Did You Know? – Another Round Of Fabulous Facts!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

.

Another random bunch of facts for you today.

I think I prefer the final one the best because of its irony and the fact that it illustrates that people can sometimes delude and convince themselves into believing they saw what the really didn’t.

Anyway, here they are, so choose your own favorite, but whatever you do….

Enjoy.

.

facts 02

.

The US Constitution contains many

spelling and grammatical errors.

american-constitution

.

.

The term ‘Lunatic’ is derived from the Latin word ‘luna’ meaning ‘moon’.

It originated from the belief that insanity is caused by changes in the moon.

Lunatic

.

.

Thirty-three light years away there is an

exoplanet completely covered in burning ice.

burning ice

.

.

James Stephen “Steve” Fossett was an American businessman,

and a record-setting aviator, sailor, and adventurer

who, in 2002, became the first person to

fly solo nonstop around the world in a balloon.

Steve Fossett

.

.

At its peak the Roman Empire

stretched for 2.51 million square miles,

but it was only the 19th largest empire in history.

Roman_Empire_Map

.

.

Throughout the 1800s people were buried alive so often

that coffins included mechanisms to allow those people

to ring a bell in the graveyard.

people were buried alive so often that coffins included mechanisms to allow those people to ring a bell in the graveyard

.

.

Homer and Langley Collyer, two compulsive hoarders,

were found buried beneath a collapsed pile of

the things they had stored in their house over the years.

Homer and Langley Collyer house

.

.

The last time a cavalry charge was used on the battlefield

was during WWII when a Mongolian cavalry division

charged a German infantry division.

Two thousand Mongolians were killed

and not a single German died.

Mongolian cavalry division

.

.

In ancient Egypt some servants were covered in honey

to attract flies away from the pharaoh.

(I suppose it’s better than the alternative!)

servants were covered in honey to attract flies away from the pharaoh

.

.

June 28, 2014 was the 100 year anniversary of the assassination

of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria,

heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne,

who was killed in Sarajevo along with his wife Duchess Sophie

by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip.

This was the incident that led to the Great War,

also now known as World War I.

assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria

.

.

Although several notable people died on the toilet,

one of the most famous is probably Elvis Presley.

Doctors attributed his death to too many prescription drugs.

elvis-presley-s-toilet

.

.

When pizza deliveryman Brian Wells

was stopped by the police in the middle of a bank robbery

no one believed his story that he had been forced to do it

by some people he had delivered pizza to.

He kept on pleading with the officers saying that

the necklace he was wearing was a bomb.

Unfortunately for him though,

the bomb squad didn’t show up early enough.

pizza deliveryman Brian Wells

.

.

Almost one-seventh (840) of all the languages on Earth

are spoken in one country…

Papua New Guinea.

map_of_papua-new-guinea

.

.

When it was first built,

Disney’s Tomorrowland

was supposed to represent

the far off future year of 1986.

Tomorrowland_Disneyland

.

.

A famous proponent of healthy eating and organic farming,

Jerome Irving Rodale died of a heart attack

while being interviewed on the Dick Cavett Show in 1971.

Some of his last words were that [he] would

“live to 100, unless [he was] run down by a a sugar-crazy taxi driver”.

Appearing fast asleep during the show, Dick Cavett joked

“Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?”

before discovering that his 72-year-old guest had indeed died.

Many people are convinced they saw this on TV

but the incident was never aired.

.

.

===============================================

.

Safe And Secure

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

.

Safe and secure is the wish of all of us and we pay other people to make sure that we are. In fact in today’s world hundreds of thousands of people are employed one way or another in the security business.

Looking at the macro-side of it, despite the fact that we all hate being treated as suspects when we go to the airport, most of the time the security people seem to get it right. After all, although many have been planned, there have been very few successful terrorist attacks since the infamous 9-11 in New York City and The Pentagon.

 Security-check

Nevertheless we have to be vigilant and cautious no matter where we are in the world. This is particularly so for American citizens and government employees, who are potential targets overseas.

Even in the most unlikely of places.

On July 31, last year, for example, Norwegian Police blocked off the area around Oslo’s royal palace following the discovery of a suspicious object beneath a nearby automobile outside the U.S. embassy.

The embassy was evacuated.

So was Norway’s royal palace and part of downtown Oslo.

Authorities even temporarily suspended subway service.

An international children’s soccer game was canceled at nearby Voldslokka Stadium so that the field could be used to land helicopters close to the embassy.

The Oslo bomb squad, emergency services and other agencies responded to the bomb alert. They examined the ‘device’ but were quickly able to determine that it was in fact a fake, much to the relief of everyone.

However, the incident then raised further questions.

Who had been responsible?

How had the perpetrators managed to breech Embassy security and plant the device, even a fake one?

It wasn’t too long before an “Oh, oh…” was heard.

Keen to make sure everyone was alert to the possibility of an attack, security staff at the U.S. embassy in Oslo had carried out a safety drill earlier in the week. That safety drill had included placing fake bombs on vehicles to rehearse their emergency-response operations.  

However, they forgot about one of the ‘bombs’ and a few days later the practice bomb was spotted on an embassy vehicle as it tried to enter the embassy grounds just after 11 a.m. The eagle-eyed security guards on duty leaped into action and the bomb alert was declared.

Of course the officials concerned apologized for their mistake in leaving the fake bomb, regretting any disruption caused by this incident, and essentially calling a bomb scare on themselves.

Safe and secure? Maybe, but from whom?

Who is going to protect us from the idiots?  

 .

=============================

.