Rise of the Flamingo

1957 was a year for the record books in American commerce. The electric watch, and the first electric portable typewriter both made their way to market that year. The Wham-O Company introduced the first Frisbee, and Union Products employee Don Featherstone created a very special yard ornament — the plastic, pink flamingo.

Died for His Apples

John Chapman (A.K.A. Johnny Appleseed) died for his trees. While he was staying in Fort Wayne, Indiana, news came that cattle had broken through a brush fence and into one of his nurseries, more than 20 miles away. Chapman, already more than 70 years old, made the trek on foot, exposed to the elements, and contracted pneumonia on his return trip. He died a few days later in Fort Wayne on March 18, 1845.

Twine Ball

“Weird Al” Yancovic memorialized “The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota” in his song of the same name. But that Darwin, Minn. ball of twine, measuring 12 feet across, is actually the country’s second largest such sphere. The record-holder, with more than 7 million wrapped feet of sisal string, resides a few states away in Cawker City, Kan.

Queen's Cookie

The gingerbread man, a familiar character, who runs away from an elderly couple, a cow, a fox and others probably got his start, running away from England’s Queen Elizabeth I. It’s said she created the first gingerbread men when she had edible portraits made for her courtiers.

Imprudent Marriage

In olden days, an imprudent marriage was one made for the sake of love with no thought for status or financial stability. Experts predicted that kind would never last.

Figs

Figs, a member of the mulberry family, came to California in the 18th century with Franciscan missionaries. Today, California is the world’s second largest producer of the fruit with 14,000 tons harvested in 1996. And in first place? Turkey.

They're Not Dutch

Although called the Pennsylvania Dutch, most Lancaster County residents can’t trace their progenitors to the Netherlands. That’s because “dutch” comes from “deutsch,” the German word for “German.”

Tax Farmers

It seems ancient Rome was a step ahead of its time on the issue of whether to privatize public services. Instead of enlisting the help of government revenue workers, the city-state hired out collections to Publicani or “tax farmers.” Publicani won the right to collect taxes by submitting the highest bid in their region. Many of these cash collectors made money on the side by providing loans at rates of up to 4 percent per month.

True Weight

Men and women often don’t know the truth about their weight. Experts claim that more than 40 percent of America’s overweight men believe their weight falls in the healthy, normal range. Almost 30 percent of normal-weight women, however, describe themselves as too heavy.

Peaceful Warrior

The historic Hiawatha got his start as a cannibal, not a prince. But he reportedly worked for peace among Indian nations, eventually founding the Iroquois Confederacy, in order to atone for his earlier way of life. One of his most popular ideas was the teaching that a family that lost a loved one to violence must adopt someone of lower status to take the missing family member’s place.

Females Prefer

Research on the king of beasts may have human parallels. When given a choice, female lions prefer long, dark manes.

Insecure Love

Having a crush could be a sign of insecurity. Psychologists report that those who are confident are less likely to fall in love than those who lack a strong sense of self. And what about gender? In a relationship, men are more quickly enamored than are women.

Cromwell's Head

Oliver Cromwell was a clever man. He died in 1658 and was executed in 1661. That’s right. King Charles II had Cromwell’s dead body exhumed from its grave so it could be publicly hung, drawn and quartered. Visitors to Westminster Abbey could view Cromwell’s head, attached to the end of a pole, until 1685. Very clever.

Coin-Op Parking

The world’s first parking meter was installed on a street in Oklahoma City, Okla., in July 1935. Carlton Cole Magee’s coin-operated creation limited parking time in order to help clear up congested city streets. But the meter proved most popular with cities for its ability to raise revenue. In 1998, San Francisco, Calif., raked in almost $13 million from its more-than 23,000 parking meters.

Baby Bite

What kind of bug likes to slurp up human skin cells? The chigger — a tiny, red mite. But don’t worry about the adults. They’re fairly well-mannered things. Only the babies bite.

Dangerous Hair

An old Irish proverb counsels the traveler to turn around and start his journey over again if he encounters a woman with red hair.

More Bark

About 585,000 dog bites are reported in the U.S. each year, so in the name of public safety, a group of Denver researchers studied the problem. Among their findings, the following breeds are more bark than bite: Chihuahua, Golden Retriever, Labrador Retriever, Poodle, Scottish Terrier and Shetland Sheepdog.

Old-Timey Fun

Of all the world’s athletic contests, one of the most interesting might have been the historic Invergarry Highland Games where competitors lifted heavy stones, threw hammers, ran from the island to Invergarry and back (6 miles) and twisted “the four legs from a cow, for which a fat sheep was offered as a prize.” Alas, today’s tamer games offer no such diversion.

