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Topic: Useless Fact's
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Bob Maar
(Maar stands for Maartini)
Posts: 28608
From: New York City & Newport, RI
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 10-13-2003 10:03 AM
Rated G ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Useless fact - What happened to the kids who went on the Children's Crusade?
The Crusades of medieval western Europe became progressively uglier as centuries passed; gold and lives were squandered, and yet the Crusaders were no closer to wresting the Holy Land from the infidel Muslims.
In 1202, Crusaders ransacked Christian churches and Eastern European villages, much to the embarrassment of the Church and their communities back home. Morale in western Europe was at an all-time low.
It was in this atmosphere that two young boys emerged from the countryside of western Europe to act as God's warriors. Stephen was a young shepherd boy from Cloyes, France. Devout and eager, he claimed to have received a message from Jesus that he was to walk to Jerusalem and crush the infidels. Stephen soon managed to attract thousands of French boys to his cause, all hoping to change the world and right the wrongs of the Crusaders before them. Parents cried and begged them not to go, but church officials, by many accounts, fully encouraged these youths in their quest.
At the same time, a similar scene was being played out in Germany. Nicholas, a local peasant boy from Cologne, said he had received specific instructions from a cross of lights in the sky. He manageji to gather at least 7,000 young people to his cause. Like lambs to slaughter, the two groups of unarmed children marched off to reclaim the Holy Sepulcher.
It's a toss-up for which group fared worse. Most of the German children either froze to death or slid off the mountains trying to get through the Alps. The French children suffered from disease and hunger during their long march. When they reached the Mediterranean Sea, they were disappointed to discover that the sea did not part and let them walk across, as Stephen hadprophesied. Finally, seven ships were supplied by two rich merchants to carry the boys across the the Mediterranean. Two of them sank in storms with 1,400 children aboard. The other five reached land on the other side but nowhere near the Holy Land, alas. The sailors had changed course to Egypt where they sold the boys into slavery. Many of them were put to death when they refused to convert to Islam.
Meanwhile, the German children who survived passage over the Alps split into smaller groups, each looking for the passage to Palestine. Some arrived at the Italian port of Genoa with no means of transportation. Others just disappeared into the countryside to fates unknown. Of the thousands that set out from France and Germany, only a hundred or two were ever heard from again. Some historians theorize that the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin - who magically led an entire German village of children away, never to be seen again-was an allegorical history of the parents' and villagers' deep sense of loss over their children who went off to the Children's Crusade.
~source used: "Just Curious, Jeeves by Erin Barrett & Jack Mingo
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Bob Maar
(Maar stands for Maartini)
Posts: 28608
From: New York City & Newport, RI
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 10-13-2003 12:51 PM
Rated G
Useless fact - butterfly, origin of word:
How charming is the butterfly! Symbol of the soul to the ancient
Egyptians,of the gentle west wind Psyche to the Greeks and Romans (but also, it must be added, sometimes superstitiously
associated with death),lifelong study of the late Vladimir Nabokov, and the delight of tourists who watch the masses of monarchs in springtime on the Monterey peninsula in California, the butterfly has fascinated humankind for thousands of years. And it has also generated its share of misinformation.
Where, then, does the "butter" of butterfly come from?
About this there are three theories.One,basing itself on an
archaic Dutch word for butterfly, 'boterschijte'or "buttershit,"
is that this reflects the color of a butterfly's bowel movements. \
(On which my American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
comments acerbically, "This [would be] as astonishing a phenomenonas the fact that anyone ever noticed the color of butterfly excrement.") A second explanation, i.e., that some Lepidoptera are a buttery yellow, doesn't make much sense either: Why name butterflies just for the yellow ones? A third theory holds that, in medieval folklore, butterflies were believed to be disguised witches or fairies who stole butter from pantries and churns.The belief in butter-stealing fairies still existed in England at the time of Shakespeare, in whose "Midsummer Night's Dream" a fairy asks its fellow fairy, Puck:
Are you not he That fright the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk and sometimes labor in the quern,And bootless make the breathless housewife churn?
The housewife churns "bootlessly" because Puck has stolen her butter.
~source used: "More MisInformation" by Tom Burnam~
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Bob Maar
(Maar stands for Maartini)
Posts: 28608
From: New York City & Newport, RI
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 10-14-2003 10:16 AM
Rated G
Useless fact - Is garbage really warm to the touch?
