First Posted: 1/30/2014
By Samantha Weaver
* It was writer and cartoonist James Thurber who made the following sage observation: “Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.”
* You might not be familiar with the National Chicken Council, but it’s making predictions about you nonetheless. If you ate wings while watching the Super Bowl, you contributed to the 1.25 billion wings that the council’s 2014 Wing Report projected to be consumed during that event.
* Those who study such things say that if you happen to find lint in your belly button, it’s more likely to be blue than any other color.
* The name of the state of Alabama comes from the Choctaw word “albah,” which means “plant-cutters.”
* Accident or not? At an evening event in 1989, a bottle of wine once owned by Thomas Jefferson was up for sale. The asking price? $500,000. It seems nobody was willing to pony up the cash, and at the end of the night there was no sale. At that point, a waiter (inadvertently?) dropped the bottle, destroying the unprofitable item. The bottle was insured, however, and the merchant did end up with $250,000.
* The White House was not designed by an American. It was Irish architect James Hoban who won the competition to create the architectural plans for the home of the political leader of the United States.
* Before he became president, George H.W. Bush was, for a time, the youngest aviator in the history of the U.S. Navy, getting his wings just three days before he turned 19.
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Thought for the day: “When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” — Buckminster Fuller
