The father of the pink flamingo (the plastic lawn ornament)
was Don Featherstone of Massachusetts. Featherstone
graduated from art school and went to work as a designer for
Union Products, a Leominster, Massachusetts company that
manufactured flat plastic lawn ornaments. He designed the
pink flamingo in 1957 as a follow-up project to his plastic
duck. Today, Featherstone is president and part owner of the
company that sells an average of 250,000 to 500,000 plastic
pink flamingos a year.
The film for the first Kodak camera was 2¾ inches wide, or
70 millimeters. Kodak has been manufacturing 70-millimeter
film continuously since 1888.
Thomas Edison’s first major invention was the quadruplex
telegraph. Unlike other telegraphs at the time, it could
send four messages at the same time over one wire.
U.S. Patent #D219,584 was issued in 1970 to veteran movie
actor Steve McQueen. He was famous not only for his movies
but also for racing cars and working on engines off-camera
as well. A byproduct of his racing hobby was the invention
of a bucket seat.
After Marion Donovan was inundated by the wild success of her
invention of waterproof diaper covers in 1946, she was
surprised when her prototype for disposal paper diapers was
met with disinterest and ridicule. She journeyed to all the
major U.S. paper companies, and was laughed at for proposing
such an "unnecessary and impractical" item to replace cotton
diapers. After nearly ten years of pitching her revolutionary
idea, Victor Mills had the foresight to capitalize on it, and
he became the creator of Pampers.
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were not permitted to dance
together in public, according to their movie contracts.
In 1765, the sandwich was invented by John Montagu,
the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who gave the food its
name. The Earl used to order roast beef between
pieces of toast for a snack while he was at the
gaming tables, it allowed him to keep one hand
free to play while he ate.
Should there be a crash, Prince Charles and Prince William
never travel on the same airplane as a precaution.
Since 1874 the mints of the United States have been making
currency for foreign governments, whose combined orders
have at times exceeded the volume of domestic requirements.
The kings in a deck of cards each represent a great king
from history. The king of spades is King David, the king
of clubs is Alexander the Great, the king of hearts is
Charlemagne, and the king of diamonds is Julius Caesar.
In 1889, Aunt Jemima pancake flour, invented at St. Joseph,
Missouri, was the first self-rising flour for pancakes and
the first ready-mix food ever to be introduced commercially.
Celery; it takes more calories to eat and digest a piece of
celery than the celery has in it initially.
A hazelnut spread made with skim milk and cocoa. It is vir-
tually unknown in America, but European children have
happily smeared it on breakfast croissants for decades.
About 350 million cans of chicken noodle soup of all
commercial brands sold annually in the United States,
60 percent is purchased during the cold and flu season.
January is the top-selling month of the year.
An ideal marriage is one in which two people love,
cherish, and encourage each other through all the
trouble caused by their marriage.
The prolific Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect
and poet was born Michelangelo di Lodovico
Buonarroti Simoni in March of 1475.
The Kelvin absolute temperature scale was proposed in 1848 by
physician and mathematician William Thomson based on his
studies of the theory of heat and thermodynamics. The Kelvin
temperature scale has as its lower limit absolute zero, a hypo-
thetical temperature characterized by a total absence of mol-
ecular motion and heat energy, so the scale has no negative
values. The Kelvin degree is the same size as the Celsius de-
gree, and the conversion from Kelvin to Celsius is done by
adding 273 degrees to the Celsius value. When using the Kelvin
scale, the degree symbol is omitted and the temperature is fol-
lowed by a "K". The scale derived the name Kelvin from the
title Baron Kelvin of Largs, bestowed upon Thomson in 1892. The
Kelvin scale is widely used by scientists, engineers, and meteo-
rologists.
Copyleft is a method for making a program free software and
requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to
be free software as well. Copyleft says that anyone who redis-
tributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along
the freedom to further copy and change it, and guarantees that
every user has freedom. The British magazine New Scientist
published an article under copyleft, which allows anyone to
copy or redistribute the article without violating a copyright.
It highlights an article about "open sourcing," a trend among
computer programmers to share programs without worrying about
payments or ownership. The weekly science magazine says the
movement "is all about free circulation of knowledge--an emerg-
ing alternative to growing corporate power and restrictive pro-
perty rights."
WHO INVENTED THE LIE DETECTOR AND WHAT COMIC BOOK HEROINE DID HE ALSO INVENT?Dr. William Moulton Marston invented the polygraph and he also invented Wonder Woman (who just so happens to carry a golden lasso that forces people to tell the truth!) Marston was convinced that women were more honest and reliable than men.
CALIFORNIA SMOG TEST
Can UCLA
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think."
ANSWER: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), Master-orator, psychopath,
political genius, prototypical dictator,
mass murderer.
"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."
ANSWER: Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), film director.
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into
an open sewer and die."
ANSWER: Mel Brooks, Writer/Director/Actor
"Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives
should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands,
love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and
gave Himself up for her."
Ephesians 5:24-25
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Justice of the United
States Supreme Court, U.S. legal historian and
philosopher.
"Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity
and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction
sap the vigor of the mind."
ANSWER: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian painter,
architect, engineer, mathematician and philosopher.
"My father always used to say that when you die, if you've
got five real friends, then you've had a great life."
Lee Iacocca
"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him
find it within himself."
-Galileo
"Ignorance is always swift to speak."
- Unknown
"Patience is the ability to count down before blasting off."
- Unknown
"Plain women know more about men than beautiful ones do.
But beautiful women don't need to know about men. It's the
men who have to know about beautiful women."
ANSWER: Katharine Hepburn (1907-), American actress and
writer. Winner of four Oscars
THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOU DIDN'T KNOW!
Did you know...It is impossible to lick your elbow.
A crocodile can't stick its tongue out.
A shrimp's heart is in its head.
In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, no one reported a single case where an ostrich buried its head in the sand.
It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.
Horses can't vomit.
The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.
If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib.
If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die, they can pop out.
Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.
Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.
In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their butts.
Most lipstick contains fish scales.
Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
Over 75% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.