Yes. Touch the garbage and you will feel the heat generated by
millions of fast-replicating microbes as they gorge themselves
on the organic matter contained in your trash. Spores of bacteria and microscopic fungi are out there perpetually blowing around in a dormant state,but once they land in a nice,dank pile of garbage,whether it be an outdoor compost heap or simply a kitchentrash can,they immediately go to work colonizing the stuff.Rubbish,you might say,is their medium.And as their numbers
inexorably grow,so does the collective body heat.The responsible party here is aerobic bacteria,so as long as the refuse heap in question is well ventilated, it's going to generate warmth.
Compost piles can reach temperatures as high as 180 degrees F, at which point the bacteria start to bake to death in their own
metabolic stew,and the temperature levels off.
Although garbage heat can be successfully harnessed - groovy Whole Earthers have done experiments in which they've heated water by coursing pipes through active compost piles - unfortunately the Btu output is not consequential enough
to turn heads at Texaco.But what about huge urban landfills?
"Landfills,being oxygenless environments,don't produce heat but they do produce awful-smelling sulfides and steady seepages of methane that can be collected and sold to power companies,"
says Texas garbage consultant Bill Carter. "In some places,the methane builds up so fast that wells must be drilled deep into the landfill to keep it from blowing up."
~source used: "Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison"by Hampton Sides~
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Bob Maar
(Maar stands for Maartini)
Posts: 28608
From: New York City & Newport, RI
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 10-15-2003 03:26 PM
Rated G
Useless fact - Does eating red meat cause weird dreams?
Weird dreams are God's way of apologizing for having created
logic.It's a widely held belief that eating, say, a juicy T-bone
or prime rib for dinner will make your evening's in-flight
entertainment odder than usual. There might be some truth to it,
but it has nothing to do with any specific chemicals in the meat
itself. "A lot of people believe that what they eat directly
determines or at least influences their dream content," notes
Harvard dream expert J. Allan Hobson, "but there's absolutely no
evidence for it."
However,red meat is,for many people,notoriously hard to digest.
Most likely all that's happening is that you're having trouble breaking down that big steak.Throughout the night,the gastric activity is repeatedly waking you up while visions are still dancing in your head.The more details you can recall,the stranger your dreams are going to seem - because,as Hobson puts
it,"Dreams are 'normally' weird."It's just that indigestion is
giving you a clearer glimpse of the Fellini films that regularly
play up there.So next time,skip the Tagamet and enjoy the show.
~source used: "Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison?" by Hampton Sides
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Bob Maar
(Maar stands for Maartini)
Posts: 28608
From: New York City & Newport, RI
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 10-16-2003 05:44 PM
Rated G
Useless fact - cellophane:-----"And all that Jazz"
People today don't pay much attention to cellophane, but at one
time it was so valuable that it was locked in safes at night.
It all started around the time Bakelite was invented. A Swiss
chemist, Jacques Brandenberger, was tired of looking at unwashed
and stained tablecloths in Paris restaurants, so he decided to
invent some type of covering that could simply be wiped clean. He sprinkled liquid viscose on a tablecloth and it became glossy but very stiff.He then decided to try to make some type of
transparent sheet that could be laid over the tablecloth.
By using a cellulose product,he managed to create a transparent
sheet. He combined the French words "cellulose" with "diaphane",
meaning"transparent," and called his invention cellophane.
Brandenberger tried selling cellophane to the movie industry
to replace the highly flammable film they were using at the time.
Unfortunately,cellophane became distorted when hot, so he
decided to sell it as a wrapping for expensive products. The cost of cellophane was so high at the time that only the most
exclusive Paris boutiques could afford to wrap their finest
perfumesin it.At night, they kept it locked in the store safe.
Over time,cellophane became less expensive,and eventually
DuPont scientists created a version that was moisture proof. From that time on,cellophane became the packaging of choice for
candy,cigarettes,and a host of other products.
The next time you receive a gift wrapped in colored cellophane,
just be thankful you don't have to lock it up in a safe at night.
~source used: "What Makes Flamingos Pink?" by Bill McLain~
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Bob Maar
(Maar stands for Maartini)
Posts: 28608
From: New York City & Newport, RI
Registered: Feb 2001
|
posted 10-17-2003 10:31 AM
Rated G
Useless fact - The Great Fire of London:
The Great Fire of London began on the night of September 2,1666,
as a small fire on Pudding Lane,in the bakeshop of Thomas Farynor,baker to King Charles II.At one o'clock in the morning,
a servant woke to find the house aflame,and the baker and his
family escaped,but a fear-struck maid perished in the blaze.
