Huh???

1) How long did the Hundred Years War last?
116 years
from 1337 to 1453

2) Which country makes Panama hats?
Ecuador

3) From which animal do we get catgut?
From sheep and horses

4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
November
The Russian calendar was 13 days behind ours

5) What is a camel's hair brush made of?
Squirrel fur

6) The Canary Islands are named after what animal?
Dog
The Latin name was Insularia Canaria - Island of the Dogs

7) What was King George VI's first name?
Albert
When he came to the throne in 1936 he respected the wish of Queen Victoria that no future king should ever be called Albert

8) What colour is a purple finch?
Crimson

9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
New Zealand

10) How long did the Thirty Years War last?
Thirty years, of course - from 1618 to 1648

Snake caught in Calumpit, Philippines

this photo was taken sometime in 2004

Longer than Life imprisonment

Chamoy Thipsayo, a Thai businesswoman, and seven of her associates were each sentenced to 141,078 years in jail for swindling the public through a multi million dollar deposit business. Their sentence is the longest prison sentence ever handed out by a court. Thipsayo was publicly known as the queen of underground investing before the Bangkok Criminal Court finally caught with her.

Famous Products created by Infamous Inventors : NOT Big Company

• Adolph's Meat Tenderizer (Adolph Rempp)
• airbag (Allen Breed)
• air brake (George Westinghouse)
• air conditioning (Willis Carrier)
• airplane (Orville & Wilbur Wright)
• air purifier (Frederick Cottrell)
• alternating current (Nicola Tesla)
• Apple computer (Steve Jobs)
• aqualung for divers (Jacques Cousteau)
• atom "smashers" (Ernest Lawrence and Vandergraff)
• ATM (Luther Simijian)
• audio sound generators (William Hewlett)
• Avery labels (Stan Avery)

• baby bottle with hole in the middle (Nickie and William Campbell)
• ball point pen (John Loud)
• Barbie doll (Ruth Handler)
• blender (Stephen Poplawski)
• Blue jeans (Levi Strauss)
• brown 'n serve dinner rolls (Joe Gregor)
• brown paper bag (Margaret Knight)

• calculator (William Seward Burroughs)
• can opener (William W. Lyman)
• car radio (Paul Galvin)
• carpet sweeper (Melville Bissell)
• Castro Convertible sofa beds (Bernard Castro)
• CB Walkie-Talkie (Al Gross)
• Celestial Seasonings herbal tea (Mo Siegel)
• celluloid (John Hyatt)
• cereal (George Kellogg)
• Clue board game (Anthony Pratt)
• Coca-Cola (Dr. John S. Pemberton)
• color film - Kodachrome (Leo Godowsky & Leopold Mannes)
• computer mouse (Douglas C. Engelbart)
• condensed milk (Gail Borden)
• cotton gin (Eli Wbitney)
• Cracker Jack (F.W. Rueckheim)
• Crayola crayons (Edwin Binney & Harold Smith)

• Delta faucet (Alex Manoogian)
• diesel engine (Rudolph Diesel)
• digital fax (Robert Wernikoff)
• dishwasher (Josephine Garis Cochraine)
• disposable diaper (Marion Donovan)
• disposable paper cup (Hugh Moore)
• DoveBar ice cream (Leo Stefanos)
• Dr. Scholl's foot care products (Dr. William Scholl)
• dynamite (Alfred Nobel)

• earmuffs (Chester Greenwood)
• electric blanket (S. I. Russell)
• electronic calculators (An Wang)
• electric shaver (Jacob Schick)
• elevator (Elisha Otis)
• engine-driven generator (Delco) - Charles Kettering

• frozen foods (Clarence Birdseye)
• Fig Newton (James Mitchell)
• FM radio (Edwin Armstrong)
• Frisbee (Fred Morrison)
• frozen pizza (Rose Totino)

• gas mask (Garrett Morgan)
• Gatling gun (Richard Gatling)
• golf tee (Dr. William Lowell)
• Gatorade (Robert Cade, M.D.)
• grocery cart (Sylvan Goldman)
• gyroscope (Charles Stark Draper)

• Hawaiian Tropic suntan oils (Ron Rice)
• helicopter (Igor Sikorsky)
• hot dog roller cooker (Calvin MacCracken)

• implantable cardiac pacemaker (Wilson Greatbatch)
• intermittent windshield wiper (Robert Kearns)

• Jacuzzi whirlpool (Candido and Roy Jacuzzi)
• Jantzen swimwear (John and Roy Zehntbauer)
• Jolt Cola (C.J. Rapp)
• Kitty Litter (Edward Lowe)
• Knox Gelatin (Rose Markward Knox)
• Koosh Ball (Scott Stillinger)

• laser (Gordon Gould)
• La-Z-Boy recliner (Edwin Shoemaker)
• Learjet (Bill Lear)
• Life Savers Candy (Clarence Crane)
• light bulb (Thomas Edison)
• Liquid Paper (Bette Nesmith Graham)
• Louisville Slugger baseball bat (Pete Browning)

• magnetic core memory (Kenneth Olsen, founder, Digital Corp.)
• manufacture of aluminum (Charles Hall)
• Maytag washers (Fred Maytag)
• M- 16 weapon (Eugene Stoner)
• microphone & gramophone (Emile Berliner)
• microwave cookware (Stanley Mason)
• Moen faucets (Al Moen)
• Monopoly board game (Charles Barrow)
• mood rings (Marvin Wernick)
• Morse code (Samuel Morse)
• ME (Raymond Damadian)
• Murphy bed (Willliam Murphy)

