

## Too Bizarre To Be True

(T-B to B-T)

By Bill Russo

Copyright 2016 by Bill Russo

Published by CCA Media at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

## Table of Contents

Introduction

Other Books by Bill Russo

Connect with Bill Russo

An interactive, arcane collection of aphorisms, pithy tales, and odd facts - mostly about the third planet from the sun and its strange inhabitants.

**1: Cover photo** : A sculpture in Vancouver B.C. Five full size cars layered on top of a 20 foot Cedar stump. Art by Marcus Bowcott. He capped his stack of progressively bigger autos by putting a Trans Am on the top. The "Totem Pole" is apparently a statement on the growth of Canada's most densely populated area.

**How'd that work out?** The Titanic was the first ship to use the distress signal, S.O.S.

**Kings of the WWE Ring** : Wrestling's Hall of Fame includes such stalwarts as Gorilla Monsoon, George the Animal Steele, Jake the Snake, Killer Kowalski and Donald Trump. In case you are wondering who in the name of Lynda Carter was ever beaten by the real estate mogul – the answer is he beat the guy who owns the whole game, Vincent McMahon Jr.

Trump was inducted into the 'Hall' in 2013 along with living legend Bruno Sammartino who wore the Champion's Belt longer than any wrestler in the history of the promotion.

McMahon Junior took over his dad's business many years ago, just like Trump took over his dad's business many years ago.

Both men have done well and greatly expanded their 'Papa's' businesses.

The moguls faced off in a WWE battle in which the loser agreed to have his head shaved bald on national TV. Stone Cold Steve Austin is hilarious to watch as he threatens to dismantle both tycoons! You can see 20 minutes worth of the fun by clicking the link: <https://youtu.be/vVeVcVBW_CE>

Odd facts about Hillary Clinton. She won a Grammy Award. The best spoken word album for 1996 was her own rendition of her book, "It Takes a Village".

True or False? She never took Bill's last name until seven years after her marriage. If you said false, you are wrong. When Bill was re-elected Governor of Arkansas she stopped being Hillary Rodham and became Hillary Clinton. Later she became known in the press as Hillary Rodham Clinton.

**Ants and People Weigh the Same:** It's really true **.** If you add up the total weight of all the ants on earth and add the total weight of all the people on earth, the two amounts would be roughly equal. The reason for this is that there are 1.6 million ants for every person!

On the third planet from the sun there are 196 countries but only four of them have single-syllable names: France, Spain, Greece, and Chad. There used to be five when Rome was a country and the capital of the world. Today Rome is a city in Italy and is the only city on Planet Earth that has a country inside of it. The 110 acre nation called 'Vatican City' is the smallest country in the world.

The Italian city of Verona, the site of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, receives about 5,000 letters every year sent to Juliet. (Some are actually addressed to "Juliet, Verona.") A team of volunteers reply to every letter offering advice on affairs of the heart! Ciao!

Ciao is an Italian word meaning both Hello and Goodbye. Other words that are both a greeting and a farewell include "Aloha" from Hawaii, "Salut" from France and Servus from Germany.

Actually the German word, and in fact all of the others, come from the Latin word "servus" (same spelling as the German usage). Servus in Latin means servant. Later the term meant "at your service". Among the other words derived from the original Latin word is the word serf.

Some people wish that English had a term for both 'Hello' and 'Goodbye': actually it does. It's 'Ciao'. The handy little word has been used so much that it has been adopted by many languages - in the same manner as you can sometimes hear speakers from such diverse nations as Brazil and Bulgaria insert the American word "OK" in the middle of conversations.

What is the name of the only city in the world that straddles two continents?" - "Istanbul in Turkey." The Strait of Bosphorus splits the city of 14 million people into a European Side and an Asian side.

Isntabul was once the mighty Constantinople. On the 500th anniversary of the fall of the city-state to the Ottomans, somebody wrote a song to commemorate the 1930 changing of the municipality's name to Istanbul. The song was a giant hit for the four lads and a minor hit for 'They Might be Giants'. Here's the link to the Youtube 'Gold Record' version by the Four Lads; <https://youtu.be/Wcze7EGorOk>

Now here's the connection to the more up-tempo take by "They Might Be Giants". The group is most famous for singing "Boss of Me", the theme song to Malcom in the Middle, which featured Bryan Cranston - most famous for "Breaking Bad"; <https://youtu.be/vsQrKZcYtqg>

"Boss of Me" was never a hit in the U.S. but reached number 21 in the U.K. and 29 in Australia. The group took its name "They Might Be Giants" from a 1971 film of that name starring Joanne Woodward and George C. Scott which in turn was lifted from Cervantes most famous work, when his Don Quixote mistakes windmills for giants.

**His name was not Don!** Quixote's first name was actually Alonso. Rather than a person's name, "Don" in Italy, Spain, Portugal and other countries is a title of honor bestowed for gentlemen of esteem or wealth.

In Italy the female equivalent is 'donna' and in Spain it is 'dona'. The Spanish language calls for a punctuation mark over the n, called a tilde, which changes the pronunciation

of 'dona' to 'don-ya'.

**The malt beverage, Guinness Stout** is brewed in over 50 countries around the world, and sold in more than 120. About three million quarts of Guinness are quaffed every day. Over 40 per cent is consumed in Africa, the site of three of the five company-owned brewing operations. Great Britain, however, is the largest Guinness customer, followed by Africa, and Ireland. The Guinness drinkers of the United States aren't too far behind, ranking fifth on the list.

This information comes from a little side business of the beer company, called "The Guinness Book of Records". The book itself is a record holder. It's the best selling copyrighted book of all time! You might think I got this information from the Guinness Book of Records. You would be wrong – Wikipedia!

There are at least 8,000 man-made objects orbiting the Earth. Almost 2000 tons of space-junk litter the lower atmosphere. The trash is made up mostly of old satellites and spent rocket stages that will eventually burn up as they fall closer to the surface.

**Say it ain't so** : It is so! That story about the Great Wall of China being the only man-made object that's visible from space is simply not true. If you are in a very low orbit you could probably see the Great Wall, and you will also be close enough to see other man-made objects – even the highways. By the time you rocket four or five thousand miles away, nothing man-made is visible to the naked eye.

They need their 'space': If there were no space between atoms, the entire planet Earth would be about as big as a baseball!

**Quiz – What Was Humpty Dumpty?** If you said egg, your response matches that of 99 per cent of the people who answered the question in a recent query. But why do you say he is an egg? Who told you? There is no reference in the rhyme that states what 'Hump' is. Here's the full text of the poem:

Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the King's horses and all the King's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

As you can see, there is no actual proof that he's an egg. He might just be a roly poly disheveled plump little lad who broke a leg and maybe an arm when he fell.

**Older people are more nosey:** No offense seniors it's not your fault. In all human beings both noses and ears never stop growing, so if you live long enough people will start calling you Pinocchio! Even if they whisper it, with those still growing big flaps, you'll hear them.

If you drained Lake Superior and were able spread it evenly across the 48 States, all the land would be covered with 12 inches of water.

**Dreamers are smarty pants!** According to scientists the higher the IQ, the more a person dreams. In school my teachers always accused me of daydreaming. Does that count?

**2: A burp is only a breath of air** coming from the heart. But when it goes the other way, it's just a common...

According to people who study such things, the average person 'produces more than a pint of 'gas' every day. This equals exactly 13.6381 individual farts.

**Cycle of life** : Caterpillars literally melt down into a sac of fluid cells. From this mass of ooze is created the entire body of a butterfly.

In Detroit in 1937, a baby fell from a 4th floor window and landed on a man walking on the street, named Joseph Figlock, Both survived. Two years later another baby fell from a fourth floor window on the same street and landed on the same man. Once again both Figlock and the child survived.

How is it that Figlock would be twice in the same situation? He was a street sweeper employed by the city so he spent eight hours a day or more on the streets – still it's a remarkable coincidence that babies twice fell on him from four stories and that everybody survived. These accidents are certainly are TBTBT - Too Bizarre To Be True!

**The most productive American President was John Tyler**. I don't know the first thing about his Presidency except that he was elected in 1841. The reason he gets the productivity award is that he was father to at least 15 children which is more than any other occupant of the nation's highest office. If allegations of his relations with slave women are true, then the tally goes much higher. Tyler had eight children with his first wife who died from a stroke at 52. He had seven more children with the second wife.

Tyler was born in 1790 and yet as of 2016, he still has two living grandsons. Both were born in the 1920s to his son Lyon who was born in 1853 and died in 1935.

Try to reach your daily laugh quota with these next few items:

Unless you get cremated and spend the afterlife in an urn, you'll go to a cemetery where you will have a grave, headstone, and a chance to make a last statement. Many people decide that their final words will be anything but grave – here are a few examples. 1.Rodney Dangerfield's marker says, "There Goes the Neighborhood". Even in death, he gets no respect.

2. The man of a thousand voices Mel Blanc who gave audio life to Porky Pig, Sylvester the Cat, Tweetie Bird, Bugs Bunny and many more; left a familiar comment on his stone. It says, "That's all Folks".

3. And now an epitath from the Old West. "Here lies Lester More. Four Slugs from a 44. No les. No more."

4. In my book The Creature From the Bridgewater Triangle and other Odd Tales from New England, I relate the story behind the epitath of rowdy Johnny Prior. After Johnny finally got his due and was set in his grave, his good widow would have nothing to do with writing any final words on his marker; so the Selectmen had the following inscribed on his slab,

"As I am now so shall ye be,

Prepare yourself and follow me."

Widow Prior, who was kin to Mayflower voyagers, sneaked into the cemetery under the cover of darkness and added a few lines underneath, which read –

"To follow you I'll not consent -

For, I know which way you went!

There's a lot more to that story and it can be found in the book, which is available in paperback or as a 99 cent E-book.

" **My doctor gave me two weeks to live**. I hope they're in August on Cape Cod."

"After 12 years of therapy, my psychiatrist said something that brought tears to my eyes. He said, 'No hablo ingles.'"

Over fifty young American girls were taken to the hospital after getting sick from kissing frogs. It happened after the release of the Disney film, "The Princess and the Frog" in which a princess kisses a frog who turns into a prince. In real life when ten year olds kiss frogs, the frogs go "Yuck" and the girls turn into hospital patients. Don't Kiss Frogs!

**Gatorade** was not made from alligators or for alligators; but it was made for 'Gators' - the members of the college football team. The University of Florida's share so far from the profits is approaching 100 million dollars!

**In 1830 the very first train race** featured a railroad car pulled by a steam engine named Tom Thumb against Stewball the horse, pulling an equal sized railroad car. Tom Thumb sprinted out to an early lead but blew a gasket and old Stewball passed him by and came a dancin' and prancin' across the finish line in first place!

The same year that Ol' Stewball beat Tom Thumb there were only 23 miles of track in the U.S. But 20 years later there were almost ten thousand miles of rail. By 1916 there was enough trackage in North America to take the train all the way to the moon (250,000 miles).

In 1903 the Wright Brothers make the first successful airplane flight. Their craft managed about 120 feet. Now, about 120 years later, a Boeing 787 can fly

10,000 miles on a single tank of gas.

Flight Talk: English is the official language of the air. Worldwide, all flight controllers and commercial pilots who fly on international flights are required to speak English.

The Wright Brothers in 1902 testing a glider.

3: **When did a computer first pick the winner of a presidential election?**

UNIVAC, the first commercial computer, did the trick in 1952. According to the polling system of the time Senator Adlai Stevenson was expected to have a landslide win over General Dwight Eisenhower. UNIVAC knew, but the pollsters didn't, that everybody was saying "I Like Ike". The World War II hero won 442 electoral votes to only 89 for Stevenson. The win broke a string of Democratic victories going back to 1932.

If Univac had been operating in time for the 1948 election it would have saved a lot of heartache for the nation's newspapers. As election results trickled in and deadlines neared, many papers ran the following headline or a variation of it for their morning editions – 'Dewey Beats Truman'. But even as people were spreading out the newspaper on the breakfast table, the radio was reporting that the new President was not Dewey but come from behind winner, Harry Truman.

