There were more than ten martyred saints named Valentine in ancient Rome. St. Valentine’s Day could refer to as many as three of them. For this reason, Valentine’s Day was removed in 1969 from the official Catholic calendar.
Fact. The figures are all courtesy of the Greeting Card Association, which also submitted this surprising factoid: The most popular colors for Valentines are red and pink. Amazing! I was sure they’d be camouflage and tin foil.
Bullsh*t! In Saudi Arabia and Iran, celebrating Valentine’s Day is outlawed. In Saudi Arabia, shopkeepers are ordered to destroy any cards, roses, candy, and teddy bears in their inventory, as well as anything red, or face reprisal from religious police.
However, the holiday is popular anyway in both places; citizens celebrate unobtrusively or in full-fledged secrecy.
Sheikh Ali Qarni of Saudi Arabia’s Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (you can’t make this stuff up) defended the ban, pointing out that Muslims embrace the true meaning of love, which is the love of God. “Muslims are people of love, as evidenced by the fact that this word appears in [the Koran] eighty-three times,” he said.
Fact. Of the three Valentines that could be the source of the name “Valentine’s Day,” none were associated with love or romance. Popular legend sometimes recounts the story of an imprisoned St. Valentine sending one last romantic note to his beloved, but the story has no basis in historical fact.
All three saints in question were martyrs, however, and early religious observances of the holiday focused on martyrdom rather than love and romance. The Catholic Church removed the holiday from the calendar in 1969 because of the lack of data about St. Valentine.
NEW JERSEY!
Most of New Jersey lies within the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, and as of 2011 it is the most densely populated U.S. state (and has been for decades).
About 250 million years ago, the land that is now New Jersey was immediately adjacent to the land that is now the western Sahara Desert, in Africa. New Jersey still contains rocks from the African plate.
The New Jersey state bird is the ruffed grouse, its state dance is the polka, the state animal is the white-tailed deer, and the official state song is “I’m From New Jersey.”
Fact. The District of Columbia is much more densely populated than New Jersey, but it is not a state, so it doesn’t qualify. As of the 2010 census count, with nearly 1,200 people per square mile, the Garden State is definitely the most densely populated.
A metropolitan area is a major urban region linked socially and economically. Even though New York City is unquestionably in New York State, twelve New Jersey counties are part of the New York metropolitan area and five are in the Philadelphia metropolitan area (an additional three are on the fence). There are twenty-one counties in New Jersey.
Fact. Geologists have proven that some 250 million years ago, during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras, all of the earth’s continents were joined into one supercontinent, often called Pangaea. Rifts formed, and the continent split into the several continents we recognize on maps today. Our continents are still moving.
When Africa and New Jersey split, chunks of the African plate remained fused to New Jersey. When you stand on the New Jersey coast, you are standing on top of rocks that were once part of Africa.
Bullsh*t! The ruffed grouse, the polka, and the white-tailed deer are the state bird, dance, and animal of Pennsylvania.
New Jersey is the only state that does not have a state song. Some people consider “I’m From New Jersey” to be the state song, but officially, it is not.
SEVERED FEET!
A family dog from Russellville, Alabama, made national headlines in 2008 for bringing home the severed foot of a child. Police went into high alert, searching surrounding areas with cadaver-sniffing dogs and consulting numerous missing-child databases. The hysteria immediately ceased a couple of days later when forensic tests results showed that the foot was actually a bear paw.
Between August 2007 and December 2010, detached human feet have been discovered along the coastline of Washington State and British Columbia on ten separate occasions. The majority of feet discovered were wearing socks and tennis shoes.
The foot of a nine-year-old Chinese girl named Ming Li was severed in July of 2010, when she was run over by a tractor on her way to school. Surgeons found the foot to be too damaged to reattach straightaway, so they grafted it to her other leg to let it heal. An entire month later, they successfully reattached her foot to its proper place.
Fact. Police Chief Chris Hargett hastened to point out that the paw resembled a foot closely enough that it fooled an orthopedic surgeon.
Fact. The first foot, discovered on August 20, 2007, was a right male foot in a Campus shoe. The second foot, found on August 26, 2007, was a right male foot in a Reebok. The third foot, found on February 8, 2008, was a right male foot in a Nike. The fourth foot, found on May 22, 2008, was a right female foot in a New Balance. The fifth foot, found on June 16, 2008, was a left male foot that was DNA-matched with the third foot. The sixth foot, found on August 1, 2008, was a right male foot in an Everest shoe. The seventh foot, found on November 11, 2008, was a left female foot that was DNA-matched with the fourth foot. The eighth foot, found on October 27, 2009, was a bare right male foot. The ninth foot, found on August 27, 2010, was a bare right foot belonging to a woman or a child. The tenth foot, found on December 5, 2010, was a right male foot in a hiking boot.
Something is definitely afoot.
Bullsh*t! The story is close to the truth, but the reality is even cooler. Ming Li lost not her foot, but her hand in the accident. The left hand was grafted to her right calf while it healed, and it was successfully reattached to her wrist three months later.
