The mystery behind toilet paper gets flushed out

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Do you ever read the “Interesting Thing of the Day” website?  Well, I read it; I like being in the know. After reading the following article, now I know some facts about a sensitive subject: toilet paper (coincidentally, I was on the ‘john’ when I read the article).  In 1857, toilet paper was watermarked!  And it was also medicated!

BONUS:

Find more interesting facts here.

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Can you read this?

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.  The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the first and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it wouthit a porbelm. This is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.   Amzanig huh?

The Scientists Quiz

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Questions

1. How did the Ancient Egyptians calculate when the River Nile would flood each year?
2. From what did the Mayans believe the world to be made?
3. Which Ancient Greek god was thought to cause earthquakes?
4. Name the two forces which Confucius believe were central to harmony in the Universe.
5. Name one of the two influential medical books written by IbnSina.
6. Name the four most important universities founded during the 12th-13th centures.
7. What part of Tycho Brahe’s body was cut off in a duel?
8. What two methods did Vesalius use to obtain specimens for this study of anatomy?
9. Vesalius wrote one of the greatest scientific books ever published.  What was it’s title?
10. What is the name given to the tiny blood vessels that connect veins and arteries?
11. Galileo was threatened with torture unless he denied which claim?
12. Name one of the founding members of the Royal Society.
13. What incident is said to have been the starting point for Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitation?
14. Linaeus developed a method of classifying plants called “binomial nomenclature”.  What does it mean?
15. Which book proposed that species had developed over long periods of time?
16. Name the two different theories concerning the structure of the earth preferred by Werner and Hutton.
17. What is the name given to the supercontinent by Wegener?
18. What was the name of the ship on which Charles Darwin sailed to South America?
19. What is the modern name for the gas that Joseph Priestley called “dephlogisticated gas”?
20. What is the name given to Mendeleev’s grouping of elements?
21. What is the name of the device Ewald von Kleist designed for storing static electricy?
22. What apparatus did Benjamin Franklin use to prove that lightning is a form of electricity?
23. Which measurement of electricity is named after an 18th century scientist?
24. Which process, discovered by Edward Jenner, is considered to be one of the most important advances ever made in medical science?
25. Who was the first person to receive two Nobel prizes?
26. On which plant did Mendel perform most of his experiments?
27. Why did Niels Bohr go to live in the USA in 1943?
28. Who was the first woman to be appointed assistant to the Court Astronomer in 1787?
29. Why was Mary Somerville’s first scientific paper submitted to the Royal Society by her husband?
30. In 1927, Georges Lemaitre propsed an idea that explained the origins of the Universe.  What is it now known as?

Answers

1. They studied the position of the moon and the stars.
2. They believed that the world was made from the back of a giant crocodile living in a pond.
3. Poseidon
4. Yin and Yang
5. The Canon and The Cure
6. Bologna, Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris
7. His nose
8. Grave robbing and taking bodies from the gallows.
9. The Fabric of the Human Body
10. Capillaries
11. The Earth moved around the Sun.
12. Christopher Wren, Samuel Pepys
13. He saw an apple fall from a tree.
14. It means that each plant has two names. One indicates its genus, the other its species.
15. The Natural History by Georges de Buffon
16. The “Neptunist” theory and the “Plutonist” theory.
17. Pangaea
18. HMS Beagle
19. Oxygen
20. The Periodic Table
21. The Leiden Jar
22. A kite fitted with a metal key.
23. The volt, after Alessandro Volta
24. Vaccination
25. Marie Curie
26. The pea plant.
27. To escape the Nazis.
28. Caroline Herschel.
29. At that time, women were banned from the organization.
30. The Big Bang Theory

God’s pharmacy

In the beginning, God created herbs and such before He made man so that ‘Adam’ [humanity] would be provided for and live a healthy life.  Adam lived 930 years!  Now…

For today’s lesson, look at these facts.

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye… And YES, science now shows carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.

A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart has four chambers and is red. All of the researches shows tomatoes are loaded with lycopine and are indeed pure heart and blood food.

Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.

