HISTORY & BIOGRAPHY

HEY, WHERE ARE ALL THE MOON MAIDENS?

July 20, 1969, the day that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon but failed to bring back any green cheese or moon maidens. Or did they?

WHAT A HUNK OF JUNK

The Eiffel Tower was originally designed to be built in Barcelona. When the city fathers decided against it, Eiffel had to find a new location. His design won a rigged contest to find the landmark structure for the 1889 International Exposition in Paris. It beat out other designs including a giant guillotine. French snobs complained that it was an eyesore with one calling it a Metal Asparagus. At nearly 1000 feet it became the tallest building in the world. Some didn't like it towering over and overshadowing Notre Dame Cathedral and the Louvre.

The Eiffel Tower was only intended to stay up for a short time. It was going to be sold for scrap until the French Army decided it would be a good communication tower. The Eiffel Tower has had over 200 million visitors and is the first thing most people think of when you mention Paris.

I CHALLENGE YOU TO A DUEL

July 11th was the 204th anniversary of the duel between the Vice-President of the United States Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Burr delivered a mortal shot and Hamilton died the next day. The duel was held in New Jersey because New York had passed the death penalty for dueling. After the duel, Burr fled to his daughter's home in North Carolina. He was charged but never tried and eventually headed back to finish out his term as vice president.

Congressmen never want to leave office and term limits never makes it into law. Perhaps, dueling should be brought back to solve the problem.

CAVEBOY CENTERFOLDS

Cavemen liked full bodied women. How do we know? Archaeologists have found cave wall etchings of nude voluptuous women with large breasts and big curves. Scientists believe this is proof young men's (they had to be young because they didn't live very long) thoughts were preoccupied with zaftig females.

A caveman sculptor carved a nude statue 30,000 years ago- VENUS OF WILLENDORF.

RING A DING DING

First, researchers told us cavemen were drawing dirty pictures on the walls. Now, they find that cavemen were preoccupied with sex for fun instead of only reproduction. They say cavemen were swingers. Was there a Cave Pack? Some were involved in kinky sex. The researchers claim there were transvestite troglodytes (sounds like a bad movie).

WHO WOULD EVER NEED THIS BILGE?

In the middle to late 1800s, before the automobile, oil was refined and used mostly as kerosene. Gasoline was considered the waste from the oil and was dumped in the river.

THE HAPPIEST DAY OF THE YEAR IF YOU'RE A DRUID

June 21st is the longest day of the year not because your mother-in-law is visiting, it is the Summer Solstice. The Summer Solstice is the day with the most daylight. Daylight will steadily decrease until the shortest day of the year.

There will be a big celebration by modern day pagans and Druids at Stonehenge but mostly attended by a bunch of potheads who gather to take advantage of new marijuana laws.

Archaeologists have recently decided Stonehenge was a burial ground. The builders would set up a city there once a year. On the Summer Solstice, they would gather at Stonehenge at dawn to honor the dead. Then, they would all walk two miles down the road to an exact replica made from wood. Piles and piles of gnawed on animal bones have been dug up there. At sunset, the ancient people would have a big barbecue, then a giant baby-making orgy.

PUT UP YOUR DUKES- A LEADING CONTENDER IN WE WERE FIRST BURGER BRAWL

One of the many places that are fighting it out to claim to be the home of the first hamburger is Seymour, Wisconsin. Hamburger Charlie Nagreen started selling the ground meat on a bun at fairs in 1885 when he was 15 years old. He did most of the cooking in his booth. When he got tired,or business got slow, an employee would take over the stove and Hamburger Charlie would grab his guitar and start drumming up customers. His pitch:

"Hey you skinny rascals don't you ever eat?"

AAARGGH

British ships are patrolling the waters off Africa trying to stop rampaging Somali pirates. They have been ordered by the British government not to return them to Somalia because they will be beheaded per Somali justice. They are also ordered not to capture the pirates and bring them back to England. If they step on British shores they can ask for and be granted asylum. The British legal system would cause a whole new problem- Somali pirates running free in the country.

In the old days, they didn't have to contend with such problems. When the British tracked down Blackbeard they killed him, and the Captain cut off his head and carried it around as a souvenir tacked to the masthead.

