First Posted: 9/25/2014
By Samantha Weaver
* It was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who made the following sage observation: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
* Play-Doh was originally marketed as a wallpaper cleaner. It wasn’t until kids started using it as modeling material that the company saw its potential in the toy market.
* Those who study such things say that when bears, squirrels and other mammals hibernate, the flow of oxygen to their brains can drop by as much as 98 percent.
* You’ve surely heard of the long-distance buses known as Greyhounds, but you might not be aware of the company’s humble origins. In 1914, a car dealer named Carl Eric Wickman ran a car dealership in Minnesota. When business was slow, he used one of the unsold cars to offer rides between the towns of Alice and Hibbing to miners going to work. The idea was so profitable that Wickman opened long-distance routes within two years. He painted the vehicles gray in order to hide the road dust, prompting a hotel owner along one route to comment that the cars looked like greyhound dogs. Wickman liked the idea so much he started using the slogan “Ride the Greyhounds,” and the rest is business history.
* In 1955, just a few weeks before he was killed in a car crash, actor James Dean made a commercial aimed at teenagers. The subject? Auto safety. In the ad he says, “Drive safely. The life you save may be mine.”
* If you’re like the average American, you drink only one-sixth as much wine as the average French citizen.
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Thought for the day: “I’m living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.” – E.E. Cummings
