Lars Trabolt from Denmark was the 2008 World Backgammon Champion.
Named after Kit Woolsey—the backgammon expert and former editor of the online backgammon magazine Gammonline—the “Woolsey Rule” suggests to double when it is not clear whether a position is a take or a pass.
The most expensive backgammon set in the world is Bernard Maquin’s design for the Charles Hollander Collection. It boasts 61,082 black, white, and yellow diamonds with a total carat weight of 2071.48. Together with over 6.77 kg of gold, 150 g of silver, and more than 10,000 hours of labor, it retails somewhere between $1.5-2 million. Out of your price range? A mini backgammon set on Ebay sets you back $1.99.
Dream weaving…to see a backgammon game in a dream signifies the presence of an unwelcome guest in the near future. To play a losing game of backgammon represents misfortunes in love, suggesting that the dreamer seeks the wrong type of person and the pursuit for love will be an upward battle.
Bacteria
Top of the class…in Florida, a 7th grade student won a school science fair by proving there was more bacteria in ice machines at fast-food restaurants than in toilet bowl water.
According to University of Arizona researchers, the TV remote controls in hospital rooms are worse carriers of bacteria than the toilet handles.
Kitchen sponges and dish cloths across American homes are prime breeding ground for the most dangerous sources of virulent bacteria, including E. coli, Salmonella, and Staphylococcus. They provide a source of moisture, a ready food supply in the form of food particles, and an easy surface to which the bacteria may cling. They can easily be disinfected however, by placing the sponge in a microwave oven for 60 to 120 seconds. The odor is improved too!
Heavy duty…there are approximately five nonillion (5 × 1030) bacteria on Earth, making much of the world’s biomass.
That could be why sales of hand sanitizers have exploded in the U.S. In 2005, more than $67 million dollars worth of hand sanitizers were sold…a 50% increase from the previous year.
“Extreme Barophiles” are bacteria which live at depths greater than 10,000 meters. They are so biologically different from sea level bacteria that they die in a few hours if brought to the surface.
Ballet
Ballet emerged in the late 15th century Renaissance court culture of Italy, as a dance interpretation of fencing. It was eventually further developed in the French court from the time of Louis XIV in the 17th century.
The word “tutu” may be a corruption of “cucu”, French baby talk for “cul-cul” meaning roughly “botty-wotty” (for bottom). Alternatively, it may derive from tulle, the material from which tutus are often made.
For its first 100 years, ballet was performed exclusively by male courtiers as an amateur entertainment.
The largest ballet class involved 989 participants in an event organized by Andrew Warth in Canal Walk Shopping Centre, Cape Town, South Africa, on August 24, 2008.
Just for kicks! A fouette is a bit like a pirouette where the dancer flicks their leg around to spin. New Yorker Leigh Zimmerman twirled a new world record by completing 38 complete spins at the Pineapple Dance Studios in London.
Anna Pavlova, the renowned prima ballerina, died of pneumonia three weeks before her 50th birthday. Following an old ballet tradition, on the day she was to have next performed, the show went on as scheduled, with a single spotlight circling an empty stage where she would have been. The Pavlova dessert—a meringue with fresh fruit and cream—was named after her.
Bamboo
Tall order! Bamboo is the fastest-growing woody plant on the Earth, growing as fast as 47.6 in in a 24-hour period.
Many bamboos only flower at intervals as long as 60 or 120 years, and the flowering occurs simultaneously with all plants in the population. Subsequently, the plants produce flowers, which then produce seeds, and then die off. A new crop requires ten years to grow to full maturity.
Newsflash! Some of the world’s top inventors found uses for bamboo. Thomas Edison tried over 100 varieties of bamboo for the filament in his first electric bulb, and the only one that worked was the Kyoto bamboo. Also, the needle in Alexander Graham Bell’s first phonograph was made of bamboo.
Research in China’s Qinling Mountains showed giant pandas can consume, on average, 40 pounds of fresh bamboo leaves per day.
The shakuhachi, a Japanese end-blown flute, was traditionally made from bamboo. It means “1.8 feet,” referring to its size, and was used in classic Japanese music often associated with Zen Buddhism or meditation.
Because the bamboo is made up of more water than normal trees, it releases 35% more oxygen than trees.
Barbie®
Barbie® was modelled after a German doll named “Lilli” who, in turn, was inspired by a racy, German cartoon strip. The saucy Bild Lilli doll was sold in smoke shops and bars.
Two Barbie® dolls are sold somewhere in the world every second of every day.
If Barbie® were a real person her measurements would be an impossible 36-18-38.
