Some Useless Facts
First of all, should I use the word ‘useless’? Maybe not, or maybe it’s useless to know but interesting in some way.
1. In Shakespeare’s time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. That’s where the phrase, “goodnight, sleep tight” came from.
2. The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Uses every letter in the alphabet.
(developed by Western Union to test telex/twx communications.)
3. The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
4. The term “the whole 9 yards” came from W.W.II fighter pilots in the Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the..50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got “the whole 9 yards.”
5. The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
6. The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the “General Purpose” vehicle, GP.
7. The first toilet ever seen on television was on “Leave It To Beaver.”
8. It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride’s father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the “honey month” or what we know today as the “honeymoon.”
9. In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It’s where we get the phrase “mind your P’s and Q’s.”
10. Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. “Wet your whistle,” is the phrase inspired by this practice.
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Comment by Joseph Dunphy »
“The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.”
No, it doesn’t.
http://www.indiana.edu/~libweb/campus/libsink.html
People really need to start using their common sense on this one. The library was up and running in 1969
http://www.indiana.edu/~libweb/info/history/docs/mainlib.html
and it is now 2007, 38 years later. At the rate of “over an inch a year”, the library would have sunk over three feet already. How would users get in and out the front door?