A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds on the nut are just like the neo-cortex. We now know walnuts help develop more than three (3) dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.

Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.

Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and many more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don’t have enough sodium in your diet, the body pulls it from the bones, thus making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.

Avocadoes, Eggplant and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female – they look just like these organs. Today’s research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight, and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? It takes exactly nine (9) months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).

Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the mobility of male sperm and increase the numbers of Sperm as well to overcome male sterility.

Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.

Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries.

Oranges , Grapefruits, and other Citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

Onions look like the body’s cells. Today’s research shows onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells. They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes. A working companion, Garlic, also helps eliminate waste materials and dangerous free radicals from the body.

Look at how much we’ve changed…

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The year is 1909.  One hundred years ago…

• The average life expectancy was 47 years.
• Only 14% of the homes had a bathtub.
• Only 8% of the homes had a telephone.
• There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.
• The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
• The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
• The average wage in 1909 was $.22 per hour.
• The average worker made between $200-$400 per year.
• Yearly wages for the following careers: a competent accountant ($2000); a dentist ($2,500); a veterinarian ($1,500-$4,000); an engineer ($5,000).
• More than 95% of all births took place at home.
• 90% of all doctors had no college education.  Instead, they attended so-called medical schools–many of which were condemned in the press and the government as ’substandard.’
• Sugar cost $.04 per pound, eggs were $.14 per dozen, coffee was $.15 per pound.
• Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
• Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into the country for any reason (the shame!)
• The five leading causes of death: 1. Pneumonia and influenza, 2. Tuberculosis, 3. Diarrhea, 4. Heart disease, 5. Stroke.
• The American flag had 45 stars.
• The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was only 30.
• Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn’t been invented yet.
• There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
• Two out of every 10 adults couldn’t read or write.
• Only 6% of all Americans had graduated from high school.
• Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores.  Back then pharmacists said, “Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.”
• 18% of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
• There were about 230 reported murders in the entire USA!

Tips everyone should know including how to recognize fresh bread in grocery stores

THINGS TO KNOW
1. Budweiser beer conditions the hair.
2. Pam cooking spray will dry finger nail polish.
3. Cool whip will condition your hair in 15 minutes.
4. Mayonnaise will KILL LICE, it will also condition your hair.
5. Elmer’s Glue - paint on your face, allow it to dry, peel off and see the dead skin and blackheads (if any).

6. Shiny Hair – use brewed Lipton Tea.
7. Sunburn – empty a large size Nestea into your bath water.
8. Minor burn - Colgate or Crest toothpaste.
9. Burn your tongue? Put sugar on it!
10. Arthritis WD - 40 Spray and rub in, kill insect stings too.

11. Bee stings - use meat tenderizer.
12. Chigger bite - use Preparation H.
13. Puffy eyes - use Preparation H.
14. Paper cut - crazy glue or Chap Stick (glue is used instead of suture at most hospitals).
15. Stinky feet - Jello!

16. Athletes feet - cornstarch.
17. Fungus on toenails or fingernails - Vicks vapor rub.
18. Kool aid to clean dishwasher pipes. Just put in the detergent section and run a cycle, it will also clean a toilet. (Wow, and we drink this stuff?)
19. Kool Aid can be used as a dye in paint also Kool Aid in Dannon plain yogurt as a finger paint, your kids will love it and it won’t hurt them if they eat it!
20. Peanut butter - will get scratches out of CD’s! Wipe off with a coffee filter paper.

21. Sticking bicycle chain - Pam no-stick cooking spray.
22. Pam will also remove paint, and grease from your hands!? Keep a can in your garage for your hubby.
23. Peanut butter will remove ink from the face of dolls.
24. When the doll clothes are hard to put on, sprinkle with corn starch and watch them slide on.
25. Heavy dandruff – pour on the vinegar!