Indian Gold

The United States has the world’s largest gold reserves. Germany is second. Take jewelry into account, however, and India has more gold within its boundaries than any other nation. But wait, there’s more. World mine production brings in more than 2,000 tons of gold each year.

Heating Action

Shivering may not be such a bad thing. The rapid muscle contractions create up to five times the amount of heat normally produced by the body.

Criminal Tips

Experts on memory say we are more likely to remember high facial features rather than those lower down. For instance, hair and eyes are more memorable than the mouth or chin. If you want to commit a crime, wear a wig; forget the beard.

Skin Problems

Warts are the second most common dermatological complaint, affecting three out of every four people. And in first place? Acne.

Wristwrestling Championship

Informal arm wrestling contests have been held since ancient times. But the first known organized competition was staged in 1952 at Gilardi’s Saloon in Petaluma, Calif. That annual event grew larger each year and was eventually named the World Wristwrestling Championship.

Bird Feathers

The Ruby Hummingbird has fewer feathers than any other bird: 940 in all. The Whistling Swan has the most with as many as 25,000 during the winter months.

Record Jumper

Pogo sticks stormed the country in the 1920s. The New York Hippodrome chorus girls performed entire shows on them, and couples exchanged marriage vows while bouncing up and down. Jumping contests were held, and world records were set. Most consecutive jumps on a pogo stick? 177,737. That one from Gary Stewart in Huntington Beach, Calif. It took him more than 20 hours to set the record.

Clean Sweep

The broom on a street sweeper is approximately 10 feet long.

Batty

What do Liberace, Art Carney, Bruce Lee, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman and Zsa Zsa Gabor have in common? Batman. They all appeared as guests on this 60s hit TV series. Same bat-time, same bat-channel.

Solidarity Symbol

Invented by Norwegian Johan Vaaler in 1899, the paperclip became a symbol of national solidarity for Norway’s citizens during World War II. The Germans prohibited Vaaler’s countrymen from wearing buttons with the initials of their king, so they fastened paperclips to their lapels in order to show pride for Norway and protest the Nazi occupation.

Hot

The surface temperature on the planet Venus is hot enough to melt lead.

Goatsucker

The whippoorwill, a member of the goatsucker family, is a rare bird indeed. Ornithologists used to claim that birds didn’t hibernate during winter. That was back before they knew about the whippoorwill.

Presidential Ketchup

Americans and their leaders like ketchup. President Richard Nixon had ketchup with his cottage cheese, and in 1981, President Ronald Reagan declared the red stuff an official vegetable. But our neighbors to the north like it even better than we do. The average Canadian uses 1.48 quarts of the tomato-based sauce each year. U.S. citizens eat just a little bit less: 1.16 quarts per person, annually.

In the Can

It was the French, who perfected the art of canning. Napoleon needed a method for keeping food unspoiled over distance and time in order to support military expansion. He offered a prize, 12,000 francs, to anyone who could invent a method of preserving food. The award went to (envelope please) Nicholas Appert in 1810. The former vintner, chef and pickle maker spent 15 years perfecting the process.

Perseverance

The average human heart beats more than 2-1/2 billion times in a lifetime.

Women Smell Better

People can accurately identify about 1,000 different smells. Scientists add that women do a better job at this than do men.

Just a Minute

The first pendulum clock, created in 1656, was haled for its accuracy. Christiaan Huygens’ invention lost no more than one minute a day. Time marches on.

Measure of Compromise

Inch by inch, life’s a cinch. Or is it really that easy? That was the problem facing the United States and Great Britain in 1959. Couldn’t agree on how much easiness is in a life. Americans argued for an inch that measured 2.540005 centimeters. On the other side of the Atlantic, the inch came in at only 2.53998 centimeters. So the two countries compromised on the 2.54-centimeter inch. Fortunately, they already agreed on centimeters.

Beer Ads

At the end of the 19th century, breweries didn’t use draft horses in their advertisements. Instead, they emphasized the grandiosity of their factories.

Liver Cure

Don’t curse the dandelion. The Asian plant was brought here on purpose. The English claimed it had value as a cure for complaints of the liver. The yellow flower is still cultivated in India for that purpose.

Earth Pig

The name aardvark means “earth pig.”

Mummy Tattoo

How old is micropigmentation? Tattoos have been found on Egyptian mummies.

Planet X

Pluto, originally referred to as Planet X, got its name from an 11-year-old student in Oxford, England. Venetia Burney suggested that the god of the underworld made the best namesake for what was thought to be a cold, lifeless planet. Astronomers liked the name because it started with “PL,” the initials of Percival Lowell, the man who first predicted the probable location for Planet X. Lowell died in 1916, 14 years before the planet was discovered.

