These are random musings of my life journey, the people, animals, places, and events which have woven, and continue to weave, a tapestry that is me. We all know there is no real destination, only the ongoing experiences which blend together, creating the trail. Each step gives a glimpse of what is to come, without allowing me to see the end result. It is exciting. I have a home base that is mine, that gives me a place to rest. This is it. This is where my heart is, no matter where I journey...................

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Tuesday Trivia

I'm late!! I'm late! I know. I forgot it last night, and then this morning, there was a power outage that effected most of the county, and just threw everything off!


UNUSUAL LAST WILLS
Magician Harry Houdini left the rabbits he pulled out of his hat to the children of friends. His wife was given a secret code - ten words randomly chosen that he would use to contact her from the afterlife. She held annual seances on Halloween for ten years after his death, but Houdini never appeared.

Animal lover Jonathan Jackson's will stipulated that his money be used for the creation of a cat house -- a place where cats could enjoy comforts such as bedrooms, a dining hall, an auditorium to listen to live accordion music, an exercise room, and a specially designed roof for climbing.

American hatmaker S. Sanborn left his body to science, bequeathing it to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., (then a professor of anatomy at Harvard Medical School) and one of Holmes's colleagues. The will stipulated that two drums were to be made out of Sanborn's skin and given to a friend on the condition that every June 17 at dawn he would pound out the tune "Yankee Doodle" at Bunker Hill to commemorate the anniversary of the famous Revolutionary War battle. (Eeewwwuuu!!)

Vermont tanner John Bowman believed that after his death, he, his dead wife, and two daughters would be reincarnated together. When he died in 1891, his will provided a $50,000 trust fund for the maintenance of his 21-room mansion and mausoleum, even requiring servants to serve dinner every night just in case the Bowmans were hungry when they returned from the dead.

Just two days before her death of an overdose in 1970, singer Janis Joplin changed her will to set aside $2,500 to pay for a posthumous all-night party for 200 guests at her favorite pub in San Anselmo, California, "so my friends can get blasted after I'm gone." The bulk of her estate reportedly went to her parents.

Eleanor E. Ritchey, heiress to the Quaker State Refining Corporation, passed on her $4.5 million fortune to her 150 dogs when she died in Florida in 1968. The will was contested, and by the time it was finally settled, only 73 of the dogs were still alive to recieve the established $14 million. When the last dog died in 1984, the remainder of the estate went to the Auburn University Research Foundation for research into animal diseases.



"I have enough money to last me the rest of my life,
unless I buy something."

~~Jackie Mason, (1936-), American stand-up comedian.
(Me, too!!)



DISASTERS, THE TITANIC
The Titanic was designed to hold 32 lifeboats, though only 20 were on board; White Star management was concerned that too many boats would sully the aesthetic beauty of the ship.

Survivors were rescued by the Carpathia, which was 58 miles southeast of the Titanic when it received the distress call.

The Titanic boasted electric elevators, a swimming pool, a squash court, a Turkish Bath, and a gymnasium with a mechanical horse and mechanical camel.

Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last American survivor of the Titanic tragedy, died in Massachusetts on May 6, 2006, at age 99. Her mother and a brother also survived, but her father and three other brothers perished.

Eleanor Shuman, who was the inspiration for Kate Winslet's Rose, died on March 7, 1998, at age 87.

The wreckage of the Titanic was located in 1985, 12,500 feet down, about 350 miles (531 km) southeast of Newfoundland, Canada.




BOOKS
Bet you didn't know these books were banned...

Where's Waldo? Series by Martin Hanford: Schools in Michigan and New York put a ban on Waldo books because "on some of the pages there are dirty things", including a topless lady on the beach.

The American Heritage Dictionary: The whole dictionary was banned by a school district in Anchorage, Alaska in 1981 because they didn't approve of the inclusion of certain slang usage for words like bed and knockers.

The Complete Fairy Tales of The Brothers Grimm by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: The fairy tales we were told as kids are actually watered down versions of the Grimm stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel. The original works featured a great amount of blood and not-so-happy endings.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank: It wasn't the subject matter that got this literary work banned from a school in Alabama. Their reason - they just felt the book was "a real downer."

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: Libraries in New York and Colorado banned Mark Twain's adventurous tale soon after the book came out, claiming Tom Sawyer was a protagonist of "questionable character."

Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman: Stores around the United States wouldn't carry this book for fear the title would encourage customers to shoplift. However, had it been carried it probably would have been banned anyway for Hoffman's descriptions of how to make a pipe bomb, steal credit cards, and grow marijuana.

2 comments:

  1. in high school i worked at a used bookstore and we had a copy of Steal This Book which we kept behind the counter in a special room...but i think by that time the book was a collectors item and that is why we hid it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think that was a common pracice because of the propensity of it's disappearance!

    ReplyDelete

If you have something to say about it, just stick out your thumb, and I'll slow down so you can hop aboard! But hang on, 'cause I'm movin' on down the road!!! No time to waste!!!