Spending a penny is becoming more and more difficult these days, especially if you are in the US military as you will see. But then they are trained to take the pressure.
More fabulous facts below.
Enjoy.
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Stores on US military bases around the world
don’t accept pennies as currency because they are
“too heavy and are not cost-effective to ship”.
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A person’s pupils will dilate if they are lying.
In fact, because this is an involuntary behavior
it is usually a good indication.
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The world’s first female American self-made millionaire,
Madame C.J. Walker, made her fortune
in the early 20th century cosmetics industry.
A black man appeared to her in a dream
and told her the mixture which would help
her falling-out hair grow back in.
It worked, and she enjoyed a lengthy career
selling her cosmetics products.
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Australia’s National Science Agency
claims to have basically invented wi-fi
and has even sued over it.
But sure we all know it was Al Gore,
or was that the internet he didn’t invent?
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Still on the subject of the internet,
when Montenegro gained its independence
from Yugoslavia its top level internet
domain went from .yu to .me
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And yet more Internet goodies,
in 1993 there were only 623 websites.
Today, more than 100,000 domain names
are registered every single day
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The Incas constructed buildings without mortar,
the huge stones they used fitting together
so perfectly and tightly that
nothing could get between them.
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In China reincarnation is illegal.
Unless you have permission from the government.
(But how would they know if you came back
as an American or maybe a dog?)
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The first submarine attack in history
took place in New York Harbor in 1776.
The colonists attempted to attach gunpowder
to the hull of the British ship HMS Eagle
using a submersible they called ‘The Turtle’.
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NASA will send you a text message
whenever the International Space Station
passes over your location.
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Is there such a thing as a jinx?
Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert Todd Lincoln
was by his father’s side as he passed away.
He then went on to witness the assassination
of President James Garfield.
Twenty years later, in 1901, President William McKinley
invited him to the Pan-American exposition in New York
and on that day President McKinley was also assassinated.
Robert decided to decline any presidential invitations
Another month and another quiz to get it off to a challenging start.
One or two relatively easy ones today, but I think most of them you will find tough enough.
As usual, if you get stuck, you can find the answers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down below, but please NO cheating!
Enjoy and good luck.
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Q. 1: What is the official language of Brazil?
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Q. 2: Which wife of a politician said in 1981, ‘Woman is like a teabag: you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in the hot water’?
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Q. 3: Many expanses of water of varying sizes are designated as ‘seas’ such as the Mediterranean Sea, the Dead Sea, etc. But what is the only such sea in the world that does not have a coastline?
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Q. 4: What book was Denzel Washington protecting in the 2010 movie?
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Q. 5: What is both unusual and famous about the restaurant in Volterra, Italy called “Fortezza Medicea”?
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Q. 6: In which city is the music recording company Motown based?
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Q. 7: The official country retreat of the President of the USA, Camp David, is located in which mountains?
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Q. 8: Where did the Incas originate?
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Q. 9: What was the name of the Cuban President over thrown by Fidel Castro in 1959?
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Q. 10: Although the United States has Roswell and Area 51, and Hollywood has pushed out a unending stream of movies based on them, the government does not officially recognize the existence of UFOs. However three well known countries do formally recognize the existence of UFOs, can you name them? (A point for each and a bonus point if you can name all three.)
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Q. 11: Who was coming to dinner with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in 1967?
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Q. 12: Who was dubbed “Lenin’s left leg” during the early stages of Russia’s Marxist movement?
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Q. 13: In which US city was the first skyscraper built in 1883?
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Q. 14: A double question with multiple points. The US State Department currently recognizes 194 different countries in the world, but how many take up approximately half of Earth’s land area?
HINT: It is a relatively small number of the 194 total and there is a bonus point for each of them that you can name.
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Q. 15: What phrase is the unlikely link between Barbara Streisand and Bugs Bunny?
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Q. 16: What is the only state in the Middle East in which there is no desert?
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Q. 17: What former Soviet state is currently experiencing massive civil unrest and upheaval?
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Q. 18: Which river has the largest delta?
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Q. 19: Whoopie Goldberg played one in a movie and Patricia Arquette played another in a television series, what were they? (And bonus points if you can name the movie and the tv series.)
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Q. 20: Which movie other than ‘The Bodyguard’ featured the song “I Will Always Love You”?
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ANSWERS
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Q. 1: What is the official language of Brazil?
A. 1: Portuguese.
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Q. 2: Which wife of a politician said in 1981, ‘Woman is like a teabag: you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in the hot water’?
A. 2: Nancy Reagan.
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Q. 3: Many expanses of water of varying sizes are designated as ‘seas’ such as the Mediterranean Sea, the Dead Sea, etc. But what is the only such sea in the world that does not have a coastline?
A. 3: The Sargasso Sea in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean is surrounded by ocean currents and no land and therefore has no coast.
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Q. 4: What book was Denzel Washington protecting in the 2010 movie?
A. 4: The Book Of Eli. You also get a point if you said The Bible.
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Q. 5: What is both unusual and famous about the restaurant in Volterra, Italy called “Fortezza Medicea”?
A. 5: “Fortezza Medicea” is a maximum security prison – the cooks and waiters are all doing sentences of at least seven years.
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Q. 6: In which city is the music recording company Motown based?
A. 6: Detroit.
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Q. 7: The official country retreat of the President of the USA, Camp David is in which mountains?
A. 7: Appalachians.
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Q. 8: Where did the Incas originate?
A. 8: Peru.
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Q. 9: What was the name of the Cuban President over thrown by Fidel Castro in 1959?
A. 9: General Batista.
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Q. 10: Although the United States has Roswell and Area 51, and Hollywood has pushed out a unending stream of movies based on them, the government does not officially recognize the existence of UFOs. However three well known countries do formally recognize the existence of UFOs, can you name them? (A point for each and a bonus point if you can name all three.)
