30 Trivia Tidbits

My friend Jay Philpott sent these to me, maybe you will get a smile or two..

30 BITS O' TRIVIA


After molding 1.4 billion crayons, over 37 years, Crayola's
senior crayon maker, Emerson Moser, retired. What secret did he
reveal after he had made his last crayon?
Mr. Moser was blue-green colorblind.

On an afternoon in 1966 an event at Boston's PBS station,
WGBH, drew a crowd of 10,000 people, more than the same
afternoon's Red Sox game. What was that event?
An open house featuring a personal appearance by Fred Rogers.

What was the name of Apple's first personal computer which
used a mouse for user input?
Lisa, after Steve Jobs's daughter (whose mother, who was never
married to Jobs).

Certain people are deemed so important that they are not
allowed to travel together, to reduce the risk that they will both
be killed in an accident. The President and Vice-President of the
US are two; Prince Charles and Prince William of the United
Kingdom are two more. Two other people are not allowed to
travel together, for fear that if they were to both die a certain
critical secret would be lost forever. Who are they?
The two Coca-Cola Company employees who know the secret
formula for Coca-Cola. Some of my sources state that the
privileged two know not the formula for Coke proper, but the
secret formula for "Merchandise 7X", which is the "secret
ingredient" in Coca-Cola. Extra bonus trivia factoid: the secret
ingredient for "New Coke" is supposedly named "Merchandise 7X-100".

On September 17, 1977 the Tennessee Valley Authority shut
down a nuclear power plant at Knoxville, TN, for 17 days,
for an unusual reason. What was that reason?
A reactor worker's overshoe fell into the reactor.
The reason for the Knoxville reactor shutdown was unusual,
but hardly weird, all things considered. [Probably it's best that
you don't let a reactor operate for too long with a foreign object
inside it.] At the University of Florida there's a research reactor
that is constantly being shut down and restarted for what one
might consider a very weird reason. What is that?
The reactor needed to be shut down every time someone
flushed a toilet in the building where the reactor is located.

Your child doesn't like green beans? Have him plant
them in this year's garden. In a recent study,
preschool-aged children who planted, weeded, watered,
and harvested a plot showed increases in their
willingness to eat the vegetables, especially green beans.

How E-mail Works
Every day, the citizens of the Internet send each other
billions of e-mail messages. If you are online a lot, you
yourself may send a dozen or more e-mails each day without
even thinking about it. Obviously, e-mail has become an
extremely popular communication tool. Have you ever
wondered how e-mail gets from your desktop to a friend
halfway around the world? What is a POP3 server, and how
does it hold your mail? The answers may surprise you,
because it turns out that e-mail is an incredibly simple
system at its core! In this edition of HowStuffWorks,
we'll take an in-depth look at e-mail and how it works!
http://www.howstuffworks.com/email.htm


Fifty two years ago, two men literally stood on top of the world.
Edmund Hillary, a New Zealander, and Tenzing Norgay, his Sherpa
guide, did the seemingly impossible by becoming the first men to
reach the summit of Mount Everest. At its currently accepted
height of 29,035 feet, the peak is the highest spot on Earth.
Many died trying to conquer Everest's steep faces, high winds,
frigid temperatures, and thin air before Hillary and Norgay
succeeded on May 29, 1953.

Edmund Hillary did not reply, "Because it's there" when asked
why he was climbing Everest. That was said by George Mallory,
a climber who died in a 1924 attempt to conquer Everest.
His remains were found in 1999.
Mount Everest is named for a 19-century British surveyor, Sir
George Everest.
The Tibetan word for Mount Everest, "Chomolungama" means
"Goddess Mother of the World." The legend of the Yeti or
Abominable Snowman started with the Sherpa, a Tibetan people
who live in Nepal.

The Himalayas include all of the world's 25 highest mountains
if you count the Himalayas' northwest extension, the Karakoram
range; there you can find K2 (the #2 peak) and several others.

The site of Mount Everest is at about the same latitude as Tampa, FL.
Everest's extreme cold is due to its altitude, not its latitude.

One of America's great contributions to cuisine turns 102
this year: canned tuna. It almost didn't happen. The
Pacific sardine had failed to appear in California's San
Pedro Bay in 1903, so an enterprising canner told his
employees to pack 700 cans of tuna instead. Within 10
years, nine tuna-canning plants had opened, packing 115,000
cases a year. Today 23 million cases are packed annually in
the U.S., with a market value of $1.1 billion. It takes a
little over 2 pounds of raw tuna to make a pound of canned
tuna, and we eat about a billion pounds each year.

Grocery shop between 9:30 A.M. and 2 P.M. on Tuesday or
Wednesday. The crowds are small, and the shelves are newly stocked.

Buy fish on Friday afternoon. Friday is the busiest day
for every fish wholesaler. The deliveries will out in the
stores by the afternoon.

Make doctor appointments before 9 A.M. Doctors overbook.
Three of four will show up within the first hour, and the
fourth patient gets pushed to the following hour.

Ephedra accounted for under 1% of supplement sales in 2001 and
for 64% of all herbal related calls to poison centers.

Happy birthday to WD-40! Trying to concoct a missle-part degreaser,
Rocket Chemical techs mixed 39 duds. But "Water Displacement, perfected
on the 40th Try," worked so well that employees sneaked it home for all
kinds of uses. Rocket started selling cans of it. It's been used in
2,000 official and some unique unofficial ways (like once helping
firemen extract a nude burglar from an air vent). Also, it's the only
lube with a fan club--60,000 members strong.

The Columbia World of Quotations
The 65,000 essential quotations by 5,000 authors that constitute this
authoritative collection represent the research of 154 experts and are
divided into 6,500 subjects.
http://www.bartleby.com/66/

Einstein Archives Online
The Einstein Archives Online Website provides the first online access to
Albert Einstein's scientific and non-scientific manuscripts held by the
Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and to an
extensive Archival Database, constituting the material record of one of
the most influential intellects in the modern era. The site allows
viewing and browsing of approx. 3,000 high-quality digitized images
of Einstein's writings, available for viewing in two sizes:
a standard resolution image, as well as a high-resolution image for
closer inspection. This digitization of more than 900 documents
written by Einstein was produced by the Jewish National & University
Library's Digitization Project.
http://www.alberteinstein.info/

The common nighthawk is also called a bull-bat because
of the roaring sound its wings make when engaged in
aerial courtship dives.

An average of 548 peanuts are used in the making of
a 12-ounce jar of peanut butter.

A 1989 law in Florida forbids the release of more than
ten lighter-than-air balloons at a time. This is to
protect marine creatures that often mistake balloons
for food and can suffer intestinal injuries if they
eat the balloons.

P.F. Collier published a weekly periodical for the
first time in 1888. "Collier's" became the
publication's name at a later date. The magazine
was popular for 69 years.

The first successful long-distance demonstration of
television took place in 1927 in the United States.
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover made a speech
in Washington, which was seen and heard on a television
in New York.

Actor Max Gail, who played Detective Stanley
"Wojo" Wojciehowicz on TV's "Barney Miller," earned
a master's degree in finance from the University
of Michigan before he pursued acting.

David Cassidy played Keith in which family?
The Partridge Family

David Cassidy is the son of actress 'Evelyn Ward' and
actor Jack Cassidy. Half-brother of Shaun Cassidy, and
Stepson of Shirley Jones.

Rick Springfield was slated to replace an exhausted
David Cassidy as Keith Partridge had the show continued
after the 4th season.

now you know