Presidential Cow

Pauline Wayne, a cow, was the last farm animal to live at the White House. The presidential barn was torn down in 1910, and First Lady Helen Taft sent Pauline to a local farm. Pauline’s predecessors included Tad Lincoln’s pet turkey, Jack, and the Roosevelt family pig, Maude.

Dictionary Test

Not sure how to test the reliability of an on-line dictionary? An expert on the English language suggests you try out the word “abacinate.” The rare term, meaning “to destroy the sight of by placing a red-hot copper basin close to the eyes,” isn’t included in many dictionaries. Even when the word is present, it often isn’t right.

Coin Art

The buffalo nickel, introduced in 1913, had as its model a resident of the Central Park Zoo, an American bison. But the animal, better known as Black Diamond, wasn’t cooperating for artist James Fraser. He kept turning to watch the artist at work instead of standing sideways. Fraser commissioned a zookeeper to catch Black Diamond’s eye and then sneaked around the animal for the necessary side view. A centsible move.

On the Road

More people travel by bus: 860 million passengers in the U.S. and Canada in 1999 compared to 568 million who flew. Just can’t wait to get on the road again.

Biggest Hair in History

Sports enthusiasts claim that Darnell Hillman (called “Dr. Dunk” by Pacers’ fans) had the biggest hair in basketball history.

Drivers Needed

The first Saab automobile, introduced after World War II, was designed and hand built by 17 aeronautical engineers. Only one of them had a driver’s license.

Popular Names

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the most common first names are James, John and Robert for men; Mary, Patricia and Linda for women. Odds are that quite a few of those so named will have last names of Smith, Johnson or Williams.

Insulin Breakthrough

Until recently, cows and pigs were the primary source of insulin for people with diabetes. DNA technology breakthroughs in the 1980s made it possible to use bacteria to produce human insulin.

Sweet & Sour

Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries.

Man and Machine

In a classic competition between man and machine, Kiyoshu Matzukai operated an abacus for two days as he faced off against an electronic challenger in this 1946 duel. The electric calculator lost.

5-Year Guarantee

The first concrete pavement was laid in Bellefontaine, Ohio, in 1891. But it hadn’t been easy for inventor George W. Bartholomew to convince the city of his plan’s merit. Bartholomew spent two years lobbying city leaders and finally succeeded after offering to donate all materials. He also was required to post a $5,000 performance bond and guarantee that the 8-foot-wide strip would last for at least five years.

Champion Jumper

Olive Oyl, a Russian wolfhound, made it into the record books on July 8, 1998. That’s the day this California dog “skipped” rope 63 times in 60 seconds — a world record.

Hide-and-Seek

Historians theorize that the game of hide-and-seek may have evolved from a spring-time custom in ancient Persia. Children there sought birds, flowers and insects as trophies, heralding winter’s end.

Best-selling Sandwich

The Burger King Whopper, when first introduced in 1957, sold for 37 cents and quickly became the best-selling sandwich in America. Company officials say the most popular way to order the burger is with this request: “Hold the onions.”

Cheese To Dye For

What does cheddar cheese have in common with chocolate-covered cherries or a tube of lipstick? Annatto. Dairymen started adding the red dye to cheeses in year’s past to make coloring consistent from season to season. Look hard enough, and you’ll find it in butter as well.

Friends Are Fun

The average adult laughs 17 times a day, and social scientists point out that people are 30 times more likely to laugh in social settings than when they are alone.

Not Really

If it’s American, it might not be what it claims to be. In America, the animals called buffalo are actually bison. The sport called football is not the same as that played in other countries. And the cantaloupe? Not really. It’s a muskmelon. Real cantaloupe don’t have webbed skin, and they aren’t grown commercially in the United States.

Spendy Frontier

With a goal of landing a man on the moon, the Apollo program was the country’s most expensive project in the 1960s. Second on that list is the IBM 360, which Fortune magazine called a “$5 billion gamble.” But the risk paid off as IBM reportedly made more than $100 billion in sales of the mainframe computer.

A Growing Worm

The silkworm multiplies its weight 10,000 times in its first month of life and produces a single strand of silk, up to 900 meters in length. The caterpillar, if allowed to grow, becomes the blind, flightless Bombyx mori moth. But a live moth damages the silk thread when it exits the cocoon, so most silkworms are killed (steamed or baked while still inside).

Shoe Size

The distance around an elephant’s front foot is equal to half its shoulder height.

Seriously

Historians say the 53rd card in a standard deck first showed its face in Mississippi. Riverboat card sharps created the “Best Bower” as the highest card in Euchre, a game that swept the country in the 19th century. Also known as the “Juker,” this card insinuated itself into a number of other popular games and gained a new name in the process. No joke.