OOOHH THAT SMELL

Two things we take for granted: flush toilets and sewage treatment. There were no flush toilets until the late 1840s. Unfortunately, they became popular before sewage treatment. In London, the sewage headed straight for the Thames river and became sludge on the banks. England opened a new House of Lords in the early 1850s on the banks of the Thames. The odor was so bad in the new building that they considered abandoning it. If it affects a politician things get fixed. They pledged 3 million pounds and built a sewer for London. Next time you use the restroom, show some appreciation, but no foot tapping

WOULD ANY OTHER NAME SMELL AS SWEET?

BORIS KARLOFF's real name was William Henry Pratt. He never legally changed it and signed all papers with his real name. He was known as a kid as Billy Pratt.

BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH!

March 15, 44 BC, Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of Roman senators calling themselves Liberatores. He was stabbed to death. The senators must have been all against passing Knife Control laws. In the Roman calendar, ides was used for the 15th day of the months of March, May, July, and October. It fell on the 13th day of the other 8 months. The IDES OF MARCH has come to be used as a metaphor for impending doom.

WHO'S SITTING IN THE CATBIRD SEAT?

Hillary thought she was in the catbird seat. Tom Brady and the New England Patriots are sitting in one. Where did the notion of SITTING IN THE CATBIRD SEAT come from?

Baseball announcer Red Barber used the colorful phrase to describe a batter with a count of three balls and no strikes. The best position to be in. James Thurber wrote a short story called THE CATBIRD SEAT. There is a controversy as to who got it from whom. Barber said he heard it at a poker table in Cincinnati.

The expression probably originated from an area where catbirds live. Catbirds and their cousin mockingbirds head to the highest point in the yard to stake claim on it's territory. They sit up there and start loudly singing just before dawn during nesting season.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?

The Shakers were once a religious sect known for making well crafted furniture. One of their religious beliefs was celibacy- married couples included.

The Shakers are now extinct.

OUT, OUT DAMN SPOT

The Ancient Romans dry cleaned their clothes with urine. The ammonia in urine did the trick and the ammonia was derived from distilling the urine. Roman apartment dwellers would haul their chamber pots down to a central area and dump it into big cistens where it would be taken for recycling.

NICE GUYS FINISH LAST

One of the popular videos on YouTube is the minor league manager that goes berserk for several minutes- kicking dirt, throwing bases and crawling on the ground after objecting to an umpires call. It made me think about Leo "the Lip" Durocher. Leo Durocher was the manager of the Giants, Dodgers, Cubs and Astros from the 1939-1973. A colorful character, he is credited with coining the phrase "nice guys finish last" in response to being told his players were a bunch of nice guys.

Leo the Lip is the fifth winningest manager in baseball history and the second most ejected. He perfected umpire haranguing to an art. When he got to the home plate circle he would kick dirt and chalk on the umpire's legs. The chalk used to mark the baselines and outline the batter's box in those days contained lime. The lime would burn holes in the umpire's pants.

PASS THE .... HEY! WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?

There were no mashed potatoes and gravy at the first Thanksgiving dinner, but they had plenty of eels.

Potatoes did not reach North America until 1700s and were looked upon as unchristian in Europe before the Pilgrims left. Potatoes were the "devil's apples" because they grew underground.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

George Washington initiated the first Thanksgiving Day holiday held November 26, 1789.

JUST A GOOD OL BOY

The Daytona 500 also known as the Great American Race is like the Super Bowl of Stock Car Racing and held every year in February. NASCAR started for races between moonshine runners on their day off.

Moonshine runners would drive nondescript businessman type cars to look inconspicuous. They souped up the engines, reinforced the suspension,and put tanks in the trunk for their product. The tanks were outfitted to dump their load when being chased by the revenuers.

Of course, they had to prove who had the fastest car to each other. They formed the National Association of Stock Car Racing. For some reason, the cars were not plastered with ads.

LOL BFF TTL OK

It started with email and IM then spread to cell phone texting. Kids vie to be the fastest texter in town using abbreviations that make old folks scratch their heads. Abbreviating wasn't born yesterday. Creating comical abbreviations with misspellings for phrases was all the rage in the 30s and 40s. The 1830s.

