In today's Friday Factoid, I'd like to chat about a man I'm a huge fan of...
Columbo!
Almost every evening, I settle into my bed and switch on the DVD player, falling to sleep with the lieutenant's catchphrases drowning in my ears.
Well -- here's something I bet you never knew about the classic TV detective series.
In absolutely every episode of Columbo, you'll find the tune from "This Old Man" ... knick knack paddy whack, give the dog a bone... this old man came rolling home...
In his wonderfully short-chaptered autobiography, Falk says the song always gave him a big kick. It was so "crazy." The tune is usually whistled by Columbo -- but if not, it appears playing in the background somewhere, or as the underscore to the episode.
But now, a puzzle... taken straight from the episode "The Bye-Bye Sky High-IQ Murder Case"...
There are four bags of golden coins.
Three of the bags contain REAL, genuine golden coins. The other one contains fake coins.
The real coins weigh 1 pound each. The fake coins weigh 1 pound, 1 ounce.
You're in front of a weighing machine and have just 1 penny, which gives you one reading only.
That's all.
You have everything you need.
How can you tell which bag contains the fake coin?
The popular orange-flavoured drink, which actually doesn't contain any orange juice in the US, as opposed to the European recipe, was invented during the second world war.
Back in the 1930s, Coca-Cola was carefully marketed in Germany so as not to emphasize it's American heritage. Some ten years after it's launch, four million cases of coke were being sold every year -- and then, in 1939, war broke out.
Shortly after the war began, German Coca-Cola head honcho Max Keith realized that supplies of the Coca-Cola syrup were soon to end, owing to the Allied blockade.
That's when Keith (pronounced "Kite") was forced to come up with a new kind of soft drink, usually ingredients he could source locally.
In the end, he came up with a fruit-flavoured drink made from apple fibre and whey.
Then Keith had the problem of coming up with a new name.
He asked his staff to come up with something brilliant, and to start using their imagination -- their "phantasie" in German.
Some bright spark suggested you simply lop off the last few letters, coming up with the abbreviated "Fanta."
In 1945, with the war coming to a close, The Coca-Cola Company were delighted to hear of the new brand -- and Keith, rather honestly, turned over all profits to the American counterpart.
It was introduced to the US in 1960 -- and is currently available in around 70 different flavours.
It's rumoured that German prisoners arriving in the States after the war were amazed to discover Coca-Cola being sold. They had thought it a purely German beverage.
Sitting in my office earlier today, I stared at my keyboard and pondered...
"Who the devil put all of those keys in such a random order?"
I mean, surely it'd make sense to put them in alphabetical order? Not with a "Q" in the top-left, and an "M" bottom-right?
Well, that's when I began my research.
And it all began back in 1872, with a then-clumsy device known as the "Type-Writer."
Now, if you've ever used a typewriter, you'll know just how clunky they can be. But back in 1872 the situation was much worse.
Christopher Scholes, a newspaper editor from Milwaukee, invented the very first modern typewriter. And, quite sensibly, all of the letters were arranged alphabetically.
But typists were experiencing big problems.
The original typewriters were pretty poor quality. They used a series of rods called "typebars" to print each letter onto the paper. Think back to the last traditional typewriter you used... It was something like that.
The problem was that when typebars near each other were struck, they'd often get tangled together and cause a blockage -- or blot ink all over the paper. And owing to financial and quality limitations, they couldn't simply improve the quality of the typewriter, either.
So, Scholes spoke to a business colleague, James Densmore, who suggested the idea of rearranging the keyboard so that the most common letter combinations ("TH" for example) were far apart on the typebar circle.
That would reduce clashes and speed up typing.
So he did. Scholes arranged a study of letter-pair frequency, through Amos Densmore - the brother of James, and Schole's chief financial backer.
They positioned the most common letters combinations as far apart as possible, ensuring the typebars hung at safe distances from each other.
And the result... was the QWERTY keyboard as we know it today.
If you look at your keyboard right now, you'll notice one very interesting thing. The "home row" -- that is, the middle row -- contains the letters A, S, D, F, G, H, J, K, L.
It's believed this is a historical remnant of the original two-line alphabetical keyboard.
Who would've known you had so much history lying under your fingertips?
Incidentally, did you know that the first major release of a typewriter - in 1874 by Remington, who bought the patent from Scholes - only typed capital letters?
It's release was almost entirely ignored until the Remington 2 came out in 1878, which included a SHIFT key to alternate between lower case and CAPITAL LETTERS.
It's called a shift key, because it actually caused the carriage to shift in position for printing either of two letters from the typebar.
