Useless Information! AKA Trivia that you cannot live without!

[girl_dee]

Caesar salad has nothing to do with any of the Caesars. It was first concocted in a bar in Tijuana, Mexico, in the 1920's.

[girl_dee]

Pat Benatar is 65 today
Don Fagen (Steely Dan) is 70.

[charley]

never cook bacon unless you are wearing clothing!

[cathexis]

A florescent light buzzes at a very high frequency which drives some people half mad, but most people don't hear it at all.

[girl_dee]

Originally Posted by cathexis

A florescent light buzzes at a very high frequency which drives some people half mad, but most people don't hear it at all.

Yes and I think this causes headaches

[girl_dee]

Originally Posted by charley

never cook bacon unless you are wearing clothing!

I know there is a story here .... we’ll save it for chat

[Femmewench]

I'm sure this is going to be an answer on Jeopardy one day.

This is the only US state to include USA on its license plates.

What is New Mexico?


Lest we be confused with Mexico.

[cathexis]

Originally Posted by girl_dee

A 13th guest at a table is considered unlucky, and in Paris sometimes a quatorzieme is hired to be a professional 14th guest and balance out the luck.

Forgot about this. Some buildings, especially older ones, are constructed with no floor being referred to as the 13th floor. The buttons on the elevator may be numbered so that there is a 12th floor button then one for the 14th floor.

[homoe]

Originally Posted by charley

never cook bacon unless you are wearing clothing!

SO true........................

[girl_dee]

Dolly Parton is 77 today!



In 1996, scientists named the world's first cloned mammal -- a sheep -- after Dolly Parton. When asked about the name choice, Scientist Ian Wilmut said, "Dolly is derived from a mammary gland cell, and we couldn't think of a more impressive pair of glands than Dolly Parton's.”

Parton has been married to asphalt-paving business owner Carl Dean since May 30, 1966. She admits to staying faithful despite calling herself a flirt. "He knows I'm a flirt and a tease but it's harmless," said Parton. "I've never met the man that would take his place.

Dolly’s birth was paid for with a sack of oatmeal


Her family -- which included 11 siblings, herself the fourth -- was extremely poor when she was growing up in the backwoods of Tennessee's Great Smokey Mountains. "You know they always talk about two rooms and a bath? We had two rooms and a path. We'd have running water when we'd run to get it," Parton said. "We didn't have any electricity ... if fireflies were out, we'd catch them in a mason jar and put them in our bedroom!”

She once lost a Dolly Parton lookalike contest. "I just over-exaggerated my look and went in and just walked up on stage. I didn't win. I didn't even come in close, I don't think," she said.

She refused to sell Elvis Presley the publishing rights to her hit 'I Will Always Love You.' Elvis' manager called Parton the day before the recording session and told her that he and Presley wouldn't record any songs that they didn't have at least half of the publishing rights to. "It had nothing to do with Elvis, because hopefully he was disappointed too, but I just wouldn't let him have the publishing," said Parton.

Since she was 7-years-old, Parton has written approximately 5,000 songs. Parton considers herself a writer first and foremost -- singing has always come second. According to her website, Parton writes a song every two or three days, and she always makes time to write on her birthday. She wrote her first song about her corn-cob doll. She was not able to write yet, so her mother had to copy the lyrics for her.

[girl_dee]

1998 - President Clinton goes on national TV and states, "I want you to listen to me, I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

1784 - Benjamin Franklin writes a letter to his daughter expressing his disapproval of the eagle as our nation's symbol. He preferred the turkey.

1892- Bessie Coleman born d. 1926 American daredevil aviator. She was the world's first black female aviator to obtain a pilot's license (1921). Her father was of mostly Cherokee descent, making her also the first female of native American descent to earn a pilot's license. U.S. pilot schools were unwilling to take a black female student, so she learned French and went to Paris to earn her license. She died in a plane crash while preparing for a show. While flying as a passenger with a student pilot, the plane suffered a mechanical failure and spun out of control. Not seat belted in, she fell out of the plane and plummeted to her death. The pilot died in the crash.


RIP Ms Coleman!

[girl_dee]

The First Social Security Beneficiary

the first Social Security check, check number 00-000-001, was issued to Ida May Fuller in the amount of $22.54 and dated January 31, 1940.



Ida May Fuller was the first beneficiary of recurring monthly Social Security payments. Miss Fuller (known as Aunt Ida to her friends and family) was born on September 6, 1874 on a farm outside of Ludlow, Vermont. She attended school in Rutland, Vermont where one of her classmates was Calvin Coolidge. In 1905, after working as a school teacher, she became a legal secretary. One of the partners in the firm, John G. Sargent, would later become Attorney General in the Coolidge Administration.

Ida May never married and had no children. She lived alone most of her life, but spent eight years near the end of her life living with her niece, Hazel Perkins, and her family in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Miss Fuller filed her retirement claim on November 4, 1939, having worked under Social Security for a little short of three years. While running an errand she dropped by the Rutland Social Security office to ask about possible benefits. She would later observe: "It wasn't that I expected anything, mind you, but I knew I'd been paying for something called Social Security and I wanted to ask the people in Rutland about it."

Her claim was taken by Claims Clerk, Elizabeth Corcoran Burke, and transmitted to the Claims Division in Washington, D.C. for adjudication. The case was adjudicated and reviewed and sent to the Treasury Department for payment in January 1940. The claims were grouped in batches of 1,000 and a Certification List for each batch was sent to Treasury. Miss Fuller's claim was the first one on the first Certification List and so the first Social Security check, check number 00-000-001, was issued to Ida May Fuller in the amount of $22.54 and dated January 31, 1940.

[girl_dee]

The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.


This happens to me a lot, and i think more as we get older!

[VintageFemme]

Originally Posted by cathexis

Forgot about this. Some buildings, especially older ones, are constructed with no floor being referred to as the 13th floor. The buttons on the elevator may be numbered so that there is a 12th floor button then one for the 14th floor.

The building I work in, is like this with 20 floors. It does not list a 13th floor on the elevator buttons. The building is less than ten years old.

[Tovah]

The velociraptor screech from Jurassic Park was a recording of tortoises having sex.

[girl_dee]

Originally Posted by Tovah

The velociraptor screech from Jurassic Park was a recording of tortoises having sex.

,,,,,,,,,

[girl_dee]

Chewbacca's voice was created by the original films' sound designer, Ben Burtt, from recordings of walruses, lions, camels, bears, rabbits, tigers, and badgers in Burtt's personal menagerie. The individual recordings were mixed at different ratios for Chewbacca's different utterances.

[girl_dee]

a group of pugs is called a grumble.

[Femmewench]

Originally Posted by girl_dee

The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.


This happens to me a lot, and i think more as we get older!

Well now I can stop calling it the gift of menopause.

[girl_dee]

The actual quote is from Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar (1599). The warning is uttered by a soothsayer who is letting Roman leader Julius Caesar know that his life is in danger, and he should probably stay home and be careful when March 15th, the Ides of March, rolls around.