Blind, Buildings And Buttermilk Are Just Some Of Today’s Facts

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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A host of random facts today, as always.

Buttermilk included.

So make some pancakes and…..

Enjoy.

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did you know5

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The Home Insurance Building was erected

in Chicago in 1884 and has been called the

“Father of the Modern Skyscraper”.

It was 10 stories high.

 Home Insurance Building was erected in Chicago

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Every year, more than 14 billion pounds

(6 billion kilograms) of garbage

is dumped into the world’s oceans.

Most of it, is plastic that is toxic to marine life.

 garbage is dumped into the world's ocean

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Contrary to popular belief,

the Mayans don’t have just one calendar

and none of their calendars predicted

the world would end in 2012.

Now you tell me!!!

 Mayan calendar

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80% of infants are

born with a birthmark

 born with a birthmark

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Buttermilk is NOT milk containing butter.

Buttermilk is actually the part of the milk

that’s left after you churn the butter out.

 Buttermilk

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Russia’s surface area is bigger

than Pluto’s surface area

 Russia's surface area

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Malcolm X was shot and mortally wounded

by three members of the Nation of Islam

on the stage of the Audubon ballroom in Harlem

on February 21, 1965.

In March of 1964, Malcolm X announced

a break with the Nation of Islam,

leading to conflict, threats,

and ultimately his assassination.

 Malcolm X

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If you want to make a pineapple sweeter

you actually need to use salt!

 pineapple

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The escalators in London’s underground

travel two times the circumference of the Earth

every week!

 escalators in London's underground

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Foreigners account for 23% of

Switzerland’s roughly 8 million people

 Switzerland

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Various studies show that during

a time of extreme stress or in a crisis,

women tend to react with reference to their feelings,

while men tend not to react with logic and deductive reasoning.

 man and woman reacting to stress

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Finally, Braille, the tactile writing system

used by blind and visually impaired people,

is named after its creator, Louis Braille,

who was blinded in both eyes in an accident

during his early childhood.

He mastered his disability while still a boy

and, in 1824 (at the age of just 15), presented

his system of tactile code that would eventually

allow blind people to read and write.

Louis Braille

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Dirty Harry? It Must Be Fact Day!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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No dirty facts here. That’s someone else’s job.

Just good clean fun with another selection from the fabulous fasab fact file.

Enjoy.

..Oh, and spare a thought for poor Betty Stobbs who for one split second thought she had made it.

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facts 03

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Dirty Harry’s badge number is 2211.

Dirty_Harry_Badge

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Frisian, a language native to the Netherlands,

is considered the easiest foreign language

for English speakers to learn

Nord friesische Dialekte

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The amount the U.S. military spends annually

on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20.2 billion.

Keeping their cool

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The Milky Way has four spiral arms, not two.

Milky Way galaxy

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The main ingredient for chocolate are technically cacao beans,

but they are known throughout the cocoa industry as cocoa beans

because of a misspelling.

Cacao beans and chocolate

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Cacao has been around for millions of years and

is probably one of the oldest of nature’s foods.

cacao beans

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It has been calculated that in the last 3,000 years

there have only been 240 years of peace in the world

peace-time-war-time

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During the An Lushan rebellion in China in the mid 700s

nearly 40 million people died.

This was 1/6 of the world’s population.

An Lushan rebellion in China

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Your brain is the fattest organ in your body at around 60%

fat-head

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Curfew comes from a combination of two French words

– “couvrir” and “feu”. Literally this means to “cover fire”.

curfew-photo

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In 1999, Betty Stobbs, 67, of Durham, England,

took a bale of hay to feed her flock of sheep

on the back of her motorcycle.

Her hungry sheep, however, charged her bike and

knocked her into a deep ravine.

She survived the fall but was killed

when her bike landed on top of her.

Betty Stobbs

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Andrew Jackson was involved in as many as 100 duels,

most of which were fought to defend the honor of his wife.

Not surprisingly he was shot multiple times during his life.

Andrew Jackson duel

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Alexander the Great is famous for a spying technique still used today.

He had all his soldiers write home to their families

and then intercepted the letters.

Whoever didn’t have something nice to say was executed.

Alexander_the_Great

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If you are referred to as a “treasured guest”

in Disney don’t get carried away.

That means you’re an asshole and

workers are being warned about you

Sleeping Beauty Castle Disney

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The voices of Yoda and Miss Piggy

were done by the same person.

His name is Frank Oz.

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Pierre-Joseph Proudhon – What It Means To Be Governed.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I had intended to indulge myself today with a bit of a Sunday Sermon about the increasing intrusiveness of government.

But then I found a quote from a Frenchman named Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and I decided to let him use my pulpit on this occasion.

