Pinhead Chronicles
By Sam Wein,
Rubber got its name from the English chemist, Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen when he found that in its raw latex state, India gum could rub out lead pencil marks.
• A typical bed usually houses over six billion dust mites.
• In Gippsland, Australia, the world’s largest earthworm can grow 5 to 6 feet in length.
• To cure hay fever, have a tapeworm. There is no dose of hay fever that a good tapeworm cannot cure.
• It is estimated that between 3,000 to 10,000 ships and approximately 30,000 lives have been lost in North America’s great lakes from 1680 to the present.
• The term “furlong” is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word, furh or furrow, and ‘lang’ or long and literally means the length of a furrow. The original furlong was the length of a furrow across a square field of 10 acres.
• The longest reign in history was the 6th Egyptian dynasty of Pepi II, who ascended the throne about 2500 B.C. at the age of six, and reigned for 91 years.
• The word “mob” comes from the latin “mobile vulgaris” or “excited crowd.” The term was shortened to mob in the 18th century.
• Beaver teeth are so sharp that native Americans once used them as knife blades.
• In 1888, an estimated 300,000 mummified cats were found at Beni Hassan, Egypt. They were sold at $18.30 per ton and shipped to England to be ground up and used as fertilizer.
• The name of the dog on the Crackerjack box is Bingo.
• The FDA allows an average of 320 or more insect fragments and one or more rodent hairs per 100 grams of peanut butter.
• In Siberia, in 1994, a container full of marijuana was discovered in a 3,000 year old grave of a Scythian princess and priestess among the other articles buried with her.
• Columbus in discovering America, also discovered turtle meat, sweet potatoes, chilies, plantains, allspice, chocolate and pineapple.
• Watches got their name because they were originally worn by night watchmen.
• When World War I broke out in 1914, the Becton Dickinson Company had to stop importing German elastic bandages and started making them in the United States. They held a contest to give the new product a name. The winners were a group of doctors who called it ACE for All Cotton Elastic.
• In 1915 a congressman, complaining about the increasing complexity of the tax code, lamented, “I write a law. You drill a hole in it. I plug the hole. You drill a hole in my plug.” His words were reported all over the country and a new word, “loophole” was born.
• No piece of square dry paper can be folded more than seven times in half.
• In Rome in 65 B.C., Cicero’s brother’s advice on campaigning for public office was “be lavish in your promises, men prefer a false promise to a flat refusal. Contrive to get some new scandal aired against your rivals for crime, corruption or immorality.”
• A poem written to celebrate a wedding is called an epithalamium.
• The symbol on the “pound” key, (#) is called an octothorpe.
• Aunt Jemima pancake flour, invented in 1889, was the first ready-mix food to be sold commercially.
• Dr. Seuss wrote “Green Eggs and Ham” after his editor dared him to write a book using fewer than 50 different words.
• In the 1500s, people with money had plates made of pewter, which contained lead. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach out onto the food causing lead poisoning and death. This happened most often with tomatoes. So, for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
