"Tell Me Something I Don't Know": Trivia & Fact Thread

[DrSpaceman]

Kenner toys, best knows as the original production company and creators of the Star Wars toy line, lost the exclusive rights to Star Wars because they failed to make a $10000 payment one year after Return of the Jedi and before the newer movies came out.  It was in the contract they had exclusive rights as long as they made $10k a year for George Lucas.  The company was acquired bought up by Tonka or Hasbro and after that happened no one reviewed the contract to know about the clause and failed to pay it one year.  The whole story is in the documentary The Toys that Made us. 

 

On a similar note, the creator of the Barbie doll, Jack Ryan, made a fortune because in his contract he made a percentage of the profit off each doll sold.  It created a huge conflict between him and Mattel, had to sue them for much of the money.  He was married several times, including to one Gabor sister, and did his best to blow most of his money with women, drugs and booze before committing suicide in 1991

Also Barbie is based on a german doll that was inspired by a prostitute from a comic strip.  Same source for this, The Toys that Made Us.

The company that originally owned the rights to the Beatles records and music, BMI, created the CT scanner

The Guinness Brewery was leased originally to Arthur Guiness in 1759 for 45 irish pounds a year.  The length of the contract is 9000 years, so it still costs 45 pounds a year to lease. 

When the ABA and NBA merged in 1976, two owners agreed to fold their teams rather than join the NBA.  One received a pay out of $3.3 million to fold his team, a pretty good payday.  The other owners, the Silna brothers, were given just $2.2million........plus an agreement for 1/7 of the share of each of the remaining 4 ABA teams TV rights "in perpetuity".  TV rights were nothing, basically nonexistent, in those days.  There was no national TV contract for the league.  Three years later, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird came along. Then a few years later a guy named Michael Jordan.  Needless to say, that turned out to be a pretty good deal.  Some say its the best contract in the history of sports.  To date they have received $750 million since the deal was signed.  That includes $500 million they were given in 2014 as part of renegotiating the contact because they were suing over whether the money included revenue from newer media streams. 

[Blergh]

Here's a bit of musical trivia: the original Jefferson Airplane's drummer, Spencer Dryden, was the half-nephew of Charlie Chaplin but even his closest friends claimed they didn't know this until after his death in 2005 because he kept it a secret.

Mr. Dryden had been born in 1938 to   Mr. Wheeler Dryden,Jr. who'd been born in 1892 to  the performer Wheeler Dryden, Sr. and Hannah Hill Chaplin. The latter was still married but informally separated from Charles Chaplin,Sr.  and just a year after he was born, Mr. Dryden, Sr. took Mrs. Chaplin's youngest child away to India! It would only be in 1915 when Charlie became world famous that the younger Mr. Dryden would seek out his elder half-brothers by Hannah and would wind up being a virtual servant of Charlie the rest of Mr. Chaplin's life in the US before his death in 1958. Tellingly, when Charlie Chaplin wrote his autobiography, he made no mention whatsoever of any of the Drydens  (although he did detail Hannah's resulting galloping mental decline after that cruel separation from her youngest child) while he considered his elder half-brother Sydney to be his best friend. Oh, and Mr. Chaplin, Sr. had had his own nonmarital son after separating from Hannah by a girlfriend that Charlie in his autobio only identified as 'Louise' who herself would die shortly after Charles, Sr. did- with their orphaned son being sent to the very same workhouse as Charlie and Sydney had been after Hannah's first breakdown but whose fate thereafter remains a mystery (in part due to Charlie mentioning that he was registered under Louise's surname but neglecting to mention what the surname was- or even the boy's  own given name).

[DrSpaceman]

Oona Chaplin, best known as Talisa Stark, killed at the Red Wedding on Game of Thrones, is also related to Charlie Chaplin,  She is his granddaughter.  And the great granddaughter of playwright Eugene Oneill.  Charlie Chaplin's last and 4th marriage was to Eugene Oneill's daughter. 

