The Utterly, Completely, and Totally Useless Fact-O-Pedia
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The life’s work of Ludoph van Ceulen, who died from unknown causes in 1610 at age 70, was to calculate the value of the mathematical constant pi to 35 digits. He was so proud of this achievement that he asked that the number be engraved on his tombstone. So it comes as no surprise that his epitaph read “Ludolph van Ceulen: ‘3.14159265358979323846264338327950288…’ ”
“Sir John Strange. Here lies an honest man. And that is Strange.” This was inscribed on a tombstone of a lawyer in England.
“Here lies Johnny Yeast. Pardon me For not rising.” In Ruidoso, New Mexico
F
Famous Last Words
“Don’t pull down the blinds! I feel fine. I want the sunlight to greet me.”—Rudolph Valentino, Italian actor and sex symbol.
“Either the wallpaper goes, or I do.”—Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and writer.
“Nothing but death.”—the response of Jane Austen, English writer, when asked “is there anything you require?”
“I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.”—Humphrey Bogart, American actor.
“I just wish I had time for one more bowl of chili.”—Kit Carson, American frontiersman
“I’m bored with it all.”—Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, before slipping into a coma and dying nine days later.
Fangs
When brushing a dog’s teeth, never use human toothpaste: it’s too sudsy and contains too much fluoride for Fido. A meat-flavored toothpaste is available on the market or you can make your own concoction: half salt, half baking soda, slightly moistened. As for the dog’s breath…
There is a dentist from Irvine, CA, named “Dr. Fang.”
The clouded leopard, which feasts on monkeys, deer and pigs, has been discovered living deep in the Borneo rain forest. Its jaws can open wider than those of any other cat, and the fangs are as big as a tiger’s, even though tigers are ten times larger than clouded leopards. Their two-inch canine teeth have drawn comparisons to the saber-tooth tiger.
The fangs of the tarantula are “hinged” to move vertically (up and down), while the fangs of other spiders move horizontally.
The gaboon viper of Africa is armed with the longest fangs of any snake in the world. The fangs have been known to exceed two full inches.
Feathers
Birds may not be the only animals that can fly, but they are the only ones with feathers. Birds use their feathers to help them fly, to hide from predators, to keep warm and dry, and to display (or show off) to their mates or rivals. So you see why birds spend so much time taking care of their feathers.
There are two basic types of feather: vaned feathers cover the exterior of the body while down feathers are located underneath the vaned feathers. The pennaceous, or contour, feathers are vaned feathers that arise from tracts and cover the whole body. Some feathers, filoplumes, are hairlike and are found along with the down feathers.
An owl’s flight feathers have a soft comb-like edge to help muffle sound.
Snipe have two special tail feathers that vibrate during courtship, making a whirring sound called “drumming.” I guess some could refer to this as a back beat!
Feathers do eventually wear out and need to be replaced. This process is called a moult. As soon as a bird loses say a flight feather, another one begins to grow. Ducks prove an exception to the rule—they lose all their flight feathers at the same time, and they cannot fly for weeks until the new ones grow in.
Feminism
The term “Chauvinism” was derived from Nicolas Chauvin, a semimythical soldier under Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite the unpopularity of Bonapartism in Restoration France, Chauvin was said to be an ardent supporter and often donned a violet in his lapel, the symbol of his deposed Emperor. He remained fanatically loyal despite his poverty, disability, and the abuse he suffered.
Upon the death of her husband, female printer Anne Green became the publisher of the Maryland Gazette in 1767. She ran Maryland’s only paper for eight years and when she died in 1775, her obituary read, “She was of a mild and benevolent disposition, and for conjugal affection and parental tenderness, an example to her sex.”
“As one goes through life one learns that if you don’t paddle your own canoe, you don’t move.” Katharine Hepburn, American actress
“I married beneath me—all women do.” Nancy Astor, first woman to serve as a member of the Parliament.
Women in Switzerland weren’t given the right to vote until 1971. 621,403 members of the all-male electorate voted for the female right to vote, while 323,596 opposed the measure.
Betty Friedan launched an entire movement with her book, The Feminine Mystique. Her analysis of women’s role and status in society dramatically affected women in the US and internationally. She once stated, “A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex but neither should she adjust to prejudice and discrimination.”
Film
Only three films have ever taken all “top five” Academy Awards; Best Picture, Best Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay: It Happened One Night (1935); One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975); and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
The first film “blockbuster” was Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) because people lined up around the block to see the movie.
