First Automatic Dishwasher

In 1850, Joel Houghton patented the first automatic dishwasher a wooden machine with a hand-turned wheel that splashed water on dishes. It wasn't much, but it was the first patent. In 1886, Josephine Cochran invented the first practical dishwasher. It was also hand operated. Dishwashers did not become household items until the 1950s.

Bacon Cheddar Chips

Here is an interesting twist, potato chips on the outside and bacon with cheddar on the inside. Salty, crunchy, cheesy, and smoky, what more can a person want.

Butterz are hand formed and the bacon and cheddar are coated with an actual potato chip wrapped around. In fact, it’s a thick potato chip batter, like Pringles. They also have other flavors made by B More Nutz in Baltimore and are available online.

Hack My Car

More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control lat month, after a hacker used a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.

Police arrested a 20-year-old former Texas Auto Center employee who was laid off and allegedly sought revenge.

“We started having a rash of up to a hundred customers at one time complaining. Some customers complained of the horns going off in the middle of the night. The only option they had was to remove the battery.”

The dealership used a system called Webtech Plus as an alternative to repossessing vehicles that haven’t been paid for. The system lets car dealers install a small black box under vehicle dashboards that responds to commands issued through a central website, and relayed over a wireless pager network. The dealer can disable a car’s ignition system or trigger the horn to begin honking, as a reminder that a payment is due. The system will not stop a running vehicle. Honk if you love technology. Who says there is no big brother.

Remote Beer Opener

Here is one of those, 'I wonder who thought of that' inventions. It is actually available on the web for $25. A nine function universal remote control with built in beer opener. Hmmm.

Beer Opener Cuff Links

If that is not good enough, here are some bottle opener cuff links. How many folks do you know that wear cuff links to drink beer?

What's in a Name

The use of an additional 'middle name' started in 17th century aristocracy, and didn't become popular among the masses until the 19th century. Only three of the first seventeen US presidents had middle names. John Quincy Adams was the first.

Odd Book Prize Awarded

The winner for 2010 is 'Crocheting Adventures With Hypberbolic Planes'.

The Diagram Prize was founded in 1978 and is run by trade magazine The Bookseller. The winner of the Diagram Prize for year's oddest book title, decided by public vote, was announced March 26.

The six finalists are "Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter;" "Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich;" "Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots;" "The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease"; "Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes;" and "What Kind of Bean is This Chihuahua?"

The shortlist was narrowed down from 90 entries, including "The Origin of Feces" and "Bacon: A Love Story."

Previous champions include "Bombproof Your Horse" and "Living With Crazy Buttocks." Maybe I should have submitted my original book series, 'Terrible Tommy's Titillating Tidbits of Turpitude and Trivia.'

New From KFC

It's "Double Down" bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken. Even KFC is getting in on the bacon phenomenon. Even calorie conscious Subway has a double bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich.

White House Easter Egg Roll

The White House announced that the theme of this year’s highly anticipated Easter event is “Ready, Set, Go!” with a goal of promoting health and wellness.

The roll will take place Monday, April 5, one day after Easter Sunday, on the South Lawn of the White House. According to a statement, there will be live music, sports, cooking stations where children can learn how to make healthy food, storytelling and egg-rolling.

George Washington's Teeth

He did not have wooden teeth as commonly believed. According to a study of Washington's four known dentures performed by a forensic anthropologist from the University of Pittsburgh in collaboration with the National Museum of Dentistry, the dentures were made of gold, hippopotamus ivory, lead, human and animal teeth, including horse and donkey teeth. Oh, and he didn't really cut down that cherry tree.

Washing the White Lions

In the middle ages lions really were kept in the Tower of London.  By Victoria's reign in 1837 all the lions had been moved to safer accommodation in Regents Park.  In 1860 April Fool's day fell on a Sunday, so a prankster had an idea to invite 'all and sundry' to the Tower of London to see the annual washing of the white lions.

The invitation said: Admit the bearer and friend to view the annual ceremony of 'Washing the white lions' on Sunday, April 1st, 1860.  Thousands of people turned up and waited, until one-by-one, it dawned on them that they had been hoaxed.

Color TV Hoax

Another April Fool's Day joke was played in 1962 when there was only one tv channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black and white. The station's technical expert, Kjell Stensson, appeared on the news to announce that, thanks to a new technology, viewers could convert their existing sets to display color reception. All they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen. Stensson proceeded to demonstrate the process. Thousands of people were taken in. Regular color broadcasts only commenced in Sweden on April 1, 1970.

Kellog's Corn Flakes

The company began with the serendipitous discovery of toasted flakes which later were developed into Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. This event set in motion a century of innovation for Kellogg.  In the late 1800s at the Battle Creek Sanatorium, a combination hospital and health spa for the elite and famous.

W.K. Kellogg, business manager, and his brother, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, chief physician, were in the process of cooking some wheat for a type of granola when they were called away. When they returned, the wheat had become stale. They decided to force the tempered grain through the rollers anyway, and surprisingly, the grain did not come out in long sheets of dough.  Instead each wheat berry was flattened and came out as a thin flake. This led to the formation of the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company in 1906, which eventually became Kellogg Company – changing the form of breakfast forever. One of the items on the "Battle Creek Diet" was lima bean paste on toast, Yuck!

Aspen to the Rescue

The rising level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is making some trees grow by 50% is a finding of a new study of natural stands of quaking aspen, one of North America's most important and widespread deciduous trees. The study, by scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Minnesota at Morris (UMM) and published Dec. 4, 2009 in the journal Global Change Biology, shows that elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the past 50 years have boosted aspen growth rates by an astonishing 50 percent.

The findings are important as the world's forests, which cover about 30 percent of the Earth's land surface, play an important role in regulating climate and sequestering greenhouses gases. The forests of the Northern Hemisphere, in particular, act as sinks for carbon dioxide, helping to offset increased levels of carbon dioxide.

Aspen is a dominant tree in mountainous and northern forested regions of North America, including 42 million acres of Canadian forest and up to 6.5 million acres in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

"We can't forecast ecological change. It's a complicated business," explains Waller, a UW-Madison professor of botany. Carbon dioxide is food for plants, which extract it from the air and through photosynthesis convert it to sugar, plant food. Seems to me nature is healing itself. Hmmm, wonder if that news is in the Global expletive findings?