It’s not you, it’s me. On Feb 12, 2004, Mattel announced that Barbie® and Ken had broken up.
The smash-hit song “Barbie Girl” by Aqua sold eight million copies worldwide and topped many lists including Rolling Stone’s “20 Most Annoying Songs” and VH1’s “Most Awesomely Bad Songs…Ever.” Mattel sued the record label, MCA, and even took the case to the Supreme Court, stating copyright and trademark violation. The case was dismissed.
Baseball
The first five members to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1935 were Walter Johnson, Christy Matthewson, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, and Ty Cobb.
Baseball evolved in the early 17th century out of a family of English folk games including rounders, stoolball, and cricket.
Still coming to terms with baseball? A swinging strikeout is often called a “whiff” and a batter who is struck out by a fastball is often said to have been “blown away.”
Getting to second base is easier than you think. Second is the easiest base to steal, because the catcher must throw a farther distance.
In 2008, Alex Rodriguez’s salary peaked at $28,000,000, making him the highest-paid baseball player of the year. His career salary at the time was $198,416,252.
The green underside of a baseball cap serves to reduce the light reflection that could distract the ballplayers during daytime games.
An inspector from Major League Baseball visits every ballpark at least twice a year and checks the specifications of the mound including height of the mound, slope of the mound, size of the pitcher’s circle; flatness of the pitcher’s rubber; and flatness of the area on which the pitcher’s rubber is laid.
Bats
One of the rarest mammals in the United States, the spotted bat has the largest ears of any bat species native to North America.
If a bat flies into your home, simply open all the doors and windows and allow it to find its own way out. If this fails to remove the pest, take a large towel or blanket, throw it over the animal, gather it up, and put it outside. The bat should extricate itself from the cloth without any additional handling.
The Giant Golden-Crowned Flying Fox has a wingspan of 5 ft and the mammal weighs approximately 3 lbs.
In German, it was once believed that one who donned the left eye of a bat as a talisman would become invisible. Sufficed to say, the trend was short-lived after people were seen fashioning the eyes of dead bats.
The sound of music—white-winged vampire bats, the closest living relative of the common vampire bat, can sing well-coordinated duets with each other.
Beef
Clara Peller, the elderly actress who first voiced the infamous Wendy’s slogan “Where’s the Beef?”, was later fired after cutting a commercial for spaghetti sauce where she answers her famous question by saying,“I found it.”
Beefaroni contains vitamin A and no other vitamins.
Selfridges, the renowned London department store, is said to offer the world’s most expe
nsive sandwich at £85. The ingredients of the sandwich are: Wagyu beef, fresh lobe foie gras, black truffle mayonnaise, brie de meaux, rocket, red pepper, and mustard confit and English plum tomatoes. You have to pay extra if you want a pack of chips on the side.
Beefalo, also known as catalo or cattalo, is a hybrid beef animal, bred by crossing the domestic Pulled Angus with the American Bison. Texan Charles Goodnight developed the beefalo in the mid-19th century as he preferred bison meat to beef and, with this hybrid, sought to combine the good flavor of the bison with the Angus’s resistance to certain diseases and pests.
Kobe beef is an exclusive beef from the black Tajima-ushi breed of Wagyu cattle, raised according to strict tradition in Japan. Its distinct flavor, melt-in-your-mouth tenderness, and fatty well-marbled texture is due in large part to the unusual rearing process. Some of it includes feeding beer to the cattle during summer months to stimulate their appetite, massaging the cow to relieve stress and muscle stiffness, and brushing the haircoat with sake to improve the haircoat and softness of skin, which will in turn affect the meat quality.
Acclaimed self-taught chef Fergus Henderson of St John restaurant in London has been lauded in Britain, the U.S., and Europe for his “nose-totail” style of cooking. The menus at St John offers dishes using the most unusual parts—heart, chitterlings, kidneys, brain, and bone marrow to name a few—to create exceptional dishes. His restaurant is considered one of the world’s best.
Bell, Alexander Graham
In 1888, Alexander Graham Bell was the president of the National Geographic Society.
His father, grandfather, and brother were all associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf.
Mark Twain expressed initial interested in Bell’s company but decided against an investment of $5000, because he saw possibilities in another invention called the Paige typesetting machine. Unfortunately, the machine proved to be much less successful and cost Twain an investment of $250,000. By 1894, Twain declared bankruptcy.
Ring my bell…On March 7, 1876, the U.S. patent office issued a patent on Bell’s invention that sent words over a wire by converting the sound waves to a varying current of electricity. This is arguably the single most valuable patent in history.