At this time,most London houses were of wood and pitch construction,dangerously flammable, and it did not take long for
the fire to expand.The fire leapt to the hay and feed piles on
the yard of the Star Inn at Fish Street Hill,and spread to the
Inn.The strong wind that blew that night sent sparks that next
ignited the Church of St.Margaret,and then spread to Thames
Street,with its riverside warehouses and wharves filled with
food for the flames: hemp,oil,tallow,hay,timber,coal and spirits along with other combustibles.The citizen fire fighting brigades had little success in containing the fire with their buckets of water from the river.By eight o'clock in the morning,the fire had spread halfway across London Bridge.The only thing that stopped the fire from spreading to Southwark,on the other side of the river,was the gap that had been caused by the fire of 1633.
The standard procedure to stop a fire from spreading had always been to destroy the houses on the path of the flames, creating “fire-breaks”,to deprive a fire from fuel.Lord Mayor
Bludworth,however,was hesitant,worrying about the cost of
rebuilding.By the time a Royal command came down,carried by
Samuel Pepys, the fire was too out of control to stop.The Trained Bands of London were called in to demolish houses by
gunpowder,but often the rubble was too much to be cleared before
the fire was at hand, and only eased the fire's way onward.The
fire blazed unchecked for another three days,until it halted
near Temple Church.Then,it suddenly sprang to life again,
continuing towards Westminster.The Duke of York had the presence of mind to order the Paper House demolished to create a fire break, and the fire finally died down.
Although the loss of life was minimal,some sources say only
sixteen perished,the magnitude of the property loss was
staggering.Some 430 acres,as much as 80% of the city proper was
destroyed,including 13,000 houses,89 churches,and 52 Guild Halls.Thousands of citizens found themselves homeless and
financially ruined.The Great Fire,and the fire of 1676,which
destroyed over 600 houses south of the river,changed the face of
London forever.The one positive effect of the Great Fire was
that the plague,which had ravished London since 1665,diminished
greatly,due to the mass death of the plague-carrying rats in the
blaze.
~source used: www.luminarium.org
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Bob Maar
(Maar stands for Maartini)
Posts: 28608
From: New York City & Newport, RI
Registered: Feb 2001
|
posted 10-18-2003 07:45 AM
Rated G
Useless fact - Why do people sweat, and why does it smell?
Scentists know that sweating is a cooling mechanism that keeps us from overheating, but they don't know why we sweat instead of
cooling down in other ways.Other animals have sweat glands,but
most of them go almost entirely unused because the animals have
developed different methods to cool their blood and regulate
their body temperature.Rabbits,for instance, rush blood through their ears to cool their body.Dogs pant.Some animals wallow in mud or water,and still others urinate on their legs.
Humans release two substances from over two million sweat glands
in the skin, which tends to attract bacteria that smell bad. The
explanation that seems most likely comes from the famous anthropologist Louis Leakey,His theory is that humans once used body odor as marking for their territory and to ward off predators.Eventually humans learned to defend themselves with weapons,but the strong smell lingered on.
Now human smell tends to ward off other humans,as well as anything else with a nose. As a result, societies have engaged in the war against body odor. Early weapons include perfumes, herbal concoctions, and sometimes even bathing. Late in the 19th
century,scientists developed antibacterial solutions that killed germs growing in the armpits or on the feet, and in the 20th century, along came sweat-blocking agents called antiperspirants.So far,these substances are the most successful solutions to B.O. in the course of human history.Until we come up with something else or evolve out of our sweat glands,they'll just have to do.
~source used: "Just Curious, Jeeves" by Erin Barrett & Jack Mingo
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Bob Maar
(Maar stands for Maartini)
Posts: 28608
From: New York City & Newport, RI
Registered: Feb 2001
|
posted 10-20-2003 12:25 PM
Rated G
Useless fact - boomerang:
The word is Australian,but the boomerang is not exclusively an
Australian device.Similar missiles were known in ancient Egypt
and can be found in parts of Africa and India today.The Hopi
Indians of Arizona know one form of the boomerang; apparently,
Eskimos once used them - there is such a legend among some
Eskimos.
Nor do all boomerangs return to their throwers.The notion that
an Australian aborigine can kill a large animal (or an enemy
aborigine) with a boomerang that returns obediently to its owner
is quite false.The boomerang used for this purpose,sometimes
called the war or hunting boomerang, is not designed to return to the thrower, nor is it thrown in the same fashion as the return, or "sporting," boomerang. When thrown with murderous
intention by an expert, it is a murderous weapon. But its flight
is straight,not curved;thus it doesn't come back but must be
retrieved.