**UNIVAC was not a laptop** : The only lap that the **UNIV** ersal **A** utomatic **C** omputer could fit on would be the lap of luxury, for it was priced at 1.5 million dollars. Most of the early sales were to government agencies. Logistical problems included finding enough space for a computer than had 5200 vacuum tubes and weighed 29,000 pounds.

Eisenhower's Vice President was future President Richard M. Nixon.

**Really odd fact about the 1952 election:** Outgoing President Harry M. Truman who had decided not to seek re-election tried to recruit his old General to run for President as a Democrat. Ike declined and later signed on with the Republican team.

**What's the largest volcano** in the entire solar system?

It's good old Olympus Mons, on Mars. It is almost 400 miles wide and 14 miles high! Almost three times higher than earth's highest peak, Mount Everest, it's wide enough to cover all of the flatlands of Arizona. The city of London would easily fit inside the vast crater at the top. But, because of its wide base, climbing it would not require mountaineering skills. You would need some sort of breathing assistance. Since Mars atmosphere is 95 per cent carbon dioxide, its air would be fatal in a time frame just slightly longer than the 60 seconds or so that you can hold your breath.

The US Secret Service was first established in 1865. It original task? Seek out and stop the manufacturers and distributors of bogus money. At the end of the Civil War, around 40% of American paper currency in circulation was counterfeit.

**The five cent U.S. note**. Fractional or postage currency has a rich history. At the beginning of the Civil War people starting hoarding coins for their precious metal content. Coins became difficult to find because of the hoarding. People started to try to use stamps instead of coins as a means of commerce. The government decided to help ease the hoarding issue by issuing "paper coins" also known as postage currency or fractional currency. Fractional currency was first issued on August 21, 1862 and they were last issued on February 15, 1876. Three cents, five cents, ten cents, twenty-five cents, and fifty cents notes were all issued. Fractional currency is physically smaller than other United States money. It also does not have a serial number.

The 14th State that Never Was. In the beginning the United States was composed of 13 colonies. It was planned that the 14th colony to be admitted to the Union would be the State of "Franklin". But before Franklin was able to become part of the United States, in 1788, the autonomous region was downgraded and became merely a section of Tennessee – which was not part of the United States until 1798 when it became not the 14th, but the 16th state.

**Texas allowed to split into five states:** Under the terms of its admission to the United States, Texas could divide itself into five separate states. There were a number of proposals considered in the 1800s but ultimately the largest of the 48 united, United States came into the Union as a single entity.

In the early 1900s a bill was introduced in the Texas legislature to spin off the panhandle into the new state of "Jefferson". In the 1990s the movement to make "Jefferson" the 51st State was re-kindled. Another proposed state in 1869 was 'Lincoln".

The highlighted part at the bottom of the picture is the proposed State of Lincoln.

A retired college professor, Herbert Arbuckle, said "It's still valid" in reference to the provisions of law which would permit Texas to split into five states.

He points out one advantage that such an arrangement would give to Texans – "We would have ten senators!"

After Barack Obama won his second term as President, a petition was floated and signed by over 125,000 people to secede "peacefully" from the United States. Arbuckle said that the Civil War proved that states cannot secede, but if the big state decided to become a handful of smaller states, the new group would be able to wield much more power than the single state of Texas. Stay tuned!

Instead of a new state coming from Texas, it's much more likely that the 51st state will either be Puerto Rico or the District of Columbia. Both PR and DC have large groups pushing for statehood. In the case of the island, there is also a fair amount of opposition.

**4: Don't get mad at me. I didn't say it**. "Michael Jackson's album was only called 'Bad' because there wasn't enough room on the sleeve for 'Pathetic.'" – The Late artist known as Prince.

"My doctor gave me two weeks to live. I hope they're in August on Cape Cod."

"Somebody complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen; it said 'Parking Fine.'" – an unknown comic.

Prior to World War One, The Bayer Company of Germany, owned exclusive use of the trademark, "Aspirin". The U.S. and other allied nations were given the rights to the name as part of the reparations in the Treaty of Versailles.

In the mid 1700s the active ingredient of aspirin was first isolated and extracted from the bark of willow trees. Prior to the identification of the Salicylic Acid, people had known for thousands of years that willow bark had therapeutic properties. Scientists believe that the use of bark medicine predates Christianity by some 400 years.

**The record for selling the most records** (also CDs, downloads, etc)

The top selling solo artist of all times is still the American artist Elvis Presley of Tupelo, Mississippi. His recordings have sold upwards of 210 million certified units.

The best selling group, the Beatles from Britain, are the top selling act of all time, beating even Elvis, with 269 million units.

In third position is pop singer Michael Jackson who is credited with 180 million units.

Madonna leads all women and is in fourth place overall with a very respectable 170 million pieces sold.

Rounding out the top five is the U.K.'s Elton John at a not too shabby 166 million.

Filling out the top ten are: Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Rihanna, Mariah Carey, and Celine Dionne.

In slots ten through fifteen are AC/DC, Whitney Houston, Queen, The Rolling Stones and Abba.

Rounding out the 20 top acts of all time are; Taylor Swift, Eminem, Garth Brooks, The Eagles and U2.

Just missing the top 20 is the Bronx's favorite son Billy Joel. William Martin Joel, born in 1949, shows no sign of slowing down and may be able to move up the charts - especially since he has become a franchise player at Madison Square Garden, one of the most fabled venues in the States. Singed to play one concert a month indefinitely, he quickly set the all time attendance record for the 19,000 seat mid town landmark. Go. Go, Go Mr. Piano Man!

**5:** **Are you sure you'll be back in a jiffy**? As it happens, a 'jiffy' is a real unit of time – it's 1/100th of a second. It takes a full measure of one hundred "jiffies" to equal one second!

A second isn't what you think it is. Scientifically, it is not defined as 1/60th of a minute, but as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom."

But that's no fun. Think about this one. Time passes faster on your face than your feet. Einstein's theory of relativity postulates that the closer you are to the center of the earth the slower time goes. So if you go to the top of Mount Everest and stay there for 365 days you can shorten that year by a whole two or three "jiffies".

The third season of the year, by the 17th century, was called "fall" by the whole English speaking world. Within a hundred years many British people favored "autumn" and considered "fall" an American assassination of speech! Today either is acceptable but poets and lovers prefer "autumn" to "fall". I prefer summer to both!

**About Time** : George Carlin said "There is no time. We made it up."

"Aside from Velcro, time is the most mysterious substance in the universe. You cannot see it. You are not able to touch it and yet a "Computer Geek" can charge you a hundred dollars an hour to look at your PC and not really fix anything!" – an unknown comic.

**Blame/Credit Benjamin Franklin for Daylight Savings Time**. Funny guy that Ben. He came up with the idea of DST as a joke. He liked the idea of forcing people to get up one hour earlier during the planting season so that they could work more hours in the daylight and save on candles.

**Where Time Flies;** Not surprisingly **,** the fastest paced cities in the U.S.A are all Eastern communities. They are Boston, New York and Buffalo. The slowest paced cities – no surprise there either - Two are in Cali and one is in the South: Shreveport, Los Angeles and Sacramento. Sacrebleu!

**So when this happens, Will we live forever?** Scientists, some of them anyway, say that time may come to an end. They claim that the acceleration of the expanding cosmos is only an illusion that is caused by a decrease in the speed of time. They think that time will eventually stop and everything will come to a standstill. I usually bet on horses that do that.

**Stephen King claims to have written 'The Shining'** and about a hundred other

Best-selling books; but I have it on the highest authority that every word that he ever set down on paper was lifted verbatim from Webster's Dictionary. To be fair he doesn't just throw the words out in alphabetical order like Noah did - he rearranges them a bit to make them a little more interesting than Mr. Webster's.

**6: Twit or Tweet?** When you send out a message on Twitter it probably should be called a twit, but it is not. A pregnant goldfish should probably be called Goldmother, but she's not. She actually is called a "Twit".

Butterflies taste with their feet. That's no great feat – my feet smell.

It's physically impossible for you to lick your elbow. You're trying right now aren't you? I told you that you couldn't do it! It is also not possible for you to run a mile in under four minutes. I don't think you're even going to try!

How Wild Was The West?

Dusty Main Street in any Old West town was dampened not by rain, but by blood spilling from the losers of daily gun battles. Ladies and cowpokes alike had their nostrils seared by the lingering smell of gunsmoke hanging in the air like cobwebs in a forgotten attic.

That's the image that most people have on the American West of the 1800s. Losers in poker games, feeling cheated, would rather 'plug' the card sharp rather than leave town broke. "Hoss Theives" were escorted to hell at the end of a rope dangling from a Cottonwood tree. If the beer wasn't cold enough, even a sod buster would backhand the bartender and slap him silly unless he got a colder one.

There was no law. The sheriff hastily left to 'go fishing' every time a gun-hand turned up, with a face that was a match for a wanted poster tacked up on the wall of the General Store.

Dodge City's Front Street in the 1870s

Take this quick quiz.

How many people were gunned down in a typical year in the Wild West towns of Abilene, Dodge, Laredo et al?

A: 100

B: 1000

C: 2000

D: 5

If you answered "C" you are off by 1995. If you said "B" you missed it by 995. If your reply is "A" you're off the mark by 95.

Yes M'am or Sir. The answer is five! That's it. The average murder rate in the years around 1875 was 1.5 per year.

How about the most famous gun battle in the history of the cowboy days? The Gunfight at the OK Corral - the most bloody shootout in the history of Tombstone, Arizona and in fact all of the West. The body count? A total of three 'hombres' were killed.

The fame, or should we say 'infamy' of the Wild West is due in large part to the novels of Ned Buntline. Writing in the 1870s he made "Buffalo Bill" a national hero and glamorized the seedier side of the frontier. Boston and New York newspapermen ran reams of copy sensationalizing the life west of the Mississippi.

Chief Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill Cody in the late 1800s.

7 **: "People say New Yorkers can't get along**. Not true, I saw two New Yorkers, complete strangers, share a cab. One guy took the tires and the radio. The other guy took the engine." -- David Letterman

"New York is a town where something is happening all the time. Most unsolved." -- Johnny Carson – Tonight Show.

"This is the Tonight Show. I can't tell you much about it other than the fact that this show is going to go on forever" -- Steve Allen first host of the Tonight Show on the program's premiere broadcast, live from New York in 1953.

While the show hasn't yet been on forever, it's close. Starting with 'Steverino' in 1953 there have been to date a total of six hosts. They are: Steve Allen (1954-57) then came Jack Parr (1957-62) followed by Johnny Carson for three decades (1962-92) then Jay Leno for 17 years (1992-2009) Conan O'Brien had a trial run that lasted two years (2009-2010) until Jay Leno took the show back for four more years (2010-2014) and finally Jimmy Fallon grasped the helm in 2014. Consider this: The host of the Tonight Show for the year 2100 has probably not been born yet!

Boston Joke: "Why do ducks fly over Boston upside down? Answer: "Because there's nothing worth crapping on!"

"What's the capital of Massachusetts?"

Answer: "Boston".

Reply" "Nope. It's 'M' of course."

In colonial Boston the first person sentenced to the stocks was named Edward Palmer. He was also the builder of the stocks. His crime? He charged too much for building the stocks!

Fred Allen, one of radio's top comedians, started out working in the stacks of the Boston Public Library. He juggled books in his spare time. Though he probably would have made a good accountant, he became a juggler in Vaudeville before going into radio. As a successful author, he had a few choice words for his editors, "Where were you when the page was empty?" On Hollywood Fred pulled no punches when he said, "All the sincerity in Hollywood you could stuff into the navel of a flea and still have room left over for eight caraway seeds and an agent's heart." Fred was a man of many words – most of them very funny.

Giles Corey had only two words for the witch hunters who were executing him in colonial Salem by crushing him with an ever increasing mound of heavy stones – "more weight".

Some Thoughts On Marriage... Bill Fields said "Marriage is better than leprosy because it's easier to get rid of." He may also have said "Before marriage, a man yearns for the woman he loves. After marriage, the 'y' becomes silent."

"I spend money with reckless abandon. Last month I blew $5,000 at a reincarnation seminar. I thought, -What the hell, you only live once."