A. 10: France, Italy and Chile have all formally recognized the existence of UFOs.
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Q. 11: Who was coming to dinner with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in 1967?
A. 11: Sidney Poitier.
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Q. 12: Who was dubbed “Lenin’s left leg” during the early stages of Russia’s Marxist movement?
A. 12: Joseph Stalin.
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Q. 13: In which US city was the first skyscraper built in 1883?
A. 13: Chicago.
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Q. 14: A double question with multiple points. The US State Department currently recognizes 194 different countries in the world, but how many take up approximately half of Earth’s land area?
HINT: It is a relatively small number of the 194 total and there is a bonus point for each of them that you can name.
A. 14: Seven countries take half of the Earth’s land area and they are Russia, Canada, USA, China, Australia, Brazil and Argentina.
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Q. 15: What phrase is the unlikely link between Barbara Streisand and Bugs Bunny?
A. 15: “What’s up, Doc?” is Bugs’ catchphrase and the name of a 1972 comedy/romance movie starring Barbara Streisand and Ryan O’Neill.
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Q. 16: What is the only state in the Middle East in which there is no desert?
A. 16: Lebanon.
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Q. 17: What former Soviet state is currently experiencing massive civil unrest and upheaval?
A. 17: The Ukraine.
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Q. 18: Which river has the largest delta?
A. 18: The River Ganges.
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Q. 19: Whoopie Goldberg played one in a movie and Patricia Arquette played another in a television series, what were they? (And bonus points if you can name the movie and the tv series.)
A. 19: They played ‘mediums’, Whoopie Goldberg in the movie ‘Ghost’ and Patricia Arquette in the hit tv series ‘Medium’.
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Q. 20: Which movie other than ‘The Bodyguard’ featured the song “I Will Always Love You”?
A. 20: ‘The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas’, a movie starring Dolly Parton who wrote the song.
I must admit to not having much time for nuts with allergies, er… to nuts. But I’ve always liked the edible variety, particularly peanuts and peanut butter. Liked it when I was a kid, still like it today. One of the best culinary inventions ever, in my opinion.
Mr Peanut – Planters logo
Peanut butter has been invented and reinvented many times during history. Peanuts were known as early as 950 B.C. and originated in South America. The ancient Incas used peanuts and were known to have made it into a paste-like substance.
As a crop, peanuts emigrated from South America to Africa thanks to early explorers and from there traveled by trade into Spain which then traded the product to the American colonies. A rather roundabout way to get to the US, but there you are, or rather, here it is.
The first commercial peanut crop was grown in Virginia in the early to mid 1840’s and in North Carolina beginning around 1818.
According to the Corn Products Company, Dr. Ambrose Straub of St. Louis patented a peanut butter-making machine in 1903 and some unknown doctor invented peanut butter in 1890.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg patented a “Process of Preparing Nut Meal” in 1895 and used peanuts. Kellogg served the patients at his Battle Creek Sanitarium peanut butter. Joseph Lambert worked for Dr. Kellogg and began selling his own hand-operated peanut butter grinder in 1896. Almeeta Lambert published the first nut cookbook, “The Complete Guide to Nut Cookery” in 1899.
By 1914, many companies were making peanut butter.
Joseph L. Rosenfield invented a churning process that made peanut butter smooth and in 1928, licensed his invention to the Pond Company, the makers of “Peter Pan” peanut butter.
In 1932, he began making his own brand of peanut butter called “Skippy” which included a crunchy style peanut butter.
But it is possibly agricultural chemist, George Washington Carver who has the best claim to the peanut butter gold medal position. In the course of his research he discovered three hundred uses for peanuts and hundreds more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes.
Carver wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life.
He started popularizing uses for peanut products including peanut butter, paper, ink, and oils beginning in 1880, the most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers contained 105 food recipes using peanuts.
However, Carver did not patent peanut butter as he believed food products were all gifts from God. The 1880 date precedes all the above inventors except of course for the Incas, who were first. It was Carver who made peanuts a significant crop in the American South in the early 1900’s. Today half of all edible peanuts produced in the United States are used to make peanut butter and peanut spreads.
Thanks Mr G W Carver.
George Washington Carver – One Of America’s Great Scientists
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And here are a lot of other things you probably didn’t know about peanuts….
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite;
The peanut is not a nut, it is actually a legume;
It takes more than 500 peanuts to make one 12 ounce jar of peanut butter;
The Planters Peanut Company mascot, Mr. Peanut, was created during a contest for schoolchildren in 1916;
Throughout the South, peanuts were known as “Monkey Nuts,” and “Goober peas,” before the civil war;
The fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth is called Arachibutyrophobia;
People living on the east coast prefer creamy peanut butter, while people living on the west coast prefer chunky peanut butter;
Skippy Peanut Butter is sold more in the world than any other peanut butter;
The average American kid will eat approximately 1.500 peanut butter sandwiches by high school graduation;
The #1 peanut producing state is Georgia;
On average, the American household consumes six pounds of peanut butter annually;
96% of people put the peanut butter on first when making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich;
Americans consume the most peanut butter in the world;
Approximately three jars of peanut butter are sold every second;
In a year, about 90 million jars of Skippy Peanut Butter are sold. (This works out to three jars sold every second);
In the U.S. peanuts account for 66% of all snack nuts;
Both Thomas Jefferson and Jimmy Carter, U.S. presidents, were peanut farmers at one time;
Peanut butter is an effective way to remove chewing gum from hair or clothes;
Incas used to create pots in the shape of peanuts that were highly prized;
In Greene, New York, you are not allowed to eat peanuts and walk backwards on the sidewalk during a concert.
fasab 