The origin of this custom is not definitively known, but here’s one reasonable theory: As settlers laid down roots in the American Midwest in mid-1800s, they opened small, one-room schoolhouses to teach the children. It was the responsibility of the community to find a teacher—almost always a young unmarried woman. And because they couldn’t afford to pay much, if anything at all, the community took care of the teacher’s basic needs as best they could. Someone might donate a home, for example, while parents of other kids might help keep her fed. An apple for a teacher was an outgrowth of that—a sweet treat for a job well done (in lieu of salary). But why apples and not, say, peaches or corn? Kids may well have brought those, too, later in the year. Apples may be the iconic gift for teachers because the beginning of the school year coincides with peak apple season in September.
“When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye.” —Cathy Guisewite
…via the Internet to see if it had any Cokes in it, and whether they were cold (1982).
WHAT WOULD YOU TAKE?
If a firestorm were sweeping toward your home and you had to get out fast, what would you take with you? The following responses—taken from Facebook posts and newspaper reports related to recent fires in California and Canada—are our favorite answers to the question “What random thing did you grab when you had to evacuate?”
“My black lab and my Tony Bennett tickets.”—Tim N.
“Wife took my bear head off the wall. Nothing for me to wear, but got me bear head.”—Rodney T.
“Grabbed all my crystals and tarot cards but forgot checkbook and underwear.” —Beth S.
“I packed a bottle of ketchup but not one pair of pj’s for my 4 year old! In my defense, he likes ketchup better than pj’s anyways!”—Kayla M.
“My 22-year-old son grabbed his combat-ready light sabers and I grabbed a toothbrush that could be replaced the second I walked into my planned evacuation shelter (my dental office).” —Shana V.
“My Hawaiian shirt collection.”—Peter S.
“The braided 28-inch ponytail I recently cut off and haven’t donated yet.”—LaDahn G.
“Processed cheese slices and snow pants (in May).”—Jennifer K.
“A basket of empty picture frames.” —Shelly H.
“Half a blender and a watermelon.” —Vanessa L.
“The keys to my son’s car that we left parked in front of our house!”—Ginger G.
“My wife brought dog poop bags and we don’t have a dog.”—Greg B.
“A digital projector and a bottle of Fogbelt Del Norte IPA.”—Justin R.
“A container of zip ties.”—Kelley E.
“Forgot all toiletries but did manage to remember eyelashes and self-tanner…not my brightest moment.”—Renee H.
“An antique potato peeler. I have two new ones that aren’t worth anything. They just don’t make things like the used to.” —Dave J.
“I packed a doll I’d had since I was two and yogurt and one sock.”—Rehta K.
“Bags of Flaming Hot Cheetos.” —Angela B.-D.
“One of our laptop chargers. But not the laptop.”—Nichole M.
“My daughter’s Smile Safe ID card (in case kids go missing) from when she was 9. She’s 21 now and lives in the northeast.” —Denise L.
“Every key to every vehicle we ever owned. No socks, no underwear, no food but I have keys. And house and current vehicle I am driving are keyless entry.” —Winston E.
“My husband has no underwear but he brought a pie plate!”—Danielle D.
The first “March Madness” NCAA basketball pool was at Jody’s Club Forest Bar on Staten Island in 1977.
TOTALLY (YOU)TUBULAR
Stop watching cat videos on YouTube for a second and check out these amazing facts about the internet’s most entertaining waste of time, YouTube.
Founding Fathers: Three former employees of PayPal, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. When eBay bought PayPal, they used their bonuses to start YouTube in February 2005.
The initial idea for what became YouTube: a video dating site called Tune In Hook Up.
The founders got the idea to host videos because of two specific events in 2004: 1) Karim wanted to see footage of Janet Jackson’s notorious “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl, but couldn’t find it anywhere, and 2) Hurley and Chen wanted to send a short video of a dinner party by email, but couldn’t because of attachment size restrictions.
First YouTube video: “Me at the zoo” by a user named Jawed (a.k.a. co-founder Jawed Karim) in April 2005. It was 19 seconds long and it shows Karim at the San Diego Zoo talking about elephants.
