as disks, pellets, or snow.
Although the primary use of dry ice is to keep perishable products such as ice cream and meat refrigerated during shipping, it also has some rather unusual uses.
For example, dry ice pellets are often used instead of sand blasting to clean structural walls.
Dry ice is also one of the two most common substances used to seed clouds to produce rain (the other is silver or lead iodide).
Although some people like to play with dry ice, such as by adding water to a container full of dry ice to create an artificial fog, the ice can be dangerous. It should never be handled wi
thout using gloves, as it can cause severe burns.
Also, never store dry ice in an airtight container. If you do, it will explode!
More questions? Try these websites.
EARTH AND MOON VIEWER
http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/vplanet.html
You can view the earth from the moon, or the moon from the earth. You can see a view of most major cities as seen from a satellite, as well as many other fascinating views such as the world’s current cloud cover.
LIRRART REFERENCE
http://www.Ikwdpl.org/readref.htm
A storehouse of information divided into ten major categories. You can find everything from a list of Supreme Court decisions to the closest ATM.
CELERRITY ADDRESSES
http://www.geocltles.com/SlliconValley/1954/address
If you want to write to famous actors, actresses, or singers, this site gives you their mailing addresses.
INTERNET PUBLIC LIBRARY
http://www.ipl.org/
This site has a wealth of information on subjects ranging from antique bottle collectors to phrenology.
ANTS TO ZOOS
http://www.elk-grove.k12.il.us/coolstuff/search.cgi
This site has hundreds of links from ants to electronic zoos.
ANECDOTE: WHICH CAME FIRST, THE CHICKEN OR THE EXERCISE MACHINE?
I’ve often been asked, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” When J. Mark Davis asked me that question once again, I sent him my answer and thought no more about it.
The next day I received a thank-you and a fascinating e-mail. It seems that Mark is the inventor of the “Eggsercizer.” He is a consultant for nuclear power industries, and as he traveled from plant to plant, he often squeezed a tennis ball to work out his hand and arm muscles. One night he couldn’t sleep and decided to get a snack from the refrigerator. When he opened the refrigerator door the first thing he saw was an egg, and a new idea was born.
Mark realized that the egg shape matched the natural contour of the hand. So he decided to make rubber objects in the shape of eggs. Mark called them Eggsercizers and manufactured them to look like egg-shaped footballs, basketballs, soccer balls, baseballs, golf balls, and so on.
Mark was delighted with my answer to his question and told me, “I usually tell people I know which came first, the chicken or the egg. Your explanation makes more sense and I will now have to change my marketing strategy for the trade shows.”
A few weeks later, Mark kindly sent me and my staff a number of Eggsercizers. He told me that he had “eggspress”-mailed them. When they arrived I sent him a note of thanks and could not resist telling him that they were “eggsactly” as “eggsciting” as “eggspected.”
Mark and I have been exchanging e-mail for some time now and he has sent me a copy of his book on marketing as well as some of the new products he has invented. He is a true inventor, entrepreneur, and author.
A short time ago, I noticed that J. Mark Davis had been profiled in People magazine because of his invention. In the meantime, my daily workout with my baseball Eggsercizer is guaranteeing that I have a very strong handshake, which I’ll definitely need if I ever have a chance to personally meet Mark Davis, the inventor of the egg-shaped exercise tool.
Off the Wall
How many licks does it take to reach the center of a Tootsie Pop? (Sucking doesn’t count.)
In the commercial, wise Mr. Owl decides to find out and counts, “Ah-one [lick], ah-two [lick], ah-three [CRUNCH].” He just didn’t have the willpower to keep licking. If he had, he would have found out that it takes approximately 142 licks to reach the center.
A group of curious college students were not satisfied with Mr. Owl’s answer and decided to conduct a study to find how many licks it takes. To do this, they set up some simple ground rules:
No one could put the entire Tootsie Pop in their mouth. That would be “sucking” and only “licking” was allowed.
Everyone had the same flavor as a “control.”
Each person could choose whether to lick on only one side or all around the pop.
The goal was reached when the licker “tasted Tootsie.”
The lickers ended up in one of three groups:
75 to 100 licks group. These people tend to be too excited about the experiment or not excited enough. The excited ones were candy fanatics who couldn’t resist biting. The apathetic ones just wanted to get the experiment over and didn’t want to taste the center anyway.
