- Bulletproof glass isn't. It's bullet resistant. Given current (2004) technology, it would take a pane of bullet resistant glass at least 3½ inches thick to provide certain protection against a single round fired from the most powerful of the commonly available, portable firearms. No reasonable thickness will protect against closely-spaced multiple hits.
- George Frederick Watts, a noted painter and sculptor of the 1800s, went to visit the parents of his friend and fellow artist, Valentine Princeps, in 1850. He was scheduled to stay three days; he stayed 30 years.
- C. S. Lewis became one of the world's foremost writers on Christianity as a result of a long evening's discussion of religion with J. R. R. Tolkien, author of the magical fantasies The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
- The word "draconian" means exceptionally harsh and strict. It comes from Draco ("dragon"), the name of the Athenian lawgiver who, in 621 BC, stipulated the death penalty for a wide variety of crimes, including stealing fruit.
- When the printing press was invented around 1450, the first items printed were religious. However, when non-religious works started coming off the presses, many of the very first publications were pamphlets describing horrific acts attributed to Vlad Tepes, sometimes called "the son of the dragon" - or, in Romanian, Dracula.
- Bear was an Indian chief who ruled an area north of the island now called Manhattan, a place called, in Bear's language, p'tauk-seet-tough ("home of the Bear"). A new kind of attire was introduced to the US from the town founded in Bear's old home. This was the formal wear known by the Americanized version of the Indian name - tuxedo.
- Porcupines are born with quills.
- The licorice plant produces a chemical - glycyrrhizin - that is fifty times as sweet as table sugar. Incidentally, licorice has been used for thousands of years to treat respiratory problems.
- Hippocrates gets a lot of well-deserved credit for advancing the practice of medicine, but he also advised his colleagues not to treat advanced tuberculosis because the TB sufferer would probably die anyway, thus making the attending physician look bad.
- The Chiuri trees that grow in the Himalayan foothills are handy things to have around. Nepalese parents give them to their daughters as wedding presents. Families process the Chiuri fruit to make a refreshing drink, a butter and shortening substitute, cooking oil, fertilizer, insecticide, chicken feed, candles, soap, rat poison, and a medicine for rheumatism.
- Myth-makers like to claim exalted parentage for their larger-than-life characters. That sometimes gets out of hand. If you believe all the myths, you believe that Hecuba, Queen of Troy, bore 50 children.
- It's fortunate for fantasy fans that wholesaling pencil sharpeners didn't work out too well for Edgar Rice Burroughs. Incidentally, he submitted his first novel under the pseudonym Normal Bean to emphasize that he was imaginative, not crazy.
- Because his later political career was so overwhelming, we often forget that Winston Churchill wrote eight best-selling novels between 1900 and the outbreak of WWI.
- Tennessee has six Official State Songs.
- The Maine Coast Guard unit called to active duty at Fort McClary in Kittery, Maine in 1864 included Corporal Hannibal Hamlin, who trained, worked in the kitchen, and stood guard duty like the rest of his unit. He slept in the officers quarters, though, because he was Vice President of the United States.
- Wooly mammoths still lived in a part of Siberia 500 years after the Egyptians finished the Great Pyramid of Cheops.
- No one knows exactly when she was born, when she died, or what her real name was, but the woman known as Lady Murasaki Shikibu, of the Japanese Imperial Court, wrote the world's first novel, A Tale of Genji, around 1010 AD.
|