THE WHITE HOUSE!
African-American slaves helped to build the White House. President John Adams, the first to move into the White House, was against the practice of slavery, so his staff contained no slaves.
The White House has a tennis court, a putting green, a billiards room, a jogging track, a swimming pool, and a bowling alley, thanks to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Quincy Adams, Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon, respectively.
The White House has exactly eighty-eight rooms on four levels, including sixteen bathrooms. There are 198 doors, 100 windows, six fireplaces, three staircases, and an elevator. The original walls of the White House were built out of white limestone (that’s how it got its name), and it takes 280 gallons of paint to cover its outside surface.
Fact. The workers themselves represent a slice of American cultural history. Many were slaves, many were immigrants, and some were free African Americans. Our second president, John Adams, was the first to live in the White House, and he never owned a slave.
Fact. Teddy Roosevelt had tennis courts built behind the West Wing in 1902.
Eisenhower had the first putting green installed outside the Oval Office.
John Quincy Adams put the first billiards table in the White House in 1825, but certainly not the last.
Clinton had a jogging track built around the south grounds during his first term.
Gerald Ford built an outdoor swimming pool on the South Lawn in 1975.
President Nixon was an avid bowler, and friends had a one-lane alley built for him in a White House basement room in 1969–1970. The alley remains!
Bullsh*t! In the White House, there are 132 rooms on six levels, including thirty-five bathrooms. There are 412 doors, 147 windows, twenty-eight fireplaces, eight staircases, and three elevators.
The original walls of the White House were built out of gray sandstone, and they are still in place. “The White House” became a nickname for the house in the early nineteenth century when it was painted white, and it became the official name after Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed it so in 1901.
It takes 570 gallons of paint to cover the White House’s surface.
HOLY COW!!!
The phr
ase “holy cow!” started to find common usage in the 1930s, but was popularized by baseball announcers in the decades after–particularly in the ’50s and ’60s by broadcasting legend Phil Rizzuto, who used the phrase prodigiously. When the former Yankee shortstop’s number was retired in a 1985 ceremony, an actual cow wearing a halo was brought onstage.
In many Hindu traditions the cow is regarded as holy. Cows are seen as symbols of sacrifice, wealth, and strength. The 1,500-year-old Mahabharata says, “Cows are the foremost of all things … there is nothing more sacred or sanctifying than cows.”
If you look closely at the chandelier hanging in the middle of the Massachusetts Senate chamber, you’ll notice that a brass casting of a cow is incorporated into it. The casting is fondly nicknamed “the Holy Cow,” and also has a counterpart in the House of Representatives chamber in the Massachusetts State House, in the form of a painted cow portrait. The painting was famously stolen in 1933 by members of the Harvard Lampoon in an incident called the “Cow-Napping.”
Fact. Rizzuto’s exclamations of “holy cow!” punctuated many dramatic moments in Yankee history, and led to multiple cow-themed tributes to the man. At the 1985 ceremony, the live “holy” cow accidentally (and comically) knocked Rizzuto off his feet.
Fact. In traditional Hindu societies, even the vegetarians derive a lot of benefit from cows. Milk, curds, and ghee (clarified butter) provide the basis for their diet. Cows perform labor by pulling carts and plows. Even cow dung has its uses: It is an excellent fuel when burned, and because it contains ammonia and menthol, burning dung repels mosquitoes and even acts as a disinfectant. That cows provide all these things is seen as the embodiment of merit.
Bullsh*t! There is no cow in that chandelier, and there was no “cow-napping.”
However, there is incorporated into the chandelier in the Massachusetts Senate chamber a brass casting of a fish, which is colloquially known as the Holy Mackerel. It’s believed to be the counterpart to the Sacred Cod, a 1784 carving of a codfish that hangs in the House of Representatives chamber.
The Sacred Cod was famously pilfered in 1933 by members of the Harvard Lampoon in an incident known as the “Cod-Napping.” It was returned two days later after members of the House refused to legislate without the cod present.
1950!
In 1950, President Truman ended racial segregation in the military, Israel declared its independence, and the Republic of Korea was established.
In 1950, South Pacific won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Musical. The Academy Award for Best Picture went to All the King’s Men. The first Peanuts and Beetle Bailey comic strips appeared in newspapers.
In 1950 the United States population was 152,271,417. The average household income was $4,237. There were slightly more women than men, but they only made up 28.8 percent of the workforce.
Bullsh*t! All of those things happened in 1948.
Fact. In 1950, we also saw the first kidney transplant and the first TV remote control (it was connected to a wire). The Yankees won the World Series, and the NBA championship went to the Minneapolis Lakers.
Fact. The United States population has more than doubled since 1950, and we now make ten times as much money on average, although adjusting for inflation, we make about one and a half times as much money. These days, there are still more women than men, and they make up a little less than half of the workforce.
HUGS!
A 2010 study by animal behaviorists at the DuPage Animal Hospital in Villa Park, Illinois, proved that dogs that are “routinely held, hugged, and cuddled with” are three times as likely to live longer and remain healthier than dogs that aren’t. The study inspired the Humane Society to distribute bumper stickers that say “Have you hugged your dog today?”