26. Body paint - Crisco mixed with food coloring. Heat the Crisco in the microwave,  pour in to an empty film container and mix with the food color of your choice!
27. Tie Dye T-shirt – mix a solution of Kool Aid in a container, tie a rubber band around a section of the T-shirt and soak.
28. Preserving a newspaper clipping – large bottle of club soda and cup of milk of magnesia , soak for 20 min. And let dry, will last for many years!
29. A Slinky will hold toast and CD’s!
30. To keep goggles and glasses from fogging, coat with Colgate toothpaste.

31. Wine stains, pour on the Morton salt and watch it absorb into the salt.
32. To remove wax – Take a paper towel and iron it over the wax stain, it will absorb  into the towel.
33. Remove labels off glassware etc. Rub with Peanut butter !
34. Baked on food – fill container with water, get a Bounce paper softener and the static from the Bounce towel will cause the baked on food to adhere to it. Soak overnight. Also; you can use 2 Efferdent tablets, soak overnight!
35. Crayon on the wall - Colgate toothpaste and brush it!

36. Dirty grout - Listerine.
37. Stains on clothes - Colgate.
38. Grass stains - Karo Syrup.
39. Grease Stains - Coca Cola , it will also remove grease stains from the driveway overnight. We know it will take corrosion from car batteries!
40. Fleas in your carpet 20 Mule Team Borax - sprinkle and let stand for 24 hours.  Maybe this will work if you get them back again.
41. To keep FRESH FLOWERS longer Add a little Clorox! , or 2 Bayer aspirin, or just use 7-up instead of water.

42. When you go to buy bread in the grocery store, have you ever wondered which is the freshest, so you ’squeeze’ for freshness or softness?  Did you know that bread is delivered fresh to the stores five days a week Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Each day has a different color twist tie. They are:
Monday = Blue, Tuesday = Green, Thursday = Red Friday = White and Saturday = Yellow. *yellow*
So if today was Thursday, you would want red twist tie, not white which is Fridays (almost a week old)!  The colors go alphabetically by color Blue – Green – Red – White - Yellow , Monday through Saturday. Very easy to remember. I thought this was interesting. I looked in t he grocery store and the bread wrappers DO have different twist ties, and even the ones with the plastic clips have different colors. You learn something new everyday! Enjoy fresh bread when you buy bread with the right color on the day you are shopping.

Pass this information on to friends so they can be informed also! 

Trivia 2: Cigarettes, gold, snowflakes, and more…

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Anatomy

• Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.
• By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.
• The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.
• Brains are more active sleeping than watching TV.
• Our eyes remain the same size from birth but our noses and ears never stop growing.
• Everyone has a unique tongue print.
• Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
• Wearing headphones for an hour increases the bacteria in your ear 700 times.
• If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.

Animals

• The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
• The largest ant colony in the world stretches from Spain, through Germany, all the way to Italy, mostly underground. Thanks to the hive mentality of ants, any two of them, even if taken from the opposite ends, would instantly recognize each other.
• A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
• A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate. I know some people like that!
• If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
• The original name for butterfly was flutterby.
• Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
• Goldfish have an attention span of 3-5 seconds.
• Sheep in Scotland faint if you jump out at them.
• Mosquito repellents don’t repel–they hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito’s sensors so they don’t know you’re there.
• To escape the grip of a crocodile’s jaws, prick your fingers into its eyeballs. It will let you go instantly.
• A cockroach can live for 10 days without a head.
• There are more chickens than people in the world.
• According to Genesis 1:20-22, the chicken came before the egg.
• A snail can sleep for three years.
• All polar bears are left handed.
• Butterflies taste with their feet.
• Mosquitos are more attracted to the color blue than any other color.
• Koalas and humans are the only animals that have finger prints.
• There are 200,000,000 insects for every one human.
• Octopus have three hearts.
• Tiger shark embryos fight each other in their mother’s womb.  The survivor is born.
• A blue whale’s tongue weighs more than an elephant.
• Nose prints are used to identify dogs, just like humans use fingerprints.

Entertainment

• During the chariot scene in “Ben Hur,” a small red car can be seen in the distance.
• Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
• Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to s-l-o-w film down so you could see his moves.
• The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.”
• Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.
• Elvis got a “C” in music in grade 8.
• Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than the entire Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
• Marilyn Monroe had six toes on one foot.

