US Presidents trivia

US Presidents

» Thomas Jefferson's father was one of the surveyors who laid out the Virginia/North Carolina border.

» President Ulysses S. Grant was once arrested during his term of office. He was convicted of exceeding the Washington speed limit on his horse and was fined $20.

» John Adams died on July 4, 1826, the same day friend as his political rival and friend Thomas Jefferson. His last words are reported to have been, “Thomas Jefferson still survives.”

» Though his wife Martha had four children by a previous marriage, George Washington left no direct descendant. He never sired a child to continue his family line.

» President William H. Taft was once offered a contract to pitch for the Cincinnati Reds.

» John Adams was central to the Revolution and to the creation of the Declaration of Independence and the government under the Constitution.

» President William Howard Taft was a seventh cousin twice removed of Richard M. Nixon, and was a distant relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

» John Adams was the first president to have a son become president. His wife, Abigail Smith, was very influential and known as an engaging conversationalist and a wonderful writer of letters.

Words and Numbers trivia

Words and Numbers

» The plain black dickey worn with a clerical collar by some clergymen is called a rabat.

» The female name Vanessa is Greek for "butterfly."

» Rulership by words is called logocracy.

» In Australian slang, to be “spliced” means to be married.

» The final word given at the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in 2000 was "demarche," a noun meaning a course of action or a diplomatic representation or protest; in 1999, the final word was "logorrhea," a noun meaning an excessive use of words.

» Secure, relatively high-yielding stocks came to be called blue chips, a term taken from the game of poker, where blue chips are more valuable than white or red chips.

» In British English, a booger is called a "bogey" or "bogie."

» Senectitude is another word for old age.

Structures trivia

Structures

» The seats at Fenway Park in Boston, home of the Boston Red Sox, are made of oak.

» The famed London Bridge spanned the River Thames for almost 140 years. In 1968, the city of London decided to sell its sinking bridge for $2.6 million to Robert P. McCulloch, founder of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, who needed a bridge to connect the city to an island in the lake. The island was created in order to remove an obstruction that blocked water flow from the Colorado River into Thompson Bay. It took three years to carefully dismantle, pack, ship, and reconstruct the landmark bridge in the desert state. It cost more than $7 million to rebuild it in Lake Havasu City. Finally, on October 10, 1971, London Bridge was officially dedicated in Arizona before a crowd of 100,000 in a lavish ceremony.

» The Serpentine Railway, built in 1885 at Coney Island, was the first gravity roller coaster to tie the track end together and return passengers to their starting point without them needing to disembark while the car was placed on the return track. The train, with its passengers seated sideways on a wooden bench, ran atop an undulating wooden structure. The train was slow and took several minutes to complete its circuit.

» The famed London Bridge which spanned the River Thames for almost 140 years from the 1830s until 1968, now connects Arizona's Lake Havasu City's mainland and island. The bridge survived a terrorist attack in 1884 and the bombing from the Germans in both World Wars. But it could not withstand the forces of nature, as it was sinking into the Thames River's clay bottom.

» The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History houses the world's largest shell collection, some 15 million specimens.

» The famous Citgo sign near Fenway Park in Boston is maintained not by Citgo, but by Boston's historical society.

» The famous Eden-Roc Hotel, in Cap D’Antibes in the French Riviera, is often described as the most fabulous hotel in the world. The President of the Republic, Arab princes, stars of the stage and screen – all have stayed here in this security-conscious Shangri-La where credit cards are not recognized, and hard cash is the only currency. Sara and Gerald Murphy, a rich American couple with very fashionable friends invented the summer season in the 1920s. They convinced the Eden Roc's owner to keep the place open after April, and filled it with guests like F. Scott Fitzgerald and wife Zelda, Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter, and Pablo Picasso.

» The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History houses the world's largest shell collection, some 15 million specimens. A smaller museum in Sanibel, Florida owns a mere 2 million shells and claims to be the world's only museum devoted solely to mollusks.

Technology trivia

Technology

» The first flexible, rolled film for still photographs was introduced only about 4 years before the first motion picture was made.

» The first Harley Davidson motorcycle was built in 1903, and used a tomato can for a carburetor.

» The first manned spacecraft to be launched was the Soviet’s Vostok 1, which left Earth in 1961.

» The first parking meter was installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1935.

» "MIDI" stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It is a standard means of sending digitally encoded information about music between electronic devices, often between synthesizers and computers.

» Time magazine named the computer its "Man of the Year" in 1982.

» A 1999 survey of 25,500 standard English-language dictionary words found that 93 percent of them have been registered as dot-coms.

» A 2001 study conducted by PC Data and Information Resources Inc. showed that greeting cards, soup, breakfast cereal, and Imodium were among the most popular package goods bought online.

Statistics trivia

Statistics

» The most common place name in Britain is Newton, which occurs 150 times.

» Sweden is the biggest user of ketchup spending$4 a year on it. Australia comes in second with $2.50 spent on ketchup each year. Third place goes to the United States and Canada who spend $2.20 a year on ketchup. How do other countries stack up: Germany $1.70, United Kingdom $1.60, Poland and Japan $1.40, France $1.20, and Russia $0.90.

» More than 40 percent of the women in the United States were in the Girl Scouts organization. Two-thirds of the women listed in Who's Who of Women were Girl Scouts.

» If population continues to expand at its present rate, Calcutta, India, will have a population of 66 million in the year 2000.

