Notes from the Brooklyn Polygnostic Institute

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mikelibrarian

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#2,541
Fun Fact

When in Argentina, Charles Darwin tried to hunt rheas with a pair of bolas as he witnessed the gauchos doing. All he managed to do was trip his own horse, much to the gaucho’s amusement.

May be verified in : Darwin’s Watch: The Science of Discworld III By Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen Pg. 141

Happy Charles Darwin's Birthday oh seekers of knowledge
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,542
#2,542
Fun fact

Charles Darwin owned a book that described Mendelian genetics but never cut open the pages for that section of the book.

May be verified in Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein. Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe by Mario Livio pg. 53
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,543
#2,543
Fun Fact

Darwin conducted experiments with snapdragons which almost lead him to discovering the same laws of inheritance that Mendel discovered.
May be verified in Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein. Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe by Mario Livio pg. 51-52
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,544
#2,544
Fun Fact

The first smiley may have appeared in the New York Times’ 1862 transcript of one of President Lincoln’s speeches. It records the audience’s reaction to Lincoln’s humorous introduction as “(applause and laughter ;) “ Unfortunately, this was the only such emoticon in the entire speech, and the text suffers from so many typographic errors, that it was likely to be an error with ); being intended, although all of the other audience reactions were encapsulated by square brackets rather than parenthesis.

May be verified in Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation Symbols & Other Typographical Marks. By Keith Houston. pg. 234-235
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,545
#2,545
Many Northern Newspapers called for President Lincoln’s assassination long before he was assassinated.

May be verified in the article Abraham Lincoln is an Idiot: The difficulty of recognizing excellence in its own time by Mark Bowden that appeared in the June 2013 The Atlantic.
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,546
#2,546
Fun Fact

President Polk willed his estate to the State of Tennessee with the expectation that only his descendants would be able to live there and his grave would be there for all perpetuity. The mansion wound up being torn down and a Best Western now sits on the site.
May be Verified in Dead Presidents: an American Adventure Into The Strange Deaths and Surprising Afterlives of Our Nation’s Leaders by Brady Carlson pg. 97

Happy President's Day Oh Seekers of knowledge.
 
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M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,547
#2,547
Fun Fact

Millard Fillmore and Rick James are buried in the same Buffalo cemetery.

May be Verified in Dead Presidents: an American Adventure Into The Strange Deaths and Surprising Afterlives of Our Nation’s Leaders by Brady Carlson pg. 208

Happy President's Day Oh Seekers of knowledge.
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,548
#2,548
Fun Fact

Buffalo Bill renamed his Wild West show Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the Sword at the Chicago World’s fair. Theodore Roosevelt later named his Spanish-American war cavalry regiment after these fictional warriors.

May be verified in Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500 Year History by Kurt Anderson pg.111-112

Happy President's Day Oh Seekers of knowledge.
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,549
#2,549
Fun Fact

Two asteroids are named after Herbert Hoover. Neither of them were named by American scientists Hooveria was named by an Austrian astronomer in 1920 in honor of the help Hoover gave to Austria after World War I. The other, Herberta, was named in honor of Hoover‘s visit to Belgium in 1938.
May be Verified in Dead Presidents: an American Adventure Into The Strange Deaths and Surprising Afterlives of Our Nation’s Leaders by Brady Carlson pg. 124.

Happy President's Day Oh Seekers of knowledge.
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,551
#2,551
Fun Fact
The most common male names in the Byzantine Empire around the year 1000 were John, Theodore, Constatntine, Andrew and George.

May be verified in the History of Byzantium podcast
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,552
#2,552
Fun Fact

The bowling industry with 69,000 workers employs more people than the coal industry which has 51,000. There are more professional dancers, 20,000 in the United States than actual coal miners- 15,000.

May be verified in the noted section of June 23, 2017 issue of The Week Magazine. The information was originally published in slate com
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,554
#2,554
Fun Fact

A basilica was originally a Roman government building that housed the courts.

May be verified in A Street Through Time: A 12,000 Year Walk Through History By Dr. Anne Millard pg. 10
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,555
#2,555
Fun Fact

The average American takes 5,117 steps a day.

May be verified in the bottom line section of the March 22,2013 issue of The Week magazine. The news was originally reported in The wall street Journal
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,556
#2,556
Fun Fact

Gentle Giant has a 30 disk set out. This should make about a dozen people happy.

I don't remember the source. I'm guessing there was an advertisement on youtube because I was listening to The Yes Album.
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,557
#2,557
Watching BBC Earth Episode 3 Fresh Water.
David Attenborough: The crab-eating macaque specializes in eating mangoes.
Me:
I guess technically most monkeys specialize in eating mangoes. Any monkey living near a mango tree is a mango eating monkey. Meanwhile if you see a monkey eating a crab, that's interesting. You'll name that monkey a crab eating monkey even if it's an uncommon behavior.
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,558
#2,558
Fun Fact

One theory about the extinction of the dinosaurs asserts that the asteroid that hit the earth kicked up an enormous cloud of debris that blanketed the Earth. The heat of the falling sand grains as they vaporized in the atmosphere heated the Earth's surface to 1200 degrees within two hours of the impact.

May be verified in this episode of Radiolab.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/dinopocalypse-redux
 
M

mikelibrarian

Lost in the stacks.
#2,560
#2,560
Fun fact

Reusable shopping bags are breeding grounds for bacteria carried by raw meat and unwashed vegetables. After San Francisco banned plastic bags a study by two law professors found that emergency room visits caused by E. coli infections increased,. Regular washing and drying can clean out a reusable bag’s colonies.

May be verified in the article When going “green” makes people sick by Ramesh Ponnuru . Ramesh Ponnuru wrote the article for Blloomberg.com it was reprinted in digest form in the February 22, 2013 issue of the Week Magazine
 
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