Prohibition
An estimated 75% of the liquor that was smuggled into the U.S. during prohibition arrived along a route from the mouth of the Lake Erie and St. Claire Rivers. This was eventually nicknamed the “Windsor-Detroit Funnel.”
When prohibition was repealed, beer was the first legal alcoholic drink made available on April 7, 1933. Other alcoholic beverages were made legal December 5, 1933.
In 1904, North Dakota was a prohibition state but Montana wasn’t. In Sidney, MO, a bar was built on the state line so one could buy a drink in Montana and drink it in North Dakota.
Pilsner Urquell was the number one import beer in the U.S. before Prohibition.
Al Capone, also known as Scarface, was the most famous figure during the Prohibition Era for his control of large portions of the Chicago underworld. Capone was making $10 million per year in revenue through the sales of bootleg alcohol, racketeering, gambling, and prostitution…taxfree, of course.
Templeton Rye Whiskey was said to be Al Capone’s whiskey of choice.
Q
Q-tips®
Leo Gerstenzang invented the cotton swab in the 1920s after attaching wads of cotton to toothpicks. His product was originally named “Baby Gays.”
The word “Q-tip” is an abbreviation for “Quality tip,” though the Q once stood for “Quilted.”
Nearly 3 out of 4 Americans stick cotton swabs in their ears despite the package’s instructions against it.
Q-tips® cotton swabs are the most popular product for babies in the United States.
The website www.instructables.com provides instructions for making a Q-tip gun, which can launch Q-tips® anywhere between 30-50 ft.
Quail
Dirty bird! The California Quail is known to live in convoys and to enjoy the occasional community dust bath.
It’s true love or nothing for the Mountain Quail and Gambel’s Quail—they are both monogamous.
Also called the Blue Quail or Cottontop, a Scaled Quail has a feather pattern similar to scales.
The sex of a quail can be determined by the feather shape and coloration on the head and wings. The males have black and white stripes along the side of their heads while the stripes on a female’s head are brown and sandy.
The California Quail digests vegetation with the help of protozoan in its intestine. Chicks acquire the protozoa by pecking at the feces of adults.
Quail eggs are a delicacy in many countries around the world. In Colombia, a single hard-boiled quail egg is a popular topping for hot dogs and hamburgers.
Quakers
“Quakers” earned their name from the trembling which occurred when the Spirit moved them.
Quakerism is a way of life rather than a set of beliefs. They seek divine experience directly, within themselves, and through their relationships with those around them. These encounters provide Quakers a meaning and purpose.
Quakers are not Amish, Anabaptists, Shakers, or Puritans…they also no longer dress like the man on the Quaker Oats box.
The UK alone has approximately 25,000 Quakers.
Charity organizations such as Amnesty International, Oxfam and Relate all started as fledgling enterprises founded by Quakers.
Famous Quakers included British surgeon Joseph Lister, father of antiseptic surgery; Lucretia Mott, women’s rights/anti-slavery activist, and former President Richard Nixon.
Queen Elizabeth II
Since 1917, the Sovereign has sent congratulatory messages to people celebrating their 100th and 105th birthday and every birthday thereafter. The message consists of a card with a personalized greeting and a facsimile signature. The Queen has sent 100,000 telegrams to centenarians in the UK and the Commonwealth.
The Queen has a meeting with the Prime Minister of England every Tuesday.
Hot doggity! The Queen received a corgi for her 18th birthday and has owned more than 30 ever since. Her Majesty currently has five corgis: Monty, Willow, Holly, Emma, and Linnet.
The Crown owns all mute swans in the kingdom because of an outdated quirk from the 12th century. Though the Queen only exercises her rights on specific stretches of the River Thames and its surrounding tributaries, the Crown can take action to prosecute those guilty of harming a swan. In 2006, Shamsu Miah was so hungry during Ramadan that he killed a swan and was confined to jail for two months.
The Queen has received a number of unusual gifts during her reign, many of which include live animals. The more exotic animals such as the jaguar and a sloth from Brazil have been placed in the care of the London zoo, but she has also received two black beavers from Canada. Other odd gifts include pineapples, eggs, a box of snail shells, a grove of maple trees, and 7 kg of prawns.
Quiff
The quiff is a hairstyle that combines the 1950s pompadour hairstyle, the flattop, and occasionally, a mohawk.
The hairstyle was trendy during the British “Teddy Boy” movement, but became popular again in Europe with early psychobilly acts including The Meteors, Demented Are Go, and other groups of the early 80s.