OK is a survivor of the fad although texters have shortened it to K. OK stands for oll korrect. Some that didn't last are OW-oll wright KY-know yuse SP-small potatoes KG-know go NS-nuff said.

WHO WAS NOBEL?

Alfred Nobel was the inventor of dynamite. His father invented plywood. Hmmm. Was there a deep seeded resentment causing Alfred to want to blow up building materials?

JUST OK BOWL

They could not sell all of the seats at the first Super Bowl with Green Bay and Kansas City. Two college marching bands played at half time. There is no video record of the first two Super Bowls because the tapes were erased. They thought no one would ever want to see them again. Pete Rozell, the NFL commissioner wanted to call it THE BIG ONE. Kansas City Chiefs' owner Lamar Hunt thought of the name after watching his kids play with a Super Ball.

DON'T CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN

Former box office champion SOUND OF MUSIC just aired again Sunday night. Filmakers take dramatic license to make films more interesting. If the Von Trapp family had really climbed that mountain at the end of the movie to escape the Nazis they would have been heading into Germany, not Switzerland. The audience smiling with feelings of relief and well being as the "Climb Every Mountain" music plays should instead be screaming "Stop, you're going the wrong way. Turn around!"

HEAVEN KNOWS ANYTHING GOES

In the 1800s, ladies would not lick ice cream in public because it was indecent

NO COFFEE NO INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION?

Coffee reached England in 1550. Before that, everyone was drunk all of the time because they drank alcoholic beverages instead of water. They didn't drink water because they didn't want to get cholera and dysentery.

When they sobered up and became alert, clear and hyped from caffeine, things changed. They started thinking and inventing instead of sloshing around.

Lloyd's coffee house is where merchants and traders met and where Lloyds of London started to insure ships and their cargo.

So salute coffee, without it everyone would have been to drunk to invent Wii, cell phones, and Ipods.

HIGHWAY HI-FI

The 1956 Chrysler offered the option of the Highway Hi-Fi- a record player for the car. It played specially made records that played at 16 2/3 rpm and played for 60 minutes per side. You couldn't play records from your collection on them, you had to buy records made for the player and only 32 were offered- including the soundtrack from movie "Davey Crockett".

The Highway Hi-Fi was not offered for the 1958 Chrysler.

HELP WANTED

WANTED
Young, skinny, wiry fellows
not over eighteen.
Must be expert riders willing
to risk death daily.
Orphans preferred.

This was an ad for the pony express.

NO PARIS, BRITNEY OR LINDSAY

Just think of all the things that are important to us that they didn't have 150 years ago. Automobiles, airplanes, electric lights, telephones, radio, television, movies, recordings, refrigerators, hamburgers, chocolate, and Coca-Cola. They did have whiskey, leeches, books, the sun, nature trying to get you and your imagination.

TIMES HAVE CHANGED

There was a time when Heisman trophy winners may not have gone on to play professional football- mostly pre-1950's players. 1951 winner Richard Kazmaier went directly to Harvard Business School instead of signing with the NFL. He said that he would never make as much money playing football as he would in business. So, he didn't waste his time or his legs.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

The most popular exhibit ever at the Luna Park and Dreamland amusement parks on Coney Island was the Premature Infant exhibit. Premature babies in their incubators were on display for long lines of onlookers. Some people would return often to keep tabs on their favorite baby. The Luna Park exhibit ran from 1904 until 1943- long after Luna Park closed. It wasn't as completely inhuman as you may be thinking. Incubators were a new complicated expensive technology and hospitals wouldn't buy them. Most babies were born at home and the chances for a premature baby living were slim. The inventor set up the incubators with its tiny occupants at exhibitions. When he saw the popularity, he hit upon the idea of charging admission to defray the cost of operating the machines.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE

Iron Eyes Cody was best known as the indian with the tear running down his cheek after seeing a polluted river in the famous "Keep America Beautiful" television public service announcement. He, also, appeared in over 200 movies.

Iron Eyes Cody was born in Louisiana. Both of his parents were Sicilian immigrants. His birth name was Espera DeCorti. He married an indian woman, adopted 2 indian children and steadfastly claimed he was an indian until his death at the age of 94, in 1998.