First YouTube comment: In 2005 Marco Cassé typed “LOL!!!!!!!” in response to a video called “Good Times!!!”
You’ll never watch them all. Every minute, about 100 hours of video are uploaded.
Not counting people who watch but don’t have accounts, there are a billion registered users on YouTube—a third of all internet users worldwide.
The first video to amass a billion views on YouTube was the 2012 music video for “Gangnam Style,” the worldwide smash hit by South Korean rapper Psy. View counters on YouTube only had six digits at the time, forcing an update to the code.
Psy’s record has long since been surpassed. In 2018 Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi hit number one in the United States with “Despacito.” Within a year of its release, the video for the song hit 4.7 billion views.
You can “like” or “dislike” videos on YouTube. Most disliked ever: the 2010 music video for “Baby” by Justin Bieber. As of March 2018, more than 8 million people have given it a thumbs-down.
Lots of music videos have scored a few billion views, but the most popular non-musical video is a 2012 episode of the Russian cartoon Masha and the Bear. It’s been viewed by nearly three billion people.
If you make YouTube videos and do pretty well at it—like get 10,000 subscribers—the company lets you use a production studio in Los Angeles to make your videos, free of charge.
The most popular search engine on the internet is Google, but number two is YouTube. More people search for things on YouTube each day than they do on Bing, Yahoo!, and Ask put together.
Just 18 months after YouTube went live, Google bought it for $1.65 billion.
Soon after YouTube launched in 2005, a website called utube—the online home of the Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Company of Perrysburg, Ohio—started getting millions of new visitors. Utube sued YouTube, on the grounds that the similar name was hurting their business. (The suit was dismissed and utube changed its domain name to utubeonline.com.)
YouTube is available around the world; after the United States, the country that watches the most videos is Saudi Arabia. That nation—where Facebook Messenger is blocked—racks up 190 million views every day.
YouTube’s many user-generated “tutorial” videos are a great way to learn how to do something. The two most popular topics: how to kiss, and how to tie a tie.
It’s not just a waste of time, it’s a waste of energy, too. A three-minute live-action YouTube video uses up about 30 megabytes of data, which requires about three AA batteries’ worth of energy.
Worldwide, humans spend about a billion hours every day watching YouTube videos.
Ever had to watch a slideshow of somebody’s vacation pictures? In 2011 a guy named Jonathan Harchick made a video slideshow out of his pictures of a vacation to Chile. It lasted 571 hours, 1 minute, and 41 seconds—over 23 days. It’s the longest video ever uploaded to YouTube. (It’s since been taken down, thankfully.)
One horsepower is defined as the amount of power needed to lift 550 pounds one foot (off the ground) in one second.
First woman to die in the electric chair: Martha Place, for murdering her stepdaughter (NY, 1899).
PIRATES OF THE
FRONT PORCH
Nearly 26 million Americans had a holiday package stolen from their doorstep or front porch by “porch pirates” in 2017. (Did you?) The number has be
en growing in recent years. Here’s what some folks have been doing to fight back. Some are nice, and others…well, let’s just say you might want to talk to a lawyer before following in their footsteps.
Nice Pirate Fighter: Jason Ennor of Castle Rock, Colorado
Fighting Back: Ennor is at home during the day when many of his neighbors are at work. Package theft had been a problem in his neighborhood, so in December 2016, Ennor let his neighbors know via social media that he was starting a one-man pick up and delivery service. Here’s how it works: neighbors share their FedEx, UPS and U.S. Postal Service package tracking information with him, and as soon as he receives a text notifying him that a package has been delivered, he rushes out to collect it before porch pirates can steal it. Then when the neighbors return home, he delivers their packages in person. He charges $5 for the service. “At the moment, being Christmas, it’s especially a focus,” he told Denver’s Channel 7 News. “Who wants to buy something and then have it not be there?”