The Japanese Punch perm, a favorite among Yakuza members, bears a strong similarity to this hairstyle.
Famous quiffs include those of Morrissey, Tintin, Elvis Presley, Conan O’Brian and the former Brazilian president, Itamar Franco.
A quiff can also be used to describe a promiscuous woman.
To attain the perfect quiff, one should first wash and towel dry the hair. Then, while the hair is still slightly damp, apply medium-hold gel to the roots. Use a blow dryer to heat the roots so the hair is lifted off the face. Finally, lift the quiff high at the front.
R
Rabbits
Rabbits are nocturnal creatures that are most active between dusk and dawn.
When a rabbit is happy, it will click its teeth. If it is angry toward a human or another rabbit, it will grunt.
Rabbits are not rodents. They belong to a family called “lagomorphs.”
The mating ritual among the European rabbits is almost without motion and can last more than thirty minutes. Males will fight each other by squirting urine and even using their teeth to castrate one another in pursuit of their female companions. Occasionally, a male will have his genitalia gnawed.
According to Chinese astrology, people born in the Year of the Rabbit are articulate, talented, and ambitious. They are also considered patient, kind, and virtuous, and even better than that—financially lucky. They are most compatible with those born in the years of the Sheep, Pig, and Dog.
An American rabbit named “Nipper’s Geromino” has the longest ears on record, measuring 31.125.”
Rain
A drizzle occurs when drops of rain are less than half a millimeter.
There are three general types of rain: orographic, frontal, and convective. Also known as showers, convective rain generally lasts for less than one hour.
The world record for rainfall was 1825 mm (over 6 ft!) at Foc-Foc, Reunion in the Indian Ocean.
Mawsynram in the state of Meghalaya, India, is known as the wettest city in the world. The average annual rainfall is 12,000 mm (39.37 ft).
Feel the need for speed? A raindrop falls at 600 ft per minute or 7 mph.
A raindrop is actually circular but appears oval because gravitation pulls on the front as the raindrop is falling.
Forks, Washington is the rainiest city in the continental United States… but it really made it on the map after becoming the home of the vampires in Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling Twilight series.
Rainforest
Every second, an area of the rainforest comparable to a size of a football field is being destroyed.
A tropical rainforest can be so densely packed with trees that rain falling on the canopy can take as long as 10 minutes to touch the ground.
In moist South American rain forests, sloths move slowly enough for algae to grow in their fur.
Tropical rainforests circle the Earth’s equator like a belt, maintaining an average constant temperature of 80°F and
acquiring 160-400 in of rain each year.
Nearly half of world’s original four billion acres of rainforest have now disappeared. The amount lost is equivalent to the combined size of Washington, Idaho, California, Nevada, and Arizona.
Rambo
The movie was an adaptation of the novel written by award-winning Canadian author, David Morrell. In the book, the character of Rambo kills many of his pursuers, while in the film he is not directly responsible for any of the deaths. Before filming, Sylvester Stallone felt the character of John Rambo needed to be more sympathetic.
Rambo: First Blood II was the first film where Rambo killed while shirtless. Total number of casualties? 46.
In Japanese, the word “rambo” means “violence.”
Before Stallone was signed onto the project, the film studio Warner Bros had considered Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Al Pacino, and Dustin Hoffman for the role.
With its $63 million-dollar budget, Rambo III was the most expensive film ever made at the time of its release.
Rats
The Karni Mata temple in the town of Deshnoke, India, is known to be a temple of rats. Goddess Karni is thought to be a reincarnation of Goddess Durga. The rats in this temple are worshipped as they are considered to be the spirits of Goddess Karni’s followers. The priests who maintain this ancient temple provide the rats with food.
Rats can live without water for an even longer duration than camels.
An experiment was done in which a marked rat was left on one of the islands of New Zealand. Within a few days, the same rat was found on another island 400 meters away from the original one. They can swim in the water for as long as 36 hours.
Hold the cheddar! Contrary to popular belief, rats do not like cheese; in fact, they are lactose intolerant.
Rats will eat their own feces, strictly for the nutritional value.
Rats may not have gallbladders or tonsils, but all are born with belly buttons.
During its receptivity period, the female rat can mate around 500 times and with 500 different partners! Each period lasts around 6 hours and occurs 15 times in one year. In fact, a pair of mating rats could produce 1,500 more rats in only one year if all of their offspring survive.
Rice
The Chinese word for rice is the same word used for food.