In a major new national trend, schools across the country have been instituting a new ban in hopes to keep our kids safe. The dangerous culprit from which we need to protect them? Hugs.
A study at the University of North Carolina concluded that hugging can lower your blood pressure. Interestingly, the effect was much more pronounced on women than men.
Bullsh*t! Nothing true in that paragraph.
In fact, animal behaviorists assert that dogs don’t like to be hugged, even when it’s their beloved master doing the embracing. When dogs place a limb over or around another dog, or superimpose their bodies over another, it is a sign of dominance and aggression.
The scientists go on to say that hugging a dog you’re not familiar with is a good way to get bitten.
So, next time you want to show Spot that you love him, lick his face instead.
Fact. The hug threat is being addressed at our schools with varying levels of severity, from outright bans on any form of physical contact (even the high-five), to strict time limits of two or three seconds per hug.
Didn’t you hear? Hugs are the new drugs.
Fact. The North Carolina study is just one of a multitude that show loving physical contact is demonstrably beneficial to health. In the study, the huggers showed decreased blood pressure for long after the actual hug, and even during the recounting of a stressful memory.
Both men and women also showed increased levels of oxytocin, sometimes called the “love hormone,” which is supposed to have a beneficial effect on the heart.
The dip in blood pressure was more pronounced in women, and women also showed a clear dip in cortisol, which is known as the “stress hormone.”
I think the next logical step would be for our president to pass a law providing universal hug care for all Americans.
IMPOSTORS!
Joshua Abraham Norton was a British-born businessman and resident of San Francisco who, on September 17, 1859, declared himself emperor of the United States. During his “reign,” the “Imperial Majesty of these United States” issued numerous decrees, ate at any San Francisco restaurant for free, issued his own currency (which was accepted anywhere in the city), and declared himself “Protector of Mexico.”
In the late ’90s, the Paul VI Catholic High School in Fairfax, Virginia, was delighted to welcome sixteen-year-old incoming student Jonathan Taylor Spielberg, the rich nephew of director Steven Spielberg. Not long into his tenure at the high school, it was revealed that “Spielberg” was actually Anoushirvan Fakhran, a twenty-seven-year-old former porn actor from Iran.
In the 1970s, Dr. Charlotte Bach taught biology at the University of East London for three years before it was revealed that she had never been a scientist, and, in fact, had never even earned a college degree.
Fact. The emperor was so beloved by locals that his seal of approval led to increased business for merchants (hence his free meal ticket at any restaurant) and his self-issued currency was collectible and valuable (and therefore accepted tender in San Francisco).
When a local police officer arrested Norton in hopes of committing him to an asylum, locals responded with outrage. Norton was released, the police apologized, and, from then on, he was routinely saluted in the streets by the boys in blue.
Norton ordered the construction of both a bridge and a tunnel across San Francisco Bay. Like all of his decrees, it was ignored, but the Transbay Tube (built in 1969) bears a plaque of “Norton I, Emperor of the United States, Protector of Mexico” to this day.
Fact. When his fakery was found out, Fakhran received an eleven-month suspended sentence and a hundred hours of community service. When asked why he did it, he said, “Just for the fun, to get the experience I never had.”
Bullsh*t! Dr. Charlotte Bach never taught at the University of East London. She was a fringe evolutionary theorist with a large following among scientists and intellectuals in 1970s London and thought to be a former lecturer at Budapest’s Eötvös Loránd University. Upon her death in 1981, it was revealed that Dr. Charlotte Bach was never a scientist or a professor, and indeed was never Dr. Charlotte Bach: She was actually Karoly Hajdu, a Hungarian immigrant, former criminal, and most shockingly, a man.
RARE BOOKS!
The most expensive printed book ever sold was a copy of John Audubon’s Birds of America, which was purchased at auction in 2010 for $11.5 million. The most expensive manuscript ever sold was Leonardo da Vinci’s handwritten Codex Leicester, which Bill Gates bought in 1994 for $30.8 million.
The libraries of both Brown and Harvard universities contain books bound in human skin.
The Voynich manuscript, a handwritten book on 240 vellum pages from the early fifteenth century, and containing essays on natural history, religion, astronomy, mysticism, and mathematics, is believed to have been written by Matthias Voynich, who was seven years old at the time.
Fact. Only 119 copies of Audobon’s Birds of America are thought to exist, eleven of which are in private hands.
The Codex Leicester contains seventy-two pages of Leonardo da Vinci’s personal scientific writings and drawings. Gates scanned the document and included the images as a screen saver in Windows 95.
Nice of him to share.
Fact. The practice of binding books in human skin was commonplace at a couple of times in human history, and is known as anthropodermic bibliopegy. Several such tomes still exist today in rare book collections, including the copy of Practicarum quaestionum circa leges regias Hispaniae in Harvard’s law library that bears this inscription: “The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my deare friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive.”
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