Food

• A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
• Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.
• Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
• 40 percent of McDonald’s profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.
• Chocolate kills dogs!  It affects a dog’s heart and nervous system.  A few ounces is enough to kill a small sized dog.
• The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s gum.
• Apples are more efficient than caffeine in keeping people awake in the mornings.

Language/Literature/Words

• There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver.
• The dot over the letter “i” is called a tittle.
• The name Wendy was made up for the book “Peter Pan.” There was never a recorded Wendy before.
• Sherlock Holmes NEVER said “Elementary, my dear Watson.”
• The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.
• 315 entries in Webster’s 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.
• “Dreamt” is the only word in the English language that ends in “mt”.
• “I am.” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
• “Bookkeeper” is the only word in English language with three consecutive double letters.
• The sentence “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” uses every Letter in the English language.

Other

• Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn’t wear pants.
• The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
• The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles.  At that time, the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.
• Roses may be red, but violets are indeed violet.
• An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing.
• The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.
• Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
• Drunk drivers can be sentenced to death by firing squad.
• The “number of the beast” (666) mentioned in Revelations was actually a mathematical representation of the name Caesar Nero.
• Two-thirds of the world’s lawyers practice in the United States.
• Dacryphilia is arousal from seeing tears in a partner’s eyes.
• Porphyrophobia is a morbid fear of the color purple.
• The initials YKK on your zipper stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushibibaisha, the world’s largest zipper manufacturer.
• Ketchup was sold in the 1830’s as medicine.
• Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.  It also took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa’s lips.
• There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
• Dentists recommend that a toothbrush be kept at least six feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.
• Adolf Hitler’s mother seriously considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor.
• The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
• The “pound” (#) key on your keyboard is called an octothorp.
• Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
• It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
• In Chinese, the KFC slogan “finger lickin’ good” comes out as “eat your fingers off”.
• We shed 40 pounds of skin a lifetime.
• Yo-Yos were once used as weapons in the Philippines .
• Mexico City sinks abut 10 inches a year.
• Blue is the favorite color of 80 percent of Americans.
• The thumbnail grows the slowest, and the middle nail grows the fastest.
• There are more telephones than people in Washington , D.C.
• The three wealthiest families in the world have more assets than the combined wealth of the forty-eight poorest nations.
• The first owner of the Marlboro cigarette company died of lung cancer.
• Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
• The world’s youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
• The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.
• When the moon is directly overhead, you weigh slightly less.
• Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never telephoned his wife or mother because they were both deaf.
• The longest place name still in use is: Taumatawhakatangihangaoauauotameteaturi- Pukakpikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu – a New Zealand hill.
• More than 40,000 parasites and 250 types of bacteria are exchanged during a French kiss.
• Coca-Cola was originally green.
• The name of all the continents ends with the same letter that they start with.
• Each king in a deck of playing cards represents great king from history. Spades: King David; Clubs: Alexander the Great; Hearts: Charlemagne; Diamonds: Julius Caesar.
• 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
• If a statue of a person in the park on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle.  If the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle.  If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
• American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.
• The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
• Most lipstick contains fish scales.
• The Romans used licorice near their pillows to shoo away bad dreams.
• The largest recorded snowflake was 15 Inch wide and 8 Inch thick. It fell in Montana in 1887.
• Former president Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails in his entire 8 year presidency.
• 250 people have fallen off the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
• A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court.
• If you counted 24 hours a day, it would take 31,688 years to reach one trillion!
• The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year!

Sources come from all over the internet.

Q: What facts can you contribute to this list?

Did you know these facts about President Barak Obama?

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1. Obama’s ancestors owned slaves:

A distant cousin from his mother’s side, Gabriel Duvall, a Supreme Court Justice and a member of the US House of Representatives, from the second district of Maryland was also a friend of Thomas Jefferson and the owner of 37 slaves

2. His maternal grandparents liked to move around:

Born in Kansas, Obama’s maternal grandparents lived in four states before settling in Hawaii.