125 to 150 licks group. These were the most serious experimenters, keeping meticulous notes and striving to use true scientific principles for the experiment. To them, even a Tootsie Pop was fair game for scientific investigation.
175 to 200 licks group. These people tend to savor candy, let a Life Saver completely melt in their mouth without ever biting it, etc. You know the type. The ones who always have candy long after yours is gone.
Although it took the experimenters from 75 to 200 licks to reach the center, standard statistical methods were used to determine the 142-lick average.
FACTOIDS
If you find a Tootsie Pop wrapper with an Indian shooting at a star, you can turn it in for a free Tootsie Pop.
About 100 years ago, candy maker Leo Hirshfield came up with the treat and named it for his 5-year-old daughter, Clara, his “Little Tootsie.” At the same time electric lights were just starting to flicker on across America and Utah became the forty-fifth state.
Each year Tootsie Roll Industries produces enough candy to stretch from the earth to the moon and back.
The company experimented with brightly packaged “Mutant Fruitants” suckers that changed colors and flavors on the way to a Tootsie Roll center.
Oddly enough, Tootsie Rolls and Tootsie Pops aren’t classified as chocolate under the definitions federal officials use when collecting data on the candy industry.
DID YOU KNOW?
In today’s often male-dominated corporate world, Tootsie Roll Industries is owned and operated by a woman, Ellen Gordon.
The company strives to maintain a familylike atmosphere. At the Chicago plant, all employees are greeted by name and the 1,700 workers at the various plants are allowed to eat sweets while on the job.
In addition to its main product, Tootsie Roll Industries produces other candy, including: Mason Dots, Cella’s, Charleston Chews, Sugar Daddys, Sugar Babies, Blue Razzberry, Junior Mints, Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Da Pops, Tootsie Pops, Blow Pops, and Caramel Apple Pops.
The company has done well even when the candy industry has been in a slump. It has paid dividends for 53 years, increased sales each year for the past 19 years, and boosted annual earnings for the past 14 years.
Glamour and other magazines have recommended Tootsie Rolls because they are small and low in fat.
But perhaps the candy’s enduring success is due to durability. As Ellen Gordon once said, “We have some that were made in 1938 that we still eat. And if you can’t bite it when it’s that old, you certainly can lick it.”
How long would it take to vacuum the state of Ohio? (You’d better get some help!)
You must be ambitious if you want to vacuum the entire state of Ohio. It would take you 33,683 years! You should probably recruit some help before undertaking this project.
To calculate the answer, certain assumptions were made:
Lake Erie forms part of the state of Ohio and you do not want to vacuum the lake.
Ohio is flat. Although it is a flat state, it’s assumed to be extremely flat: no boulders, ravines, hills, or hummocks. The calculations did not consider the extra time needed to push the vacuum up a hill or move a boulder so you can vacuum under it.
It takes approximately one second to vacuum one square foot.
Here, then, is the computation:
Area of Ohio: 41,330 square miles
Lake Erie portion: 3,277 square miles
Part of Ohio to be cleaned: 38,103 square miles (41,330 minus 3,227)
Convert square miles to square f
eet: 1,062,250,675,200 square feet
If you can vacuum one square foot in one second, then it will take you:
1,062,250,675,200 seconds or
17,704,177,920 minutes or
295,069,632 hours or
12,294,568 days or
33,683 years!
FACTOIDS
Because of the popularity of vacuum cleaners made by the Hoover Company, the English use the word “hoover” instead of “vacuum.” Atypical expression is “I hoovered the carpet today.”
The first vacuum cleaner, invented by Cecil Booth, was so large it had to be drawn up to a house by horses; a team of men was required to use it.
Early vacuum cleaners were operated manually. Two people were needed: one to operate the bellows and the other to move the mouthpiece over the floor. The dust was blown into the air.
Most vacuum cleaners were sold by door-to-door salesmen until the late 1940s because the vacuums were expensive and a relatively new concept.
The 1944 Sears catalog mentioned the vacuum cleaner in the index but didn’t include a picture because so few were sold.
DID YOU KNOW?
It all started because M. R. Bissell, a china shop proprietor in Grand Rapids, suffered from allergy headaches caused by the dusty straw used to pack the china.