Bangers and Mash

The British meal of sausage and mashed potatoes goes back a long way. Sausages can be traced back to ancient times. Victorians were skeptical of what was in a sausage, suspected horse meat, and nicknamed them ‘Little Bags of Mystery’. After the outbreak of the World War, food shortages led to a dramatic reduction of meat in sausages, so producers packed them out with scraps, cereal, and water, which caused them to pop when cooked over hot fires. That is how the name bangers came to be. The mash comes from the way potatoes are cooked - mashed.

Crap Email Hack

We all get way too much marketing stuff in our inbox. One way to reduce it is to filter for the word unsubscribe and send the mail straight to trash. If you want to keep some of the materials, set up a folder for marketing and send the emails there. That way you can keep the info, but it is not mixed with important emails.

Origin of Credit Cards

In 1949, Frank McNamara, an executive at the Hamilton Credit Corporation, was embarrassed to find himself short of cash when it came time to pay for a dinner with clients at a New York restaurant. Charge accounts were already common, allowing customers to add up a tab at certain establishments and pay it later, but those accounts were only for each specific business. McNamara had the idea of making a card which could be used at multiple unconnected upscale New York restaurants. Diners Club would pay the restaurant, and the diner would pay Diners Club, plus interest. Diners Club's had 20,000 members in its first year, who could use it to pay for services at 28 restaurants and two hotels.

Bacon, Vitamins and Minerals

Bacon provides us with substantial amounts of the important, necessary vitamins and minerals our bodies need to function healthfully. From bacon, we receive: 65% of our Recommended Daily Intake of Thiamin (Vitamin B1) as well as 47% of our Niacin (Vitamin B3), 38% of our Vitamin B12, 36% of our Zinc, 24% of our Vitamin B6, 22% of our Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), 22% of our Phosphorus, 10% of our Pantothenate, 10% of our Magnesium, 9% of our Iron and the Protein to fat balance in bacon is actually 4 to 1, which is one of the highest protein to fat balances found in any meat, fish, or fowl found on Earth.

International Dance Day

April 29 is International Dance Day. It was introduced in 1982 by the International Dance Council (Conseil International de la Danse). The main purpose of Dance Day events is to attract the attention of the wider public to the art of dance. Emphasis should be given to addressing a new public, people who do not follow dance events during the course of the year. Every year, the president of the CID sends the official message for Dance Day which circulates in every country of the world.

US National Dance Day was created by Nigel Lythgoe and takes place in the United States on the last Saturday in July. It was founded and officially recognized in 2010 when American congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced a National Dance Day resolution to promote dance education and physical fitness.

Free Friday Smile

Happy Friday

There is no doubt in the honesty of a child's smile.

I cultivate the habit of smiling and sharing a Happy Friday!

Wordology, Trivia

The word trivia originates from the Latin word trivium (plural trivia), where “tri” stands for triple and “via” means way. Basically, the word means a place where three ways meet. This word gained prominence in Rome, where people would often chin wag with others at a trivium. The word trivalis in Classical Latin meant an appropriate street corner and commonplace. In medieval times, the word gained broader meaning and came to refer grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Much of what you read here can be referred to as trivia.

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is mostly known for archiving the web, which the San Francisco-based nonprofit has done since 1996, two years before Google was founded.

It is also called the Wayback Machine and indexes over 435 billion webpages dating back to 1996. It is the largest archive of the web. The archive also hosts:

• Books. One of the world’s largest open collections of digitized books, over 6 million public domain books, and an open library catalog.
• Videos. 1.9 million videos, including classic TV, 1,300 vintage home movies, and 4,000 public-domain feature films.
• The Prelinger Archives. Over 6,000 ephemeral films, including vintage advertising, educational and industrial footage.
• Audio. 2.3 million audio recordings, including over 74,000 radio broadcasts, 13,000 78rpm records, and 1.7 million Creative Commons-licensed audio recordings.
• Live music. Over 137,000 concert recordings, nearly 10,000 from the Grateful Dead alone.
• Audiobooks. Over 10,000 audiobooks from LibriVox and more.
• TV News. 668,000 news broadcasts with full-text search.
• Scanning services. Free and open access to scan complete print collections in 33 scanning centers, with 1,500 books scanned daily.
• Software. The largest collection of historical software in the world.