19 Almost Interesting Facts I Stole From Mental Floss

(I don’t know from whom they stole them.)

Mental Floss . Com

1)  The word “PEZ” comes from the German word for peppermint—PfeffErminZ.
This must be to keep German children from asking for candy at the grocery store before they’re old enough to earn the money to buy it.

2)  Researchers believe that herring communicate with one another in a way humans would find repulsive: passing gas.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

3) There was a third Apple founder. Ronald Wayne (pictured at home in 2010) sold his 10% stake for $800 in 1976.
He’s got to be a relative.

4)  Wilford Brimley was Howard Hughes's bodyguard.
He ate all the oatmeal and Hughes starved to death.

5)  Toy companies failed to duplicate the success of Theodore Roosevelt's teddy bear with William Taft's "Billy Possum."
Go Figure…

6)  People didn't always say "hello" when they answered the phone. When the first regular phone service was established in 1878, people said "ahoy."
Monty Burns still does.

7)  In response to The Lorax, the forest products industry published Truax to teach kids the importance of logging.
Dr. Seuss wasn't available or they could have killed thousands of trees producing it.

8)  Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima for work when the first A-bomb hit, made it home to Nagasaki for the second, and lived to be 93.
This was NOT a guy you wanted hanging around.

9)  Prairie dogs say hello with kisses.
If the mound is rockin’ don’t come knockin’

10) New Mexico State's first graduating class in 1893 had only one student—and he was shot and killed before graduation.
Princeton, fearing competition, was the prime suspect.

11)  The 50-star American flag was designed by an Ohio high school student for a class project. His teacher originally gave him a B–.
You’re a grand old flag, you’re a B minus flag…

12)  Sean Connery turned down the Gandalf role in Lord of the Rings. "I read the book. I read the script. I saw the movie. I still don't understand it."
What?  And he understood Highlander?

13)  E.B. White of Charlotte's Web fame is the "White" of Strunk and White, who wrote The Elements of Style.
And many of us who write have called EoS, Some Pig.

14)  12+1 = 11+2, and "twelve plus one" is an anagram of "eleven plus two."
I don’t know - A smart person told me this is interesting.

15)  Barry Manilow did not write his hit "I Write the Songs."
I knew it!!!!

16)  There's a basketball court above the Supreme Court. It's known as the Highest Court in the Land.
I bet they wear shorts and Converse under those robes.

17)  Redondo Beach, CA adopted the Goodyear Blimp as the city's official bird in 1983.
Spider Man was going to be the City insect till someone said, arachnid and all hell broke loose.

18)  In 2001, Beaver College changed its name to Arcadia in part because anti-porn filters blocked access to the school's website.
Yikes!

19)  William McKinley was on the $500 bill, Grover Cleveland was on the $1,000, and James Madison was on the $5,000.
As a service to counterfeiters everywhere.

To continue my theft - here's a vid a friend posted on FB.

Back to the Futurist

Sure, I wrote a time-travel story once (link) but I think of the whole sub-category as a cheat. A writer sits in his/her garret (or more likely in front of a computer screen at work,) and tries to come up with an idea for a new story.

The muses – usually so chatty, are off by the pencil sharpener putting tips on the dry-erase markers.

Parenthetically () the reason all successful writers HATE the question, “where do you get all your ideas,” (non-successful don’t hate that question because nobody bothers to ask them,) is (still following me?) that most writers have no flicking idea where they get their ideas. Some writers have a tangible inspiration, a dog, a child, a 67 mustang,

but most writers get their ideas while waiting for the microwave, or while shampooing their facial hair, and that’s all they know.

“Yes, Oprah, my prize-winning novel came to me while I was conditioning my nose-hairs one day.”

So while his nose-hairs are sufficiently conditioned, and the muses are busy making mischief with the office supplies, the supposedly brilliant writer is left with the vacant vault known as his imagination.

“Oh!” he says to himself, thereby confirming the opinion among his coworkers that he is instable and creepy, “George Washington!” He then giggles to himself as he writes a crappy little story about going back in time to bring a 1973 Volkswagen Super beetle to George Washington at Valley Forge so the father of our country can zip around at amazing speeds to surprise the British at Trenton. Of course the beetle runs out of gas at the banks of the Delaware, and the next filling station is a hundred and thirty years away (even further is the VW takes unleaded,) so George gets into the boat to cross the river. The intrepid first-person-point-of-view character takes a picture of the scene with a Swinger Polaroid camera he finds in the back seat.

Not very original (except the Swinger camera bit.)

Then there’s the character that goes back in time to correct something – a murder, a missed opportunity, the acting career of Pauli Shore, and having thought he succeeded finds the world he returns to so changed that he longs to lose himself in Bio-Dome – or maybe Encino Man (a time travel story – in a way.)

Never saw that one coming.

Then there are the moving ahead time-travel stories that always place the character in either a Jean Luc Piccard utopia, or Mad Max dystopia. Of course, rather than utopia or dystopia the future is likely to be filled with boring office jobs, and insipid television programming on six million stations that you can watch on tiny Apple products.

But history is full of stories where the future encounters the past – the barbarians over-run Rome, the Europeans over-run the Americas, the missionaries over-run native cultures. These are all stories of violence, epidemic, lost culture, and suffering.

No wonder the muses want nothing to do with them. I’d rather have points on my dry-erase markers.

Does the Swinger ad count as a vid?  Did you notice Ali Macgraw, and recognize Barry Manilow before he became obnoxious?  Not good enough?  Okay, here's the most plausible time-travel story involving George Washington I know.