A similar explanation exists for the "return" key.
And today, I'd like to ramble on about one of my favourite topics: SPACE and the Universe.
Did you know that the average galaxy holds somewhere between 100 and 200 million stars, encircling the centre?
We live within the Milky Way galaxy. The next closest galaxy is Andromeda, which is still pretty far away. Even if we travelled at the speed of light, it'd take two million years to reach it.
Today, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, we can observe a phenomenol 100 billion galaxies. But there are many more we can't detect.
Yet what about us in our galaxy?
Let me ask you a question.
Can you imagine being in a vehicle travelling at 330 miles.... per second?
Well, you are. Right now.
Your body at this moment is almost 20,000 miles of actual space away from where it was ONE MINUTE AGO.
The energy of the "Big Bang" all those years ago sent everything flying outward in all directions - and it's not getting any slower. The universe, if anything, is speeding up.
It's thought that in a billion years or so, we might be travelling at 1,000 miles per second. Imagine that.
Our galaxy rotates around itself every 250 million years, or so, and the sun is expected to burn out after another 16 cycles. That's about 4 billion years from now.
Today, our Universe itself is around 14 billion years old. Which seems pretty darn old.
But, really, it's just a baby.
It's expected to live for another trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion years. (If it doesn't, tell me, and I'll refund your money!)
And, of course, getting a grasp on HOW BIG that number is ... is really quite difficult.
Here's an experiment...
(zero) 0 = A...............................................................................................B = (1 billion) Place a mark on the line above where you think one million mark would be!
...... Done it yet?
So, where did you put the mark?
Let's clarify here. A billion is 1,000 million (even though many in the UK still interpret it as a million million). That means the number 1 million wouldn't really even EXIST on the above line. And if it did, it'd be CLOSEST to the start of the first dot as is physically possible.
Does that give perspective on some of these numbers?
The Universe is amazing.
You're amazing.
The world we live is in phenomenol.
See the magic... and stop living with your limiting thoughts and your grey view of life.
Breath the fresh air, see the beauty in everything... and SMILE.
The word "testis" comes from Latin, meaning to bear witness.
And apparently back in ancient Rome, only MEN could bear witness or testify in a public forum.
In order to show importance to their testimony, they would hold their testicles as they spoke, and an oath was declared while holding another's testicles.
So that's where we get the word testify from today.
Co-founder of Google, Larry Page, was fascinated by mathematics and the Googol at high school, apparently -- and over the past five years especially, their modified version of the word has been assimilated into every major language in the world.
But it wasn't always like that.
Yahoo! used to be the big player. And there's a huge Internet myth that the name was an acronym, standing for: "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."
If you've heard that one in the past, you've been duped.
It's what's known as a "backcronym," constructed after the fact.
The name "Yahoo!" came because the two founders - Jerry Yang and David Filo - enjoyed the word's definition in the book Gulliver's Travels: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth."
They stuck with it.
And the exclamation mark? Well, that was added merely to get around trademark issues. The "Yahoo" trademark was already taken. In desperation, the two lads added a "!" to make it unique. It worked.
Both search engines are among the world's top five websites.
And today, I'm chatting about Amazon.com, the book company currently enjoying over $10.7 billion a year in revenue.
Well, here's something you just might not know...
Amazon.com was almost called Cadabra.com.
Founder Jeff Bezos officially launched back in 1994, trading under the name "Cadabra.com" -- but Bezos later changed the name to the world's most voluminous river, the Amazon.
The oft-quoted reason for the change is that "Cadabra" sounded too much like "Cadaver" -- a human corpse.
But the real reason is a little more believable...
Back in the early days of the Internet, when Yahoo! Search dominated all, the first page of results were displayed in alphabetical order.
By having the company name start with "A," Bezos ensured he'd always be above his competitors -- such as Barnes & Noble. It sounds crazy today, but back then it was a pretty smart thing to do.
Just joined the blog? Here's a quick reminder of some of the posts that have had the most impact on readers...
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What messages on this blog have had the most impact on you?
Every day for over a year now, I've posted messages designed to inspire, uplift and develop. Ironically, more often than not they've had a profound impact on me.
Yesterday's post "Who Are You?" made a lot of people really think -- and inspired around forty messages in my inbox, as well as chat at Karl Forum.com.
And so, today, I'm posting a list of the blog posts that have raised a good chunk of feedback -- typically thirty messages or more.
Maybe -- just maybe -- these will have an impact on you, too.
A couple of days ago, I was admitted to hospital for a number of specialised scans.