Peyton Manning and Reese Witherspoon were born two days apart in the same hospital in New Orleans. 

Edited August 25, 2018 by DrSpaceman

[DeLurker]

Bob Keeshan, of Captain Kangaroo fame, was the original Clarabell the Clown on the Howdy Doody Show.

Which I learned by listening to a John Waters interview on NPR today who had been taken to one of the HD Shows by his parents and described Clarabell the Clown  #1 as psychotic looking.

[Blergh]

On 10/12/2018 at 11:58 AM, DeLurker said:

Bob Keeshan, of Captain Kangaroo fame, was the original Clarabell the Clown on the Howdy Doody Show.

Which I learned by listening to a John Waters interview on NPR today who had been taken to one of the HD Shows by his parents and described Clarabell the Clown  #1 as psychotic looking.

    

      Speaking of clowns, guess who was the first Ronald McDonald? Willard Scott the future NBC weatherman! Psychotic  is one apt word to describe his demeanor, etc.!

[Silver Raven]

I just found out that little Joey Mazzello from the original Jurassic Park is one of the members of Queen in Bohemian Rhapsody.  Aw, he's all grown up.  :)

[Blergh]

OK, because Miss Callas was never a movie star (and this wasn't an onset clash of ego), I guess I'll have to put this story here. It seems in the late 1950's or in the 1960's, the legendary performer Marlene Dietrich became enthralled with Maria Callas. One of Miss Dietrich's most notable talents was that she was an excellent cook and would make sumptuous dishes for her family, friends and new flames to rave about. To this end, she made a very special beef bouillon by taking eight pounds of Grade A beef then boiling and straining said beef for many times for quite a few hours until all that was left was eight OUNCES of the bouillon which she eagerly presented to Miss Callas. Alas, Miss Callas replied 'Very good! What brand CUBES did you use?'- and that was the virtual end of Miss Dietrich's liking for Miss Callas. 

[Mindthinkr]

56 minutes ago, Blergh said:

OK, because Miss Callas was never a movie star (and this wasn't an onset clash of ego), I guess I'll have to put this story here. It seems in the late 1950's or in the 1960's, the legendary performer Marlene Dietrich became enthralled with Maria Callas. One of Miss Dietrich's most notable talents was that she was an excellent cook and would make sumptuous dishes for her family, friends and new flames to rave about. To this end, she made a very special beef bouillon by taking eight pounds of Grade A beef then boiling and straining said beef for many times for quite a few hours until all that was left was eight OUNCES of the bouillon which she eagerly presented to Miss Callas. Alas, Miss Callas replied 'Very good! What brand CUBES did you use?'- and that was the virtual end of Miss Dietrich's liking for Miss Callas. 

Funny. I went to the Opera yesterday and Miss Callas was a subject of discussion. Thank you for this story. I’m going to retell it to my opera going partner. 

[Blergh]

Since it's getting close to Christmas, here's something for Grinch lovers! Boris Karloff (the original cartoon's voice) was born William Henry Pratt in Surrey, England and the great-nephew of Anna Leonowens (whose  own fictionalized account of her experiences as a tutor to King Mongkut of Siam's children would eventually become the basis of The King and I ) but the latter had long since cut ties with her original  blood family including her sister (his grandmother) so they'd never meet despite Mrs. Leonowens living to 1915 when he was 27. One probable reason for Mrs. Leonowens having severed ties was that she didn't want to chance it being known that her maternal grandmother (whose name has been lost to history) was East Indian.  Mrs. Leonowens even went so far as to pretend to have been born in Wales instead of India ( something her claimed Welsh 'birthplace' was rather shocked to find out was NOT the case decades after her death).

