Posted on by Patrick

Uncovering Facts, Handing Them Out Free To A Thankful World

On average, humans have superior smelling capabilities with their left nostril.

What a great fact. It means that I can basically walk around with a finger up my right nostril and really not lose much smelling power. Beyond that, it’s simple, pretty damn gee-whiz-able and just beautifully digestible. It’s the kind of knowledge nugget that a guy like me can find, place in my little basket of enlightenment and be quickly on my way.

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Posted on by Patrick

May Fun Facts Fill Your New Year

Fun Facts: Freeform Edition

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.
  • Once found in every habitat between the Arctic Circle and present-day Mexico City, gray wolves were all but eliminated in the Lower Forty-Eight states by the 1920s.
  • John Adams, our second president defended the British in the trial that followed the Boston Massacre … He was victorious as to this day no one knows who instigated the bloodshed.
  • Adolph Coors III was killed in a botched kidnapping attempt in 1960; he was allergic to beer.
  • Chester Arthur went to Yellowstone National Park during his time as president and along with a friend from the Senate caught 105 pounds of fish in a single day.
  • Allen Collins the lead guitarist for Lynyrd Skynyrd was arrested eighteen times between 1974 and 1985, most of the time for driving while intoxicated.
  • Black is not a color, rather it is the absence of color.
  • At the very first United States Congress in 1789 there were only eleven states represented as North Carolina and Rhode Island had yet to ratify the Constitution.
  • Once at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field, Dodgers public address announcer Tex Richards got irritated with the fans who had hung their coats on the field railing and announced, “Will the fans sitting down the foul line please remove their clothes!”
  • The Grateful Dead had only one cardinal rule, “Don’t impose your trip on anyone else.”
  • Solitaire was originated in Germany and was known as “Patience.”
  • There’s a spruce tree in Dalarna, Sweden that is about 9,500 years old.
  • The Tampa NFL team is called the Buccaneers, but there were other good options including The Godfathers, the Aquanuts, Florida Fruits and Tampa Suns of Beaches.
  • “Courage is being scared to death … and saddling up anyway,” John Wayne.

 

 

Posted on by Patrick

Fun With U.S. Presidents*

Beginning with Abe Lincoln in 1860 and continuing through the late 1890s all U.S. presidents had facial hair, but since William Howard Taft in 1913, no president has had whiskers.

That’s gotta piss the hipsters off. Over 100 years and nary a soul patch. Not a handlebar, a Fu Manchu, a gnarly sideburn, not even a Van Dyke (a Van Dyke is any form of both a goatee and a mustache with the cheeks bare). That’s because a president can’t just roll out of bed and look the way he wants. He has to be coiffed and get bossed around by handlers who are seemingly in possession of some poll that says the old gals in Oshkosh find a 72-hour growth unpresidential. Facial hair, probably not important. But presidents are – important and fascinating and odd and unlikely and flawed and funny. Presidents are a hot topic in my insignificant little life.

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