The tongue of a chameleon is twice as long as its body! Due to the fact that the chameleon is a slow-moving creature, it has evolved a very long (and very fast) tongue, making it easier to catch a quick lunch.

The average human tongue is four inches long (10 cm) and has between 6,000 and 10,000 tastebuds. People with more than 10,000 are called "supertasters" People with under 2000 tastebuds are called non tasters. Everybody else is in the middle.

Bill Fields, known as W.C. was among the greatest comics of the first half of the 20th century. A notorious drinker, Mae West refused to work with him after they made the very successful, "My Little Chickadee". She turned down a fortune and multiple offers and never made another movie with him. One of the tales told about his drinking on the set concerned a lemonade container. Bill Fields was tiring of Mae's complaints about his boozing so he started hiding his gin in the lemonade container.

One day somebody pulled a joke on the comic and poured out his liquor, replacing it with something else.

When Field's took a slug he almost choked to death and screamed out: "What Damned fool put lemonade in my lemonade?"

He once complained that while on safari his supply of liquor was stolen and he had to exist for a whole week on nothing but food and water!

A friend saw W.C. leaving a liquor store shortly after 1941 invasion of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Fields was pushing a hand truck loaded to the gills with six cases of scotch.

"Bill, Why are you buying six cases of whiskey?"

"Well, I got six because I think it's going to be a short war," he replied.

"I always keep a little flask of whiskey handy in case of snake bite," said W.C., adding -- "I always keep a little snake handy too."

**8: A single day on the planet Mercury** is twice as long as a year. Because it revolves so slowly, a day on Mercury corresponds to 176 days on Earth. However, a year (the amount of time to complete an orbit of the sun), corresponds to just 88 Earth days.

Confused? Me too. So if we were on Mercury for a single day, in reality we would be there two years? I don't think there's enough suntan lotion on Earth to allow humans to stay on Mercury for a whole day since it gets up to 800 degrees by high noon.

Eight arms has the giant squid but only two eyes. The eyes are big. They can grow up to 20 inches in diameter. The deep sea creatures can grow to 40 feet or more.

One of the few predators of the giant squid is the sperm whale – the largest of the toothed whales. Adult males average over 50 feet in length. Their brains are five times larger than human brains. That would make them smarter than people except that at 120,000 pounds they are 600 times bigger than humans! This fact, comparatively speaking, makes sperm whales 'pinheads'.

Have you heard that men think about sex every seven seconds? If you're a woman, you might even believe it. Nobody is really sure how this myth got started – although it is probable that women had something to do with it. The truth is that there's not a single shred of scientific evidence (or even anecdotal evidence) to back up this notion. It's basically an 'old wives tale'. And 'wives' is the key word in this factoid.

In fact, according to an American Sex Survey, 30% of men don't think about sex at all during the day. (this compares to 66% of women, still a long way from "every seven seconds" territory.) As for the other 70%, - if they were thinking about it every seven seconds, it would be hard to get anything done: like spending three hours trying to recover a crucial document that was accidentally deleted.

While Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and temperatures can reach 800 degrees at high noon, the North Pole which is shown in this picture, is actually very cold because it never gets direct sunlight. NASA says there may be frozen water (ice) in that dark spot near the top of the pole.

**9: The year 2017** : It's the 150th anniversary of Canada and the 50th anniversary of the only flying saucer landing pad in the world. Built by the local community to celebrate Canada's 100th birthday in 1967, it's in St. Paul, Alberta. As far as we know the UFO landing pad has had no usage in the last half century but is looking forward to some in the next.

**More TB-to-BT: Bad city names**.

These monikers may be Too Bizarre to Be True, but they really, really are:

**Pile of Bones**. By royal decree, the name of this Canadian city was changed in 1900 to Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan.

**Swilling's Mills**. Today the city's 1.4 million residents are glad that the name was changed to Phoenix, Arizona.

**Sing Sing** was a nice little town till they put a prison in it and the local manufacturers complained when they had to stamp their wares as 'made in Sing Sing'. Today those products are stamped with the town's new handle, Ossening, New York.

**Hot Springs** was a great appelation for a village, but there was this radio show called Truth or Consequences that offered a little prize to any town that would change its name and so the town fathers changed the name of their peaceful community to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

**Intercourse:** if ever a place needed a name makeover it was Intercourse. So they changed it to Siloan – but it didn't take. Map makers and just about everybody else still call it Intercourse. It's true. You could look it up on Wikipedia. "Just Google Intercourse in Alabama".

There's also and Intercourse, Pennsylvania in Amish country. The 1985 movie "Witness" starring Harrison Ford was filmed in Intercourse, PA. The population of the town is steady at around 1,500 people.

If you are coming to Pennsylvania make sure to see Intercourse.

**10:** TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard. It's true. You could look it up – or just type it on your own keyboard!

Children think adults have almost no sense of humor and they might be right. Kids laugh, on average, 400 times a day. Adults yuk It up only 15 times. Back when Johnny Carson hosted the tonight show the average for adults was 22.6 laughs per day.

Robert Ripley, he of 'Believe it or Not', dug up this next tale. A Texas man, Henry Ziegland, broke up with his fiancé in 1893. The jilted lady's heart was broken and she committed suicide. The girl's stalwart brother sought revenge. He tracked Ziegland down and fired a blast at the head of the vagabond lover. Ziegland went down and the brother then turned the gun on himself and ended his own life. Henry was on the ground and seemed lifeless, but the bullet had only grazed his head and had merely knocked him out for a few minutes. He recovered fully and lived peacefully for years afterwards.

Still residing in his same house in 1913, some 20 years later, Ziegland wanted to get rid of a large tree on his property near to where he had been shot. The tree was so wide that he felt it would be easier to blow it up with dynamite than to try and chop it down. When he blew up the tree, he suddenly fell dead, though he was standing far away from the explosion. Investigators found out that the bullet that had grazed Ziegland two decades prior had lodged in the tree that he blew up. The explosion propelled the ancient bullet from the tree straight into Ziegland's head – avenging the deaths of the fiancé and her brother some 20 years later. Vengeance is always sweet and sometimes very patient!

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

The once ubiquitous typewriter is rarely seen today in the U.S. but continues to be used in many parts of the world especially where electric service is spotty.

**11: Bob Ripley didn't come up with this one** but it is a 'Believe it or Not' - the USA PATRIOT Act's name is actually an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.

One of the best known acronyms of the 20th century came from the U.S. military. 'Snafu' stands for 'Situation Normal, all Fouled Up'. That's the version that writers use. Real soldiers probably say, "Situation Normal all 'effed' Up".

I know, I know. I used 'effed' instead of the real word. DAMMIT JIM I'M A WRITER NOT A SOLDIER!!!

**Real Newspaper Headlines** –

Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case

Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures

Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges

Bugs Flying Around With Wings Are Flying Bugs

Homicide Victims Rarely Talk to Police

Iraqi Head Seeks Arms

Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says

New Vaccine May Contain Rabies

Hospitals Sued by Seven Foot Doctors

Panda Mating Fails: Veterinarian Takes Over

After Detour to California, Shuttle Returns to Earth

Juvenile Court To Try Shooting Defendant

Clinton Wins on Budget, But More Lies Ahead

Two Sisters Reunited After 18 Years in Checkout Counter

Dead Coyote Found in Bronx Launches Search for Its Mate

Diana Was Still Alive Hours Before She Died

Federal Agents Raid Gunshop, Find Weapons

Midget Sues Grocer, Cites Belittling Remarks

One Armed Man Applauds Acts of Kindness

Poison Control Center Reminds Everyone Not to Take Poison

Attorney Accidentally Sues Himself

Threat Disrupts Plan to Meet About Threats

Shot off Woman's Leg Helps Nicklaus to 66

Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery, Hundreds Dead

Man Struck By Lightning Faces Battery Charge

Kids Make Nutritious Snacks

British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands

National Hunting Group Targeting Women

Man Accused of Killing Lawyer Receives a New Attorney

Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Ax

Worst Newspaper Ad Mistake: "Italian Swill Colony Wine"

**12: Q. What's special about the word "Rhythm"?** Answer - It's the longest word in the English language that doesn't contain a full-time vowel. A E I O U are the starting five on the vowel's varsity squad, but the ambiguous "Y" sometimes gets to go in as a sub.

There are more than a thousand trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion ways a chess game can play out. That's more than the number of electrons in the entire universe. It might even equal a googol.

A googol is the largest number with a name. It is a one with a hundred zeros behind it. It also was the inspiration for the large search engine corporation known as Google.

More people speak EngIish in India than in England, Australia, Canada, and the U.S. combined.

There was little punctuation in western literature until the 1400s when the invention of moveable type prompted the introduction of a standard system to break up sentences and make text easier to read.

Of the world's population, one person in ten lives on an island. Indonesia and Britain account for nearly half of that total. The most populous islands are Java (an island of Indonesia) 140 million. 2. Honshu, Japan, 104 million. 3. Great Britain, 62 million. 4. Luzon, Phillipines, 48 million. 5. Sumatra, Indonesia, 47 million.

The island of Java with its huge population is smaller than the combined area of the six New England states – Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and Connecticut. Java is so densely populated that the island has ten times as many people as the 14 million that live in New England.

Map showing language distribution on Java

**13: The longest Hollywood kiss was not from some steamy** Jane Russell film or from a hot flick made in the 1990s by Sharon Stone. The longest pucker in picture history was osculated in the 1941 comedy film, "You're in the Army Now." Jimmy Durante, Phil Silvers, Jane Wyman and Regis Toomey were the stars. Toomey and Wyman lip locked for a record three minutes and five seconds. Ms. Wyman was married to the actor Ronald Reagan from 1940 to 1949. Despite their divorce, it's reported that she voted for Ronnie when he ran for President in the elections of 1980 and 1984.

I have it from reliable sources that 1/3 of people with alarm clocks hit the 'snooze' button every morning. In the 25-34 age group, it is over half.

From former TV commentator Jon Stewart: "I celebrated last Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land."

Forty two per cent of you will get this wrong. It would be a higher percentage if I hadn't given you this little 'heads up' to put you on your toes. You're in a race. You overtake the athlete in second place, what position are you in now? A. If you answered 'first', think again. You've overtaken the athlete in second place, which means you're now in second place.

**14: What do Godzilla, Mickey Mouse, Shrek, Snoopy,** Snow White and Tinker Bell have in common? They are among 16 fictional characters that have stars on Hollywood's "Walk of Fame." Yes, the Simpsons (Bart and company) also have a star.

When Sam Bellamy's pirate ship The Whidah, sank off the coast of Wellfleet in 1717, ten tons of gold in coin, dust, and bars was scattered on the beaches of Cape Cod. Locals found a few coins every year for hundreds of years. In 1986 Barry Clifford led a team that found and salvaged The Whidah and recovered 60 cannon, thousands of gold coins, and 200,000 artifacts from the ship. Mr. Clifford displays them in his Whidah Museum in Yarmouth, Cape Cod.

If all the gold in the ocean were mined, there would be enough to give every man, woman, and child on Earth almost ten pounds apiece.

Some of the gold recovered from the Whidah by Barry Clifford

What's in a name? Dave Thomas named his burger stand after daughter, Wendy. The name Hasbro is derived from the name of its founders, Hassenfeld Brothers. Similarly, the name Adidas is also derived from its founder Adolph "Adi" Dassler. Incidentally, Adi's brother Rudolph also formed his own company which he initially called Ruda. He eventually came up a more descriptive, original name - Puma.

From my Funk and Wagnall to yours: What's that word again? It's on the tip of your tongue. The word we're looking for is "lethologica". It means not being able to remember the word or name you're looking for.

**Q. Which Hollywood beauty** was the cover girl for Life Magazine more than anyone else?

A. Sepia haired sizzler, Elizabeth Taylor. The magazine was published for more than a hundred years and at one time had a weekly circulation of 13.5 million copies.

**15: The average driver in the United States** spends about two days a year waiting for red traffic lights to turn green. Most people have to wait eight minutes per day but for some the delay is fifteen minutes or more.