3. Obama’s great-uncle liberated a Nazi concentration camp:

Charles T. Payne, served in the U.S. Army 89th Division and helped liberate Buchenwald concentration camp.

4.  Obama has highly educated family members

Father Barack Hussein Obama got a Master degree in economics from Harvard University, Mother Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro got a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Hawai, Half-sister Auma Obama got her PhD from the University of Heidelberg.

5.   China Business Consultant among family members

Mark Ndesandjo, Barack Obama’s half-brother, son of Ruth Nidesand and Barack Obama Sr. runs an Internet company called WorldNexus that advises Chinese corporations how best to reach international customers.

6.   Obama’s Grandmother was a bank president

Barack Obama’s maternal grandmother was a bank vice president in Hawaii.

7.   His wife was assigned to be his mentor

In 1989 Michelle Obama was asked to mentor a summer associate from Harvard name Barack Obama. Michelle Robinson initially brushed off advances from Barack because he was an intern, and she was higher up the law firm’s hierarchy as an associate.

8.  Obama has won two major media awards

Obama has won two Grammy Awards. First for Best Spoken Word Album in 2005 for the audio book edition of Dreams From My Father (2004), and again in 2007 for the audio book edition of The Audacity of Hope (2006).

9.  Gandhi is Obama’s hero

His heroes are Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Pablo Picasso and John Coltrane.

10. Who would Obama choose to play Obama in a movie?

Obama has said that he would like Will Smith to play Obama in a movie.

[Source]

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Fascinating facts about books, authors, editors and book selling

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EDITOR AND PUBLISHER LORE AND LEGENDS

Senior editor’s view of his job

At a cocktail party celebrating the launch of a new book, a young woman waving a highball approached the publisher’s senior editor and asked, “Are you a writer?”

“No,” replied the editor.

“Then just what do you do,” she asked.

“I’m in the cleaning and repairing business.”

Editorial director looking to get lucky

One day, the editorial director at a small technical publishing establishment was observed hanging a horseshoe over the door to his office. His colleagues, in surprise, asked the director whether he believed it would bring luck to his acquisitions efforts.

“No,” the editorial director replied. “I don’t believe in superstitions. But I’ve been told that it works even if you don’t believe in it.”

Most honest book jacket blurb ever written

Perhaps the most honest wording ever to appear on a book jacket was the blurb signed by Random House publisher Bennett Cerf on a 1936 Gertrude Stein book titled, The Geographical History of America on the Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind. Here’s what Cerf wrote:

This space is usually reserved for a brief description of a book’s contents. In this case, however, I must admit frankly that I do not know what Miss Stein is talking about. I do not even understand the title.

EVOLUTION Of BOOK MAKING

Thumb index

The thumb index, those rounded notched indentations cut into the edges of pages to facilitate quick reference, have been around for over a century. The process was invented in 1884 by Alfred A. Butler of Bay City, Michigan.

Origin of plastic book jacket cover

The plastic book jacket cover had its origin in Newark, New Jersey. In 1939, Arthur Brody, son of neighborhood pharmacist and a former stock clerk in Bamberger’s downtown Newark department store invented the plastic book jacket cover.

Since his father ran a profitable book lending library out of his drugstore on Bergen Street, young Brody looked for ways to protect the thin paper book jackets, which frayed and tore easily, so that the books would have a longer lending life. He experimented with rigid sheets of clear plastic which he cut to book jacket size, folded between the rubber wring rollers of his grandmother’s washing machine, and wrapped around the lending library book jackets. Thus was born the plastic book jacket industry.

Early book publishing

By the end of the 15^th century, printing had taken place in over two hundred European communities. As a result, more than 30,000 different editions of printed books were produced.

More than half of these books were church or religion-related, consisting of sermons, commentaries, polemics, lives of the saints, church histories, brevaries, Psalters, and Bibles. Of the remainder, publishing was done on such subjects as astrology, alchemy, chemistry, and the art and practice of healing. There were also an abundance of textbooks of grammatical and philological content made necessary by the rapid spread of the printed word.