[Blergh]

With the release of the newest movie  Mary, Queen of Scots , it's quite ironic to think that ,in spite of all the bad blood between herself and Queen Elizabeth I of England (which wound up with the Queen of Scots being executed for plotting against her first cousin once-removed)  , her son James VI of Scotland was chosen to succeed the latter (and every single English monarch since has been a direct descendant of these Scottish monarchs ever since) but what's even more astonishing is how it came to be.  Queen Elizabeth I was very aware of being the last of the Tudor dynasty and having no children to leave the throne to but from the time she succeeded at age 25 to being on her literal deathbed at age 69, she refused to name a successor. Yes, she had some even more distant relatives ( Lady Jane Grey's younger sisters, etc.) but neither she nor her government were keen on having them propped up.  Anyway, without further ado, here's how it happened with James VI (though some historians  have speculated they made a secret deal right before his mother was executed but there's no documentation of this). When Elizabeth I was on her deathbed and too weak to even speak, her ministers asked for the zillionth time who was going to be the next monarch and someone piped up if it would be her nearest blood relative (and great-great-grandson of E's paternal grandfather Henry VII)  James which prompted Elizabeth to somehow hold her hands over her head in the shape of a crown then nod. Then as soon as she breathed her last, someone took off her signet ring from her finger then horsemen raced said ring to Edinburgh, Scotland to James who was then told the news and James wasted no time racing TO London to be proclaimed the King of England.  Let's keep in mind that England and Scotland had been at war with only a few grudging truces here and there for centuries with England openly trying to conquer and wipe out Scottish independence -yet somehow the king of this nation got accepted by the English government and tolerated by the English people with virtually no resistance or any real rival claimants propped up. Not to say Elizabeth wasn't a tough act to follow AND that there wouldn't be problems  in the future with James reigning over two nations which even during his reign went to war with each other, but this IS how he became king of England. 

Edited December 9, 2018 by Blergh
plurality

[Sandman87]

You know how various rulers and nobles throughout history ended up with popular nicknames? Alexander The Great, Richard The Lion-Hearted, and so on? Well some ended up with less grandiose nicknames:

• The man who became king of Poland in 1320 was known as Wladyslaw the Elbow-High. He was rather short.
• Louis V of France was referred to after his death as Louis the Good-for-Nothing or Louis the Do-Nothing.
• A Bulgarian farmer who led a revolt and ruled the country for a year was known as Ivaylo the Cabbage.
• One of Norway's Kings was known as Eyestein the Fart. By comparison, his son Halfdan the Bad Entertainer (aka Halfdan the Mild) got off easy.
• The King of Galicia from 1188 to 1230 was noted for foaming at the mouth when enraged, earning him the name Alfonso the Slobberer.

[Blergh]

Meet the Press premiered  on the NBC television network in 1947 which makes it the longest running regularly scheduled network program but  what's less known that it was the creation of Martha Rountree and Lawrence Spivak- who would each host the show. Miss Rountree was the original moderator from its debut to 1953- to date the ONLY woman moderator in the show's history.   

[Blergh]

Before anyone derides the term, I  think it only fair that folks understand the original meaning of the word 'lady'. Back in the early Dark Ages ( the first few centuries after the last Roman soldiers left Britain), things were quite chaotic with wars, anarchy and famine dominating life for most Britons. Anyway, in the few households that were lucky to have a source of grain and a place to store it, the woman of the house was referred to as a 'hlaef dige' (" she who kneads the loaf")  while the man of the house was a 'hlaef org' ( "he who guards the loaf") - and, yes the latter term became lord. 
 

[Blergh]

Want to try staying in a traditional country inn? Nowhere better to do that in  Japan's  Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan Inn  near Mt. Fuji which has been tending to guests eager to partake in its natural hot springs since 705 A.D. ! No, I did NOT mean to type out 1705 or 1750 but this inn has been continuous business with 52 generations of the same family running it for over twelve centuries. Nowadays, it has electric lights and indoor plumbing but otherwise it's somewhat unchanged from its inception.

[Sandman87]

On 2/12/2019 at 8:20 AM, Blergh said:

Want to try staying in a traditional country inn? Nowhere better to do that in  Japan's  Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan Inn  near Mt. Fuji which has been tending to guests eager to partake in its natural hot springs since 705 A.D. !