It takes about one half of an ounce of gasoline to start the average car. And sitting at a stoplight for one minute consumes 1.6 ounces of gasoline. So what does this cost you? At $2.50 a gallon (128 ounces) starting up old 'Nellybelle' will set you back three fourths of a penny. And that long wait for the light to finally turn green – that's going to set you back two and a half cents! It doesn't sound like much but there are 250 million cars and trucks in the United States. So it costs America $1,875,000 each and every time the cars are started. And if everybody has to wait one minute at a stop light during the day, the cost is a mind boggling six and a quarter million dollars. In terms of wasted fuel – one engine start and one wait at a stop light will squander over four million gallons!

Where's the nearest gas station? According to astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11′s lunar module only had about 20 second's worth of fuel remaining when it landed on the moon

The word anagram has no anagram. In case you forgot here's an example of an anagram. Ron Paul/Our Plan

Here's a few more:

Cone/Once,

Face/Café,

Fade/Deaf.

Here's a few tougher ones: Gainly – Laying

Resistance – Ancestries

Orchestra – Carthorse

Replays – Parsley

Working out anagrams can be a fun way to pass some time. Let's move on now because I think you get the idea how an anagram is dame /made!

In 1940 there were 8,000 residents in the village of Las Vegas, Nevada. By 1960 there were 64,000 people in the city and 16,000 slot machines. By 1999, the population had risen to almost 500,000 people and 200,000 slot machines.

It's commonly said that no word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple. However, there are some obscure (but real) words that do rhyme with them. Month rhymes with en-plus-oneth, or (n+1)th, a mathematical term. Orange rhymes with Blorenge, a hill in Wales. Silver rhymes with chilver, a female lamb. Purple rhymes with curple, the hind-quarters or a horse or donkey. Dumb rhymes with crumb, which is what I am for even bringing this up.

Think fast. Do you trim your toenails more often than your fingernails? Probably not. Your fingernails grow four times faster than your toenails. Thank the Lord for this because it's a lot easier to trim pinkie and company than those things down by the ankles.

**16: "The guy who invented** the hokey-pokey just died. It was a weird funeral. First, they put his left leg in -" unknown comic

If you have a fear of peanut-butter getting stuck to the roof of your mouth, then you suffer from Arachibutyrophobia. (For real! You could look it up.) And if you have Arachnophobic Arachibutyrophobia, you are suffering from a fear of spiders getting stuck in the peanut butter getting stuck to the roof of your mouth.

If you have a fear of diaphoresis stay out of steam baths – they cause diaphoresis (Sweating).

**Why Isn't Ruth** the opposite of ruthless? Most guys are not cruel, heartless and callous so they can't be called ruthless. They are the antithesis of Ruthless and they should be called Ruth. I think I just answered my own question - guys named Spike, Rocky, Gunner and Axe are probably not going to like being called Ruth.

**Numb and Dumb** : In Texas in the 1970s, two 'yeggs' tried cashing a stolen check at a local bank. Unfortunately for these two dim mugs, the teller behind the window was also the victim of their theft! A few hours earlier, they had broken in and swiped checks from her home. So they got to the bank and the two knuckleheads went to the teller window of their victim. She immediately recognized her own checks and notified the police who quickly apprehended Dumb and Numb, the Skull brothers.

**What do you call a word that is spelled the same backwards?** Words like "Madam" are called palindromes. Here are a few more:

Civic

Radar

Mom

Noon

Racecar

You can stretch the boundaries of playing with Palindromes by stringing two or more words together to make a Palindrome phrase:

Top spot

My Gym

Don't nod.

Step on no pets.

Was it a cat I saw?

No lemon, no melon.

Sit on a potato pan Otis.

Madam I'm Adam.

Now here's the palindrome champ. Let me know if you can find a longer one than this 21 letter gem.

Eva can I see bees in a cave?

**17: The protest organization "Don't Make a Wave** Committee" was founded by Canadians to expose the nuclear testing being carried out by the US in Amchitka, Alaska. Eventually the group adopted the name of the ship they used during their protests – Greenpeace.

The ship that gave a 'movement' its name – Greenpace.

The ship Greenpeace is now retired but the organization is still thriving and it now has three ships.

Honey is the only food that doesn't spoil. A jar of honey that was discovered in the moldy tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh – and estimated to be some 3,300 years old -- was found to be perfectly good to eat. They said the same thing about the Twinkies they found – but they were probably only 50 years old.

Atom's Apple: The size of an atom compared to a typical apple, is roughly equal to the size of an apple compared to the size of planet Earth! An atom consists of a nucleus with orbiting electrons. If the nucleus were the size of a marble, and if the electron were like a human hair, the orbit of the electron would be two miles from the nucleus.

**18: Amazing mind trick**. Your friend casts the dice. Four spots show on one and two on the other. You immediately announce that the opposite sides of the pair will be three and five. Amazingly you are proven correct! The opposite sides of dice always add up to seven. Five on one side will show a two on the other. A one will show a six on the other side, etc.

Using same principle, we shall now make the trick a little more difficult and more mysterious. Take three dice and hand them to a friend. Tell him or her to roll the dice and then stack them up one on top of the other.

Explain that you cannot see five faces of the dice. The five numbers than you are not able to see are:

The bottom of the top dice.

The top of the middle dice.

The bottom of the middle dice.

The top of the last dice

And the bottom of the last dice

Despite not being able to see the five sides, you will predict the total number of spots on the five hidden sides.

Look at the top of the first dice. For example say that the top number is five. Subtract five from the number 21. You reveal that the total of the hidden faces is 16 spots. Have your friend count them and you will win! You'll be able to do it every time. Simply subtract whatever the top number is from 21 and the result will always be correct.

The simple explanation is that the total of the top and bottom of each dice is seven and you are using three dice. The math says 7 times 3 = 21. Take away the top number and you will never fail to amaze, and perhaps win a few bets along the way!

**19: For the love of** : Ailurophilia is the love of cats. On the other side of the equation is Ailurophobia which is a fear of felines. You could look it up – but why would you?

Which is better? Clam Chowder or Cat Clowder: No! Cat Clowder not a soup made of cats – it's a group made of cats! A clowder is actually the proper name for the plural of cat. I.E. One cat equals a cat. Two cats or more constitute a clowder of cats who are probably looking for a Murder of Crows: or any other birds that might be within claw's reach!

Do Dogs Outnumber Cats in the U.S.? No. There are 88 million pet cats and 77 million pet dogs.

Do Cats Talk? Yes and no. Cats only meow when communicating with humans. Many people say their cat has a variety of meows and the owners claim to know the meaning of each. I had a cat with a number of different meows. When he wanted to go out, he announced it by very loudly saying "ow". He would urgently drag out the 'ow' (as in the word how) for about three seconds and I always knew what he meant.

Cats can make 100 different sounds. Dogs may understand more words (a thousand or so for some pups) but cats do have a much broader range of vocalizations. Cats can change their meows to communicate with their owner. Some have been known to imitate human babies in order to get their owner to open up a bag of treats!

Science has proven that cats do love their humans. Some cats even follow their owners around much in the manner that dogs do.

Do cats and dogs sweat? 99 per cent of you will get this wrong. They do too sweat. But only in the pads of their feet!

The 48 united states of the United States have the highest concentration of pet dogs in the world.

No wonder they race them! Greyhounds are the world's fastest dogs reaching a blistering pace of up to 45 miles per hour.

The world's smartest dog and best worker is the Border Collie. Their vocabulary comprehension can exceed one thousand words. Putting that in perspective, a old human child knows about 200 words by age three.

George Washington kept dogs while Abe Lincoln was a cat lover. When asked what her husband's hobby was, Mrs. Lincoln replied, "cats".

**20: The return of tales from the talented Mr. Ripley** : Here's the TBTBT tale of twin brothers that were separated at birth and adopted by different families. The Lewis family named their boy James. The Springer family named their adopted son James. Boy boys were given the nickname Jim. They grew up in separate towns and never knew each other. Each became trained in law enforcement. Each boy was expert in carpentry and mechanical drawing. Each boy got married. They both married women named Linda. Both women bore the Jims sons. One Jim named his son James Alan while the other Jim called his son by the different name of James Allan (note the difference of one "L"). Hold on there's even more. Both Jimmies divorced their Lindas and remarried. You guessed it! The twins who had never met and didn't know about each other both remarried and they both married second wives name Betty. They both had canines named Toy. You could look it up – but don't because even I am not too sure about this one! It is Too Bizarre To Be True.

**21:** **In a previous section we learned that the tombstone of Rodney Dangerfield** was inscribed with the epitaph: "There goes the neighborhood." Here's a look at the stone.

Dangerfield's self deprecating humor made him one of the most successful comics of the second half of the 1900s. Jog your memory of the "I don't get no respect" man with a sampling of some of his typical lines:

"A girl phoned me the other day and said, 'Come on over, there's nobody home.' I went over. Nobody was at home!"

"I was such an ugly kid, when I played in the sand-box, the cat kept covering me up. "When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them."

"I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio."

"I get no respect. The way my luck is running, if I were a politician, I'd be honest!"

Rodney's Album – No Respect

**22: Time for another Bob Ripley** type of story. The year is 1914 in early July, long before smart phones and instant cameras but only a few days before the start of World War One. A German lady took a picture of her young son and left the film plate with a photo shop in Strasbourg, France to be developed. The woman had gone back to Germany after dropping off the film and was unable to cross the war zone to pick up the film. A few years later, she went to a photograph shop in Frankfurt Germany to buy a film plate. The plates were sold in single lots at the time. She wanted to take a picture of her new baby daughter. It turns out that the film plate had been used before, for when the film was developed it turned out to be a double exposure. Now the part that is Too Bizarre To Be True. The image on the photo was that of her new baby superimposed upon the very picture she had taken years earlier of her young son! It's T-B-to-B-T, but it seems as though the original film plate had been mistakenly labeled as 'new' and ended up in the stock of a shop more than a hundred miles away from Strasbourg, only to be bought once again by the very same lady! Believe it - or look it up!

The first photograph was taken around 1827 but it took up to eight hours to capture the image! There are not too many photos of people smiling from those days because few people could hold a smile for that long. In 1837 Louis Daguerre refined the process so much that he was able to take clear photos in just a few minutes instead of a third of a day. Polaroid Corporation invented a camera that developed photos right inside the unit in less than 60 seconds. Later the firm developed much of the technology of digital photography. Failing to capitalize on the new technology the company went bankrupt in 2001.

An early Polaroid Land Camera. The land didn't refer to a field or other earthy spot but rather to Edward Land, the inventor of the camera. He first unveiled the marvel in 1948.

**23: Famous New Yorkers** : The Seinfeld Cast: Seinfeld was set in New York City and the co-creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld were both born in Brooklyn. The only other major cast member to be born in New York is Elaine (Julia Louis Dreyfus)

Kramer (Michael Richards) is a California guy and George (Jason Alexander) is from New Jersey.

Donald Trump. Whatever original parts Donald Trump still has, were born in Queens, in 1946 – prompting an unknown comic to say about Trump. "The hair is real, the head is fake!"

Vito Genovese and Lucky Luciano – both these departed famous/infamous New Yorkers now reside in the 'Apple's' St. John Cemetery where they were joined in 2002 by killer gangster John Gotti of the Bronx who went from rags to prison rags before joining his fellow crime kings.

Who's Who on Seinfeld. We discussed the Seinfeld cast. Jerry, Elaine, Kramer, and George were the four main actors, with a side of Newman and a dash of Bania. For a while Bryan Cranston was on the show as the wild and crazy dentist Tim Whatley. But here's the 64 dollar question. What person, not a regular or semi regualar, is featured on every single episode of the show? Give up? It's Superman. He's either talked about or shown in pictures on Jerry's refrigerator.

The Seinfeld main cast

**24: Up next is the story of a wealthy Chicago brewery owner who fled to Europe** to avoid arrest for his part in a scam of epic proportions. On the lam for over a year, he never would have been captured if it hadn't been for a valuable painting of the American West! This story is bizarre but I can vouch for its veracity because I researched it and published it in my book "Ghosts of Cape Cod".

