Life is mostly about the pursuit of knowledge and, therefore, the collection of fun facts. All my fun facts were harvested personally … They started as a physical book purchase from Amazon, then moved to a Kindle download where I bookmarked them by hand; at the conclusion of a book they were transcribed into a Snoopy Moleskine, and finally, they appear here for your personal wonderment.
In February of 1914 the Pierstorffs of Grangeville, Idaho sent their five-year-old daughter to visit her grandmother seventy-five miles away in Lewiston via parcel post because it was cheaper than a train ticket. Little Mary Pierstorffs weighed forty-eight pounds, just under the fifty-pound limit. The charge was fifty-three cents and it was attached to the front of her coat.
The roots of what we recognize today as heavy metal can be traced back to Eric Clapton and Cream. Cream played 275 five live dates and spent fifty days in the studio in a career that only lasted twenty-eight months.
“Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway,” John Wayne.
Over fifteen percent of Poland’s population died during World War II and over eighty percent of their horses were lost.
The largest of the old-growth forest trees in Washington state would provide enough wood to build an entire neighborhood with just one tree.
National Handwriting Day is January 23rd, John Hancock’s birthday.
Before Mike Bloomfield, there were lead guitar players in bands, but no one ever talked about their solos. The band he played in, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band gave rise to Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Miller, Canned Heat and other bands who wanted to go beyond the three-minute pop hit. Bloomfield started it all and was the first bonafide American guitar hero.
The US Mail was delivered twice a day until 1950.
Today’s computer keyboards, the so-called QWERTY keyboard was invented by typewriter manufacturers to separate common letter pairs so that when they were typed sequentially, the keys wouldn’t stick.
On September 13, 1848, a man named Phineas Gage, a miner, was trying to blow up some rock with gunpowder. He had made a hole, filled it with gunpowder and was now tamping the powder into the hole using a six-foot, two-inch diameter iron rod. In this process, sawdust is typically mixed with the gunpowder to prevent an inadvertent explosion but Phineas did not use any this day. On about the fourth thrust of the iron bar it became a projectile entering Phineas’ face just below the left cheekbone and exiting through the right side of his skull. Phineas survived the rod-through-the-face, but people said he was always drunk and surly thereafter.
FDR had a custom-made railcar, the Ferdinand Magellan, that had armor plating, bullet-proof glass, a six-inch thick water-tight bulkhead and escape hatches in the roof so that the crippled president could be lifted out if attacked. At 285,000 pounds it was the heaviest thing to ever ride on US rails.
Commanche Chief Quanah Parker, “The white man goes into his church and talks about God; the Indian goes into his tepee and talks to God.”
In 1959 Dion was touring with Buddy Holly, et al. Dion felt guilty about how his parents were struggling financially, so he chose not to spend the $36 for a seat on that ill-fated plane that killed Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper.
“You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” is the most-played song in the history of radio (as of 2011), over fifteen million plays.
Churchill said that the only good thing to be said about waking early was, “You can get in an extra cigar.”
In 1873 a man was riding on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. The conductor asked him where he was headed, the man replied, “To hell probably,” to which the conductor responded, “That will be two dollars and get off at Dodge City.”
Bugs Bunny was the first cartoon stamp, a thirty-two cent stamp that sold 365 million.
Left O’Doul had career major league batting average of .349, the fourth best all-time for lefthanded hitters. In four consecutive season he batted .398, .383, .368 and .336. He said, “When I was playing ball in the big leagues my bats would be jumping up and down in the trunk.”