Not-So-Nice Pirate Fighter: Angie Boliek of Hillsboro, Oregon
Revenge! It’s a Christmas tradition in the Boliek household to photograph all the kids in the new pajamas that Santa brings each year, but in 2017 someone stole the package containing the pajamas off her doorstep. She decided to get some payback. She stuffed an Amazon box with 15 of her four-month-old son’s soiled diapers, along with a note reading “Enjoy this you thief!” (How disgusting were the boy’s diapers? “Well, he’s been sick the last week, so we’ll just leave it at that.”) She put the package on her doorstep on a Sunday morning. “It was gone by Monday afternoon,” Boliek says. “The police thought it was hilarious…and awesome.”
Nice Pirate Fighter: The Package Guard
Fighting Back: The Package Guard is a device that looks kind of like a frisbee and functions similar to a bathroom scale. You install it on your front porch where you want your packages to be delivered. A message reading “PLACE PACKAGE HERE” is printed on top, and when a package is set upon it, the weight triggers the device to alert you via e-mail, text, or the included app that the package has arrived. If anyone tries to lift your package off the Package Guard without entering the correct code into the smartphone app, the device gives off a shriek that’s as noisy as a car alarm. Price: $79.
Dr. Seuss’s inspiration for the Grinch who stole Christmas: himself “on a bad day.”
Not-So-Nice Pirate Fighter: Jaireme Barrow of Tacoma, Washington
Revenge! Barrow had so many packages stolen from his doorstep that he invested in a video surveillance system for his front door. All that got him was footage of several more people stealing his packages, but no arrests. In 2016 he rigged up a 12-gauge shotgun “blank” in a cardboard box that he leaves out on his doorstep. When porch pirates lift the box, they get a large BANG!…and Barrow gets hilarious footage of the terrified porch pirates running for their lives. He posts the videos on YouTube… and sells his “Blank Boxes” on his website for $50–$70, plus $4.99 for five extra shells.
Barrow swears his Blank Boxes are legal, but the Tacoma Police disagree. Who’s right? The final verdict may have to wait for the outcome of a future lawsuit (assuming one is ever filed) brought by someone who gets injured while trying to steal Barrow’s packages. Till then, he says he’s having a blast…so to speak. “It’s instant karma,” he says. “Someone is trying to commit a crime, and you are able to get back at them instantly. It’s a satisfaction I can’t describe.”
Nice Pirate Fighter: Terry Bohlan of Campbell, California
Fighting Back: After Bohlan’s home security system recorded a porch pirate stealing packages from his doorstep, he reported the theft to the police department…and volunteered his own doorstep as a place where police could leave “bait” packages to catch porch pirates. The bait packages contain items, such as laptops, that are commonly shipped through the mail, plus a GPS tracking device that allows police to follow the thieves and arrest them. Now when porch pirates come to Bohlan’s doorstep, instead of nabbing his belongings, they are nabbed by the police. (A similar program in Arcadia, California, has resulted in more than 100 arrests for theft.)
Not-So-Nice Pirate Fighter: Tom Mabe, a comedian in Louisville, Kentucky
Revenge! Why limit yourself to boxes filled with poop or exploding rounds when you can have both? After Mabe and his neighbor Bob had packages stolen from their front doorsteps, Mabe rigged up a box with “four-day-old poop,” presumably (and hopefully) from a pet, and some kind of small explosive charge. He left the box out on his front doorstep. Four days later, his security camera recorded someone stealing the package and driving off in a car. They didn’t get far: When the car reached the end of the block, the package, triggered by a 40-second timer, detonated inside the car, which came to a sudden stop. The poop-sprayed porch pirate quickly exited the car and appeared to vomit on the sidewalk.
New Year’s Eve tradition for kids in the Philippines: jump up and down 12 times at midnight.
NAMING CANADA
Here’s how each of the Great White North’s provinces and territories got their names. (Well, all except for the Northwest Territories—we assume you can figure that one out for yourself.)
