Whoopee Cushions

The whoopee cushion is a classic design that has not changed since its launch in 1932.

The idea of sitting down to make a funny noise is much older, Queen Victoria was given a musical bustle in 1887 for her Golden Jubilee which played 'God Save the Queen' when the wearer sat down. The Roman Emperor Elagabulus used an early version of the whoopee cushion at his dinner parties.

The Quad City Mallards ice hockey team hold the world record for the largest simultaneous whoopee cushion sit with 3,614 sitters taking part at Moline, Illinois, USA.

Whoopi Goldberg (Caryn Elaine Johnson) got her stage name from her childhood flatulence and the fact that it made her sound like a whoopee cushion. She adopted the traditionally Jewish surname 'Goldberg' as a stage name, because her mother felt that Johnson was not "Jewish enough" to make her a star. Well, that's about the end of it.

Patriot's Day

Patriots Day April 19 - America had remained neutral in the war until April 6th of 1917 when President Wilson and the U.S. Congress made a declaration of war. This poster calls for the American people to get on board with the war efforts.

Political Bonus

We tend to think the people in Congress today are a bit looney, but it all started way earlier.

In 1936, Democrats took over Rhode Island’s state senate and began giving out $100 bonuses to veterans. A Republican was concerned at this liberality and quietly recommended a bonus for Sgt. Evael O.W. Tnesba of the Twelfth Machine Gun Battalion. A Democrat seconded the bill and it passed immediately, sending a ripple of laughter through the chamber.

Sensing they’d been had, the Democrats referred the bill to a committee for study. There they discovered that Evael O.W. Tnesba spelled backward is Absent W.O. Leave.

Racing Right

Races are usually run counterclockwise because it is believed to be easier for right handed people, who make up the majority of world population. Putting their right foot forward and leaning into a turn feels more comfortable and provides more power and balance than the reverse direction, say physicists.

Going counterclockwise also looks more natural, with runners passing the observer in the way most people perceive, think, and read; that is left-to-right. Easy to understand why counterclockwise was chosen standardizing international competitions.

Mustard

The oriental mustard plant originally started growing in the foothills of the Himalayas, but migrated to the USA, UK, Denmark, and Canada.

Mild white mustard grows wild in North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe and has also spread. Black mustard is grown in Argentina, China, the US, and Canada.

Canada and Nepal are the world's major producers of mustard seed, between them accounting for about 57% of world production in 2010. The United Sates receives 43% of Canada's total output of mustard seeds.

Get Rid of Smells

If you get something really smelly on your hands, like mustard, garlic, or cheap cologne, try rubbing your hand on some stainless steel under running water. This combination should mostly wipe out the bad smells.

Another tip for removing odors from fish, onions, or garlic is to rub your hands across the blade of a stainless steel knife. You can even buy stainless steel 'soap', which is just a piece of stainless steel about the same shape and size as a bar of normal soap.

There is not much scientific data about how stainless steel removes odor and other types of odors are not affected by contact with the metal.

Eight Geography Quick Facts

1. Scranton, Pa., was formerly called Skunk’s Misery.
2. No point in Great Britain is more than 75 miles from the sea.
3. On a map North East, Pennsylvania, is in northwest Pennsylvania and Northwest, Virginia, is in southeast Virginia.
4. There is one spot on earth from which, within an hour’s driving time, you can visit Athens, Belfast, Belgrade, Bremen, China, Denmark, Dresden, Frankfort, Limerick, Lisbon, Madrid, Mexico, Naples, Norway, Oxford, Palermo, Paris, Peru, Poland or Vienna. The spot is in the county of Sagadahoc, Maine, US. It is surrounded by towns bearing these names.
5. No building in Washington, D.C., is taller than the Washington Monument. The city enacted a height restriction in 1899 to protect Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an “American Paris” with “low and convenient” buildings on “light and airy” streets.
6. Canada’s coastline is six times as long as Australia’s.
7. Weirton, W.Va., is the only town in the United States that borders two different states on opposite sides. It borders Ohio directly on the west and Pennsylvania on the east.
8. Vatican City occupies about 4,736,120 square feet. The Pentagon, by comparison, has a total floor area of 6,636,360 square feet.

Four Person factory

Dirk Vander Kooij's furniture-making company, Studio Dirk Vander Kooij, in the Netherlands needs only a skeleton crew of four people. The hard work is carried out by an old industrial robot that Vander Kooij fashioned into a 3D printer. He converted an old industrial CNC (computer numerical control) extruder into an interfaced mechanical arm that prints, level after level, continuous layers of low-resolution plastic into furniture.

Using plastic recycled from old refrigerators, the machine "prints" furniture the way an ordinary printer uses ink to print documents. Many analysts expect 3D printing to revolutionize manufacturing, allowing more small firms like his to make products without hiring many people.

De-oxygenated Blood Turns Blue Myth

The common misconception that blood which lacks oxygen turns blue probably comes from the fact that veins appear blue and blood in the veins is typically heading back to the lungs, hence depleted of oxygen.

People who perpetuate this myth often claim that the reason we never see blood in its blue form is that the instant we get cut, the blood is exposed to oxygen and instantly turns red. However, when you get blood drawn from your veins that isn't exposed to air, it is dark red.

When blood is deprived of oxygen it actually just turns dark red. When it’s oxygenated, it turns a brighter red. The red color primarily comes from the hemoglobin, which contains four heme groups. These heme group’s interactions with various molecules end up giving it the dark red or light red color we see. The hemoglobin itself is a protein that binds with oxygen to be distributed throughout the body in blood.

Veins are very close to the surface of skin. This location under the skin is largely why veins appear blue despite the fact that the blood is dark red. This is from the way light diffuses in the skin. Veins appear blue from the way subcutaneous fat absorbs low-frequency light. This permits only high frequency blue and violet wavelengths to penetrate through the skin to the vein, with the other wavelengths getting filtered off from the pigmentation of your skin.

If a person has darker or lighter skin the veins tend to appear green or brown. People with extremely light skin, such as an albino, will typically have veins that show up as dark purple or dark red, more closely resembling the actual color of the blood running through the veins.