Up until recently an even older operating business was also in Japan; the Kongo Gumi construction company, which began operations in 578 A.D, and was involved in projects like building castles and temples. It was absorbed by another company in 2006.

The oldest that Europe can manage is the Stiftskeller St. Peter, a restaurant inside St Peter's Abbey in Salzburg. It has only been (verifiably) in business since 803 A.D.

[emma675]

According to my Snapple cap today,  in a room of 23 people, there is a 50% chance that two people have the same birthday. 

[Blergh]

In San Francisco, there's an ornate fountain at the corner of Market and Geary/Kearney Streets called Lotta's Fountain. Lotta Crabtree was the daughter of a would-be prospector and a shrewder mother who turned Miss Crabtree's voice into a goldmine by having her perform from the age of six!  Thankfully, Miss Crabtree herself liked performing a great deal and also learned very well from her mother how to keep her earnings. So, at the age of 38 in 1875 she donated this fountain to the city where she first had gained fame and while it was pleasant curio in the beginning, it soon became a vital part of the city.

      In 1906, the Big One struck Frisco and with all the tremor, aftershocks and fires, virtually ALL the city's water supply was compromised but one of the rare exceptions was. .. Lotta's Fountain which kept playing throughout the  entire ordeal. In addition to slacking the survivors' desperate thirst, it also become a meeting ground for folks to trade news and get information about loved ones as the telephone and telegraph lines were also out! Anyway, Miss Crabtee had long since been retired in Boston having invested her earnings well (and never marrying) but did live to see her fountain help sustain the city she'd loved!

[Blergh]

Sometime in the 1950's to 1960's, Cary Grant was ready to have breakfast in bed at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in NYC when he made an upsetting discovery- there were only three halves of English muffins on his plate as opposed to at least being four halves. Mr. Grant reasoned that since the in-house menu said that the item was 'English muffins', there needed to be at least four halves of the item! Anyway, he immediately called room service demanding an explanation but they had no idea why this was so, so he kept calling higher and higher up the food chain until he finally got ahold of the hotel owner Conrad Hilton ( Paris's great-grandfather and an ex of Zsa Zsa Gabor) who was vacationing in (of all places) Istanbul, Turkey. Mr. Hilton explained to Mr. Grant that an efficiency expert had discovered that, on average, the hotel guests had only consumed three halves of the original two muffins while wasting the fourth half so to save on waste and monies, the expert recommended that, from that point on, the kitchens should serve only three halves. Mr. Grant countered that the listing of the item as muffins was misleading so, in the interest of clarity, the menus should henceforth spell out 'One Muffin and a Half'. Believe it or not, Mr. Hilton agreed and the menus' were re-issued with that correction! Let's keep in mind that back at that time, overseas calls were very expensive- especially from hotels so it's likely Mr. Grant wound up having been very Pound foolish to try to save pennies! 

[27bored]

Outer space is actually round.

[Blergh]

13 hours ago, 27bored said:

Outer space is actually round.

How can you TELL?! I mean it has no end! 

[Brookside]

Those of you who like animal/mammal/insect trivia should check out Ze Frank's True Facts videos - he's hilarious.

Here's a link to one about the star-nosed mole - www.youtube.com/watch?v=fio1NUxszhY

If the link doesn't work just Google Ze Frank True Facts star nosed mole'

(Just be aware that if you like his style and the weird things you learn, you will be sucked into a wormhole!)

[Blergh]

18 minutes ago, Brookside said:

Those of you who like animal/mammal/insect trivia should check out Ze Frank's True Facts videos - he's hilarious.

Here's a link to one about the star-nosed mole - www.youtube.com/watch?v=fio1NUxszhY

If the link doesn't work just Google Ze Frank True Facts star nosed mole'

(Just be aware that if you like his style and the weird things you learn, you will be sucked into a wormhole!)

Not bad but how about sharing with us at least one bit of  animal trivia you've learned?

 Here's one I  learned: it takes eight generations of monarch butterflies to fly from Canada to their fave forest in Mexico!