» Tangshan, China, suffered the deadliest earthquake of the 20th century on July 28, 1976. One quarter of the population was killed or seriously injured, with an estimated 242,000 people killed.

» More than 45,000 pieces of plastic debris float on every square mile of ocean.

» If we were to up-turn the Millennium Dome at Greenwich, London, it would take 3.8 billion half-liters of beer to fill it up.

» More than 50 percent of adults surveyed said that children should not be paid money for getting good grades in school.

Sports : Football trivia

Sports : Football

» ABC-TV's Monday Night Football premiered in September 1970. Its three original commentators were Keith Jackson, Don Meredith, and Howard Cosell.

» According to the rules of Gaelic football, players may punch the ball, but the punching motion must be clearly visible to the referee. Players may not pick up the ball off the ground unless they first get their toe under the ball.

» At greatest risk of injury to a professional football player's anatomy is the knee, which is involved in 58 percent of all major football injuries.

» Because of a football's resemblance to an olive, albeit a very large one, the Chinese often call the American game of football "olive ball."

» Because of fears that the Japanese, who had attacked Pearl Harbor less than a month earlier, might attach California, the Rose Bowl game of 1942 between Oregon State and Duke University was moved east to Duke's hometown in Durham, North Carolina. It didn't, however, help the home team. Oregon won, 20-16.

» During the football season of 1905, at least 19 players died in college and high school contests.

» For the 2000 Super Bowl, about a third of the TV commercial spots were purchased by dot-com companies. The following year, the numbers dropped to just 10 percent bought by 'Net companies.

» For the first time, the play-by-play of Super Bowl XXX in 1996 was broadcast in the Navajo language and NBC-TV offered a secondary, foreign-language audio feed to its affiliates.

Sports : Olympics trivia

Sports : Olympics

» At the 1952 Olympic Games, Russian gymnast Maria Gorokhovskaya won an overall record seven medals.

» At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Tom Malchow was the youngest member of the U.S. men’s swim team at age 19. Malchow was humorously nicknamed ”Puppy Chow” by his older teammates. Four years later, at the Olympics in Sydney, he was the 200-meter butterfly gold medallist. Malchow's time of 1:55.35 was the third-fastest performance ever. His nickname changed to “Top Dog” and "Big Dog."

» Australian swimmer Murray Rose won six Olympic medals and was the first man to swim the 1,500-metre freestyle in less than 18 minutes. He won national titles in three countries: the United States, Canada, and Australia. At age 17 in 1956, Rose became the youngest Olympian to win three gold medals during one Olympics.

» Because of the outbreak of major world wars, the modern Olympics did not hold competitions in 1916, 1940, and 1944.

» Boston-native figure skater Tenley Albright was the first American woman to win an Olympic figure-skating gold medal. In 1952, Albright placed second in women's figure skating at the Olympic Games. She was the U.S. national championship from 1952 to 1956. In 1953, Albright became the first American woman to win the world championship title. She won the title again in 1955. At the 1956 Olympics, Albright won the gold medal in women's figure skating. She was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1988. After retiring, Albright became a surgeon.

» Canada’s first Olympic gold medal was won by a man competing for the United States. George Orton of Strathroy, Ontario, took first place in the steeplechase at the 1900 Olympics in Paris, but because Canada didn’t have an official team, he entered as part of the American team instead.

» Childhood ice figure-skating partners JoJo Starbuck and Ken Shelley made skating history when, in 1968, they were the youngest pairs team America had ever sent to the Olympic Games.

» For its Olympic athletes who bring home a gold, silver, or bronze medal, the Philippines pays handsome sums of money. However, none have won in decades.

» At the 1952 Olympic Games, Russian gymnast Maria Gorokhovskaya won an overall record seven medals.

» At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Tom Malchow was the youngest member of the U.S. men’s swim team at age 19. Malchow was humorously nicknamed ”Puppy Chow” by his older teammates. Four years later, at the Olympics in Sydney, he was the 200-meter butterfly gold medallist. Malchow's time of 1:55.35 was the third-fastest performance ever. His nickname changed to “Top Dog” and "Big Dog."

» Australian swimmer Murray Rose won six Olympic medals and was the first man to swim the 1,500-metre freestyle in less than 18 minutes. He won national titles in three countries: the United States, Canada, and Australia. At age 17 in 1956, Rose became the youngest Olympian to win three gold medals during one Olympics.

» Because of the outbreak of major world wars, the modern Olympics did not hold competitions in 1916, 1940, and 1944.

» Boston-native figure skater Tenley Albright was the first American woman to win an Olympic figure-skating gold medal. In 1952, Albright placed second in women's figure skating at the Olympic Games. She was the U.S. national championship from 1952 to 1956. In 1953, Albright became the first American woman to win the world championship title. She won the title again in 1955. At the 1956 Olympics, Albright won the gold medal in women's figure skating. She was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1988. After retiring, Albright became a surgeon.

» Canada’s first Olympic gold medal was won by a man competing for the United States. George Orton of Strathroy, Ontario, took first place in the steeplechase at the 1900 Olympics in Paris, but because Canada didn’t have an official team, he entered as part of the American team instead.

» Childhood ice figure-skating partners JoJo Starbuck and Ken Shelley made skating history when, in 1968, they were the youngest pairs team America had ever sent to the Olympic Games.

» For its Olympic athletes who bring home a gold, silver, or bronze medal, the Philippines pays handsome sums of money. However, none have won in decades.