The film, The Story of Alexander Graham Bell debuted in 1939. After it was released, the telephone was commonly called the “Ameche” which was a slang reference to the actor Don Ameche who played the telephone’s inventor.
Bible
On October 22, 1987 a Japanese buyer, Eiichi Kobayashi, purchased the Old Testament portion of a Gutenberg Bible for $5.4 million at a Christie’s Auction. The last sale of a complete version took place nine years before, again at Christie’s, for $2.2 million. Today, single pages from first-edition Bibles fetch $25,000 each.
The Tynesdale Bible, translated by William Tyndale, was the first printed Bible in the English language and the New Testament was published in 1526. Before Tyndale completed the second edition, he was taken up and burned for heresy in Flanders.
When ancient scribes copied earlier books, they wrote notes on the margins of the page (marginal glosses) to comment or correct their text—especially if a scribe accidentally omitted a word or line. When later scribes were copying the copy, they were sometimes uncertain if a note was intended to be included as part of the text. Over time, different regions evolved different versions, each with its own assemblage of omissions and additions.
In addition to providing their well-known Bibles in hotel rooms, the Gideons also distribute Bibles to members of the military of various countries, to hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons.
Birth
Lotus Birth is the practice of leaving the umbilical cord uncut after birth so that the baby is left attached to its placenta until the cord naturally separates.
In 2008, a 70-year-old Indian woman, Omkari Panwar, gave birth to twins, via emergency cesarean section. Omkari became pregnant through IVF treatment so she and her husband could produce a male heir. The babies weighed 2 lbs each.
The youngest birth was by a five-year-old girl in 1939, by C-section. Her parents, who assumed their daughter had a tumor, took her to a hospital, where she was determined to be seven-months pregnant.
In 1888, German obstetrician Karl Crede invented the first artificial incubator for premature babies. Because electricity was not widely available, the air inside was warmed by a kerosene lamp.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2007), the world birth rate is at 4.2 births per second.
On July 22, 1971, Dr. Gennaro Montanino of Rome, Italy, announced he had removed the fetuses of ten girls and five boys from the womb of a 35-year-old housewife during her fourth month of pregnancy. The unborn babies were 5 in long and 5 oz. in weight.
Heavy duty! Topping the scales at 22 lb 8 oz, the heaviest surviving baby was a boy born to Carmelina Fedele in September 1955 in Aversa, Italy.
Black Hole
According to Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, the black hole weighs the equivalent of 4.31 million suns, with an uncertainty of plus or minus 0.36 million. The observations also pinpoint the distance from the Earth to the galaxy’s center at 27,000 light-years.
The black hole emits X-ray radiation. The rays get smaller and smaller until they disappear, or “evaporate.”
The gravity around the “hole” of a black hole is so strong that nothing can make its way back out after a critical distance. This critical distance at which nothing, not even light, can escape is called the Event Horizon.
“Blackhole Sun” was a song written in 1994 by Chris Cornell of the band Soundgarden. The single has sold over 3 million copies worldwide and can be rocked out on the videogame Rock Band and sung on the games Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol Encore and SingStar 90s.
Black Widow
True Black Widow Spiders have the most potent spider venom, which can cause swellings up to 6 in.
The females can live for up to five years, while a male’s lifespan is much shorter. The female, on occasion, eats the male after mating. This form of sexual cannibalism has been observed in the wild only with the southern black widow species.
The female hangs belly upward and rarely leaves the web.
Many spiders of the genus Steatoda are often mistaken for widow spiders, and are known as false black widows. Their poison can be painful, but not necessarily fatal.
In 2006, Jason Fricker from Dorchester spent three days in a hospital after being bit three times on the chest and stomach when a false black widow fell down the front of his shirt. Although the false black widow has been in Britain since the 1870s (reportedly arriving in bananas from the Canary Islands), its numbers and range have grown in the UK due to milder climates.
Margaret Rudin made headlines in 1995 as “the black widow” in the shooting death of her fifth husband. The skull and some charred bones of her husband were found in 1995 in a desert about 45 miles from Las Vegas. Prosecutors said she killed him to get a 60 percent share of his $11 million fortune. She was convicted of his murder in 2001.
Blood
Blood has a long road to travel. There are about 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body. And the hard-working heart pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood through those vessels every day.
An average adult contains five to six quarts of blood in their body.
Most donated red blood cells can be stored for forty-two days.
If you begin at age 17 and donate every 56 days until you reach 79 years old, you will have donated 46.5 gallons of blood during that time.
Most tropical marine fish can survive in a tank filled with human blood.
The Utterly, Completely, and Totally Useless Fact-O-Pedia Page 2