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FACTS OF THE MONTH:
March was named for Mars, the god of war.
Comic strip character Blondie Bumstead's maiden name was Boopadoop.
Select a whole number. Multiply the numbers on either side of your selection together (if you picked 6, multiply 5 and 7). The answer you get will be one less than when you square the original number. (5x7=35, 6x6=36) (9x11=99, 10x10=100)
To clear a drainpipe, pour a cup of baking soda into the clog, followed by a cup of vinegar. A few minutes later, flush it out with a quart of boiling water.
Although there wasn't a word for it at the time, the Martians in H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" died of AIDS.
Last week (end of Feb. '98), CBS's "The Young & the Restless" was the highest-rated network daytime program for the 479th consecutive week. That's over nine years without faltering even once!
Maine is the only one-syllable state.
| from PHOBIA
WEEK:
Logizomechanophobia: Fear of computers. Also referred to as Cyberphobia, but that's too easy to pronounce. Some color-related fears: Soceraphobia: Fear of in-laws. Nyctophobia: Fear of the dark. Or if you prefer Johnny Carson's definition he used for many years on "The Tonight Show": Fear of running backwards high-speed naked into a brass doorknob. Triskadekaphobia: Fear of the number 13. Paraskavedekatriaphobia: Fear of Friday the 13th. Automatonophobia: Fear of anything that falsely pretends to be a sentient being, such as an android, a ventriloquist dummy, a wax statue, or even Bugs Bunny. |
Ten percent of the people on board the Mayflower were named John.
Cervantes (author of "Don Quixote") and Shakespeare died on the same day, 23 April 1616.
In Texas it is illegal to have sex with a chicken, unless the chicken initiates it.
A grasshopper can jump the human equivalent of a half-mile in the air.
Montpelier, Vermont, is the only state capital without a McDonalds.
In a recent survey, only nine percent of those polled could name the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, while 54% could name the judge on the original "People's Court".
The winner of the Director's Guild of America award for Best Director has gone on to win the Oscar in the same category all but four times. And the last two times the DGA winner wasn't even nominated for the Oscar (Steven Spielberg for "The Color Purple" and Ron Howard for "Apollo 13").
| from TITANIC
WEEK:
Morgan Robertson's novel Futility was about the largest ocean liner in the world, the unsinkable Titan. This fictional ship did not have enough lifeboats, and on a cold April night it strikes an iceberg and sinks to the bottom. Futility was published in 1898, fourteen years BEFORE the Titanic sank. A first-class suite aboard the Titanic cost what in today's money would be $75,000. Of the 705 survivors of the Titanic, only seven are still alive today. Of the 1523 people who died on the Titanic, only 306 of the bodies were recovered. Older movies regarding the Titanic's sinking show the ship going down in one piece because that is what the surviving crew members were told to say happened at the hearings that followed the sinking. It wasn't until the ship was discovered on the ocean floor in two pieces that testimony from surviving passengers was finally believed, that the ship broke apart before it sank. Ninety-four percent of the women and children in First Class survived the sinking of the Titanic, compared to only 47% of the women and children in Steerage. The Titanic swerved to miss the iceberg, and as a result opened a hole in the side of the ship long enough to prevent the watertight compartments to do their job. If the ship had maintained course and struck the iceberg head-on, a few engineers sleeping below decks at the bow of the ship would've been crushed to death, but the ship would have remained afloat, with no major loss of life. |
Because metals were needed for the war effort, Oscar Awards handed out during World War II were made of wood.
An ounce of platinum can be stretched into a wire ten thousand miles long.
The U.S. Postal Service ends up with about 10 million pieces of undeliverable mail each year because the addresses are unreadable.
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