Without the spirit angle, here's the tale of Albert Crosby, the beer king. He came from a wealthy Cape Cod family. At a young age he went west and secured a $10,000 loan with no qualification other than his family name. He saw a niche. Starting a wholesale liquor business he soon became the biggest spirits distributor west of Boston and New York. Albert quickly dumped his first spouse and got a trophy wife. Apparently wife number two had tastes so expensive that even his massive wealth couldn't stand up to her spending habits.

He tried to rein her in by bringing her back to his home in Brewster on Old Cape Cod. But the house was too small for her, so he had to build a 35 room mansion called Tawasentha. Fabricated from brick and mortar it had a 60 foot tower that would have been more at home on a cathedral, and an adjacent fireproof brick building that he used for an art gallery.

His art collection blossomed quickly and was said to be the richest in New England and New York. Suddenly Crosby and the second wife left town. They departed for parts unknown, just ahead of a posse who had judgments against him for over five hundred thousand dollars – a huge sum for 1899. Crosby's assets were close to $400,000 – not enough to pay the notes against him, if he wanted to, and he did not.

Things were going well for the Mr. and Mrs. Crosby in their Euro hideout. But even as they were hobnobbing with high society on 'the continent', Karma was brewing a cup of comeuppance in the form of a judge from Indiana.

The judge, who was also a practicing attorney as well as a State Senator, loved two things: Art and summers on Cape Cod. He was staying on Lower Cape Cod when a friend told him that one of the finest art galleries in all of New England was located on the grounds of Tawasentha in nearby Brewster. Though the Crosbys were in hiding, their gallery was still open.

As he wandered with his friend looking at the amazing collection of paintings, he shouted: "That's it. I know that painting on the wall. It's called "The Yosemite" and the last time I saw it was in Chicago where it is still supposed to be!"

The judge actually represented one of the creditors trying to find Crosby. The name hadn't meant anything to him until he saw the purloined painting. An effort spearheaded by the judge took four years but Crosby and second wifey were finally brought back to the States to face charges. The case took a twist when Crosby showed up in a New York City court ahead of his trial and declared bankruptcy. He had signed everything over to the second wife. He thus was able to hurdle morality and legality and retain control of his mansion and keep all of his money- in the name of wife number two.

Except for the fact that the mansion is now owned by the town of Brewster and you can visit in the summer for three dollars, there's no happy ending here. The rich stay rich and as for the rest of us......?

**25: Raising the Dead** : It is said in the Bible that Jesus brought Lazarus back to life four days after he died. Jesus himself was said to be dead for three days and three nights before he brought himself back to the living. These things, if they happened, are supernatural miracles. Today, natural miracles assisted by medical science are routinely bringing dead people back to life. A 29 year old Swedish woman rose from the dead 80 minutes after she had perished by becoming trapped in ice. She made a full recovery with no brain damage. In 1986 a 30 month old girl named Michelle Funk fell into a stream and drowned. After being dead for three hours she was brought back and made a full recovery. Science has the technology to revive a great many 'clinically dead' people. The chief problem is brain damage. It is usually an issue if breathing and blood circulation has stopped for more than three minutes.

**To the Rescue Dr. H. Bansal of India** : As of 2016, he has been given ethical permission to see if he can regenerate the damaged brains of dead people! Dr. Bansal is going to use 20 patients who have been declared dead due to brain injury. The patients will be kept on life support for several months while attempts are made to repair their brains. The good doctor believes that the brain stem cells may be able to erase their history and re-start life based on the surrounding tissue – in the same manner as salamanders and other creatures are able re-grow entire limbs.

Doctor Bansal reports that he already has had enough success with the procedure to warrant the new study. He points out that he has two patients who have regained minimal consciousness and he has hopes that they will further improve and "have reasonable consciousness and useful human life." Good luck Doc.

26: **How to Kill Weeds and Not Yourself or the Environment**. So you spent 20 dollars on a weed killer at Home Depot and it killed the weeds along with your grass and probably five robins and a cardinal. Without getting to specifics, there is a growing body of evidence that not only are these weed killers murdering the environment, they may be harming people. They are poison, after all. So what's a body to do? The answer is something your grandmother's grandmother knew but many people today don't.

White Vinegar! You can get a brand name 32 ounce bottle of the stuff for about four dollars – probably less if you buy the store brand.

Here's how to use it. Pour it on the weeds straight from the bottle. Don't put it on grass. Use it just on weeds. It's excellent for unwanted growths that come up through the cracks in walkways, or patios. They will expire in a few days and won't come back till next year. Do not apply if there is a chance of rain. The rain will dissipate and waste the vinegar.

I said not to apply the vinegar to the grass – but if you have rhododendrons or azaleas, add a cup of vinegar to a gallon of water and apply it near the base of your plants. They love acidic soil and the vinegar will increase the acidity of the soil as well as send a supply of iron into the dirt for the plants to use.

If you happen to have kiddie sand box which a kitty is using as a litter box; liberally douse around the outside with vinegar and the kitty cat will scat and stay away for a month or so.

**27: 666 explained: In the book, Ghosts of Cape Cod** , written by your humble scribe, it falls to the Reverend Mr.Treat to enlighten the people of Eastham concerning the number 666, which was spat at the villagers by Maria Hallett whom they called a witch. As they were trying to stone her for her 'crime' of having a child out of wedlock she screamed :

"Six times you barred me.

Six times you were bettered.

Six times more, If need be,

I'll escape and flee unfettered.

For this jailing, a pox you are due.

The curse of '6-6-6' I put upon you."

Reverend Treat said: "666 is merely the number after 665 and the number before 667. It is also the sum of the first 36 natural numbers. That is to say, 1 plus 2, plus 3, plus 4...and so on, up to plus 34, plus 35, plus 36, equals 666. By itself, this is merely an odd fact, but what makes the number unholy is what is written in the Good Book. In Revelation 13:16, the Bible warns us that 666 is the number that represents the Beast: the Devil."

Despite what the Reverend Mr. Treat said, there is a fair amount of evidence that the number of the beast might actually be 616. According to a Wikipedia entry a number of scholars believe that there have been instances where both numbers have been used. Some documents from antiquity do use the 616 number and some have the 666 number. Either way the number did not help poor Maria whose ghost is still said to wander Cape Cod today, more than 200 years after her death. She is searching for her love Sam Bellamy. Sam was a hard working salvage man who turned to pirating after going broke trying to find treasure off the coast of Cuba. As a pirate he found lots of gold on board the ships he attacked. There was more than 10 tons of it on board his ship the Whidah when it sank off the Cape Cod coast – making Sam the real life richest Pirate of the Caribbean.

For hundreds of years beachcombers would find gold coins washing ashore on the beaches of Wellfleet and Eastham. Adventurer Barry Clifford actually managed to find the location of, and salvage the wreck of the Whidah, the richest prize in the Atlantic. He displays thousands of artifacts from it in his museum in Yarmouth on Cape Cod. There's a walk aboard replica of the ship in the facility as well as cannons, coins, and much more.

**Where do they come up with these names?** TASER. The controversial stun weapon was named by its inventor after a book in the long running series of Tom Swift books from the 1900s. The TASER came from **T** (om) **A S** (wift) and his **E** (lectric) **R** (ifle).

More than three dozen Tom Swift adventure books were published between 1910 and 1940.

Other titles that may inspire future inventions include:

Tom Swift and his Giant Magnet

Tom Swift and his Magnetic Silencer

Tom Swift and his Ocean Airport

After a recent flight from busy Logan Airport in Boston to PBI in Palm Beach, Fla; I am 'all in' on building some Ocean Airports.

And speaking of FLA, it's way better than what the U.S. post office wants us to use for Florida's nickname. I'm never going to say FL and nobody will ever pen a hit song about FL like they did when they came up with "Tallahassee Lassie from F-L-A".

California – The PO wants you to use CA for California's nickname. If you tell me to meet you in CA, I'll see you in Toronto or Montreal. C'est ci bon! "Cal" is ok except that somebody might confuse it with Cal Coolidge – a depressing president whose six years in office ended in the grave year of 1929. The best nickname for California is Cali.

Massachusetts: it's always going to be Mass. Never MA (that's my Mother) or MS (That's the default address for a woman, regardless of her marital status or lack thereof)

Connecticut: CT? CT, really? N.T. (No Thanks) It's horrible. It's nickname must always remain Conn! Do you really think that the UConn Huskies would continue their greatness if forced to change their name to the UCT Huskies? UCT rhymes with Yuck.

I could go on and mention Tennessee, which we are now supposed to call TN. It's Tenn! Always has been always should be. And what about the half drunk young men who use that famous pickup line in bars around the country: "Are you from Nashville. You must be, because you're the only "Ten" I See!" How's that gonna sound if those mugs have to say "You're the only T.N. I see."

**28: Henry Ford is famously quoted as saying** that customers buying his Model T could have any color they wanted as long as it was black. He may have said it after his car had become the most successful automobile in history – but at the beginning of the run in 1908, you could have a red model T, or even a green one, or a grey one, or even a blue Model T.

Yes Virginia there really were red and blue Model T cars! It wasn't until six years later in 1914 that Henry decided to streamline his operation (and save a few extra bucks) by going all black. Black paint was said to have been cheaper at the time. It may have been, or perhaps Mr. Ford simply decided he could paint cars faster and at less cost by using just one color. Things worked out pretty well for the Model T – it's still the best selling car of all time with more than 16 million units sold. At one time it is said that one out of every ten cars in the world was a model T!

About a hundred years after the Model T, VW sold about 20 million bugs but they were sold in many more markets than the Model Ts and their market share was nowhere near the position held by Ford.

The most popular car ever, as pointed out, is the Ford Model T. But what is the all time most popular book to be transferred to film. The Bible? Good guess. There have close to 200 feature films based on the Bible.

The Bible trails Sherlock Holmes by some 60 films. At last count there were 254 adaptations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's pipe smoking detective.

The Guinness Book of Records says that Holmes is the most filmed literary character in cinematic history. But those films were based on some two dozen stories and books by Doyle.

What single book is the most filmed of all time? It is not the Bible, although the Good Book does place in the top ten. With over 200 movies made so far, Bram Stoker's Dracula takes first place. For many people the only one that really matters is the Bela Lugosi version.

**Some real-life warning labels** from paranoid companies...

1. on a propane torch: Never use while sleeping.

2. on a digital thermometer: Do not use orally after using rectally.

3. on a bottle of hair dye: Do not use as an ice-cream topping.

4. on a toilet brush: Do not use orally.

5. on an iron. Do not iron clothes on body.

6. on Christmas Tree Lights: Warning for indoor or outdoor use only. (and you had your heart set on decorating that little anchor stuck in the sand at the bottom of your tropical fish tank!)

The originators of the iconic video blockbuster "Pacman" had originally decided to name the game "Puck Man". Deciding against it, they realized the word-play potential among English-speaking teen-aged boys. You know the type of comments; like the University of Hockey – Puck U!

**Have you ever been called a "Dead Head"?** Well you are. Or at least part of you is unless you're bald. That hair that you spend so much time on trying to give it life and body. Forget it. You can't. It's dead! Dead Head. Dead Hair. The only living part of your hair is the follicle and that's beneath the surfaced of your skin. What you see on the top of your head is an outcropping – no more. Sorry. I'm just sayin' so don't shoot the messenger!

**29: How Did Wikipedia Miss This?** If you look up the oldest pitcher to win a baseball game, Wikipedia will tell you it was former Boston Red Sox leftie Bill Lee. In 2010 he hurled just under six innings for the Brockton Rox of the Canadian American League and picked up the win. The "Spaceman" got the victory that night in the Massachusetts City of Champions (Rocky Marciano and Marvin Hagler to name two) and at 63 became the oldest pitcher ever to appear in and win a professional baseball game.

While it is true that Lee who won 119 games for the Sox and the Expos between 1969 and 1982 did become the oldest winning pitcher at 63 – the record was shattered two years later.

Wikipedia isn't on top of it for some reason and they missed it; but in 2012 a 65 year old former major league pitcher went a full nine innings for the San Rafael Pacifics of the Northern Independent League in Cali. Before a crowd of almost two thousand fans, the old fellow threw 94 pitches, 69 of which were strikes, and did not walk a batter. He got the win and also had one hit in four trips to the plate.