BOOK TITLING TIDBITS AND TRIVIA

Book for amnesiacs

A European publisher issued a book titled The Memoirs of an Amnesiac that contained only blank pages.

Recurring themes in 20th century book titles

One of the most interesting phenomena in publishing in the 20^th century was the evolution of book titling themes often patterned after a single successful book or series of books. Some of the more popular book titling themes dealt with numbers, minutes, days, nights, seasons, colors, landscapes, and even the earth, sun and moon.

INNOVATIVE BOOK PROMOTION

Strange new market for books: Losing lottery ticket buyers

Here’s a book promotion aimed only at lottery ticket buyers but only those who lost.  The sponsor was the government of Ontario, which runs a weekly lottery for $1 a ticket. What the Ontario government did, during several periods in the late 1970s and 1980s, was to establish a time interval during which losing lottery tickets could be used as cash toward a purchase of a book by a Canadian author.

When first tried for three months in 1978, losing Wintario lottery tickets could be used as 50c cash up to four tickets per purchase to buy any Canadian-authored book, hardcover or paper. In subsequent promotions in the early 1980s, losing lottery tickets could be used to buy only Canadian-authored paperbacks, with a limit of $1 per book.  Over 95% of Ontario’s booksellers honored the losing lottery tickets as cash, for which they were reimbursed from lottery proceeds by the Ontario government.

PUBLISHING MISCELLANY

How publishers said “NO” when rejecting famous books

The following rejections have been adapted from Rotten Rejections with the permission of the publisher, Pushcart Press.

Catch-22, Joseph Heller (1961) “A continual and unmitigated bore.”

Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe (1929) “Marred by stylistic cliches!  Has all the faults of youth and inexperience.”

Lord of the Flies, William Golding (1954) “You have (not) been wholly successful in working out an admittedly promising idea.”

Lust for Life, Irving Stone (1934) “A long, dull novel.”

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert (1856) “A heap of details which are well done but utterly superfluous.”

Poems, William Butler Yeats (1895) “Absolutely empty and void; does not please the ear, nor kindle the imagination.”

The Good Earth, Pearl Buck (1931) “Regret the American public is not interested in anything on China.”

The Ipcress File, Len Deighton (1963) “Author tends to stay too long on non-essentials, is enchanted with his words, his tough style, and that puts me off badly.”

The Jungle, Upton Sinclair (1906) “it is fit only for the wastebasket.”

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, John le Carre (1963) “le Carre – he hasn’t got any future.”

The Razor’s Edge, W. Somerset Maugham (1944) “I do not find the thing good of its kind. ¦ I think it is distasteful.”

The Time Machine, H. G. Wells (1895) “Not interesting enough for the general reader; not thorough enough for the scientific reader.”

Why authors once sold dedications in their books

In ancient Rome books were individually produced by hand and, thus, had very limited circulation. Consequently, this meant little income for their authors. Probably as a result, it was common practice for authors to dedicate their written works to friends or patrons who were expected to reciprocate with payment in coin or kind.

The ancient custom of selling book dedications by authors survived at least into the 18^th century. This is evidenced in the work of the British religious leader and novelist, Laurence Sterne [1713-1768] who, in one of his published volumes, in the space usually used ft dedication, published this message: “To be let or sold for fifty guineas.”

Unschooled youth who learned from books

He was born in a log cabin in the Midwest and grew up without schooling. As a youth, he clerked at a country store and found friendship in books that helped him envision a world outside that he had never seen or known about. He told his neighbors, “The things I want to know are in books. My best friend is the man who’ll git me a book I ain’t read.”

He widened his circle of book friends and educated himself. Eventually, his friends helped him acquire the knowledge that elevated him to the highest office in the land. His name was Abraham Lincoln.

How you as a reader should evaluate an author

“You must of necessity enter his thoughts before you can rightly evaluate them.” –From John D. Snider’s I Love Books.

Bookseller permanently on the shelf

James Edwards (1757-1816) was an English bookseller who achieved both fame and riches traveling throughout Europe buying and selling books. At his death in 1816, in accordance with his wishes, he was buried in a coffin of wood made from his own bookshelves.

