All in a Day

Yep, it's that time of year again to start out the old mnemonic "Spring forward, Fall back".  I usually hear nothing but complaints about losing an hour of sleep, but good grief, it happens on a Saturday night and the next day is Sunday.  The only people who it seems like it would really inconvenience are the church goers...and I'd like to know what percentage of them sleep through church anyway.    I'd think people who worked the graveyard shift would be happy, having to work only 7 hours. 

When I worked on rigs, we usually got paid for the nine hours we were out there during this time change and generally when the fall change of advancing the clock ahead an hour, we got paid for eight, despite having only worked seven hours, but I did have a few companies who refused to do that, saying we got the extra hour in the spring, so it was only fair.  The trouble with that was I sometimes hadn't been working for the company then and when that was the case - when I had to be out there for nine hours and only got paid for eight - I'd make a point- if I could- to do absolutely nothing for an hour.  If I couldn't, then I'd do it some other night .  Don't get me wrong, I was a good hand and conscientious about my job, but it was the principal of the thing.

Enough about my roughnecking days (or nights), here's some day trivia:

The total time between sunrise and sunset is the "day length".  This can vary with latitude.

Day length at the equator is about 12 hours every day.

Day length at the poles ranges between 24 and 0 hours every six months.

Why aren’t there exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness on the spring and fall equinoxes?

On the equinoxes, the very center of the Sun sets just 12 hours after it rose. But the day begins when the upper edge of the Sun reaches the horizon (which happens a bit before the center rises), and it doesn’t end until the entire Sun has set. Not only that, but the Sun is actually visible when it is below the horizon, as Earth’s atmosphere refracts the Sun’s rays and bends them in an arc over the horizon.

Early Model Typewriters

Early model typewriters were often referred to as "Literary Pianos" because of a version designed by Christopher Sholes had just two rows of keys, the first row made of ebony, the second of ivory.

Last Call for Alcohol

Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, asked for whiskey just before his death.

He was refused by his nurse.

Brain Freeze

The scientific name for "brain freeze" or Ice cream headache caused by eating something cold is sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia

 
WorldArtsMe

colophon

A colophon is a publisher's emblem, containing information on a title page about the book's publication and production.

A colophon printed in 1471

Dickens' Pet Raven

Charles Dickens had a talking pet raven named Grip and Dickens was devastated when the bird died from eating a paint chip.  According to Dickens, the bird's last words were "Halloa, old girl!"

Dickens had his adored pet stuffed and it now resides in the Rare Books Dept. of the Free Library of Philadelphia,

Rent-A-Typewriter

Ray Bradbury wrote some of his famous novel Fahrenheit 451 on a rented typewriter in a basement typing room at UCLA.

The charge? Ten cents per thirty minutes of typing time.

Hello, Goodbye

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hello is an alteration of hallo, hollo, which came from Old High German "halâ, holâ, emphatic imperative of halôn, holôn to fetch, used especially in hailing a ferryman." It also connects the development of hello to the influence of an earlier form, holla, whose origin is in the French holà (roughly, 'whoa there!', from French là 'there'). As in addition to hello, halloo, hallo, hollo, hullo and (rarely) hillo also exist as variants or related words, the word can be spelt using any of all five vowels

"Goodbye" came from the Middle English "godbwdye", which is short for "God be with ye."

Hello, Goodbye - The Beatles

No "J"

J is the only letter that doesn't appear in the periodic table of elements.

Leading & Lesser Languages List

There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today. However, about 2,000 of those languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers.

The most popular language in the world is Mandarin Chinese, with over 1.2 billion people who speak that language.

In 2008, The International Civil Aviation Organisation decreed that all Air Traffic Controllers and Flight Crew Members engaged in or in contact with international flights must be proficient in the English language as a general spoken medium and not simply have a proficiency in standard ICAO Radio Telephony Phraseology.

Some languages are nearly extinct and are spoken by only a few older people.

Top 10 Rarest Languages Still Spoken in the World

The origins of many languages aren't clear to historians and researchers, but many people believe the Biblical tale of the Tower of Babel.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Tower of Babel (Vienna) 
Licensed under Public Domain via Commons

The Christmas Song - Alvin & The Chipmunks

Debuting on this date in 1958, this song aka The Chipmunk Song (Don't Be Late) it was the only song to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles Chart. The song was also a hit with the entertainment establishment, garnering three awards at the 1958 Grammys: Best Comedy Performance, Best Children’s Recording, and Best Engineered Record (non-classical).

