Miscellaneous Trivia

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World Tourist day is observed on September 27.

Street Boulevard in Joplin, Missouri was named for Gabby Street, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in the early 1930's.

Liberace Museum has a mirror-plated Rolls Royce; jewel-encrusted capes, and the largest rhinestone in the world, weighing 59 pounds and almost a foot in diameter.

Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old.

Every queen named Jane has either been murdered, imprisoned, gone mad, died young, or been dethroned.

Four of the first six presidents of the U.S. were 57 years old when they were inaugurated. No other presidents have been inaugurated at that age.

Shampoo was first marketed in the USA in 1930 by John Breck, who was the captain of a volunteer fire department.

Vellum, a fine-quality writing parchment, is prepared from animal skin: lambs, kids, and very young calves. Coarser, tougher types are made from the skins of male goats, wolves, and older calves. Vellum replaced papyrus and was superseded by paper.

Catherine de Medici was the first woman in Europe to use tobacco. She took it in a mixture of snuff.

Historians claim that the first valentine was a poem sent in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London at the time. In the United States, Miss Esther Howland is given credit for sending the first valentine's cards. Commercial valentines were introduced in the 1800's and now the date is very commercialized. The town of Loveland, Colorado, does a large post office business around February 14.

In 1969 the Navy spent $375,000 on an "aerodynamic analysis of the self-suspended flare." The study's conclusion was that the Frisbee was not feasible as military hardware.

In 1970, "MCI" stood for "Microwave Communications, Inc." No longer used as an acronym, it now stands alone.

The orange things that crossing guards, construction and high way workers, etc. wear is called a retroreflective vest, or "International Orange".

Roger Wrenn was the photographer who took the famous picture of General Douglas MacArthur wading ashore in the Philippines in October 1944.

If a person counted at the rate of 100 numbers a minute and kept counting for eight hours a day, five days a week, it would take a little over 4 weeks to count to one million and just over 80 years to reach a billion.

February is Black History Month.

WHAT CAN TELL ABOUT AN INTERSTATE HIGHWAY FROM ITS NUMBER? If it's an odd-number, it's a north-south route. Even-numbered Interstates run east-west. A three-digit number beginning with an even-number is a beltway while a three-digit number beginning with an odd-number is a bypass or spur.

Some people think that the stage musical Les Miserables runs a bit long, but it's a mere flash in time compared with one of the sentences in the novel on which it is based. Supposedly to make it easy to read, that 3-page, 823-word sentence is divided by 93 commas, 51 semicolons and 4 dashes.

By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand.

There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.