The name of this wonder? One more time! It was Bill Lee. The "Spaceman" did it again! As of this writing the ageless Lee (now 70) has not ruled out coming back for another encore. In fact he recently made an offer to Red Sox management to pitch three days in a row for them – against the New York Yankees!

Bill Lee in 2007 pitching for a minor league team in Nashua, New Hampshire

**From Little Acorns**...about 8,000 years ago somewhere in the wilderness of what is now called Oregon in North America, a tiny Honey Mushroom began to grow. It was very small and grew slowly. This mushroom is still alive in the two thousands and it has grown some. It now covers an area of 2200 acres and it is still growing. Though most of it is underground, its top can be seen. Much more visible are the dead trees that it has affected. Whole groves of them in the Malheur National Forest wither as the once microscopic giant continues to grow and demand more territory. How long can it live? Nobody knows. How big can it get? Nobody knows. What is the largest living thing on earth? A whale perhaps. Well you could stick a whole school of whales inside of an American football field, but it would take over 1600 football fields to cover as much ground as the Honey Mushroom. Could this thing ever get big enough to take over the whole planet and wipe out the human race? Good news. It's edible. It doesn't taste very good, but if we have to, we could probably open McMushroom restaurants across the globe and chew this thing to death!

**30: Never Fail in Driving Screws.** You're trying **to** get some screws set in the wall but they keep falling off the end of your screwdriver before you can get them started. Without having to go out and purchase a magnetic screwdriver, here's a great trick and it really, really works. Take a piece of plastic wrap about eight inches square and poke a hole in the middle of it with the screw. Hold onto the plastic wrap as you are turning the driver and you'll be able to get even the most stubborn screws to go in. When you get it screwed in just pull away plastic wrap. Done!

So now you've made some new holes in the wall. What about the old ones? Here's a quick "Tip" to patch them. Use the "Tip" – a Q tip. Cut it in half and insert into the hole. Put the stick end in first, with the cotton part slightly inside the hole. Then apply spackle. The hole will be flush and completely filled. As for the other half of the Q-tip. Stick it in your ear! Just kidding. Fill the other hole.

They're not just for your ears anymore!

**All adult cats are lactose intolerant** , and should not be given milk to drink. While it's not fatal to them, it can cause digestive problems and upset tummies. Some people believe that it's okay to give milk to kittens, but most animal doctors say to give them water instead.

**Can a Hershey Bar kill a dog?** All chocolate and cocoa products are bad for canines. In large quantities it can be fatal. There's an ingredient in these foods called theobromine that can give your dog an upset stomach and worse, even in small amounts. Don't let your best friend down – no chocolate for the hound!

**31: Spelling Tip** : I before E, except after C and in words like neighbor and weigh. So 'weigh' is spelled with six letters when three would do the job much better, as in the same word with a different meaning ; "way". Words that sound the same but have different meanings are called homophones. Some examples: Their/There; Two, too, to;

Would/wood; could/cud (I put the last one in to see if you're paying attention!)

Another spelling tip: Bookkeeper has two Os, two Ks and two Es. Think in pairs and you'll win a spelling bee if you're the last speller standing and they give you bookkeeper for your word. BTW, bookkeeper is the only word in the English language with three double letters in a row. O. OK. OKE!

Speaking of short-cut words like BTW; if Rip Van Winkle woke up today from a hundred year nap and got a bunch of text messages, do you think he'd understand them? In case you just woke up today from a long nap and need to know, here are some of the more prominent abbreviations in use in the initial decades of the 21st century.

BTW – by the way

LOL – laugh(ing) out loud

OMG – oh my God

TWX – text message, originally a teletype message

BRB – be right back

IDK – I don't know

TY – Thank You

YW – You're Welcome

BFF – best friends forever

ROFL – rolling on the floor laughing

ROFLACGU – same as ROFL except it's for the elderly: Rolling on the floor laughing and can't get up! Drum roll please!

**32: Why Do People Say Charles Lindbergh Was the First to Fly Across the Atlantic?** In truth, when Lindbergh made his flight, there had been 18 people before him that accomplished the feat! John Alcock and Arthur Brown were the first to make the non-stop trip in their Vickers Vimy plane in 1919. The men had electric heating suits to ward off the cold that blasted them in their open cockpit. When those suits failed, the pair had to go to their backup plan – hot coffee spiked with whiskey.

In all fairness, I have to point out that in 1927, eight years after Alcock and Brown's journey Lucky Lindy was the first person to make a solo, non-stop flight across the Atlantic.

**Pike's Peak in Colorado was named for Zeb Pike. He** was the first American to discover it **,** but he never was able to climb to the summit of the 14,000 foot mountain. Lacking socks and wearing light pants, his men were not dressed for the negative four degree temperatures they found as they climbed near the top. The bitter weather, a lack of proper equipment, and very little food prompted Zeb Pike to head back down the mountain and save his men from further suffering and possible death. The summit was not crested until 1820, fourteen years after Zeb Pike's attempt.

Pike's Peak, Colorado. Cape Cod poet and songwriter Katherine Lee Bates was inspired to write the lyrics to America the Beautiful after seeing the view from the peak during her break from teaching in the summer of 1893.

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain's majesties

Above thy fruited plain, etc.

**33: Remember the Alamo and Don't forget the Chewing Gum.** While we may have General Santa Anna to blame for the massacre at the Alamo we do have something to thank him for. In later life while living in the United States, he imported a great quantity of chicle. He wanted to use the rubbery substance for making tires. Thomas Adams, a man assigned to him by the U.S. government had other ideas. He bought a ton of the stuff from Santa Anna and turned it into the wildly popular "Chiclets" which are still sold around the world right up to today.

Though it was said that The Great War was the war to end all wars, the Allied Supreme Commander, after studying the Versailles Treaty – which brought an end to World War I – is said to have declared, "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years". Exactly twenty years and 65 days later, France and England declared war on Germany. The United States was soon to enter the battle after the bombing of its Pearl Harbor base in the territory of Hawaii.

Throughout sea-faring history, the vast majority of the sails and ropes used on ships were made from hemp. In fact, the word 'canvas' is based on the old English word 'canevas' which itself came from the Latin word cannabis.

Chiclet advertisement from 1905

Chiclets today.

**34:** **George's Bank is not a financial institution,** but plenty of money is made there. It's an elevated area of the floor of the Atlantic Ocean that runs from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia. For over 400 years the 'bank', the most accessible in the U.S. has been one of the world's richest fishing areas. It was part of mainland North America until it sank into the ocean some 12,000 years ago.

**Which seaport is the most valuable in the United States?** Nine out of ten of you will get this little quiz wrong and be sentenced to read the diary of television's Mister Green Jeans instead of this fine tome.

A. Port of Louisiana

B. Port of Houston

C. Port of New York

D. Port of Boston

E. Port of Long Beach, Cali

F. Port of New Bedford

G. P ort of Alaska

The Whaling City is the answer – Letter F. For over 12 straight years New Bedford has held the title of the richest port in the entire U.S. including the two new states, Hawaii and Alaska. Others may haul in more tonnage but the value of what's brought in, pales in comparison to the wholesale price of the seafood from Southeastern Massachusetts. A high percentage of the worth of the 379 million dollar catch is from the delicious New Bedford scallops harvested and later served in the region's 5-star seafood palaces.

Here are a few other tidbits about New Bedford, from my book 'Jimmy Catfish'.

The city is the only community to have a torpedo fired off, in its central business district. A local resident who invented a new type of torpedo blasted one right down the middle of a political parade during the election season of 1896 when two Williams faced off – Jennings Bryant and McKinley. The local man wanted to show his support for William Jennings Bryant, so he braced himself by hoisting a few at a tavern on Acushnet Avenue before rocketing his torpedo straight through the parade, scaring horses and people before skidding into a store, exploding, and demolishing the building. Sadly for the inventor, his 'torp' worked better on land than it did on sea and the navy wouldn't buy it.

As many people know, New Bedford was probably the most important city of the Whaling Days, but what they don't know is that a young sailor aboard a whaler called "The Acushnet" was writing a book that would turn out to be the most important ever written in its genre. Shortly after rounding Cape Horn, following more than a year at sea, the young man jumped ship and finished work on several books – one of which was "Moby Dick". The sailor/writer didn't have incredible book sales during his life (1819 – 1891) but by 1956 everyone wanted to see and read Moby Dick, by Herman Mellville.

After being transformed into a film starting Gregory Peck, a lavish world premiere was held in November of 1956 in the several theaters of the Whaling City. Peck himself led a parade in celebration of the cinematic event, in front of more than 50,000 fans lining Main Street to watch.

**35: When Young Mark Zuckerberg** of Facebook showed up wearing a "hoodie" at a financial meeting to discuss putting the social media website on the New York Stock Exchange, Wall Street brokers were not impressed. One veteran financial analyst derided him as a juvenile. When the stock went public at $38.00 in 2012 and lost almost half of its value in a few months, many New York pros were not surprised. But by February 2014, the value of a share had risen to $55.00. By the summer of 2016, each share was worth $117.00 more than three times the original price.

If you had only thought to purchase 10 million dollars worth of stock during the IPO, it would be worth $30 million now. What were you thinking?

As for the juvenile Mark Zuckerberg, he's now in his 30s and still runs around in tee shirts, sneakers, and hoodies (though he has been known to wear a shirt and tie) while he presides over a company worth many billions. His personal wealth is said to be 51 billion dollars – making him the sixth richest person in the entire world! All this from an E-book of faces!

**The richest man in the world** is the one we get angry at every day when Windows one through ten freezes up, or displays some other annoying glitch – Bill Gates of Microsoft who is said to have a wealth of 81 billion dollars, far ahead of the number two guy who only has 73.5 billion.

He's an amazing Spaniard named Amancia Ortega who started out as a shop hand for a shirt maker and built an empire of more than 6,000 retail shops and a fashion brand named Zara. He wanted to use "Zorba" but it was already taken.

Just behind senor Ortega is American Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway, who is valued at 73 billion.

Next is Carlos Slim Helu, known as the Warren Buffet of Mexico. From 2010 to 2013, he was the richest fellow on earth and he may bounce back to the top spot but as of this writing his 50 billion puts him at number four. The fifth richest person is American Jeff Bezos whose little company named for a river barely showed a profit for a long time, but now Amazon is so powerful that Mr. B is up to a personal fortune of 45 billion dollars.

**How much does a million dollars weigh?** It weighs a ton. You couldn't carry it **.** In one dollar bills a million dollars scales in at 2041 pounds! But if you use one hundred dollar bills you could easily carry it since it would weigh only about 20 pounds. It requires 490 notes of any U.S. paper currency to make a pound. It follows then that a pound of dollar bills equals $490.00. A pound of flesh on the other hand, equals 16 ounces.

Where did that come from? The pound of flesh was first written about by Shakespeare in the Merchant of Venice, from the year 1596. Shylock insists that Antonio so pay him. Shylock says, "The pound of flesh which I demand is 'deerly' bought. Tis mine and I will have it."

**36: The World's Tallest People.** If you are a man and were born in the Netherlands in the 1940s I can tell you much about yourself without even looking at you. First off, as of 2016, your age is between between 66 and and 75. That's simple math. But I also know that you are five foot six and one half inches tall. I know this because that's the average height of people your age from your nation.

How things have changed! Dutch people are now said to be the tallest people in the world. A person born today in Amsterdam will grow to over six feet tall by the time he's a teenager – almost a full foot taller than his grandfather or great grandfather. Why the Dutch have become so tall is a mystery – but it is said that they are the world's tallest people.

**Now a new group has emerged, even taller.** In a mountain range spanning the gap between Bosnia and the 'boot' of Italy, a super race of giants is emerging. Giant may be too extravagant a term for these people, but it is a fact that the men are growing to six feet two inches and the women are topping five foot six as teenagers. An astounding 28 per cent of the boys in this area known as the Dinaric Alps are six foot three inches tall or more! There have been a number of studies showing that this group of people spread across the mountain range, are taller as a group, than even the Dutch.