I was placed on a special x-ray machine and asked to swallow metallic fluids to track my various movements. Yuck!
But the nurse was exceptionally polite. She helped and comforted me every step of the way - even when I almost broke the x-ray machine itself. Oops.
And I let her know what an excellent bedside manner she had!
She was absolutely thrilled. And the doctor, who she warned me was typically very sharp, also really opened up, sensing a friendlier atmosphere.
As we left, she commented: "That's the friendliest I've ever seen him. I don't know what you did. Amazing!"
I didn't do a thing.
There was positivity in the air!
I've written about the power of positivity before. Remember my trip to Richmond in February? A little positive talk ended up wangling me a discounted stay in a booked-up hotel, even though that wasn't my goal!
Today, I'd like to share a little story from Keith Ready.
After you've finished reading it, think...
When was the last time YOU were super positive?
Enjoy!
(PS. The Friday Factoid has been suspended this week due to my current hectic schedule. I'll be back next week!)
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Just My Job
Recently, a business associate and I went to call on a retail customer, and we experienced one of the real challenges in visiting a very large regional shopping centre that is over 2kms long, with in excess of 300 shops spread over three shopping levels. How do find a store when you haven't been to this shopping centre for some considerable period of time?
Well when we first arrived at the centre and had parked our car, the first thing we did was look for a centre directory or the customer service desk, but without any success. As we weaved our way past a host of customers and shoppers who all seemed to be well aware of where they were going, out of the crowd appeared one of the shopping centre security officers. He was as you may well expect dressed in a black suit, white shirt and dark tie, with the shopping centre logo emblazoned on his jacket. He was holding a two-way radio hand set with an ear piece and remote microphone in his ear, which obviously allowed him to speak to other security officers working in the centre at that time.
Seizing the opportunity to seek some assistance from someone who would no doubt know where the store was located, I approached him and asked for directions. He smiled at us both and indicated that the store was on the next level, only some 75 metres from where we were standing.
Before we could thank him, he added.
'However, please allow me to show where it is.'
We thanked him, but said that there was no need, as we would now be able to find it with the help of his directions. His immediate reply came as a real surprise to us both.
'No not at all, please follow me, it is not very far and it is all just part of my job.'
Almost without realising it, we were walking with him and moved onto the travelator that took us to the next level of the shopping centre and the short walk to store. As we walked, he asked how our day had been and then added that it was a very busy day in the centre, mainly because it was school holidays. When we reached the store, we both thanked him for his courtesy and asked for his name.
He replied with a grin on his face, 'my name is Rob and I suppose you could say that it is not such a great name, given the work that I do here as a security officer.'
We both laughed at his zany sense of humour and once again thanked him for his courtesy and great customer service. As he moved away, he replied for the second time, 'it is a pleasure, all just part of my job.'
The visit to our retail customer lasted about 20 minutes and then we head back towards the car park, only this time we were more certain which way we had to go.
As we walked along the shopping mall level we came across the customer service desk which we could not find on our arrival at the shopping centre, so we stopped to speak to the customer service attendant at the counter. We asked if we could speak to the centre manager and was quizzed in a friendly manner about why we wanted to see him - our answer was that we wanted to give some feedback about a positive customer service experience we had just had. Sadly, the centre manager was not available; however, the customer service attendant suggested we could speak to the duty manager in charge of centre security. So we decided that we would go down to the security office located on the loading dock on the first level of the centre.
On arriving at the security office we were greeted by the duty manager who had a very apprehensive look on his face, which we concluded was due to the fact that when similar contact was made with him by members of the public, it was to lodge a complaint of some sort. When we told him we wanted to give some feedback about a great service experience offered by of one of his team members, his face changed to a positive expression as we went on to praise Rob for making our visit to the centre an enjoyable one. We asked him to pass on our thanks to Rob and make sure that the centre manager was made aware of what he had done for us.
As we left the office and walked back to our car, we both discussed the likelihood that our expression of appreciation would make its way back to Rob and to the centre manager. We agreed that whilst it would have been great if the praise was passed on to Rob we realised that he would have no doubt been the recipient of many other expressions of appreciation from other customers just like us, who had experienced Rob's all part of my job attitude to his work. Whether other people would have taken the time express their appreciation to his boss as we did - is a matter of speculation, the fact that we did express it to Rob and then to his manager, was all that mattered to us at the time.
There is little doubt in my mind that people like Rob don't walk their talk selectively, it just isn't in their nature to be obligingly beyond expectations to one or two people as he did with us and then not do the same with others. I am sure Rob's job as a security officer is full of daily challenges with lot's of not so good things to deal with, so no doubt doing what he did for us and I am certain many others, is more than likely the part of his job that makes his day just that more enjoyable and rewarding.