[Brookside]

1 minute ago, Blergh said:

Not bad but how about sharing with us at least one bit of  animal trivia you've learned?

 Here's one I  learned: it takes eight generations of monarch butterflies to fly from Canada to their fave forest in Mexico!

I would have but I forget them as soon as the video is over!

Here's one - marsupials don't produce placentas.

And another (with apologies to any male readers) - the star-nosed mole's testicles swell up to 9% of its body mass during the mating season.  The equivalent of a bowling ball in a human.

[Blergh]

1 minute ago, Brookside said:

I would have but I forget them as soon as the video is over!

Here's one - marsupials don't produce placentas.

And another (with apologies to any male readers) - the star-nosed mole's testicles swell up to 9% of its body mass during the mating season.  The equivalent of a bowling ball in a human.

 Something to consider re mole mating: moles spend virtually their entire lives underground so that means that they almost certainly never SEE the objects of their lust but find them and mate with them entirely via smell and feel! 

[ratgirlagogo]

14 hours ago, Blergh said:

find them and mate with them entirely via smell and feel! 

This seems very sane to me.  Human dating in the internet age has become far too visual.  Viva moles!

[Blergh]

11 hours ago, ratgirlagogo said:

This seems very sane to me.  Human dating in the internet age has become far too visual.  Viva moles!

To each one's own. However; it seems folks 'Net dating often see (and hear) what they WANT to see re those they'd never previously crossed paths with -and  have about as much of a 'courtship' as the moles themselves prior to hooking up!  

[jenh526]

I got into a discussion with a coworker about ways to dry your hands in a restroom. I mentioned this contraption that isn’t seen much anymore, a continuous roll towel. We both agreed it was gross, wiping your hands where other people have wiped theirs. Then I went online and found a study someone had done that found that the continuous roll towel was actually the MOST hygienic method, certainly far more than a hot air blower.

[Blergh]

The striking brunette companion of Harry Longabaugh (AKA the Sundance Kid) known to historians as Etta Place who accompanied him and his cohort Butch Cassidy to South America where she obtained 2500 acres in her own right  and evidently participated in a bank robbery with the duo in Argentina and was a crack shot herself before permanently returning to the United States in 1905.

 However; that's virtually all that's known about about her. In the first place her given name was recorded by detectives as Ethel, Eva and Rita before they finally settled on Etta. It's possible that she may have started only calling herself Etta in South America due to it having been difficult for native Spanish speakers to pronounce  'Ethel'. Also, although Pinkerton Detectives discovered that she and Longabaugh briefly returned to the US to visit her family in 1904, they were unable to discover WHO her family was (and this has remained a mystery). The surname Place that was used was actually the original surname of Mr. Longabach's mother but her own actual original surname is unknown- as is the date and place of her birth.  Her life before she met Mr. Longabaugh is also the subject of endless speculation  ranging from her having been a schoolteacher, a prostitute, a married mother who left her family for him, etc. but none of those  scenarios have been confirmed though it's believed by her accent and polished manner that she'd originally been from somewhere near the East Coast of the US. Oh, and the last confirmed sighting of her was in San Francisco in 1907 (yes, it appears she lived through the Big One the year before unscathed) but afterwards, her fate is a complete mystery. 

Edited October 8, 2019 by Blergh
clarity

[Blergh]

On this date (December 8 th) in 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave the stirring speech to the Joint Houses of Congress about the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor the day before (December 7th) calling it a ' Day That Will Live in Infamy'- and as a result of the attack, the  US Senate and the US House of Representatives would officially declare War on the Empire of Japan.

What's less known is that it passed with a total of 470 votes for  War to  ... .1 against it.

 The one vote against it was by the 61-year-old Montana Representative Jeannette Rankin a former teacher who believed that since she was a woman who could not go to war, she refused to send anyone else.  She had been urged  by her colleagues to at the very least abstain rather than vote against the measure but she refused to compromise on this even though she knew it would be a very unpopular stance even in her own state.  Her term was over  in 1942 and was never to be elected again .She also said that she wanted to stand by her country but she could not vote for war and 'you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake'! 

