Welcome to ToTG!



Showing posts with label trivia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trivia. Show all posts

September 2, 2016

New Moon

New Moon - the phase of the moon when it is in conjunction with the sun and invisible from earth, or shortly thereafter when it appears as a slender crescent.

There was a new moon last night (Sept 1) and  there will be another on Sept 30.

According to superstition, two new moons occurring in one month foretells bad weather.


August 17, 2016

Be Careful What You Wish For

Louisa May Alcott was with her dying father in 1888 when he said "I am going up, come with me."  Alcott replied "Oh, I wish I could." and died two days after him.

August 16, 2016

Pay Day

In 1940, Vermont resident Ida May Fuller became the first beneficiary of Social Security payments.  Her first check, number 00-000-001, was for $22.54.

June 5, 2016

The McFarthest Spot


What's so special about this place in S. Dakota?

According to Atlas Obscura, it is the McFarthest Spot -the farthest you can be in the continental US from a McDonald's location.

From the website:

Geographically speaking, in the lower 48 United States it is impossible to get farther away from a McDonald's restaurant than this location in South Dakota. From the McFarthest Spot it would take 145 miles driving (only 120 miles as the crow flies) before a visitor could devour their next two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.

May 5, 2016

Can You Name the Movie?

Using only a one-word clue?

I took the quiz and didn't do all that well, surprising me because I consider myself pretty good at movie trivia.  I think my biggest problem was being aware of the ticking clock and thinking that the more time I took, the worse my score.  That's not the case, so take all the time you need.


That said, there was no way I was going to get them all correct, but there were a few movies I couldn't remember that I should have.  Also, I misspelled a couple and it won't accept the answer.


April 2, 2016

Polly Want Some Cracker Trivia?





A Ritz cracker has seven holes, while a regular saltine has thirteen.

March 20, 2016

Spring Has Sprung!

Happy Vernal Equinox!


Summer, fall, winter, spring

The seasons rotate as each brings

Its special beauty to this Earth of ours.

Winter's snow and summer's flowers;

Frozen winters will flow come spring.

There is a renewal of everything.

- Edna Frohock
American poet (1906-97)

 photo spring_md_wht.gif

Everything you need to know: Vernal equinox 2016

March 14, 2016

Hamlet vs PayPal



PayPal's Terms and Conditions (including their privacy policy, acceptable use policy, eBay shipping services policy and billing agreement terms) has a longer word count at 36,275 than does Shakespeare's Hamlet, which has 31,950 words in total.

March 13, 2016

Not-So-Famous Last Words

Your Last Words Would Be Philosophical

"What we know is not much. What we don't know is enormous."


I think this one is probably pretty correct, although mine would probably be more along the lines of:

"Did you know Ben Franklin's last words were 'A dying man can do nothing easy.' ?"

March 12, 2016

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.

January 26, 2016

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.

January 20, 2016

Last Call for Alcohol

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

He was refused by his nurse.


January 19, 2016

Brain Freeze

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

January 10, 2016

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

January 6, 2016

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,


January 5, 2016

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.

December 30, 2015

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

December 29, 2015

No "J"

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


December 28, 2015

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.



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).