There are more than 40,000 different varieties of rice. Of those varieties, more than 100 grow worldwide (with the exception of Antarctica) but only 10% of them are marketed and sold.
Rice is traditionally thrown at the bride and groom at weddings as it symbolizes life and fertility. These days, confetti is often used instead of rice.
Grains of rice added to a salt container keep the salt flowing freely.
The “wild rice” marketed and sold in supermarkets across North America is a type of grass called zinzania aquatica. It has no relation to the rice plant at all.
5,000 liters of water is required to produce 1 kg of rice.
Rio de Janeiro
Rio De Janeiro is home to the largest and second largest urban forests in the world: Floresta da Tijuca (or “Tijuca Forest”) and the forest in Parque Estadual da Pedra Branca (or “White Stone State Park”).
Many of Brazil’s most notorious favelas, or shantytowns, are located in Rio de Janeiro. They are ridden by sewage, crime, and hygiene problems. In Rio, one in every four cariocas (as Rio’s inhabitants are called) lives in a favela, which is not recognized in the city as a legal entity.
Rio has 50 km (31 miles) of beaches spread out along the coast of the state.
Carnival festivities in Rio de Janeiro date back as early as 1723 in the form of Entrudo. The basic idea was to get everyone soaking wet: people would go onto the streets with buckets of water and lime, prepared to make any passerby a potential victim. It was so popular that even the emperors took part in the charades. There is a documented record, however, of a woman being arrested in 1855 for throwing a lime at Dom Pedro I’s escorts. Authorities frowned upon the lack of control, and eventually Entrudo was outlawed.
Duran Duran’s hit single “Rio” was inspired by the band’s tour to Brazil. The music video was shot over the course of three days in May 1982 on the island of Antigua, and encapsulates the glamour and excess associated with the decade.
Roller Coasters
As a practical application, NASA announced that it would build a roller coaster to help astronauts escape the Aries I launch pad in case of an emergency.
In Japan, roller coasters are very popular at amusements parks and are known as jet coasters.
The “4th Dimension” is a term used to describe a style of roller coaster where riders are positioned on either side of the track, in seats capable of spinning on a horizontal axis. An example of this is the “X Roller Coaster” at Six Flags Magic Mountain.
Six Flags Great Adventures boasts the fastest roller coaster in the world. Kingda Ka, the “rocket coaster”, accelerates to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds and towers at 456 ft, making it the tallest, fastest roller coaster in the world.
A man who did not talk for six years because of shell shock spoke his first words after a ride on the Coney Island Cyclone. He told his friend, “I feel sick.”
In addition to wallets, change, and keys, some of the more unusual items found under roller coaster tracks are glass eyes, fake legs, brassieres, and false teeth.
The Rolling Stones
Growing up in the outskirts of London, Mick Jagger was a choirboy who was a huge fan of musicians like Muddy Waters, Leadbelly, and Chuck Berry while the young Keith Richards was a fan of classic blues, jazz, and R&B. They attended the same elementary school together but didn’t meet up until their later teens, when Mick was a student at the prestigious London School of Economics.
“Sympathy for the Devil” is not a song about devil worshipping. It was inspired by Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic novel, The Master and Margarita, and also included references to WWII and the Kennedy assassinations.
In February 1977, Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested Keith and Anita Pallenberg for possession of heroin, cocaine, and hashish. Keith was sentenced to community service, which included a benefit show for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. He was once quoted to say, “I never had a problem with drugs, only with cops.”
“Gimme Shelter” is the first song on the “Let it Bleed” album, and also the title of the Rolling Stones 1969 tour film. This documentary is renowned for capturing most of the violence of the Stones tour-ending free concert at Altamont Speedway in California. A disruption between members of the Hell’s Angels biker gang and the audience culminated in the murder of a young fan named Meredith Hunter.
The song “You Don’t Move Me” was written by Keith Richards as an angry response to Mick Jagger’s decision to go solo.
The Roman Empire
The Roman Apicius published the first documented recipe book in 62 AD. Titled De Re Coquinaria, it described the feasts enjoyed by the Emperor Claudius.
At the height of the Roman Empire in the second century, the land area was roughly the size of the U.S. today. The population was estimated somewhere between 70-100 million people.
Poisonous lead was used as a sweetening agent by the Romans. The sweetener, sapa, was made by reducing sour wine in lead pans. The lead from the pans combined with the wine to create lead acetate which remained in the final sweetening product.
The Utterly, Completely, and Totally Useless Fact-O-Pedia Page 15