However; she was far from undaunted in her philosophy spending the rest of her life in activism and even led  roughly  5,000 women who formed  Jeannette Rankin Brigade in 1968  which marched against the Vietnam War  in Washington, D.C. when she was 87! She would live to  92  before her 1973 death and from 1985, there has been a statue of her representing Montana  in the US Capitol's Statuary Hall inscribed with her quote "I Cannot Vote For War" . Yet, she always said she was prouder that she had been the only woman to actually vote FOR  women's suffrage in 1917 during her earlier term in the Representatives. 

Edited December 9, 2019 by Blergh
correction

[Silver Raven]

Jeannette Rankin also voted against World War I.  After that vote, she ran for the Senate, but lost in the Republican primary.  She didn't serve again until 1940, just in time to vote against World War II, She didn't run for re-election.

[Blergh]

8 minutes ago, Silver Raven said:

Jeannette Rankin also voted against World War I.  After that vote, she ran for the Senate, but lost in the Republican primary.  She didn't serve again until 1940, just in time to vote against World War II, She didn't run for re-election.

True but she  was one of 56 folks in the Houses of Congress to vote against the US entering what was then termed ' the Great War' back in 1917 but in 1941, she knew there'd be no other representatives joining her when she cast her vote which kept it from being a total rubberstamp deal. 

[Blergh]

OK, I guess the talk of Sharon Osbourne's rather appalling treatment of one of her family's employees  during and after a fire got me to thinking of this one (and since neither of them were ever television or movie performers, this is as a good a place to tell the story):

 

 It seems in the early 1970's, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis had deposited her children for a family visit to the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port. Inasmuch as she wasn't particularly fond of her children's paternal relatives, she decided to cut her own visit short and saw a chauffeur parked on the street and demanded that he immediately take her to the dock where the Onassis yacht was anchored.

 "I'm sorry, Mrs. Onassis, but Mrs. Kennedy has told me I am to wait here until she is ready to do her shopping in 45 minutes," the chauffeur protested.

"But it will only take 15 minutes to go to and from here to the yacht!" Mrs. Onassis countered.

"I can't take you there because Mrs. Kennedy needs me to wait here!" the chauffeur replied.

"Well, if you can't take me there right now, then YOU'RE FIRED!" Mrs. Onassis fumed.

At which point Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy came upon the scene.

"He's right! I told him to wait here to take me shopping. And you can't fire  him, he's MY employee!" Mrs. Kennedy corrected.

 

Yes, I know that Mrs. Kennedy had quite a few problems & faults and usually Mrs. Onassis seemed a more sympathetic & likable person but I'm glad Mrs. Kennedy won THAT one! 

[JTMacc99]

According to my calendar, the Romans named January for the goddess Janus, the pagan god of gates, doors, and beginnings.

[Blergh]

I heard this story from my late father but have been able to find no online confirmation so let's just call this a legend possibly based on reality:

 

 Sometime around the mid 20th century, US American tourists in a city in Mexico became very frustrated with the numbers of scorpions found in shoes, bedding,etc. and ,as a result the local government decided to curb that problem by enacting a 'Scorpion Bounty'. This meant that for every X number of scorpions captured, the city would pay so many pesos. At first, the city saw a brisk number of folks bringing in the captured critters and thought they were on their way to rid the locale of that problem. Before too long, though, they noticed larger and larger numbers of citizens bringing in enormous numbers of scorpions and they were puzzled because the numbers seemed out of reasonable proportion compared with  how many scorpions that were  naturally roaming  the city's environs. Then they went to the citizens' homes and discovered that a significant number of them had turned their porches, spare bedrooms, garages, bathrooms, outhouses,etc. into. ... SCORPION RANCHES!  Yes, the folks had realized there was money to be had from scorpions and they were eager to maximize their earning potential by doing this. It wasn't too long before  that was the end of the Scorpion Bounty. 

