News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
Public pool urine — A typical public pool contains about 17 gallons of urine but don’t let it keep you from the water. That pool holds about 219,000 gallons of water so the urine content is only about .008 percent. Consider that the FDA allows canned apricots to be 2 percent insect filth.
The longest war was between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly. It lasted 335 years.
The Isles of Scilly are English but were used as a base against the Dutch by the Royalists during the English Civil War. Rather than declaring war on all of England — which was in the hands of Cromwell’s Parliamentarians, who were their allies — the Netherlands declared war specifically on Scilly on March 30, 1651. The declaration became moot when Cromwell captured the isles.
In 1985, the chairman of the Isle of Scilly Council, wrote to the Dutch Embassy in London in attempt to dispel the legend that his community was at war with a nation of Europe. The Embassy, however, found that the legend to be true as no peace treaty was ever signed.
So on April 17, 1986, that was rectified.
Ever wonder how much voltage a transmission line carries? Count the insulators. Each insulator can withstand about between 13,500 and 17,250 volts. A 500KV line will have between 24 and 28 insulator disks.
Things weigh less at the equator.
Genghis Khan was a slave for a while. He escaped, though, and the rest is history.
Florins and ducats were gold coins used for common trade in Europe starting in the Middle Ages. The florin was minted by Florence and the ducat by Venice. Ducats eventually became minted by other nations. The Hungarian ducat remained in use until 1915.
Cubic zirconium beats diamond, at least by traditional measures of beauty. The original test for diamond beauty was the number of colors displayed while refracting light. CZ is much better at this.
Famed science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein served as an ensign aboard the famed aircraft carrier USS Lexington in 1929. He entered a short story in a shipboard writing contest. He didn’t win.
Who was E. Irvin Scott? He was the Swarthmore resident, who along with brother Clarence, was the first to sell toilet paper on a roll. The Scotts had a great company whose headquarters ended up near Philadelphia International Airport until it was destroyed by Albert J. Dunlap in 1995.
William Durant last years — William Durant, the founder of General Motors, went bankrupt in the Great Depression. He spent his last years managing a bowling alley in Flint, Mich.