~source used: "More Misinformation" by Tom Burnam~
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Bob Maar
(Maar stands for Maartini)
Posts: 28608
From: New York City & Newport, RI
Registered: Feb 2001
|
posted 10-21-2003 12:34 PM
Rated G
Useless fact - Who invented chewing gum?
Humans have been chewing on something since the dawn of history,
usually sap (resin) from various trees or wax.In 1848,John
Curtis made the first gum in the United States when he cooked
resin from a spruce tree on his wood-burning stove. In 1869,the
first patent issued for chewing gum was given to William Semple,
a dentist in Ohio,who invented a gum to exercise the jaws and
stimulate the gums.It never sold, probably because it was made
primarily of rubber.
The invention of gum, as we know it today, came about because
of the friendship of two men, Thomas Adams,a photographer,
and Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna,who had defeated the Texans at
the Alamo. When Santa Anna was exiled from Mexico, he lived with
Adams on Staten Island, New York. Adams had tried different
schemes to make money but all had failed. Santa Anna told him of
an idea that could make Adams wealthy. He told him of a gummy
substance that people in Mexico had been chewing for thousands of years.It was called chicle,the milky sap from the sapodilla
tree that grows in the tropical rain forests of Central America.
But gum was not on either's mind. The plan was to blend chicle
and rubber together to make cheaper tires, toys, and rainboots.
Santa Anna had his friends in Mexico ship a ton of chicle to
Adams. Although he labored for about a year, every one of his
experiments failed. He had not been able to blend chicle and
rubber. A vast amount of useless chicle was stored in his
warehouse and Adams decided to throw it all into the river.
By sheer luck, Adams happened to go into a drugstore and saw a
little girl buy some paraffin wax chewing gum. He remembered
that Santa Anna had told him that Mexicans chewed chicle.
Inspired, Adams started making unflavored pure chicle gum. It
sold extremely well and Adams built a thriving business.
Some years later, John Colgan, a drugstore owner in Louisville,
Kentucky, was selling a gum he made from balsam tree sap and
flavored with powdered sugar. He had heard of how successful
Thomas Adams was,so he ordered 100 pounds of chicle.He started making Taffy Tolu Chewing Gum, which was so successful that he
sold his drugstore and devoted his time to manufacturing chewing
gum. A breakthrough in gum manufacture occurred when a popcorn
salesman, William J. White, started experimenting with a barrel
of chicle a friend had given him. He discovered how to flavor
gum. Chicle does not absorb flavors, but sugar does. He combined
flavors, such as peppermint, with corn syrup and then blended the mixture with the chicle. In 1899, the major gum manufacturers united to become the American Chicle Company. William White was president and Thomas Adams, Jr., was chairman of the board. You might see some of their brands today, such as Black Jack and Beeman's. People have been chewing gum ever since.
William Wrigley, Jr. (the founder of Wrigley Gum) devised a
marketing technique that caused sales of his gum to soar. He
mailed one stick of gum to every person in teh United States who
was listed in the phone book.
~source used: "What Makes Flamingos Pink?" by Bill McLain~
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Bob Maar
(Maar stands for Maartini)
Posts: 28608
From: New York City & Newport, RI
Registered: Feb 2001
|
posted 10-23-2003 12:50 PM
Rated G
Useless fact - Are mushrooms plants or animals?
In 1993,a team of molecular biologists tried to construct an
evolutionary family tree of all living organisms by analyzing
ribosomal RNA.The study revealed something surprising:Fungi and
animals shared a common branch.On the great tree of life,in
other words,mushrooms turned out to be our brothers,whereas
plants are only our cousins."There is some organism that lived a
billion years ago that was the common ancestor of all animals and all fungi," says biologist Mitchell Sogins,one of the study's authors.Go back even further and we find the ancestor of that organism and plants.Go back even further and,as Sogins puts
it,"everybody's unicellular."
The similarities between animals and fungi are striking enough
that some scientists study human neurology by examining yeasts.
And it's believed that one of the reasons that many fungal skin
diseases are so hard to treat is that,on the molecular level,
they resemble human tissue.Maybe it's time to start thinking of
athlete's foot not as an infection,but just another relative who won't leave.
~source used: "Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison"
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