In 1935, Dudley Nichols became the first person to refuse an Oscar film award for best screenwriter on The Informer. There was a union boycott of the awards that year.
Lalita Pawar was a Bollywood actress with the longest running career. She was in more than 300 films over 70 years.
Manoel de Oliveria was 99 and the oldest film director when he made his most recent movie in 2007. The Portuguese director has made a movie a year since 1990.
“Film Gris,” a term coined by Thom Andersen, is an offshoot of film noir characterized by leftist criticism of American society (1947-1951). The films came in the context of the first wave of the communist investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
An “orphan film” is a term for a motion picture work that has been abandoned by its owner or has suffered neglect.
Fingerprints
In Babylon from 1885-1913 BC, fingerprints were used as substitutes for signatures in order to protect against forgery. Parties would impress their fingerprints into clay tablets on which contracts had been written. Although the ancient peoples probably did not realize that fingerprints could identify individuals, references from the age of the Babylonian king Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC) indicate that law officials fingerprinted people who had been arrested.
In 1906, New York City Police Department Deputy Commissioner Joseph A. Faurot introduced the fingerprinting of criminals to the United States.
It remains the most commonly used forensic evidence worldwide—in most jurisdictions, fingerprint examination cases match or outnumber all other forensic examination casework combined. Fingerprints are reported to solve ten times more unknown suspect cases than DNA.
The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they can easily be confused at a crime scene even with an electron microscope.
The largest AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) repository in America is operated by the Department of Homeland Security’s US Visit Program. The archives contain over 90 million persons’ fingerprints, many in the form of two-finger records.
Flowers
Spiderwort flowers have a very short life—only a single morning—after which the petals wilt and turn to a jelly-like fluid. However, each plant will produce 20 or more flowers per stem.
The False Hellebore or Indian Poke is a plant which grows in eastern and western America but not central. Native American tribes used it to determine their chiefs. If one was able to survive eating the very toxic plant (the roots and foliage are poisonous), they were worthy.
Low-pollen sunflowers have been developed in recent years which not only help asthma sufferers, but also extend the flower’s life. Before the advent of mo
dern materials, sunflower stems were used to fill lifejackets.
Pliny the Elder, a Roman scientist of the first century AD named the Gladioli flower. Struck by the resemblance between the sheath of the flower and the weapon that was carried by Roman soldiers, he called the flower “gladiolus” from the Latin word “gladius” which means sword.
The Rafflesia arnoldii, which can be found in the rainforests of Indonesia, is the flower with the world’s largest bloom; it can grow 3 ft across and can weigh up to 15 lbs.
The Amorphophallus titanium has also been called the “corpse flower” for its unpleasant odor, which smells of rotting flesh to attract pollinators. The “corpse flower” is not a single flower but a cluster of many tiny flowers, called an inflorescence. The plant can reach heights of 7 to 12 ft and can weigh as much as 170 lbs.
Fly
There are over 120,000 species of flies ranging in size from 1/20th of an inch to well over three inches.
Flies are the only insects to have two wings whereas all other insects have four.
Entomologists Dr. Yao and Dr. Yuan of China studied more than 378,046 common houseflies and estimated that each carried approximately 1,941,000 bacteria on their bodies.
In 1923, black flies in swarms were reportedly responsible for the deaths of more than 20,000 sheep, horses, and cattle in Romania and Bulgaria.
Flies will only beat their wings when their feet are free. As soon as the feet become stationary, their wings will stop flying.
Flies taste, smell, and feel with the hairs that cover their bodies. The hairs on the fly’s mouthparts and feet are used for tasting. Flies taste what they walk on. If they walk onto something tasty, they put down their mouth and taste it again.
Football
The person with the most Super Bowl wins is Charles Hayley who was on the San Francisco 49ers from 1989-1990 and the Dallas Cowboys from 1993-1994 and 1996.
The winner of the very first Superbowl was the Green Bay Packers in the year 1967.
As of 2006, the cost of a 30-second commercial aired during the Super Bowl was an average of $2.5 million. The first famous Super Bowl commercial was a 1974 ad for Noxzema featuring Super Bowl legend Joe Namath.
Joe Montana is the three-time Super Bowl MVP, nicknamed “Joe Cool” for his remarkable success in clutch situations and the postseason. Montana led the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowl titles from 1981-1989 and compiled a .713 winning percentage, third best in the Super Bowl era, during his 15-year career.
