...In the Western world the month of December always falls in winter, but, because they use a different calendar, a Moslem month that occurs in winter one year will fall in summer thirty years later. It would be possible for a Moslem who converted to Judaism to celebrate his first birthday 4,340 years later. Because of differences in the systems the two faiths use to calculate the year. Moslems calculate the year from the date of Mohammed's flight to Mecca in 622 (in the Christian calendar). Jews calculate the year from the time when they believe the world was created - 3761 years BC. Therefore 1982 is 1403 to Moslems (if you decide to work that out, you must remember that the Moslem year contains only 354 days!) and 5743 to the Jews. Complicated, isn't it?
...The smallest unit of measurement is called the attometre. It is only used in the microest of micro calculations and is so small that you could never see anything one attometre long. The average human thumb is 7,000,000,000,000,000,000 attometres long - and that's an awful lot of attometres.
...If a rumour was started at midnight and repeated within two seconds by everyone who knew about it to two people and those two people told two people and those two people told another two people ... everyone on earth would know about it by 6.30 in the morning.
...In 1900 a Sicilian immigrant entered the United States, penniless although he came from a wealthy family. He had been disinherited after a family quarrel. He worked hard as a farm labourer and eventually saved enough money to buy a piece of land on which he intended to build a house for himself and the girl he intended to marry. The land, however, turned out to be a barren piece of rock with a small wooden shack on it. The man decided that it was too hot to live in the shack, so he built an underground cellar where he could go to cool off. The cellar was so successful that he built another room adjoining it. Then he added a kitchen, hallway, bedrooms and a library. The rooms were lit by natural light let in by fanlights sunk in from above and there was even an air conditioning system base on a ventilation duct that brought cool air up from below. There was also a garden, again lit by a skylight, which is still, today, filled with exotic plants and shrubs. However, he took so long about building it - 39 years to be exact that his fiancée got fed up and ran off with another man. The heart-broken man died alone in his underground palace in 1946.
...The Japanese, pioneers of miniature radios and electronic gadgets are also the pioneers of miniature hotel rooms. Building space in Asaka is at such a premium that a new hotel has been built which contains 411 sleeping capsules, each equipped with a reading light, a television set, radio and transistor radio and digital alarm clock. The 'rooms' are three feet high, thirty inches wide and six fee deep. Every capsule has been filled every night since the hotel was opened in 1979, mainly by businessmen who have been out drinking and have missed their last train home.
...Apart from a few people who still believe that the Earth is flat, everybody believed that the Earth was round - until photographs taken from American space shots proved that actually it is pear shaped. Recent research has, however, shown that the Earth in fact has four CORNERS, one in Ireland, and three in the oceans near Peru, South Africa and New Guinea. It really is a square world after all.
...lf the 41/2-billion-year history of the Earth were to be measured in proportion to one year, man did not appear until 8.30pm on December 31.
...Harrods, one of the smartest shops in London, has always pride itself on caring well for its customers - pandering to their every need. In 1898 Harrods installed the very first escalator in Britain in their Knightsbridge store. But in case any of their wealthy customers found the moving staircase too much for their nerves, liveried attendants were positioned at the top to offer smelling salts or brandy to anyone who wished it. We do not know how many customers went straight back down and up again ... and again ... and again ...
...Bagpipes, which are associated with Scotland more than any other nation did not originate in that country. They were first played in Persia hundreds of years before the Scots first played them, and spread from there to many parts of Europe. Many people probably wish they had stayed in Persia.
...Machines operated by coins, such as cigarette machines or chocolate dispensers are, a twentieth-century invention. Well, you would be completely wrong. Nineteenth century? No. Eighteenth? No. Slot machines were actually invented by a Greek scientist called Hero, in the first century AD. Holy water was sold in temples. The water was contained in urns with a short pipe leading out from the base. The top end of the pipe, inside the urn, was closed by a plug which was fixed to one end of a horizontal bar. The other end was directly underneath an opening where coins could be inserted. When the coin dropped in, it hit the end of the bar and caused it to move down. This caused the plug to open and the holy water to trickle out.
...In 1895 King C. Gillette had a wonderful idea. He was fed up with having to use a cutthroat razor every morning so he set about designing a wafer thin, incredibly sharp blade that could be held together by a safety clamp. It took him eight years to perfect the design and when it went on sale in 1903, he thought he had been wasting his time for in that year only 51 razors and 168 blades were sold. The following year, however, he knew it ad been worthwhile. 90,000 razors were sold and 12,400,000 blades.
...Several French and British governments have studied the feasibility of linking the two countries by means of an underwater tunnel. The last one, which was abandoned in 1974, would have cost £846 million. But work was actually started on the digging on an earlier project in 1881. The tunnel is still there. The workers dug a tunnel, seven feet high and 879 yards long, from Kent out under the Channel. The idea was to link Dover with Calais and to transport people between the two in horse drawn carriages along the candle-lit passageway. Work was abandoned shortly after it had begun.
...The Russians have a novel way of making snow melt earlier than it would normally. When the first weak spring sunshine appears, they spray the solid snowfields with coal dust. The black dust absorbs more heat than would otherwise get to the snow, so it melts quickly.
...Oklahoma legislators decided to build several new reservoirs and ordered the state cartographer to redraw tourist maps with large blue splodges where the lakes were planned to be. Unfortunately funds ran out before the first lake was completed so motorists who drive out to the country expecting to be able to picnic beside an attractive lake are met with barren, bone-dry basins.
------------------
Pinhead,Pin-Up at 56,Pinintheneck,Pindead,PinM&M, PinMoney, Pinocchio Pincushion, Pinwheel, Pinochle
Interesting Tidbits..
Re: Interesting Tidbits..
Re: Interesting Tidbits..
Previous Topic
Index