Random Appeal

Stuff You Didn’t Know

• Men can read smaller print than women can; women can  hear better.
• Coca-Cola  was originally green.
• It  is impossible to lick your elbow.
• The  State with the highest percentage of people who walk  to work: Alaska
• The  percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28%

(now get this…)

• The  percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%
• The cost of  raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $  16,400
• The  average number of people airborne over the U.S. in any given hour:  61,000
• Intelligent  people have more zinc and copper in their  hair..
• The first novel ever written on a typewriter, Tom  Sawyer.
• The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National  Monuments.
• Each  king in a deck of playing cards represents a great  king from history:

            Spades  - King David
            Hearts  - Charlemagne
            Clubs  -Alexander, the Great
            Diamonds  - Julius Caesar

• 111,111,111  x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,  654,321
• If  a statue in the park of a person 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 because of wounds received in battle.
• If the  horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died  of natural causes
• Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, John  Hancock and Charles Thomson.  Most  of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature  wasn’t added until 5 years later.

Q.  Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of  what?

A.  Their birthplace

Q.  Most boat owners name their boats.  What  is the most popular boat name requested?

A.  Obsession

Q..  If you were to spell out numbers, how  far would you have to go until you

would find the  letter ‘A’?

A.  One thousand

Q.  What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield  wipers and laser printers have in common?

A.  All were invented by  women.

Q.  What is the only food that doesn’t spoil?

A.  Honey

Q.  Which day are there more collect calls than  any other day of the year?

A.  Father’s Day

In  Shakespeare’s time, mattresses  were secured on bed frames by ropes.

When you pulled  on the ropes, the mattress tightened, making the bed  firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase…’Goodnight ,  sleep tight’

It was the  accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that  for a month after the wedding, the bride’s father would  supply his  son-in-law with all the mead he could drink.

Mead  is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar  based, this period was called the honey month, which  we know today as the honeymoon.

In  English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts…  So in old England , when customers got unruly, the  bartender would yell at them ‘Mind your pints and  quarts, and settle down.’

It’s  where we get the phrase ‘mind your P’s and  Q’s’

Many  years ago in England , pub frequenters had a whistle  baked into  the rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups.

When  they needed a refill , they used the whistle to get some service. ‘Wet your whistle’ is the phrase inspired  by this practice.

At least 75% of people who read this will try to  lick their elbow!

YOU  KNOW YOU ARE LIVING

IN  2012

when…

1.  You accidentally enter your PIN on the  microwave.

2. You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years.

3.  You have a list of 15 phone numbers to  reach your family of three.

4.  You e-mail the person who works  at the desk next to you.

5.  Your reason for not staying in touch with  friends and family is that they don’t have e-mail  addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway  and use your cell  phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry  in thegroceries…

7.  Every commercial on television has  a web site at the bottom of the screen

8.  Leaving the house without your cell phone, which  you didn’t even have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of  your life, is now a cause for panic and you  turn around to go and get it

10.  You get up in the morning and go on line before  getting your coffee

11.  You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12 You’re reading this and nodding  and laughing.

13.  Even worse, you know exactly to  whom you are going to forward this  message.

14.  You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this  list. 

15. You actually scrolled back up to check  that there wasn’t a #9 on this  list  .

~~~~~~~~~~~AND  FINALLY~~~~~ ~~~~~~~

NOW  you’re LAUGHING at yourself!

 Blessed  are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall  never cease to be amused!” (Unknown  Author)

The Green Thing

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.
 
The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”

The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.  But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.

But too bad we didn’t do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart ass young person…

We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off.

Prometheus - Peter Weyland TED 2023 [OFFICIAL CLIP]