World's Oldest Goldfish

A goldfish named Tish lived to be 43 years old, making it the oldest goldfish known.

Milky Way

If every star in the Milky Way was a grain of salt, they would fill an Olympic sized swimming pool.

(Click graphic for larger view - it's beautiful)

"Milky Way Arch" by Bruno Gilli/ESO
 http://www.eso.org/public/images/milkyway/
Licensed under CC BY 4.0 via Commons

The Ancient Spoon

Spoons were invented at least a thousand years before forks. It is thought the earliest ones were natural items, such as seashells or conveniently shaped stones.  Later versions were carved from wood, but the wealthy had ones made from bronze or silver.

That said, knives were the earliest utensil used for eating.

3 X Name

The scientific name of the Western lowland gorilla is gorilla gorilla gorilla.

Dock of the Bay - Otis Redding

On this day in history in 1967, Otis Redding and members of the Bar-Kays band died when their plane crashed into Lake Monona, just a few miles from the Madison, Wisconsin airport. Weather was thought to be a factor in the crash, but the exact cause was never determined.

Four months after his death at the age of twenty six, Redding's ("Sitting on the) Dock of the Bay", the last song he ever recorded, reached the top spot on the pop music charts. It was his first No. 1 hit as well as being the first posthumous single to top the charts in the U.S.

The Meat of the Matter

The average American eats about 200 sandwiches every day.

When I first saw that bit of trivia, I thought "That can't be right!  I'm an old bachelor and probably eat more sandwiches than the average person, but I don't eat THAT many!" Doing the math, I figured that each American consumes nearly four sandwiches per week.  That figure still seemed higher than the amount I eat a week, though.  

After doing a little research, I found out that 50 percent of America eats a sandwich daily. It made me think about my own sandwich consumption and considering that - probably every other day - I eat a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit for breakfast, that probably counts as a sandwich, too. In fact, I had one for breakfast earlier today and two small turkey sandwiches for supper.

Oh well, I guess I really am above the mean on sandwich consumption.

Diamonds Are Forever

And a lot of the time they last longer than the marriage.

The average size of an American diamond engagement ring is 0.8 carats.

This Diamond Ring - Gary Lewis & The Playboys

Thanksgiving Turkey Trivia

* It's unclear if the Pilgrims ate turkey at the first Thanksgiving. At the time, "turkey" meant any kind of fowl.
* Evidence indicates that turkeys have been around for more than 10 million years.
* Turkey eggs hatch in 28 days.
* A baby turkey is called a "poult."
* A mature turkey has about 3,500 feathers.
* More than 45 million turkeys are consumed during Thanksgiving.
* The average weight of a Thanksgiving turkey is 15 pounds.
* The typical 15-pound turkey is 70 percent white meat and 30 percent dark meat.
* A nest of turkey eggs is called a "clutch."
* The "caruncle" is the reddish, fleshy growth on the head and upper neck of a turkey. The red, fleshy growth from the base of a turkey's beak that hangs down over the neck is called the "snood."

giblets

giblets gib·lets [jib-lits] plural noun

the heart, liver, gizzard, and the like, of a fowl, often cooked separately.

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There IS one more definition, classified as slang, but I didn't see it at Dictionary.com.  It was a LONG time ago during a football practice and after a play, one of my teammates was still on the ground after the play was over.  The coach leaned over the prostrate boy asking him where it hurt.  I wasn't close enough to hear the muffled answer, but the coach got up with a smile on his face.

"He'll be all right." he informed the rest of us. "He just got hit in the giblets."

That was a scene that came to mind at every Thanksgiving dinner after that.

Since the Word of the Day was more-or-less related to Thanksgiving, I'll just combine two posts into one.  I was going to write one about how many calories were in the average Thanksgiving dinner: from 3-4,000 and the average American will consume more than 4,500 calories and 229 grams of fat on Thanksgiving Day alone, according to the Calorie Control Council. (there were other sources that cited different numbers, but I like the alliteration of that website's name) 

That would take a LOT of exercise to work off that many calories!  A nice brisk walk would be better than spending the day in a gym, so check out the Walking Calories Calculator to see how far/fast you need to walk to get rid of those excess calories, or you can use the Holiday Calorie Counter to figure both the calories in your holiday meal and the amount of exercise needed to work off the meal.

I have my Thanksgiving meal already prepared.

Pathetic, huh? One good thing is that it will be ready in a minute and a half after I pop it in the microwave; another good thing is that it's only 290 calories with 9 grams of fat. I'll work that off watching the football games on TV!