Trivia & Miscellaneous

[Daniel E.]

Cereal trivia from Wikipedia:

"Wheaties was created in 1922, as a result of an accidental spill of a wheat bran mixture onto a hot stove by a Minnesota clinician working for the Washburn Crosby Company (later General Mills)."

"Sales of Wheaties in the US has declined significantly. From 2005 to 2014 sales of Wheaties declined 78%."

 

[Daniel E.]

Seattle home prices third most expensive in nation | king5.com

In 2018, the average cost to buy a home in Seattle has risen to $753,600, beating out cities such as Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, Boston and San Diego.

San Francisco, which remains the most expensive city to own a home, had an average home price of $1,366,000.

 

[Daniel E.]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/201211/why-we-love-music-and-freud-despised-it

Fascinatingly, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in general, disliked most music with a passion. With the exception of certain bland operas, he had practically no appreciation of music as an art form. Indeed, he avoided almost all music like the plague. One might even speculate that Freud suffered from a significant fear of music, a "music phobia."

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Sigmund Freud was a fascinating but in many ways strange dude. The cocaine probably didn't help his neuroses and character flaws either.

 

[Daniel E.]

Speaking of strange, I was shocked when I read Schopenhauer's biography many years ago. I assumed philosophers were mostly passive, nice people. Not Schopenhauer! He seemed to never regret pushing his female neighbor down a flight of stairs.

Wisdom Lovers - Existential Comics

"[The philosopher] Schopenhauer once pushed a woman down a flight of stairs because she was too noisy. He went to court for this, and as punishment had to pay her for the rest of his life."

 

[Daniel E.]

Prehistoric Footprints Discovered By Grand Canyon Hikers | Arizona Science and Innovation Desk

"It looks like a reptile track. Amphibian tracks tend to have short stubby little toes like salamander toes for example or toad toes...These are long skinny toes that look much more reptilian."

 

[Daniel E.]

Humans Change the World | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program

About 74,000 years ago: Near-extinction! Modern humans almost become extinct; as a result of extreme climate changes, the population may have been reduced to about 10,000 adults of reproductive age.

 

[Daniel E.]

Everything You Ever Wondered About Mucus and Phlegm

Mucus is so important that your body makes about a quart of the stuff on a normal day.

 

[GaryQ]

Everything You Ever Wondered About Mucus and Phlegm

Mucus is so important that your body makes about a quart of the stuff on a normal day.

I wonder what the traffic hour "stopped at the red light" percentage of all that mucus can be visualized on public display in the form of nasal extraction
AKA: "digging for gold"

And don't try and tell me any of you have never been seen "digging for a nugget" while driving

 

[Daniel E.]

Trends in Agriculture -- North Dakota State University

For much of the world until the mid-1800s, most persons were involved in agriculture. For example in the United States, 90% of the population were farmers in 1790. Essentially, people produced the food they consumed...A century later (1890), farmers were 43% of the labor force. In another century (1990), farmers were 2.6% of the labor force.

 

[Daniel E.]

"A twenty-five-year-old is 133 percent more likely to pay an overdraft fee than a sixty-five-year-old, and nearly 11 percent of consumers between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five have more than ten overdrafts per year. No wonder millennials envision a future without banks."

-- The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives (2017)

 

[GaryQ]

And they actually think credit cards are real money like if it was part of their available assets :facepalm: But then again that's a fact that is probably as prevalent in all age groups up to and including 55+. I read somewhere that since they started those mortgage credit lines where every 1$ you pay down on your mortgage is added to your credit line accordingly, some people actually owe more on their home than they bought it for 10 and 20 years ago because the credit card debts etc gets added to the mortgage when renewed as property value keeps artificially inflating and so does the residual amount get tacked onto the credit line. Long gone are the days when a home was paid off in 20-25 years and was a big part of your retirement egg basket.

I actually don't feel bad when I read or hear about seniors having a rough time when they hit retirement because they can no longer afford to pay the mortgage. What were they thinking if they still have a mortgage at retirement? Sell the damn 6 bedroom, 4 bathroom house and downsize.

"The difference between Genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" ~ (Atrributed to Albert Einstein since about 1994 but a big debate about it being true reigns and definitely not the first documented reference to the correlation between the limits of genius and stupidity)

 

[Daniel E.]

"Orange roughy lives 100 years or more—so the fillet in your freezer might be from a fish older than your grandmother!"

-- Seafood Watch

 

[David Baxter PhD]

"Orange roughy lives 100 years or more—so the fillet in your freezer might be from a fish older than your grandmother!"

-- Seafood Watch

Or it might be from your grandmother.

Is “Orange Roughy” a new nickname for Trump the Dump?

 

[Daniel E.]

Another fun fact: Orange roughy belongs to the slimehead family (Trachichthyidae).

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I think I went to school with a guy named Slimehead... I could be wrong, though... it was a long time ago... in another place far far away...

 

[GaryQ]

School: we could make a weekend degree:

learn in on one weekend everything you’d actually remember 3 years after if you went to college

 

[Daniel E.]

"Under the rule of Aztec emperor Montezuma, the cocoa bean was used as currency."

"The average annual income in 1913 was $800."

"The most misused Social Security number of all time was 078-05-1120. In 1938, as part of a promotion to sell wallets through Woolworth and other department stores, wallet manufacturer E. H. Ferree Company wanted to demonstrate how a Social Security card would fit into its wallets. A sample card was placed inside each wallet and displayed the Social Security number of the company's secretary, Mrs. Hilda Schrader Whitcher. Even though the sample card was half of the size of an actual Social Security card, was written in red, and had Specimen written in bold, many people confusedly used this as their own Social Security number. In 1943, 5,755 people were using Hilda's number."

-- Internal Revenue Service: Tax Trivia

 

[GaryQ]

Continuing on the Tax time IRS theme (also applicable to Canada and probably most countries just not the same publication)

To this day, Publication 17 of the IRS notes that "ncome from illegal activities," including money received from dealing illegal drugs or bribes, must be included in the declaration of one's income.​

Al Capone is probably the most used reference for evading the law but not the Tax Man!

Liberty Tax Canada had fun on the subject and wrote a hilarious article: "TAX TIPS FOR CRIMINALS"

Here's the lnk

https://www.libertytaxcanada.ca/blog/tax-tips-for-criminals/
​

 

[Daniel E.]

Bee Hummingbirds: Interesting Facts about the Smallest Living Birds | Beauty of Birds

The Bee Hummingbird only measures about 2 inches or 5 cm in length and weighs between 0.06 - 0.07 oz (1.8 - 2 g) - which is less than the weight of a Canadian or US penny -- because of this it is often referred to as the "Penny Hummingbird." The Bee Hummingbird is, therefore, the smallest and lightest known living bird in the world.