• Nerf ball (Reynolds Guyer)
• Nike shoe (Bill Bowerman)
• nuclear reactor (Enrico Fernii and Leo Szilard)

• oasis floral foam (Vemon Smithers)
• Odor-Eaters (Herbert Lapidus)
• outboard motor (Ole Evinrude)

• parking meter (Carlton Magee)
• PC-DOS and MS-DOS computer operating systems (Tim Patterson)
• peach (Luther Burbank)
• Pepperidge Farm bakery (Margaret Rudkin)
• Pepsi-Cola (Caleb Bradham)
• permanent wave machine (Marjorie Joyner)
• phonograph (Thomas Edison)
• plastic (Leo Baekeland)
• pneumatic tire (J.B. Dunlop)
• Polaroid camera (Edwin Land)
• Polarizing sunglasses (Edwin Land)
• Pong - I st video game (Nolan Bushnell)
• Popsicles (Frank Epperson)
• pop top can (Ermal Fraze)
• pop-up tissue box (Andrew Olsen)
• pop-up toaster (Charles Strite)
• potato chips (George Crum)
• PowerBars snack food (Brian Maxwell)
• power hand tools (Black & Decker)
• power steering (Francis Davis)
• punch card tabulating machine (Herman Hollerith)

• quartz timers (George Pierce and Walter Cady)

• radio (Guglielmo Marconi)
• radio tube (Dr. Lee deForest)
• ready mix paint (Henry Sherwin)
• respirator (Dr. Forrest Bird)
• revolver (Samuel Colt)
• rickshaw (Rev. Jonathan Scobie)
• rocketry (Robert Goddard)
• Rollerblades (Scott & Brennan Olsen)
• roll film for cameras (George Eastman)
• Rolodex (Alfred Neustadter)

• safety pin (Walter Hunt)
• safety razor (King Gillette)
• Samsonite luggage (Jesse Shwayder)
• Scrabble board game (Alfred Butts)
• ship propeller (John Ericsson)
• silo (Fred Hatch)
• Slinky toy (Richard James)
• snowboard (Tim Sims)
• Snugli baby carrier (Ann Moore)
• soda straw (Otto Diefenbach)
• sonogram. (Robert H. Rines)
• S.O.S. scouring pads (Edwin W. Cox)
• space guidance systems (Charles Draper)
• standardized cooking recipes (Fannie Farmer)
• strobe lights (Harold Edgerton)
• submarine (Cornelius van Drebbel)
• super computer (Seymour Cray)

• telephone (Alexander Graham Bell)
• television (Philo Farnsworth)
• traffic light (Garrett Morgan)
• Timex watches (Joakim Lehmkuhl)
• Tabasco Sauce (Edmund McIhenny)
• teddy bear (Morris Michtom, founder, Ideal Toy Co.)
• Toll House cookie recipe (Ruth Wakefield)
• Topsy Tail (Tomima Edmark)
• Tupperware (Earl Tupper)
• tuxedo (Pierre Lorillard)
• TV on-screen programming (Michael Levine)
• 2000 Flushes toilet bowl cleaner (Al Eisen)
• typewriter (Christopher Sholes)

• vacuum bottle (James Dewar)
• vacuum cleaner (Ives McGaffhey)
• Velcro (George de Mestral)
• Vicks VapoRub (Lunsford Richardson)
• vulcanized rubber (Charles Goodyear)

• Walkman (Jerome Lemelson)
• waterbed (Charlie Hall)
• water skis (Ralph Samuelson)
• water softener (Emmett Culligan)
• Whitman Sampler (Stephen Whitman)
• Wizzzer toy top (Paul Brown)
• World Wide Web (Tim Berners-Lee)

• xerography (photocopying - Xerox) (Chester Carlson)

• Zamboni ice resurfacer for ice skating rinks (Frank Zamboni)
• zipper (Whitcomb Judson)

coincidence : facts or fiction II

Fraternal Tragedy

Two brothers in Bermuda were victims of incredibly similar tragedies. Erskine Lawrence Ebbin and his brother Neville were both (accidentally?) killed by the same taxi and driver, carrying the same passengers, while they were riding the same moped on the same street. But the events occurred exactly a year apart. Curiously, however, they were both 17 years old when they died.

Uncanny Parallelism

It is said that the coming of Halley's comet is coincidental with some events in the life of American writer Samuel Langhorne Clemens and Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli. In 1835, the year Clemens and Schiaparelli were born, the comet appeared, and the comet reappeared in 1910, the year both of them died.

The Titan and The Titanic

The sinking of Titanic was predicted 14 years before it happened. Novelist Morgan Robertson vividly wrote the incident with incredible precision in his book entitled The Wreck of The Titan. He did not know during that time he was making one of the greatest predictions of all time. Comparing Robertson's fictional story of the Titan and the actual tragedy of the Titanic in 1912 reveals startling similarities.

• both the fictional Titan and the real - life Titanic were on their voyage when they encountered the disaster.
• both were British made luxury liners.
• both were regarded as the largest ship ever built.
• both were supposedly unsinkable and the safest ship afloat.
• both ships collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic.
• both disasters happened in April
• the length of the Titan was 800 ft. while the Titanic was 882.5 ft.
• both ships have some VIPs on board.
• the Titan had 24 lifeboats while the Titanic had 22.
• there were 3000 persons aboard the Titan while the Titanic had 2,224 passengers.
• both disasters resulted to great loss of life and property.