The tallest man ever was almost nine feet high and weighed about 440 pounds. Robert Wadlow, though he had trouble with his feet, never used a wheelchair. Still growing when he died, he succumbed to an infection caused by an ill-fitting leg brace.

Robert Wadlow, eight feet 11 inches and a fraction, with his Dad who was close to six feet in height.

**37:** **Don't touch that dial!** If you started listening to KCBS radio in San Francisco when it first signed on the air and never changed the dial, by the year 2010 you would be in your 101st year of tuning in. You'd also probably be the oldest listener in the U.S. As for the radio station, it is positively the oldest in America. KCBS signed on the air in 1909 and is still broadcasting, as the Flagship Station of the CBS West Coast Radio Network. Starting out with just 15 watts of power, today it has 50,000 and sometimes can be heard as far away as Honolulu, Hawaii – a distance of 2336 miles! One of the station's biggest personalities is John Madden, best known as the face of the Madden video game franchise. Madden, age 80 as of 2016, does a short chat with the news casters and sports anchors every morning at 8:15 Pacific time. The popular segment is repeated several times during the day. You can listen to the station live by following this link: <http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/station/kcbs/>

For the first several years of the iconic American football video game,

John Madden appeared on every cover. In the 2000s players have been featured instead.

It's reported that the face of Madden 2017 is Rob Gronkowski the amazing

Tight end for the New England Patriots.

**38:** **Great Invention With No Intention** : A youthful engineer was testing a magnetron tube. He was dismayed to notice that the chocolate bar in his pocket had turned to liquid and made a gooey mess when it dissolved from the waves radiating from the device. At first he figured he had simply come up with a quick, chocolate-melter; but when he decided to adapt it a bit and call it a Micro Wave Oven; he concocted a device that sells 13 million units a year, just in the U.S.A.

**A burr in the saddle** might be troubling to the rider, but is much more bothersome to the horse. So what does that have to do with the next invention? Quite a bit actually - because a burr and a dog combined to inspire it. George de Mestral and his canine pal were out hunting. The poor mutt was bothered horribly by burrs sticking to his coat. Later back at home, George combed out the dog and then threw a couple burrs under his microscope and discovered nature's system of teeny hooks that enable them to firmly grasp textured surfaces. With some adaptations, he made his own version of nature's hooks and called it "Velcro". It's a wonderful invention and has made millions; but this is little comfort to Rover, who's still waiting for 'the human' to figure out how to make a dog (or a saddle) burr-proof!

**I'll show him** : Revenge fueled the accident that led to the next invention. A renowned chef in Saratoga Springs could do no wrong. At his venue, even common foods became culinary delights to everyone but one man who complained bitterly about the chef's fried potatoes. This was akin to telling DaVinci he could not paint! Chef decided to serve up a big plate of fried revenge. He sliced some potatoes paper thin and cooked them until brown. Taking his largest salt shaker he buried the taters with a snow storm of white crystals. He bade his waiter to serve the mess and then sat in a chair awaiting the news of the patron's anger. He didn't have to wait long. The waiter rushed in and told him he needed to quickly make another batch of the fried mess. Turns out the customer loved them! Chef's 'Saratoga Chips' became all the rage in New England and New York. Today we know them as potato chips. I bet you can't eat one!

Speaking of food, a lot of people believe that their body informs them when they need to eat a particular food. Chocolate, for example, is sometimes consumed by people who are certain that their craving for it is dictated because their body needs it. Sadly science had debunked this lovely little myth. I don't care what science says. When my body tells me it's time for a pizza, I listen.

Man does not live by Prov-alone. He also needs sauce, meatballs, and Italian bread. I said that, but I'm too humble to quote myself so you could pretend one of the Papas said it – Papa Gino or Papa John or whoever your favorite paisan papa pizza peddler is.

**39: If a Tree Falls in outer space and there is no one to hear it** , does it still make a noise? Of course there are no trees lining the sides of the starway, but what about a couple of space rocks colliding? Would they make a noise?

The answer is no. There would be no noise. Sound does travel, like light and heat, in waves. The difference is that sound travels by making molecules vibrate. For sound to travel it must be able to leap-frog over and through the molecues. On Earth sounds get to your ears by the vibration of air molecules. In space there are no molecules to vibrate so there is no sound even if two astral bodies bang into each other.

"There's nothing to hear here people. Please just go back to your starway ships until after the silent explosion of these two giants."

**40: How many popes were also pornographers?** Exactly one. E.S. Bartolomeo Piccolomini's steamy 'Tale of Two Lovers' is still read today more than 500 years after it was written. After a wanton career noted mostly for his writings and dalliances with women – at least two of which bore him children – Bartolomeo settled down somewhat and became a priest around the age of 40. Though he never believed in or was able to master continency (you know – the sex thing), he had a talent for moving swiftly up a ladder he probably had no business being on. He went from taking his vows to Bishop to Cardinal in short order. Following the death of Calixtus III in 1458, there were many candidates better qualified for the Papacy, but when the votes were counted, Bartolomeo, the father of at least two bastards, and author of dozens of pornographic poems, became Pope Pius the Second. His book is far and away the biggest seller of the 1400s and this erotic novel is still read today...here's the link if you care to peruse it. I have also included the opening part of the story for you to sample:

<http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/piccolomini/hist_e.html>

A wood cut of Pope Pius II's tale of adultery from one of the earliest printings:

Here are the first few paragraphs of the tale, which is written in the flowery, descriptive style of the day. It takes place in Siena, in Tuscany,Italy where Bartholomeo/Pius was born.

"The city of Siena, your native town and mine, did great honor to the Emperor Sigismund on his arrival, as is now well known; and a palace was made ready for him by the church of Saint Martha, on the road that leads to the narrow gate of sandstone. As Sigismund came hither, after the ceremonies, he met four married ladies, for birth and beauty, age and ornament, almost equal. All thought them goddesses rather than mortal women, and had they been only three, they might have seemed those whom Paris, we are told, saw in a dream. Now Sigismund, though advanced in years, was quick to passion; he took great pleasure in the company of women, and loved feminine caresses. Indeed he liked nothing better than the presence of great ladies. So when he saw these, he leaped from his horse, and they received him with outstretched hands. Then, turning to his companions, he said: 'Have you ever seen women like these: For my part, I cannot say whether their faces are human or angelic. Surely they are from heaven.'

They cast down their eyes, and their modesty made them lovelier. For, as the blushes spread over their cheeks, their faces took the colour of Indian ivory stained with scarlet, or white lilies mixed with crimson roses. And chief among them all, shone the beauty of Lucretia. A young girl, barely twenty years of age, she came of the house of the Camilli, and was wife to Menelaus, a wealthy man, but quite unworthy that such a treasure should look after his home; deserving rather that his wife should deceive him or, as we say, give him horns.

This lady was taller than the others. Her hair was long, the colour of beaten gold, and she wore it not hanging down her back, as maidens do, but bound up with gold and precious stones. Her lofty forehead, of good proportions, was without a wrinkle, and her arched eyebrows were dark and slender, with a due space between. Such was the splendour of her eyes that, like the sun, they dazzled all who looked on them; with such eyes she could kill whom she chose and, when she would, restore the dead to life. Her nose was straight in contour, evenly dividing her rosy cheeks, while nothing could be sweeter, nothing more pleasant to see than those cheeks which, when she laughed, broke in a little dimple on either side. And all who saw those dimples longed to kiss them. A small and well-shaped mouth, coral lips made to be bitten, straight little teeth, that shone like crystal, and between them, running to and fro, a tremulous tongue that uttered not speech, but sweetest harmonies. And how can I describe the beauty of her mind, the whiteness of her breast? "

So ends the first part of the Pope's lurid tale. Bartolomeo/Pius II must have been a hard act to follow; but since his time, there have been 10 more to take the name. The last, Pius 12, died in 1958. The first, Pius I, served in the first century about 100 years after the birth of Jesus.

**41: Money Costs Money: It** costs a mint for the mint to mint a nickel! For every nickel the U.S. makes it costs the treasury ten cents! A one cent piece costs two pennies to make! The U.S. government loses about a hundred million dollars are year to prop up the useless coins. What's the answer? If the head of the mint was smarter than a fifth grader, she/he would figure out that it would be way better to simply eliminate these worthless pieces of money. Instead of the foolish 99 cent thing on gas and E-books, retailers can just go up to a dollar. With the nickel, they could just round up or down to the nearest dime. This makes so much sense that you know it will NEVER happen.

**Twin Time:** You have certainly heard of twins being born on different days. One twin could make an entrance into the world at 11:45 p.m., followed by the second one sometime after midnight. This situation could even result in twins being born in different years – if one were born just before midnight on New Year's Eve and the second one were born after the countdown in Times Square. It makes you wonder what's the longest time lapse between delivery of twins – doesn't it? The answer is 87. Not 87 minutes or even 87 hours. It's TB to TB, but it happened – a set of twins were born 87 days apart! Believe it – or look it up!

**Do you ever feel blue?** A whole family in Kentucky not only felt blue but looked blue. For 150 years and several generations, the Fugates of Troublesome Creek had blue skin for a variety of reasons including in-breeding. The last blue skinned member of the family was born in 1975.

In 1923 at Belmont Park, jockey Frank Hayes rode home his mount at 20 to one! That certainly wasn't the first time in the history of the New York track that a long-shot picked up a victory, but it was the first time a dead jockey won a race. Poor Frank suffered a heart attack in the middle of the race, but his body remained in the saddle as the horse crossed the finish line!

**42: How many races are there in the U.S.?** The short answer is one – the human race. But for designation purposes the American Government lists six and sometimes seven. In alphabetical order the breakdown is

1. African American

2. Alaska Native

3. Asian American

4. Native American

5. Native Hawaiian

6. White American

7. When they list a seventh choice, it is always "Other".

Though the U.S. census department now chooses not to question people about their ancestry for fear of controversy, here are the latest reliable figures.

1. More than 49 million Americans claim German ancestry.

2. Slightly more than 41 million Americans trace their ancestry to Africa.

3. Ireland is next with 35 million people.

4. 31 million Americans trace their roots to Mexico

5. Mother England comes in fifth with 26 million

6. The last time people were given the chance to choose, 21 million people traced their roots to America. The census department said that many of these people are of mixed origin and many others were making a political statement.

7. Italy was listed as the old country attached to some 17 million people.

8. Poland came in eighth with 9.7 million people listing Polish ancestry.

9. France was next with 9.1 million claimants. Scotland rounds out the top ten with 5 million descendants. Native Americans and Alaskan Americans were in 11th position with 4.9 million people.

These Headline Writers should be looking for new jobs after coming up with....

1- Two Convicts Evade Noose, Jury Hung

2 - Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim

3 - Queen Mary Having Bottom Scraped

4 - Two Russian Ships Collide, One Dies.

5 - Child's Death Ruins Couple's Holiday

6 - Two Convicts Evade Noose, Jury Hung

7 - Four H Girls Win Prizes for Fat Calves

8 - Farmer Bill Dies in House

9 - Body Search Reveals $4,000 in Crack

10 - Is there a Ring of Debris Around Uranus?

**43** Number Trick: The ultimate answer is 8. The answer is always 8. Amaze your friends with your mental powers. A. Tell them to think of any number at all. B. Tell them to take away 1 from their number. C. Multiply the result by 3. D. Add 12 to the new result. E. Divide the answer by 3. F. Add 5 to the new number. G. Take away the original number. H. Tell them the answer is 8. You will be correct. You sir or you madam are an amazing seer!

Get your Calculators ready. Set. Go: Do the math! 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

Those rings around Saturn might be giant bathtub rings. Don't laugh, the density of the planet Saturn is so low that if you had a really big bathtub – one able to accommodate the whole planet – you would find that Saturn would float. It's lighter than water. And those rings around the planet really are bathtub rings because they are composed of frozen water, rocks, and dust.

A science fiction vision of Saturn and its rings.

