FACTS OF THE MONTH:

Julius Caesar's successor, Augustus Caesar, took the month following the one named after Julius, Sextilis (sixth), and named it after himself, and thus was August born.

from LOONIEST LAWS WEEK:

A Massachusetts city once made it illegal to snore in a bedroom unless the doors were locked and the windows were closed.

In Washington D.C., it's illegal to go fishing while riding a horse.

It's against the law for women in Florida to fall asleep while sitting under a hair dryer.

In New Orleans, biting someone with your real teeth is 'simple assault'. Biting someone with false teeth is 'aggravated assault'.

It is against the law in Texas to curse in front of, or indecently expose, a corpse.

A California community has made it a misdemeanor to kill, or even try to shoo, a butterfly.

An old law in Dallas, since rescinded, said that cats left outside after dark had to wear headlights.

The 1970 U.S. Census listed almost 3000 men who were already widowers--by the age of fourteen!

A grizzly bear can sprint fifty yards in only three seconds.

Scientists have projected the odds of an asteroid crashing into the earth with catastrophic consequences within our lifetime at 5000 to 1.

Cats purr at the same frequency as an idling diesel engine.

Radium discoverer Marie Curie died of radiation poisoning.

INTERLUDE:

Despite millions of fans' pleas, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was cancelled in 1994 after seven seasons. What most of them don't realize is that the series was always designed to end when it did. The producers even admitted as much as early as the series' first season: seven years, then movies. The numbers confirm it. Follow:

  • There were 178 episodes of the series. Had the second season not been shortened by a writers' strike, there would've been 182 episodes.
  • The original plan for ST:TNG was for its strip syndication (5-eps-a-week reruns) to be in the same package as the original "Star Trek". In other words, when the old series ended its run of episodes, the new series would start reruns. When those episodes were finished, the classic series would start again.
  • The original "Star Trek" had 79 episodes.
  • 79+182=261
  • There are 365 days in a year. Subtract 52 Saturdays and 52 Sundays and you're left with (drumroll, please) 261 weekdays.
  • Result: if, under the original plan, you were to air the syndication package of "Star Trek" and "Next Generation" five days a week, it would have taken exactly one year to show every episode before starting over.

Superb, intelligent long-term planning, struck down by a 1988 strike.
And "Deep Space Nine".
And "Voyager".
Oh, well...

The Internet gets a new user every 1.6 seconds.

Even though he never lost his vision, Thomas Edison preferred to read in braille.

Most of the score for Rogers and Hammerstein's first Broadway musical, Oklahoma, was written in five hours.

Eighty percent of all body heat escapes through the head.

Ron Howard, the director of "Apollo 13", gave fellow "Happy Days" costar Anson 'Potsie' Williams pointers on filming scenes featuring weightlessness for a "Star Trek: Voyager" episode Williams directed in January of 1997.

The series premiere episode of "Columbo" in 1971 was written by a then-unknown Steven Bochco and directed by a then-unknown Steven Spielberg.

A person listening to a disc jockey from the back of the room the DJ is broadcasting from hears the DJ's voice a few hundredths of a second after people on the radio hear him, since radio waves travel over 360,000 times faster than sound waves.

Florence Nightingale only spent two years nursing soldiers. Because of a fever she contracted during that period she spent her last fifty years as an invalid.

It costs more to make a soda can than it does the pop to go inside it.

Honey is the only natural food that doesn't spoil.

Six hundred people died in a fire that devastated the town of Peshtigo, WI. The reason it didn't make the history books is that the Great Chicago Fire, which only killed 300, occured at the same time.

'Q' is the only letter that doesn't appear in any of the names of the fifty states.

When Martinsville Speedway had its first race in 1947, there were only 750 seats. Paid attendance was over 6000.

The shortest touchdown pass in NFL history was two inches, set in 1960 by Cowboy Eddie LeBaron. (A pass is measured from the line of scrimmage, not by the distance the ball travels in the air.)


July 1998


Today's
Fact


September 1998