Brainy Slug

Scientists who study memory needed something simpler than the human brain with its 100 billion neural cells. They chose the purple-brown sea slug. This seaweed-eater has only 10,000 brain cells, and they’re the biggest in the animal kingdom — up to 1 millimeter across.

Killer Mom

A scorpion mother lives the life of a single parent. That’s because she kills and eats the father. Not in front of the children, dear.

Sunny Day

How powerful is a sunbeam? Take the world’s known reserves of coal, oil and natural gas. Add up all that energy, and you get the equivalent of 20 sunny days.

An-Du-Septic

Cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith, creators of Crayola crayons, first made their mark in American schools with An-Du-Septic, a dustless chalk. They introduced the innovation in 1902 — a year before the debut of crayons — and won a gold medal at the St. Louis World Exposition.

Crazy Chicken

Chickens aren’t the brainiest creatures on the planet as one Colorado family discovered. Their Wyandotte rooster, Mike, continued to preen, strut and eat for almost 18 months after losing his head on the butcher block. “Miracle Mike” toured the country with a two-headed calf and their promoter until his death in 1947. But his memory lives on. Fruita, Colo., Mike’s hometown, continues to hold an annual “Mike the Headless Chicken Day.”

Valentine News

Think flowers are just for women? Psychologists say that men who received flowers in a Rutgers University study “demonstrated increased eye contact in conversation, stood in closer proximity to the researchers, and produced more and truer smiles than those men who did not receive flowers.”

The French Are Nice

Louis XIV, age 5, may have been king of France in 1643, but it was an Italian, Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino, who ruled the kingdom. Better known as Cardinal Mazarin, he is remembered for the following line: “The French are nice people. I allow them to sing and to write, and they allow me to do whatever I like.”

Resting Place

Ever try sleeping on a barbecue? The first use of the word in English, in 1697, referred to a raised, wooden platform for sleeping. By 1733, the meaning had shifted, and barbecue was used as a reference to an outdoor gathering, featuring grilled meat.

Tasty Danger

Piranha, South American freshwater fish known for their feeding frenzies, may not be the threat that they seem. Each year, more people eat piranha than piranha eat people.

Always Edit

America, the beautiful, almost became known for its halcyon skies. But Katharine Lee Bates, writer of the patriotic hymn, revised her description to “spacious.”

Boring Name?

Alaska’s capital city, Juneau, was originally named Harrisburgh for prospector Richard Harris. But citizens at an 1881 town meeting decided the name was too common and changed it to Rockwell. The change honored Lt. Com. Charles Rockwell, who helped keep order in the mining community. The new name didn’t last long, however. Joe Juneau, a prospector who helped found the town, insisted that something in the area should be named after him. Rockwell’s citizens agreed, naming their town a third and final time.

Not All the Same Size

A standard bowling ball must have a diameter of at least 8.5 inches but no more than 8.595 inches.

Kids Like Barney

Barney, the purple dinosaur, is televised in over 100 countries. But the kid-friendly creature got his start in a home video, made by two former teachers in 1988 and sold to toy and video stores by a group of mothers. Members of the group were convinced that children would love the friendly dinosaur, and they were right. Barney’s fan club now has more than 1 million members, and his first audio release, “Barney’s Favorites: Volume 1,” went triple-platinum.

Manure Babies

Flies like to lay their eggs in manure from horses, cows, dogs, pigs, poultry and even humans. Up to 868 fly pupae can develop from a single ounce of the moist, fecal matter.

Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction

During the French and Indian War, England found in Jeff Amherst an able and efficient commander. Amherst developed a plan for what may have been the first use of biological warfare in North America. He counseled Captain Simeon Ecuyer at Fort Pitt to provide the American Indians with smallpox-infected blankets in order to “Bring about the Total Extirpation of those Indian Nations.”

Sheepish Sheepdogs

In the frontier settlements of the American West, Spanish-trained sheepdogs were in high demand. Before its eyes had opened, the potential sheepdog was given to a ewe that suckled the puppy as if it were her own lamb. These dogs grew up, intensely loyal to their flocks.

Various Pangrams

“The quick, brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is a well-known Pangram — a sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet. But there are others. Next time, try “Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz” or “Waltz, bad nymph, for quick jigs vex.”

Artistic License

William Shakespeare recorded the dying words of Julius Caesar in his play of the same name: “Et tu, Brute.” But Shakespeare created the quotation for artistic effect. Suetonius, author of “The Lives of the First Twelve Caesars,” writes that Caesar’s actual last words were “Kai su, teknon,” meaning “Even you, my child.”

Lazy Scribe

Late Egyptian scribes often used shortcuts rather than print the entire collection of symbols needed for a section of text. One of these shortcuts is a curved, backward-slanting stroke that means “the hieroglyph that would go in this place is too tedious to draw.”