There can be nothing better in life than to offer caring and genuine service to others and not expect anything in return, however, I am sure that the praise you receive for a job very well done will never go astray - will it!
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By Keith Ready
Keith Ready lives and works in Sydney, Australia and is affectionately known as Mr. Inspiration. He is publisher of InspirEmail which provides inspirational messages to refresh the spirit and boost the emotional bank account. You can visit his website at: www.agiftofinspiration.com.au and he can be contacted at: info@agiftofinspiration.com.au
And today, I'd like to talk about that beloved drink of summer: the cold beer.
A whopping 69% of men -- and 57% of women -- drink the stuff in the United States. In fact, it's something of a traditional: the oldest recipe in existence is for beer itself.
Back in medieval England, it was routinely served with breakfast. And over in modern day Germany, they serve an ice-cream popsicle made of beer -- though with a slightly less alcoholic content.
But the most interesting revelations come from Denmark.
Scientists in the country found that beer tastes best when drunk to the accompaniment of a certain musical tone. That optimum frequency is, apparently, different for each beer.
Carlsberg Lager, for example, tastes wonderful when listening to a musical tone of between 510 and 520 cycles per second.
For me, this New York borough conjours up images of "My Cousin Vinny" and the automobile-savvy Marisa Tomei with her quick-witted comebacks.
But do you know where the Bronx got it's name from?
Well, the Bronx is actually named after the Bronx River -- which in turn was named after the first European settler in the region, a Scandanavian called Jonas Jonson Bronck.
He settled in the region in 1639 -- and owned a large farm roughly covering the area south of 150th Street.
Bronck has a street named after him in the Faroe Islands -- and a public school christened in his honour (the Jonas Bronck Academy).
And yet to this day, nobody really knows whether the founder of this holly little province was Swedish, Danish or Dutch.
The Swedish claim ownership, yet apparently state his name is spelled incorrectly. It should be, they say, Jonas Jonson Brunk.
He actually invented the world "chortle" - amongst others - which came from combining the words "chuckle" and "snort."
But at least that English curiosity actually made it into the public domain...
In 1967, the American Typers' Association made a new punctuation mark called an interrobang. It was a combination of a question mark and an exclamation mark, used to amplify the exclamation.
(A bit like saying "Oh my gosh!?" - apparently.)
But, unlike the irony mark, this new addition from the ATA was scrapped the very same year.
During production, the original horse cast as Mr Ed was so unruly, the producers almost threw in the towel. It wasn't until they found a well-trained zebra at a nearby zoo that they gave the show one last shot.
They dyed the zebra's coat, set the cameras rolling -- and it worked.
In the days of black and white television, the lack of contrast meant few would spot the difference. It was only when colour TV sets became popular that CBS was forced to scrap the series.
Sounds like an urban myth?
It's SO true, in fact, that popular myth-debunker Snopes.com has a whole article on it:
Today, I'm sharing yet another random brain-splurge of curiosities.
From erotic cucumbers to Sir Jimmy Saville, vending machine deaths to dining with royalty -- if it's not here, it's... well, it's just not here.
So ENJOY, amaze your friends -- and have a great weekend!
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* The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone
* When dining with Royalty, it is customary to stop eating when they have finished whether you have finished or not.
* Sigourney Weaver's dad, Pat, is said to be one of only two people who know the exact recipe for Coca Cola.
* The acronym I.O.U. actually stands for 'Is Owed Unto'.
* The only word in the English language that ends in '-MT' is 'Dreamt'.
* The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump.
* If you dream about cucumber it is meant to foretell romance. (Please don't analyze this one!)
* Because of the rotation of the earth, an object can be thrown further if thrown west.
* Time magazine's 'Man of the Year' for 1938 was Adolph Hitler.
* The average salary in the UK is £25,000. If you earn this, you are richer than 97% of the rest of the world.
* Walt Disney holds the record for most Oscars won (26) and most nominations received (64).
* Ringtones now account for 10 per cent of the world's music market, generating a staggering $3bn.
* What do Sir Jimmy Savile, Garry Bushell, Jamie Theakstone and Carol Vorderman have in common? They're all members of Mensa.
* Average number of Americans killed annually by vending machines falling on them: 13
* James Bond is half-Swiss. According to Ian Fleming's You Only Live Twice, Bond was the son of a Scottish father, Andrew Bond, and a Swiss mother, Monique Delacroix, both of whom died in a climbing accident.