His burial was at St. Mary’s Harrow-on-the-Hill, a little parish church on a prominent hill in Middlesex, England. “He lies here to this day,” wrote Michael Olmert in Smithsonian Book of Books, “permanently on the shelf, but definitely out of circulation.”

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Source: The Joy of Publishing by Nat Bodian.

Trivia Time: Oldest joke, tickling, food, feathers…

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The World’s Oldest Joke
A Greek girl was praying to Zeus, the king of the gods.  She was trying to understand his eternal nature.
“Zeus,” she asked, “what’s a million years to you?”
“A million years is like a second to me,” Zeus explained.
“And a million dollars?”
“A million dollars is like a penny to me,” Zeus replied.
The girl felt daring, and she asked, “Zeus, would you give me one of your pennies?”
“Sure,” Zeus replied.  “Just a second.”

The Most Ticklish Spot on the Body
Scottish scientists have figured out the most ticklish spot on the body.  It doesn’t matter if a person is right-or-left footed, a small area in the middle of the right foot is the most ticklish spot for most people.  BTW, right-handed people are more ticklish than left-handed people.

* What are twin babies called before they are born?  Womb-mates.

* The Statue of Liberty wears size 879 shoes!

* Watermelons originally came from the Kalahari Desert region in Africa, which is interesting because the average watermelon is 92% water.

* The strawberry is actually a member of the rose family.  Each strawberry contains approximately 200 seeds.

* A pigeon’s feathers are heavier than its bones.

Facts about money [trivia]

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Some fun facts about money:

• If you get your money out of a Hitachi ATM machine in Japan, it will be laundered. The way they do it is, they briefly press the bills between rollers at high enough temperatures to kill most bacteria.
• The first coin ever designed in the United States said “Mind Your Business” on it.  Benjamin Franklin came up with the idea.
• The “$” sign originally had two vertical lines running through the S.  The two vertical lines represented a U superimposed over the S, which stood for U.S., the United States.  Over time, the U lost its bottom and then lost one of its lines.  The United States is the only country that used its own name on its money symbol.  Today, the symbol means “money” all over the world.
• Look carefully in the top right corner of a $1 bill.  You will see the little owl who lives up there.
• Nine thousand years ago, people used cows for money.
• Until the nineteenth century, people in Siberia used blocks of tea for money.

Trivia Time 1: Hershey’s, Coors, kissing, belly buttons…

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• The little paper tag that comes out of the top of a Hershey’s kiss is called a nigglywiggly!
• In the 1500s, it was a crime to be caught kissing in Naples, Italy.  The punishment?  Death!
• Research shows that 66 percent of kissers turn their head to the right.
• Before most people could read or write, if a girl had to sign a legal document, she would put down a big “X” for her name.  Then to make it more official, she would kiss her signature.  That’s how the tradition of kisses and Xs stuck around.
• A survey in Italy found that Italians tell between 5 to 10 lies a day.  The number one lie was, “Don’t worry; it’s been taken care of.”  The second was, “It’s nice to see you.”
• During the 1400s, eavesdropping was a crime and was punished with jail time.
• When someone tests a new pen, the odds are almost 100 percent that they will write their name with it.
• When Coors translated their ad motto Turn It Loose into Spanish, it became Sueltalo con Coors, which can mean the same as ‘Get diarrhea from Coors.’  And when Clairol tried to shop their new curling iron called the Mist Stick in Germany, it didn’t sell well.  Someone pointed out that in German slang mist means manure.  Who wants a manure stick in their hair?
• A woman named Frances Glessner Lee made incredibly detailed dollhouses in the 1940s but they weren’t for play.  Frances was a police officer who cosntructed small crime scenes using dollhouses and dolls.  There were used as classroom tools for the police to use as training for Crime Scene Investigation.  Her “dollhouses of death” were so good, the doors could be opened with tiny keys.  Dioramas like them are still used in universities and police academies today.
• For $2500 at a Disney park, a woman can have a Cinderella theme wedding complete with the glass coach being pulled by four ponies.
• Belly button experts have not been able to figure out why belly button lint is almost always blue, even if it comes from a girl who owns no blue clothing.
• Wrinkled fingers and toes from staying in the bathtub too long does not mean they’re shriveling–they are actually expanding.  The longer you stay in the water, the more water molecules soak into your skin tissue, which stretches the skin out.
• In traditional Japanese society, women put their clothes in small, enclosed spaces and burn incense with them so the clothes would smell good.
• If you added up the hair growth of ALL your hair over your lifetime, it comes to about 590 miles.

