News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
Cats in the wild instinctively seek soft soil when it is time to do their business letting them bury their waste to hide their scent. Litter boxes work because kitty litter is like soft soil.
Call it caffeinated Finland. The Finns drink the most coffee per person per year at 26.4 pounds. They are followed by Norway at 21.8 pounds, Iceland at 19.8 pounds and Denmark at at 19.2 pounds. Guess cold winters and long nights will do it. Or maybe it’s the long days in the summer.
The first capital of the Confederacy was Montgomery, Ala. Virginia actually voted against secession on April 4, 1861. It only changed its position with the shelling of Fort Sumter. That’s when the capital was moved to Richmond. Richmond was the only major industrial center in the South.
Trip the light fantastic means dance fantastically. How can someone tripping over a light be a fantastic dancer? The original meaning for “trip” was “tread or step lightly and nimbly, skip, dance, caper.” The “light fantastic” part comes from the great John Milton who used the phrase adjectively in poems and masques in the 17th century to describe “toes” and “rounds”. Obviously, he did not mean “light” as a device that illuminates but to describe something without much weight and can move effortlessly.
It was Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis who in 1847 first came to realize that washing hands prevented infection. He mandated this in the obstetric ward a Vienna General Hospital and the mortality rate for new mothers fell from 18 percent to 2 percent.
He proselytized the policy to the point his fellow doctors thought him mad. They lured him to a Viennese insane asylum in 1865 under the pretense that he would be visiting a new medical institute. He was put in a straitjacket and confined to a darkened cell. He died two weeks later after a wound on his hand became gangrenous.
Researchers at the University of Delhi gave golden langurs keyboards connected wirelessly to a computer. To their surprise they watched the monkeys used the devices to type. The letters appeared to be mere gibberish until they ran a transcript through a decryption device used by the Indian military. To their shock they realized the langurs were communicating in an advanced code.
An example:
Dsulo IrroLion’s tooth in French is dent de lion. It’s also the name of a plant with coarsely tooth leaves. Say dent de lion fast. Now guess the English name for the plant.
What nation is closest to the United States where there is no land border? Betcha guessed wrong. It’s Russia. The distance between Big Diomede and Little Diomede islands in the Bering Strait is but 2.2 miles.
Wanna buy an empire? On this date, March 28, in 193, the Roman Empire was auctioned for 6,250 drachmas to Didius Julianus, a senator.
The sellers were the Praetorian guards who just had Emperor Pertinax assassinated.
Didius kept his new toy for 66 months before he himself was killed by those who objected to his means of obtaining it.
A drachma is about the daily wage of one worker.