[Blergh]

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic was first detected in Leavenworth, Kansas and soon was spread to Europe via departing US troops bound to fight the Great War and it would eventually spread to all corners of the world. After  some French travelers, refugees, etc. spread it to the neutral kingdom of Spain, it got tagged 'The Spanish Influenza' for quite a few decades thereafter long after it had burned itself out. 

[Blergh]

'Typhoid' Mary Mallon was a cook who appeared healthy but spread her disease to unsuspecting employers, their families and houseguests  in the Greater New York City area from as early as 1906 until she was finally permanently detained in 1915 and sent to the hospital complex on North Brother Island until her death in 1938 at age 69.  She adamantly refused to consider any kind of her treatment for the disease inamuch as she appeared healthy and broke frequent promises to consider other lines of work besides food preparation. Lastly,   despite urgent pleas, it appears that she never, EVER washed her hands after using the bathroom and this was how the disease got spread. 

IMO,  even had she been as healthy as she claimed, it's utterly disgusting to think of people having eaten food prepared by someone who couldn't bother to take a few seconds with soap and water after they'd answered nature's call. 

[MargeGunderson]

Horses can’t vomit. I only learned this last Friday, from my vet. (Alas, cats can. I have copious evidence).

[ratgirlagogo]

Since there has been some discussion of the idea of medical triage on A Certain Thread, here's some info that some of you know very well and some of you may not.

When the Nazis carried out their euthanasia (of people deemed mentally or physically unfit) and genocide (of the racially unfit, i.e. Jews, Gypsies; as well as socially unfit, i.e. homosexuals, sex workers, communists, anarchists) programs, the live or die decisions were in every case made by medical doctors based on the concept of TRIAGE.  This is a great book on this very disturbing subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Doctors-Medical-Psychology-Genocide/dp/0465049052

You may wonder why doctors, who have all sworn an oath to do no harm, could come to the point of standing in the death camps and doing the selections of those who would die (very young and very old people, physically unfit of middle age) and those who would live (old enough and strong enough to work) and the answer is obviously complicated - but very simple in another way.  The murder was always carried out in a relatively clean, bloodless, "medical" way.  The mentally and physically disabled were killed via injections, rather than, say, being shot in the head.  The camp inmates were sent into gas chambers to be mass euthanized like puppies and kittens, as opposed again to being shot or something.  In every case the idea of triage was used to justify murder since there was, of course, a war on, and Professional Experts needed to make decisions about whose lives were worth spending scarce resources on preserving.

This is one of the most disturbing but crucial books I've ever read in my life.  You ought to be able to get it from your library system, probably in e-book form as far as that goes.  If not it's available on archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/nazidoctorsmedic0000lift/page/n5

 

 

[Blergh]

Performers Glenn Close and Josh Holloway (of Lost) each had something significant happen on July 20,1969. Miss Close married her first husband, a songwriter named Cabot Wade (whom she divorced in 1971) while Mr. Holloway had the far more significant event of being born happen. However, both these events were somewhat unknown outside their immediate circles of loved ones due to the world's attention being distracted by the Apollo 11 Moon Landing having the first humans from Earth walk on the moon on that date! 

[Calvada]

On 10/14/2020 at 8:16 AM, Blergh said:

Performers Glenn Close and Josh Holloway (of Lost) each had something significant happen on July 20,1969. Miss Close married her first husband, a songwriter named Cabot Wade (whom she divorced in 1971) while Mr. Holloway had the far more significant event of being born happen. However, both these events were somewhat unknown outside their immediate circles of loved ones due to the world's attention being distracted by the Apollo 11 Moon Landing having the first humans from Earth walk on the moon on that date! 

The actress Marilu Henner has total recall memory, supposedly can recall each day of her life in detail.  You can give her a date, she'll tell you what day of the week it was, where she was, what she did, what she had for dinner, etc.  She was being interviewed by someone - Bob Costas, I think -  and he tested her by asking her where she was and what she did on July 20, 1969.  She asked why that day, wondering who told him to ask her that. He said he thought of that day because of the moon landing.  It turns out that was the day she lost her virginity.  

