Tuesday (just barely) Trivia

OK, here is today's trivia. Do you know any of these?


First, some things about words and other parts of our language:

The word 'sabotage' is derived from a French word for shoe. In France, a sabot is a kind of heavy boot or shoe worn by workmen. During the Industrial Revolution, when machine- driven mills were first introduced in France, workers displaced from their jobs by these automata would throw their shoes into the gear mechanisms, wrecking the engines and thus sabotaging the business.
Beats putting it in your mouth, I suppose!

Punctuation did not come into use until the advent of printing in the fifteenth century. Before that, words written by scribes were runtogetherlikethis.
I think like that!!

The word 'fiasco,' meaning a failure, is derived from the ancient Italian art of glass blowing. If a Venetian glass blower made a mistake while creating a fine, delicate bottle, the ruined vessel was turned into an ordinary drinking flask, which is known in Italian as a fiasco.
I've had a few fiascoes recently ... some actually included glass!!

The "y" in signs reading "ye olde.." is properly pronounced with a "th" sound, not "y". The "th" sound does not exist in Latin, so ancient Roman occupied (present day) England used the rune "thorn" to represent "th" sounds. With the advent of the printing press the character from the Roman alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case "y".
Well ...... Latin, huh? Figures!

The last thing to happen is the ultimate. The next-to-last is the penultimate, and the second-to-last is the antepenultimate.
It occurs to me as I enter the anetpenultimate that I will soon encounter the penultimate, and I always home to make it to the ultimate. How 'bout you?


Now for some miscellaneous, general trivia:

The Brownie box camera, introduced by Eastman Kodak, sold for $1.00 in 1900. The camera's 6-exposure film sold for 15 cents.
The Brownie camera I used in junior high school was not quite that old, but it was antique by today's standards!

The Prudential Life Insurance Company in USA stopped using their slogan "Own A Piece Of The Rock" after Rock Hudson died of AIDS and many jokes where made about him and the slogan.
Now this one is just a shame. But it was a different time and a different standard. Still sad.

When Scott Paper Co. first started manufacturing toilet paper they did not put their name on the product because of embarrassment.
OK, now this is just plain ol' funny!!!

The title role of Dirty Harry, 1971, was originally intended for Frank Sinatra. After he refused, it was offered to John Wayne, and then Paul Newman, finally being accepted by Clint Eastwood.
Talk about hand-me-downs!

One of the great but little-known treasures of New York City is a forty-acre hemlock forest, undisturbed, as far as is known, since the time of the Indians. The grove stands on the banks of the Bronx River in the New York Botanical Garden.
How cool!

In 'Gulliver's Travels' Jonathan Swift described a factual, natural occurrence which would not be discovered until more than a hundred years after the book's publication.
Awesome!

In his book Jonathan Swift described Phobos and Deimos, giving their exact size and speeds of rotation. 'Gulliver's Travels' was published in 1726 but Phobos and Deimos weren't discovered until 1877 by American astronomer Asaph Hall.
Don't you wonder where he got his information? (eerie music - doo, doo, doo, doo.)



Finally, this tidbit is for Bradley, who just "visited" the St. Louis Arch (if you call snapping a picture as he passed the arch in his car at 70 MPH a "visit"!!! Lol!!):


The official name of the St. Louis Gateway Arch is "The Jefferson National Expansion Monument." The Gateway Arch looks taller than it is wider, but it is exactly 630 feet by 630 feet.


Have a Wonderful Wednesday!!