A”BUTT LOAD”…Is a real unit of measurement….equal to 126 gallons.
IN 218 BCE….blocked by limestone cliffs on a Alpine pass….Hannibal faced impassable rock and winter snows….his engineers reportedly built great fires…..and then doused the heated stone with vinegar to fracture it….and made a clearing track for his troops and elephants.
FORENSIC SCIENTISTS…..found cannabis residue inside 400-year-old pipes…..excavated from William Shakespeare’s personal garden…..the discovery lends new weight to his Sonnet 76……which mentions getting creative inspiration from “invention in a noted weed”…..hinting the Bard may have smoked more than just tobacco.
A SINGLE VOLCANO…..Eruption in 1815 triggered the “Year Without a Summer” in 1816….causing snow in July and a global famine…..while trapped indoors by endless storms in Switzerland…..18-year-old Mary Shelley wrote a ghost story to pass the time…..it became “Frankenstein”…..a horror classic born from a real-world climate disaster.
THE WORD “RESTAURANT”…..literally means “food that restores”…..the term originated around 1765 with a Parisian soup vendor named Boulanger……who sold rich broths advertised as a cure for physical exhaustion…..his shop was one of the first places…..where a diner could order from a menu of prepared dishes,
“JINGLE BELLS”…..Wasn’t written for Christmas….it was composed by James Lord Pierpont in 1857….it was a “sleighing song”…..meant to be sung at Thanksgiving church services…..and lively winter sleigh races….its original title was simply,… “The One Horse Open Sleigh.”
IN 1825…..Samuel Morse learned to latte of his wife’s death….due to slow mail delivery….outraged by communication delays…he invented Morse code.
FOR 36 YEARS….the Olympics awarded official medals for fine art…..from 1912 to 1948….artists competed in categories like……architecture, sculpture, painting…..with their work being judged on its connection to sports…..the founder of the modern Olympics….Pierre de Coubertin….even won a gold medal himself in 1912….for his poem “Ode to Sport.”
EACH YEAR….winds carry 22,000 tons of Saharan dust across the ocean…..fertilizing the Amazon rainforest….and keeping it alive.
IN JAPANESE…. “Tsundoku” refers to the act of collecting books and letting them accumulate….not as a result of neglect…..but rather as a source of joy and anticipation….knowing that they hold untold stories…..waiting to be discovered.
THEY RIGGED FRANCE’S NATIONAL LOTTERY….And walked away with nearly half a million livres…..in 1729, philosopher Voltaire and a friend spotted a single math flaw….payouts were worth more than buying every ticket in a drawing….they formed a small syndicate and bought thousands of tickets….and won again and again…..until the government uncovered the exploit.
DECLARED ILLEGITIMATE…..At age 2 and removed from succession….Anne Boleyn’ daughter later took the throne as Queen Elizabeth…..ruling for 44 years….in AD 1536 at the Tower of London…..Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded…..on fabricated treason charges….after failing to produce a male heir.
ST. PATRICK’S…..Original color wasn’t green….for over 500 years….. “St. Patrick’s Blue”….was the official color on English royal banners….green only became a symbol of Irish independence…..during the 1798 rebellion.
SHE WALKED OUT OF PARIS’s TEMPLE TOWER…..Alive on December 18, 1795 AD….after more than a year in solitary at age 15….Marie Thérèse….daughter of Marie Antoinette….was the only one of the king’s children to survive the French Revolution….carrying her family’s fate with her for life.
A PROGRAMMABLE ROBOT BAND….Wowed the royal guests….changing beats on command….in 1206 AD….engineer Ismal al-Jazari built a 4-musician, water-powered automaton…..and documented its design in….. “The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices”…..his designs are seen as a key step toward modern robotics.