Are British pirates the reason for the United States not being on the metric system?

September again.  That’s a good thing and a bad thing.

The good part, of course, is the coming of fall.  After a sweltering summer, it’s going to be nice to get the coolness of autumn in the air again.

The bad part?  I have another birthday this month.  (Ever notice how those things seem to come around every year?  Amazing.)

Later this month I’ll be 66 years old.  If I had known I was going to make it this long, I’d certainly have taken better care of myself!

Oh, well, I’m stuck now.  And as they say, it does beat the alternative.

So while I prepare to get older, you enjoy some ever-fresh trivia!

Did you know …

… marine biologists tell us that more eels swim out of the Bermuda Triangle than into it?  (Do they know something we don’t know?  And why are they measuring such things, anyway?)

… the man who invented the telephone did not want one?  Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) actually considered the telephone – the invention for which he has gone down in history – to be an intrusion on his scientific work.  Bell refused to have a telephone installed in his study, saying time spent on the device was time taken away from his actual work.  (I know how he must have felt.)

… you may know a danceur?  Don’t head to the Sheriff for an arrest warrant if you do, though … a danceur is a male ballet dancer.  The female dancer is, of course, a ballerina.  (And they make beautiful music together.)

… female cats tend to be right-pawed?  On the other hand (other paw?), male cats are more likely to be left-pawed.  (That’s a paw-erful thought, isn’t it?)

… a father and son won Nobel prizes for opposite ends of the same research?  In 1906, Sir J.J. Thomson (1856-1940) was recognized with the Nobel Prize for Physics after he proved that electrons (tiny negatively-charged parts of atoms) were particles.  But in 1937, Thomson’s son Sir George Paget Thomson (1892-1975) won the same prize for proving that electrons are waves.  Physicists today say both men were correct.  (I’ll leave it up to you to figure out how they are both right.)

… you can probably blame pirates for the United States not using the metric system?  In 1794, not long after the U.S. achieved its independence, the first Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was awaiting the arrival of French scientist Joseph Dombey (1742-1794).  In addition to trade issues, Dombey was bringing to the U.S. the metric system of measurements.  In those first years of separation from Britain, many Americans wanted to move as far away from anything British as they could, including the British system of weights and measures.  However, Dombey never made it – his ship was hijacked by pirates (British ones, no less) and Dombey was taken prisoner.  Dombey was bringing with him a one-kilogram copper weight and a one-meter-long copper rod, which would be the official sources for the metric system of measurements in America.  But since he never made it, and ended up dying in captivity, the U.S. never received the instruments it needed to “go metric.”  (I knew there had to be a reason other than pure stubbornness in there somewhere.)

… double-parking in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was once a very bad thing to do?  It’s so bad, in fact, that the law used to prescribe those who double-park be put on a chain gang, with only a bread-and-water diet.  (Boy, are they strict!)

… scallops have about 100 eyes around the edge of their shells?  (All the better to see you with, my dear!)

… the movie with the highest-ever profit margin was made on a very cheap budget?  In 2007, the film Paranormal Activity was released to theatres.  It’s a “found-footage” kind of movie, a ghost story where you’re supposed to think that what’s on the screen just so happened to people … and so on.  Made for a budget of just $15,000 and with a marketing strategy best described as “grass roots,” the movie raked in a profit of $193.4 million – an estimated 19,758% return on investment.  (And it was a pretty scary movie, too!)

… worker wasps attack because they’re drunk?  You may have noticed that in late summer, wasps get a little more aggressive.  There’s a reason for that – they have one job.  Their sole purpose in life is to provide nectar for their queen.  They store all they can hold, and then have little or nothing to do.  So the wasps feast on fruit that has fallen off of trees and has fermented, causing them to get pretty tipsy.  That leads them to think it’s a good idea to attack things that are bigger than they are – like you and me.  (Not at all unlike how people act.)

… a popular rock foursome originally had five members?  When The Beatles were being formed in 1960 in Liverpool, England, Stuart Sutcliffe (1940-1962) was the bassist.  He joined John Lennon (1940-1980), George Harrison (1943-2001), Paul McCartney (born 1942), and Pete Best (born 1941) to form the group.  Sutcliffe was primarily in the band because he was a friend of Lennon.  When Sutcliffe died of a stroke in 1962, the other members chose not to replace him.  McCartney changed from rhythm guitar to bass, and the band became a four-man group.  Best would be replaced as drummer by Ringo Starr (born Richard Starkey, 1940) in 1962, about six months after Sutcliffe died.  (And the rest, as they say, is history.)

Now … you know!

This post was originally published on here