He didn’t know about the “En ess a” snoopers who have been listening to our phone calls, reading our emails, and spying on the leaders of nations that are supposed to be friends and allies of the United States, because he was speaking about what it means to be governed more than two hundred years ago.

Nevertheless, his words ring eerily true.

Nothing, it seems, has changed.

In fact today’s technology has made things far worse.

This is what he had to say all those years ago….

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To be governed is to be

watched over,

inspected,

spied on,

directed,

legislated at,

regulated,

docketed,

indoctrinated,

preached at,

controlled,

assessed,

weighed,

censored,

(and) ordered about,

by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue.

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To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction,

noted,

registered,

enrolled,

taxed,

stamped,

measured,

numbered,

assessed,

licensed,

authorized,

admonished,

forbidden,

reformed,

corrected,

(and) punished.

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It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be

placed under contribution,

trained,

ransomed,

exploited,

monopolized,

extorted,

squeezed,

mystified,

(and) robbed;

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Then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be

repressed,

fined,

despised,

harassed,

tracked,

abused,

clubbed,

disarmed,

choked,

imprisoned,

judged,

condemned,

shot,

deported,

sacrificed,

sold,

betrayed;

and, to crown all,

mocked,

ridiculed,

outraged,

(and) dishonoured.

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That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.

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The man knew what he was talking about.

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Portrait_of_Pierre_Joseph_Proudhon_1865

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, (1809 – 1865) was a French politician, the founder of Mutualist philosophy, an economist and a libertarian socialist. He was the first person to declare himself an anarchist and is among its most influential theorists. He is considered by many to be the “father of anarchism”. He became a member of the French Parliament after the revolution of 1848, whereupon and thereafter he referred to himself as a federalist.

(Bio source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon )

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A Lot Of Idiots Kill Themselves….But….

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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A lot of idiots kill themselves accidently. I’ve highlighted a few examples on this blog of people whose stupidity led to their demise.

But some do it on purpose.

If they are really dumb, however, they don’t quite manage to do it the way they had planned.

Here are some examples.

 

1. Objective Attained – Method Unexpected

Frenchman Jacques LeFevrier left nothing to chance when he decided to commit suicide.

He stood at the top of a tall cliff and tied a noose around his neck.

He tied the other end of the rope to a large rock.

He then drank some poison.

Then he set fire to his clothes.

He even tried to shoot himself at the last moment.

The plan seemed foolproof. Alas it was not.

As he jumped he fired the pistol.

However, the bullet missed him completely and instead cut through the rope above him.

Free of the threat of hanging, he plunged into the sea.

The sudden dunking extinguished the flames and the salty water he ingested made him vomit the poison.

He was dragged out of the water by a kind fisherman and was taken to a hospital, where he subsequently died of hypothermia.

There must have been an easier way. 

Jacques LeFevrier
Jacques LeFevrier

 

2. Strike another one Elvita!

One Sunday while on a visit to the Empire State Building in New York City, Elvita Adams clambered over an 8 foot high iron fence surrounding the observation deck at about 8.25pm.

She jumped off the building and plummeted earthwards.

But only for a few feet.

A strong gust of wind, possibly as high as 30mph, pushed her back towards the building and she landed on a balcony on the 85th floor, with nothing more than a broken leg.

Asked why she had wanted to commit suicide she said it was because she had been a failure at everything she tried.

Strike another one Elvita!

Empire State Building
Empire State Building

 

 

3. She Fell For Him Big Time

Back in France again, suicides at the Eiffel Tower are apparently quite common. In fact France has one of the highest suicide rates at 17.5 suicides per 1000 people!

Killing yourself with the 1,063 foot “Iron Lady” is the third most popular French suicide method behind poisoning and hanging (both of which the guy in the first incident tried unsuccessfully).

A few times, people have attempted to kill themselves but failed to do so. One man was blown onto a rafter by the wind and he was spared. But the most curious case was one in which a woman who jumped, landed on the roof of a car and later married the man who owned it!

Boy did she fall for him!!!

Eiffel Tower, Paris
Eiffel Tower, Paris

  

4. Taxi!

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, a woman threw herself off the 23rd floor balcony of the Hotel Crown Plaza Panamericano in an apparent suicide bid. However her attempt failed when a taxi caught in traffic below cushioned her fall.

Although the impact of her landing on the car shattered its windscreen and made a huge dent in its roof, the impact was not hard enough to end her life.

Instead, the 30-year-old woman was left with broken hips, ribs and significant internal bleeding.

The driver of the taxi, Miguel Cajal, told a local TV station that he noticed policemen stopping traffic and were looking upward. This made him instinctively jump out of his car.

“I got out of the car a second before. If I had not got out, I would have been killed,” the BBC quoted him as saying. The impact, he added, “made a terrible noise.”

The aftermath of a suicidal woman landing on a taxi
The aftermath of a suicidal woman landing on a taxi

 

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