[Moose135]

11 hours ago, Calvada said:

You can give her a date, she'll tell you what day of the week it was, where she was, what she did, what she had for dinner, etc.

I can do that too. Of course, you won't know if I really have total recall memory and I'm telling you the truth, or if I'm just making something up... 😉

[Calvada]

10 hours ago, Moose135 said:

I can do that too. Of course, you won't know if I really have total recall memory and I'm telling you the truth, or if I'm just making something up... 😉

You would have a one in seven chance of getting the day of the week correctly 🙂

I can't remember what I ate for dinner yesterday!  

[Blergh]

I was unable to find a source that proved my earlier contention that Glenn Close got married on July 20,1969 so I withdraw that one (and apologize for posting that part) but at least Josh Hollaway WAS born on the very same day as the Apollo 11 Moon Walk. 

 

OK, here's another trivial point. The Islamic faith has as part of its tenets the requirement that all adult Muslims (if at all possible) make a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca and walk around the Kaaba building itself  inside Islam's most important mosque seven times. It should also be noted that this is the one time in adult Muslim women's lives that they are to have their faces uncovered as 'the veil should be men's eyes' due to all pilgrims being required to remain chaste and having no impure thoughts   or actions during the hajj.  After the pilgrims complete this, they may opt to add the extra name of 'Hajji' to their surnames to denote to others that they have completed this tenet.

While Mohammed himself evidently emptied the onetime pre-Islamic temple of its pagan objects, in one corner of the building there has remained a mysterious rock (or collection of rocks) called'The Black Stone'  still venerated which may be of volcanic or a meteoric origin but scientists have been unable to analyze it to confirm the exact origin. 

[SoMuchTV]

Current/former presidents Trump, G W Bush, and Clinton are all the same age (born in 1946). How did I not know that?

[Gramto6]

Trivia I suppose...

[Blergh]

Zebras stripe patterns are so individualistic that they're essentially the equivalent of finger prints re identification!  I wonder if this could have happened so each zebra could tell exactly who was who and who belonged to which family and which herd, etc. 

[Blergh]

Aluminum is the only metal used on a large scale that one cannot find in metallic form in nature. To obtain it, one must smelt bauxite rocks to extract it then all the bits get melted to merge them into sheets,etc.  All this should be considered when one gets tempted to think  of aluminum of being 'environmentally friendly' solely due  it being able  to be cleaned then reused for X number of future uses. 

 

 

[isalicat]

3 hours ago, Blergh said:

Aluminum is the only metal used on a large scale that one cannot find in metallic form in nature. To obtain it, one must smelt bauxite rocks to extract it then all the bits get melted to merge them into sheets,etc.  All this should be considered when one gets tempted to think  of aluminum of being 'environmentally friendly' solely due  it being able  to be cleaned then reused for X number of future uses. 

and if you have ever seen a bauxite mine (I have - in Jamaica, and it is no exaggeration to call it a monstrous rape of the land) you might never want to use aluminum again. Unfortunately sometimes it is the best stuff available, but I make mine last as long as possible with multiple cleanings.

[Blergh]

19 hours ago, isalicat said:

and if you have ever seen a bauxite mine (I have - in Jamaica, and it is no exaggeration to call it a monstrous rape of the land) you might never want to use aluminum again. Unfortunately sometimes it is the best stuff available, but I make mine last as long as possible with multiple cleanings.

And that's NOT counting how toxic the tailings  are and, in particular, the waste product called 'red mud' (of which roughly two tons get produced for every ton of aluminum). 

[GaT]

I just found this out, it's illegal to have a garden in New Zealand. You can't even grow a lawn.

Quote

It’s illegal to plant anything on your personal property unless you are a licensed commercial producer. Gardens are banned to ensure the economic stability of the agricultural sector.