**44:** **The highs and lows of life:** Doc Medich started his pitching career in the early 1970s with the New York Yankees, winning a high of 19 games in 1974. Loved by the fans for his pitching, he was also lauded for running into the stands to attempt to save a heart attack victim. Doc did it not once, but twice during his tenure with the Bombers! Using CPR and Mouth to Mouth, he left the mound, dashed into the stands and brought a 73 year old man back to life. The 'patient' lived several more years. Doc was a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh before deciding to take his talents to the baseball diamond.

After putting 124 wins on his resume, the right-hander with a lifetime earned run average under .380 went back to medical school and became the doctor he always wanted to be. Sadly, Doc Medich had suffered some baseball injuries that had left him addicted to painkillers. Shortly after becoming certified as a physician, Doc was charged in 1983 with 12 counts of writing pain killer scripts to non-existent patients. The former hero's medical license was suspended and as of 2016, 33 years later, it is still suspended and the American Society of Orthopedic Surgeons voted to expel him.

As of this writing, the 69 year old 'Doc' still is unable to use his medical skills that he studied so hard to acquire. Rules are rules, but doesn't punishing a hero this much seem like overkill? The prescriptions were not hard drugs – they were pain pills for his pain.

**45: Q. Where is the driest place on Earth?** A. It's not the 35 counties out of 75 in Arkansas that are dry and do not allow liquor sales.

It's not the Sahara desert. It's not Death Valley, although that wasteland in California is the driest spot across the 3,000 miles of the United States. But the driest place on Earth is the world's fifth largest continent - Antarctica! But the place is covered in snow so how can it be dry? The answer is that the frozen continent actually gets very little snow and it doesn't melt too much. A desert is defined as an area that has less than 10 inches of rain per year and that qualifies Antarctica as the driest place on Earth.

I'm not buying it! This does not look like the driest place on Earth.

**46: Coffee beans are not actually beans** ; they're the seeds of coffee cherries from coffee trees. Lima Beans are not really beans, they are seeds. Lima Beans are sometimes called Butter Beans though they are two separate food items.

Like many beans, Butter Beans are toxic if they are not boiled for about 15 minutes.

**There really are no beans** : Actually all beans are just really seeds. Beans just sounds better. You might not like brown bread, bacon, and seeds as much as you do brown bread, bacon and beans!

It's the same with some meat. When people eat fish they retain the name. Thus you have a fish dinner. But with meat, for esthetic reasons the name gets changed. So when people are having a steak dinner they are really having a "cow dinner"; but they don't like to say that. It's the same with that Christmas ham – it ain't ham, it's a pig. They're having pig for Christmas.

47: Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a......

How many times do you think "Bones" said it to Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek?

I don't know how many, but it was a lot. Here are a few examples:

Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a bricklayer (The Devil in the Dark)

Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a mechanic (The Doomsday Machine)

Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not an escalator (Friday's Child)

Now here's a Dammit Jim that Dr. McCoy never said:

Dammit Jim, I'm an actor not a doctor!!!!

**I now pronounce you...** Captain Kirk, like all ship captains, whether their ships be of air or sea, often had the pleasant duty of performing marriage ceremonies. There is no problem with this as long as the Captain is a television or movie captain, but in real life if you are married by your ship's captain, you're not really married. Despite the romantic notions that such power is included with a captaincy – it is not!

**Go with the Flow –** in response to market demand some ship lines are now having some of their captains get licensed to perform the ritual.

How You Can Perform Marriage Ceremonies:

It's TB-to-BT.....but you really can go on line and instantly become an ordained minister and officiate at weddings, funerals, baptisms and more!

**Can I really become a Reverend online?**

_Yes you can and I will give you two online schools to pick from. The degrees are granted instantly and they are legal. The sources listed have been fully checked. They are not scams and will not charge a single penny for the ordination._

**What can I do after becoming ordained?**

**1. Officiate Marriages:**

You will be able to join people in Matrimony (you pocket a small fee of course). Your diploma will allow you to perform the ceremony in all the 48 (adjacent) states plus Alaska and Hawaii. State laws differ and one of the sites I am going to list has a map so that you can check the exact requirements for your particular state.

**2. Form a Ministry or Church:**

For real. You will be guided through the steps to start your own congregation if you wish.

**3. Free Sermons:**

You can write your own or choose from a group of ready made Sermons.

**4. Training:**

You will have online access to training as well as chat groups with other Ministers. There are also blogs and other online communities you will be able to join.

**5. Honorary Degrees:**

All degrees that you get are honorary, but legal. The churches that I'm sending you to DO NOT RUN FAKE DIPLOMA MILLS. Your degrees will be recognized by the institution and by city and state government for certain religious rites - but cannot be represented as actual bachelor or doctorate degrees.

**6. Perform Baptisms:**

You will be legally and spiritually empowered to perform this rite.

**7. Forgiveness of Sins:**

You will be able to perform these and other rites, based on your own Personal beliefs.

**8. Funerals:**

Training is provided to allow you to effectively and easily officiate at funerals.

**9. How much does it cost?**

The two churches I am going to give you, charge absolutely nothing to ordain you. You will become an ordained minister for free and instantly. You will be one hundred per cent legal in the parameters that I outlined above. There are some things from the churches that cost money. If you want certain copies of your degrees, ordination papers etc. There are some kits and other items for sale, but none is needed to become a minister. They are just extras such as credentials, diplomas, business cards, wallet cards etc.

10. How long does it take? A few minutes!

Where to get your Free Degree

Okay here goes. Here are the two sites for you to go to, if you wish to learn more or want to get ordained.

A. The Universal Life Church

Type this in a Google search and you will be taken to a results page. Click on the Universal Life link.

B. Universal Ministries - Get ordained to be a minister

Again, type this in as a Google search and click on the resulting link and you will soon be an official Parson and if you get very lucky you might be able to get a free cruise around the world in exchange for performing a few marriage ceremonies!

**48: Here's what's in a name?** Do you really believe that Rocky Marciano still would have been the only unbeaten heavyweight boxing champion in the history of the world if his parents had named him Marion?

There was a young man named Marion who did quite well in the movies as a western gunslinger. His fame came after he changed his name to John. John Wayne. Though Marion Morrison liked his stage name much better than his given name, he wasn't real fond of the nickname that fans called him – Duke. Here's what he had to say about it: "I had a dog named Duke. Every fireman in town knew that hound, because he chased all the fire-wagons. They knew the name of the dog, but not mine, so the next thing I knew, I was Duke too. I was named for a damn dog!"

John Wayne first became a star in 1939 with the release of his hit film "Stagecoach". The picture did huge box office and showed a nice profit for the times of more than a quarter of a million dollars.

That Stagecoach did so well is a wonder, because 1939 is regarded as the greatest year in the history of the cinema. The blockbuster films of that wonderful year include, Gone With the Wind,The Wizard of Oz, Dave Fleisher's animated classic Gulliver's Travels, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Goodbye Mr. Chips, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Gunga Din.

How could 1940 follow that? It couldn't - although Hollywood did come up with a few winners. Disney struck gold twice with the blockbuster Pinocchio and the well received Fantasia. Other winners included Rebecca, All This and Heaven Too and The Philadelphia Story. In Fantasia, the Sorcerer to whom Mickey Mouse played an apprentice was named Yensid. This was a little inside joke played by Walt who gave his name spelled backward, to the apprentice. Yensid = disneY.

For 1941, movie goers were treated to one of Disney's greatest treasures, Dumbo. The biggest hit of the year belonged to Gary Cooper, playing Sergeant York. Another film released that year had its problems at the box office but went on to do reasonably well. It was a little project by Orson Welles, entitled Citizen Kane.

Trying to figure out the world's oldest profession is like trying to solve the mystery of which came first, the chicken or the egg. The term in common usage refers to prostitution which certainly is not the first vocation. Many people argue that the job of farmer is the oldest profession. But before farmers fed the world, hunters fed the world. So perhaps hunting is the oldest career choice. Come to think of it, fishing probably has a shot at the title.

A better question perhaps is, What is the world's newest profession? Christopher D. McKenna says it's "Management Consulting". What qualifies him to make this claim? Probably nothing. It's just the title of the book that he has written and is trying to promote. So discounting Mr. McKenna's opinion I asked jobsite "Monster dot com" what they consider the world's newest profession. They said one word: Green!

Green jobs are the latest thing. Solar Thermal Technicians will start at $40,000 but the upper salary limit may go very high. How high it will soar nobody knows, because the job is so new.

Nursing Informatics is a profession where you start out at $60,000 and you might be able to double that in just a few years on the job. Here's a good one, Anesthesiologist Assistant. The compensation starts at 90 K and doubles with ten years experience.

Here's another great one. It does not require a college degree and the pay scale starts at 56 thousand. The health craze has fueled demand for this job – Spa Manager.

Finally Monster said there are a lot of new jobs in social media. These jobs start out at a thousand a week and can go much higher. Blog anyone?

**49: The best selling English language poet** of all time is William Shakespeare. Doubtless everyone who can read knows the bard's name. Not so with the second top selling poet. His name is Khalil Gibran. Born in Lebanon, he moved with his family to the United States shortly before 1900. They settled in South Boston where Gibran's talents as a writer and an artist were displayed when he was still a teenager. Gibran authored many books and produced over 700 drawings, paintings and watercolors – but it is for a single book, The Prophet, that he is honored world-wide.

Consisting of 26 poetic essays, it was first published in 1923 and has never gone out of print, still selling many thousands of copies each year right to the present day.

Elvis Presley was so impressed by the book that he gave copies to many friends. Johnny Cash felt so strongly about it that he recorded "The Eye of the Prophet" as an audio book. John Lennon referenced him in a song on the "White Album" and David Bowie channeled Gibran in 1970's 'The Width of a Circle."

**The Ellis Island 'Blender'**. Gibran and his family entered the United States, like millions of other immigrants, through Ellis Island. The island processing center was similar to the small end of a funnel. An eager and boisterous group of people who spoke little or no English queued up in wide lines that got progressively smaller as they were led to clerical tables where the workers spoke English only. Names were often a problem for the staff. Gibran gave his proper name to a clerk - "Gibran Khalil Gibran." His first and last name was Gibran and his middle name was Khalil. The clerk wrote down the middle and last name only and from then on Gibran Khalil Gibran, was simply Khalil Gibran.

My own father had similar problems in trying to register for school. His Mom, my grandmother, came from Palermo, Sicily. She tried hard but had a difficult time mastering English. When it came time for her to get my dad signed up the educational system, she sent Antonio, one of his older brothers with him. When he told the teacher my father's name she couldn't understand it. "Bar-tol–loh–mayo", Antonio said slowly, enunciating each syllable but still she didn't get it. Finally 'Tony' said, "Well it's not his real name, but we call him Bobby." Bobby it was for Dad from then on. Thankfully the clerk got our last name right – Russo.

**50: We end with a bit about books.** About 1,500,000 of them are published every year. Just four nations are responsible for two thirds of all titles. China leads with some 400,000 volumes to about 300,000 for the U.S. The U.K is next with about 180,000. Then comes the Russian Federation with around 100,000. Rounding out the top ten are Japan, Germany, India, Italy, Iran and South Korea.

The nation publishing the least books is the Persian Gulf country of Oman. Its four million residents manage to write just seven books per year! That's three less than Stephen King's output in a single month!

I hope you have enjoyed marching through the piles of odd facts and items discussed in these pages. If you have found it entertaining please consider leaving a positive review on one or more websites. In today's crowded e-book environment reviews are often the only way a work gets noticed.

Though I cannot personally vouch for all of the items in the 50 sections, most of the information is said to be accurate by Wikipedia and other reliable sources.
Other books by Bill Russo

The Creature From the Bridgewater Triangle

Bill's riveting account of meeting a puckwudgie

His story is featured in the films, America's Bermuda Triangle and The Bridgewater Triangle, as well as on Monsters and Mysteries in America.

Swamp Tales and Jimmy Catfish

Two fictional thrillers set in the Hockomock Swamp (The Place of Evil Spirits) and an eerie Cape Cod Lake

Crossing the Musical Color Line

Stories of iconic singers and musicians known or interviewed by the author during a long career in radio and as a newspaper editor.

The Ghosts of Cape Cod – available as an E-book and in paperback. Also available as an audio book with narration by Scott R. Pollak of National Public Radio
Connect with Bill Russo

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