BRITISH COLUMBIA. When western Canada was under British rule, the large portion of the Pacific Northwest that surrounded (and was drained by) the Columbia River was called the Columbia District. By 1848 the area had been split into British and American control, and so Queen Victoria decreed that her portion be called British Columbia. (The rest was the Oregon Territory.) The Columbia River was named after the Columbia Rediviva, the first American ship to circle the globe and which was used to ship furs caught and processed in the region.
ALBERTA. Alberta broke apart from the Northwest Territories to become an official province in 1905, and took the name Alberta, after Victoria’s fourth daughter, Princess Louise Caroline Alberta. The princess had other Canadian connections: She was married to the Marquess of Lorne, who served as Canada’s governor general (a figurehead representative of the Crown) from 1878 to 1883.
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. Here’s another person who got their name on something Canadian because of his relationship to Queen Victoria. Prince Edward (the Duke of Kent and Strathearn) was the fourth son of King George III, and father of Victoria. In 1763, after the Seven Years’ War between England and France, England took control of what is now Nova Scotia, including the small island formerly known as St. John’s Island. In 1799 the land was renamed Prince Edward Island in honor of the prince, who was stationed with an army regiment in Canada at the time.
MANITOBA. The native Ojibwa tribe called the waterways that feed into the province’s massive lake (now known as Lake Manitoba) manidoobaa, which means “the straits of Manitou, the Great Spirit.”
ONTARIO. This province also gets its name from its large, signature body of water. Lake Ontario (one of the five Great Lakes) comes from one of two words used by indigenous peoples. The Wyandot called the Great Lake ontarí:io, or “great lake.” The Iroquois called it skandario, which means “beautiful water.”
SASKATCHEWAN. The Cree called the Saskatchewan River kisiskāciwani-sīpiy, which means “swift flowing river.” European settlers named the region after the river.
Sea otters sleep on their backs, floating in the water, in large “rafts” of 100 otters or more.
QUEBEC. The Algonquin once ruled the province, which they called kébec, or “where the river narrows.” That referred specifically to the land surrounding what is now Quebec City. It’s there that the St. Lawrence River narrows.
NEW BRUNSWICK. The maritime province was once part of Nova Scotia, but it was partitioned off in 1784—separating the French settlers on Nova Scotia from the English on New Brunswick. They named it New Brunswick, because there are a lot of places in England named “Brunswick.” That’s the anglicized spelling and pronunciation of Braunschweig, the northern German city from which King George III’s family came.
YUKON. This territory in western Canada gets
its name from the great Yukon River which flows through it. “Yukon” comes from the local Gwich’in tribe’s name for the waterway, chųų gąįį, which translates to “pale water.”
NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR. While typically referred to as just “Newfoundland,” the full name of the eastern Canadian province encompasses both major land areas that comprise it: Newfoundland (an island) and Labrador (part of mainland Canada, adjacent to Newfoundland). While most of Canada has a lot of influence from English, Scottish, and French settlers, the name of this province remembers the Portuguese explorers who set foot there in the early 1500s. Portugal’s Gaspar Corte-Real and Miguel Corte-Real (they were brothers) charted the area, which was named Terra Nova, or “New Land” in both Latin and Portuguese. Translated into English, roughly, that becomes “Newfoundland.” The settlement of Labrador is named after another Portuguese explorer, 15th-century navigator João Fernandes Lavrador.
NOVA SCOTIA. The first Europeans to settle in the maritime island province were the French in the 1600s, who called it Acadia, after arcadia, an ancient Greek term for “idyllic land.” The British conquered it in 1710 and French settlers slowly started to move out, with the remainder forced out in 1755. In the 1760s and 1770s, vast numbers of Scottish Highlanders were evicted from their homes and farms in the British Isles (their land was essentially stolen by governments) and settled en masse in what was soon named Nova Scotia, Latin for “New Scotland.”
NUNAVUT. There’s no such thing as “Eskimos.” The indigenous people who live in Canada’s deeply cold, Artic Circle–approaching territories are more accurately referred to as the Inuit. From their language (called Inuktitut) comes Nunavut, the name of Canada’s newest “official territory”—it separated from the Northwest Territories in 1999. In Inuktitut, nunavut means “our land.”
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