Category: Omnibit

The man-eating bull shark tolerates fresh water. It has been known to swim up the Mississippi as far as Illinois.

William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 3-31-17

Eggs cost $6 a dozen in Hawaii and milk is about $7 per gallon. Fortunately the islands don’t get blizzards.

William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 3-30-17

The orange roughy can live up to 149 years. It’s part of the slimehead family of fish.

William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 3-29-17

Money doesn’t smell is a phrase with Roman roots namely the Latin Pecunia non olet.

Urine was valuable. It was collected from public toilets and sold to tanners. The sale was taxed.

The Emporer Vespasian’s son Titus expressed his disgusted at the concept. Vespasian had him smell a gold coin. “Does it smell?” Vespasian asked? Titus said no. “Yet it comes from urine,” Vespasian said.

And from that exchange comes the phrase.

William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 3-28-17

Who was Frankie Baker and what did he do? Well, Frankie was a she and at 2 a.m., Oct. 15, 1899 she shot her lover Allen Britt who had just won a cakewalk dance contest with Nelly Bly. Allen’s name was changed to Johnny for the song.  It should be noted that the Nelly Bly that Allen danced with was not Elizabeth Cochran Seaman the reporter from Chochran’s Mills Pa. who used that as her pen name.

Here’s Big Bill Broonzy’s version:

William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 3-27-17

Was Winston Churchill saved from drowning while a youth by Scottish farmer whose own son would discover penicillin which would be used to save the the great leader’s life again?

Um, no.

Churchill, who grew up in Ireland, was never saved by a Scottish farmer. His life was, however, saved by an antibiotic during World War II.  It was not penicillin, though, but a sulphonamide.

But it was reported as penicillin. Sulphonamides were a German discovery.

William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 3-25-17 Winston Churchill saved drowning

Yellow fever still kills 45,000 people a year.

William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 3-24-17

Punic, the language of Carthage, survived until the time of St. Augustine in the 5th Century. It had a run of about 1300 years.

William Lawrence Sr. Omnibit 3-23-17

Commode in French means convenient. It originally described an ornate chest of drawers kept in formal reception rooms.

William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 3-22-17

Genghis Khan was said to have red hair and green eyes. These features existed among Mongolians.

William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 3-21-17