Bill Hargiss is often credited with one of the first uses of the “huddle” while coaching the Oregon State Beavers against the Washington Huskies in a 1918 game in Seattle. It was popularized after a deaf player named Paul Hubbard began using it. To avoid having the other team see his sign language between plays, he and his team huddled together to conceal the signs.
The first African-American player in the American League was Larry Doby with the Cleveland Indians in 1947.
Ford, Henry
Henry Ford called the Model T the “universal car,” a low-cost, reliable vehicle that could be maintained easily and could successfully travel the poor roads of the era. By 1916, 55% of all cars were Ford Model T’s.
Ford owned a controversial anti-Semitic newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, an incredibly offensive publication which damaged Ford’s reputation. Hitler believed that Henry Ford was a perfect example for what all Germans should become.
As most people know, Ford produced the first assembly line for automobiles. He supposedly got the idea from a process that was used to slaughter pigs.
Though it owns a portfolio of British brands—Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo—UAW Ford does not consider them American cars.
Henry Ford was especially fond of Thomas Edison, and on Edison’s deathbed, he demanded Edison’s son catch his final breath in a test tube. The test tube can still be found today in Henry Ford Museum.
Mahatma Gandhi never visited the U.S., but he had many American fans and followers. One of his more unusual admirers was Henry Ford. Gandhi sent him an autographed charkha (spinning wheel) through a journalist emissary.
G
Gandhi
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”—Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi had a set of false teeth that he often carried in a fold of his loincloth. He put them in his mouth only when he wanted to eat. After his meal, he would take them out, wash them, and return it back to his loincloth again. An apple a day could have surely prevented the need for them!
Gandhi believed in the virtues of a Sativa diet which consists of foods that are free of chemicals pesticides and artificial coloring. People who eat these natural foods—including fruits, vegetables, dry fruits, nuts, and seeds—are thought to think more positively, calm their minds, and help to energize their bodies and souls.
As a lawyer in London, Gandhi got nowhere at all. He was practically a failure there. Years before, when he first came to England, his Irish teacher made him copy the Sermon on the Mount, over and over again, purely as an exercise in English. Hour after hour, Gandhi wrote, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth…Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God,” and these words made a profound impression on him.
His last words were Hé Ram! This is an exclamation to Ram (or Rama), who in Hindu traditions is one of the manifestations of Vishnu. Hé Ram means “O! lord Ram!”. (This is invoking praise of Rama, rather than an expression of surprise.)
Gems
There are more than 2000 different types of minerals, but fewer than 100 are considered beautiful or durable enough to be used as gemstones. Of these, only 20 are commonly used in jewelry.
Hot hot heat…An amethyst will change its color when heated. Smoky amethyst stones can be transformed at temperatures as low as 250°F to a shining yellow or brownish-red. Clear amethysts, or those with a high degree of transparency, become yellow or colorless at 400°F.
A star is born…A star sapphire is a special type of sapphire that exhibits a star-like phenomenon known as “asterism.” These gems contain intersecting needle-like inclusions that cause the appearance of a six-rayed star-shaped pattern when viewed with a single overhead light. Twelve ray stars also exist, but they are much less common. The most notable sapphire mines in the US are located in Montana.
In 2008, Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives found a stolen 370 million dollar raw emerald in Las Vegas. The Bahia emerald is believed to be the second largest gem of its kind on the planet and weighs an astonishing 850 lbs. It was stolen from the Pasadena, CA area; the robbers forged paperwork to remove the gem from a secure vault.
Large quantities of a green mineral gemstone have been found on Mars. Rocky outcrops of the mineral olivine were spotted by a spacecraft orbiting the planet. On our planet, however, the mineral is more commonly known as Peridot, an inexpensive gemstone used in jewelry. Its existence on Mars suggests the planet has been cold and dry for billions of years.
Giants
The Bible tells of men of extraordinary size, called Nephilim, in the pre-flood world. The Nephilim were hybrid offspring of angels materialized into human form that had sexual relations with women on Earth (Genesis 6:1,2,4). The global flood of Genesis was said to have destroyed all life on earth which would include the Nephilim (Genesis 6:17; 7:17-21), however, in Numbers, some of the spies of Israel report that the Anakites, decendants of the Nephilim, were still living in Canaan (Numbers 13:28-33).
Saxo Grammaticus, for example, argues that giants had to exist, because nothing else would explain the large walls, stone monuments, and statues that we now know were the remains of Roman construction. Giants provided the least complicated explanation for such artifacts.