* The record distance for a human fired from a cannon is 57 metres.
* It takes approximately two million flowers for a bee to make 1 lb of honey.
* A peanut is not a nut. It is a legume.
* Your body contains 60,000 miles of blood vessels
* The following celebrities were cheerleaders at college; Teri Hatcher (Freemount High, San Francisco), Sandra Bullock (Arlington, Virginia), Raquel Welch (San Diego), Cameron Diaz (Long Beach High) And George W Bush (Phillips Academy, Massachusetts)!
If you haven't visited recently, and want to meet a group of friendly, loving individuals, sharing Random Acts of Kindness, Friday Factoids, giving and receiving acceptance, and more - then check it out.
What messages on this blog have had the most impact on you?
Every day for almost a year now, I've posted messages designed to inspire, uplift and develop. Ironically, more often than not they've had a profound impact on me.
Yesterday's post "Who Are You?" made a lot of people really think -- and inspired around forty messages in my inbox, as well as chat at Karl Forum.com.
And so, today, I'm posting a list of the blog posts that have raised a good chunk of feedback -- typically thirty messages or more.
Maybe -- just maybe -- these will have an impact on you, too.
Did you know that, as an adult, you have 206 bones in your body... ?
But when you were a child, you actually had 300 bones!
Weird!
So, what happened to those 94 bones between childhood and adulthood?
Well, it's perhaps not totally true that "children" have 300 bones...
In fact, children have a different number of bones at different times in their lives. To generalise, you could say that about 300 bones become 206 bones -- but even that is not a simple process of consolidation.
As a child grows, bones are fusing into one another on different time scales while, at the same time, new bones are developing.
In fact, bone development is a process of constant change...
It's quite true that the skeleton is a very solid structure - and for good reason - but the first thing to understand is that bone is actually a dynamic tissue.
Every day of our lives, some bone is being broken down and some is being built up. The whole process is called re-modelling.
When a human is born, the bones are all in different stages of these "mineralization and ossification processes."
As time goes by, some bones that develop close to one another actually fuse into a single bone. And other bones, whose cartilage templates didn't even exist at birth, slowly take form.
It's all part of a process that is initiated before birth but for many people continues into their late twenties.
It just shows how amazing the human body really is!
Happy Friday!
(Did you know that the Mona Lisa has no eyebrows? Honestly! Go check! Got your own Factoids to share? Post them on the Factoid Fun board at Karl Forum.com!)
Welcome to another amazing Friday Factoid -- where curious facts are uncovered, and urban myths are blasted for good!
Now... Blue Moon ...
Yes, you've heard the song.
But is there really such a thing as a blue Moon?
According to modern folklore, a "blue Moon" is the second full moon in a calendar month.
Usually months have only one full moon, but occasionally a second one sneaks in. This happens every two and a half years, on average.
For your interest, the next blue Moon is June 30th 2007. And December 31st 2009 is the one after that!
And that's how most intelligent people explain away the phrase "once in a blue Moon."
But why is it called a blue Moon?
The term "blue Moon" has been around a long time, well over 400 years, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The first reference to a blue moon comes from a proverb recorded in 1528:
- If they say the Moon is blue, - We must believe that it is true.
Saying the moon was blue was equivalent to saying the Moon was made of green cheese; it indicated an obvious absurdity.
Then, in the 19th century, the phrase "until a blue Moon" developed, meaning "never" - and it's meaning continued to develop into the "once in a blue Moon" that we use today.
However, there are times when the moon has genuinely looked blue -- usually down to masses of dust in the atmos.
When the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa exploded in 1883, its dust turned sunsets green and the Moon blue all around the world for the best part of two years.
And in 1927, the Indian monsoons were late arriving and the extra-long dry season blew up enough dust for a blue Moon. Oh, and Moons in north-eastern North America turned blue in 1951 when huge forest fires in western Canada threw smoke particles up into the sky.
But, of course, these events were all pretty rare.
He's the star of "The Secret," and the man that recently appeared on Oprah and Larry King Live.
He's a big name in the self-development and manifestation world...
And, as like all the big names, he's coming to Self Dev Radio!
So, what would YOU ask James Ray if you could?
What one single question would YOU pose to James if you had the chance?
Please mail me... karl@karlmoore.com and put "BPSF" in the subject line, alongside your question. If I can, I'll ask him during the interview next week.
Remember, I'm interviewing Bernard Cornwell on the same day... SO if you have questions for him also, send them this way! :)
Thanks for your time -- and yes, I'm aware that I haven't done the Friday Factoid yet. It'll be here tomorrow. Promise!