SO LONG BAT BOY

The WEEKLY WORLD NEWS just published it's last issue. The black and white tabloid at the grocery store checkout line that followed the fugitive life of Bat Boy and claimed Hillary Clinton adopted an alien baby with pictures to prove it has been put to bed.

WEEKLY WORLD NEWS was started in 1979 after the NATIONAL ENQUIRER bought color printing presses and needed something to keep the black and white presses rolling. Most stories started out as weird news stories they clipped that the writers embellished. They reported everything anyone claimed as fact- if you said you knew Elvis was alive and living in Kalamazoo, Michigan they reported it. They worked out of the back of the NATIONAL ENQUIRER office behind a wall that was built after the serious NATIONAL ENQUIRER journalists complained about too much hysterical laughing from WEEKLY WORLD NEWS staff.>

HETTY GREEN

Who was Hetty Green? She was the wealthiest and most miserly woman in the history of America. When she died in 1916, she was worth between $100-200 million which is equivalent to $17 billion in today's dollars. She inherited $5 million dollars when her father died. She inherited another $2 million from her aunt with a will that appeared Hetty had forged. She made her money investing in Civil War Bonds, real estate and railroad stocks and barely spending a cent. Hetty wore the same black dress everyday until it would disintegrate. She had the nickname "The Witch of Wall Street" probably because of her dress and personality. She worked sitting on the floor of her bank surrounded by trunks of papers because she refused to spend the money to rent an office. She got married, but got rid of him when she was forced to pay one his debts. Her son lost his leg because she refused to take him to the hospital after breaking his leg. She argued over every bill she got and was routinely sued by lawyers to collect legal fees. She would travel thousands of miles to collect debts owed to her. She lived in cheap grungy leased apartments. She ate broken cookies that she bought in bulk and warmed oatmeal on the office radiator. She had a bad hernia but refused to have an operation because it cost. Hetty was convinced that everyone was after her money. Hetty's only extravagance was her dog who they say ate better than her. She died at age 81, and left all of her money to her two children. Her children spent and gave money to charities generously.

A BRAND NAME GONE WRONG

In the late 1800's Bayer came out with a new wonder cough syrup that they advertised in ads along with their aspirin.

Then, a strange thing happened. People who didn't seem to have a cough were showing up at the doctor's office looking for the incredible cough syrup.

Read about A BRAND NAME GONE WRONG

I'M A DUST BOWL REFUGEE

--Woody Guthrie

When Captain John Smith landed at Jamestown May 13,1607, Jamestown was in the middle of a seven year drought. It was the worst drought in 770 years. Virginia is not exactly what you picture when you think dust bowl.

When someone comments about extreme weather: "There must be something going on with the earth" "I have lived here all my life and never saw anything like this." They just haven't been around there long enough.

THOMAS EDISON'S DIRTY TRICKS

The invention of the electric chair and its adoption as a capital punishment tool was due to a series of dirty tricks by Thomas Edison. Read:

THOMAS EDISON and the ELECTRIC CHAIR

SPOT THE LOONY

I didn't know much about Nicola Tesla. I just thought he was a less known inventor and contemporary of Thomas Edison. Tesla was the inventor of Alternating Current (AC) and the Tesla Coil.

TESLA according to the website TALES OF FUTURE PAST was a crackpot who died a death similar to Howard Hughes- alone in a hotel room living out his days talking to his pigeon.

Among his kookie plans- a death ray machine and a tower to beam electricity into the ionosphere to supply the world with power. Plans he actually talked a few countries and famous investors of his time into throwing money.

He also claimed to have invented an oscillation device with which he had shattered a two inch steel chain link and would be able destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. Later he said it could distengrate the Empire State Building. At one time he said it could crack the earth in half like an apple. Luckily, he seldom wrote down his plans, so that invention is safe from Al Qaeda.

He wanted very badly to talk to Martians and at one time thought he was picking up their signals on his electricity transmitter.

Some now claim he was from another planet with plans the world was not ready for.

WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED

In 1876, the head of the British post office said that unlike Americans, the British would never need telephones. In England, office buildings were no taller than four stories, so it was easy for copy boys to run up and down the stairs delivering memos.