More Goodies:

There are three kinds of secret keepers:

1. The Vault: They can keep a secret!  If a secret goes in, it will never come out again.
2. The Piggy Bank: They can keep a secret, but if someone pressures them, they will “break” open and spill their secrets all over the place.
3. The Open Door: They keep secrets for up to an hour.

Cheap toilet paper on a roll wasn’t available until the 1800s.  What did people use before that?  Here are some creative “wipers”:

1. Eskimos and Siberians used snow.
2. Vikings used handfuls of wool.  Other people in the Middle Ages used “gompf” sticks.
3. Early American settlers used corncobs.
4. Rich Frenchmans used pretty lace napkins.
5. Ancient Romans has a short stick with a sponge soaked in salt water attached to it.

Any comments about what you just read?

Humble beginnings of major reference books

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I love reading the history of now well-known books.  It gives me hope that my magazine, Perspectives, has the potential of sitting on the shelves next to the great Reader’s Digest.  The first issue of Reader’s Digest appeared on February 5, 1922, and had a white paper stock cover with 62 pages of print (no illustrations or advertisements).

A drawing of a Beardsley-type woman writing on a scroll with a huge pen which adorned the cover was an ornament the printer happened to have in his case.  Inside, the opening article was “How to Keep Young Mentally.”

The humble beginnings of major reference books such as Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, Encyclopedia Brittanica, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, National Geographic Magazine, Reader’s Digest, and Roget’s International Thesaurus can be found here.

*****

Click here to read more about my magazine.

Toughest quiz on earth

Do you pride yourself on knowing about historical figures and their accomplishments?  Then take the ‘Master Biographer’ challenge.

Celebrity trivia

The following entries come from the Petras’ paperback, Unusually Stupid Celebrities, A Compendium of All-Star Stupidity (Villard, $13.95).

B – Kim Basinger demanded cases of Evian water on a movie set; not for drinking but for washing her hair.
C – Naomi Campbell ordered a sandwich at the famous Le Grand Vefour restaurant in Paris and was “forced” to send back her toast because it was scratching her gums.
I – Enrique Inglesias, who once told an interviewer, “I can never find extra-small condoms and I know it’s really embarrassing for people, you know, from experience.”
J – Scarlett Johannson hates to be ungrateful but said, “The studio will send you a wilting fruit basket or some mediocre champagne … some people get cars, that would be nice but will they also pay for my parking?”
L – Courtney Love had her breast implants removed and kept them as souvenirs. Her dog ate one and died.
M – Demi Moore ordered a plane to fly her from her Idaho home to New York City but upon discovering that the plane was too small and she’d have to stack her luggage, had her studio–Sony–provide a larger one.
P – Joaquin Phoenix asked at a news conference: “Do I have a large frog in my hair? Something’s crawling out of my scalp. I’m not worried about the looks. I’m worried about the sensation of my brain being eaten…what did you ask me?”
U – Usher has a $1-million watch with his face on the face, surrounded by 1,106 diamonds.
V – Vanna White reportedly makes $3 million to $5 million a year turning letters on Wheel of Fortune and maintains, “It’s not as easy as it looks.”

Babel makes audience sick

” The Japanese distributor of the new film Babel is warning audiences that the movie may cause nausea or headaches.
” Gaga Communications has received 15 complaints since the film, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, opened Saturday across Japan. Company spokeswoman Aimi Ichikawa syas the company is investigating which scenes caused the illnesses, and hasn’t ordered theatres to adjust sound or lighting.
” The problem of nausea or headaches has only been reported in Japan.”