h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>Of course, the fact that 24 June and 25 December are really close to the Solstices tells us that people would have been having a party on those days anyway< : TC

Yep. It took a few days to be sure that the sun was coming back (or going away) so festivities would have been hanging fire...

Grasshoppers aren't half bad as between meals snacks go.

The Apaches of the American southwest traditionally train their young to track and hunt grasshoppers (which do make distinctive footprints).

They taste kind of like shrimp, only crunchy.

1954 was a year for giant insects (and other arthropods).

I remember seeing 2" diameter 8" long yellow and black zebra striped grasshoppers that year of a species that ordinarily grows only about the size of my little finger.

Also saw a foot long praying mantis, a foot long centipede, and a wolf spider, ordinarily about an inch long at six inches.

Talking with an Oregon farmer, he reported once having found a foot long grasshopper in his field

He said it tasted like a lobster.

You did NOT see a foot-long praying mantis.

I thought it was pretty unbelievable myself.

No, no, no. I literally don't believe you. The largest mantis species in North America doesn't reach half of that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_mantis#Description


I call shenanigans.

And don't even get me started on this claim about a giant grasshopper.

>>1954 was a year for giant insects (and other arthropods).<<

Help. That's the year I was born. Should I have an X-ray?

Only if your name is Arthur O'Pod.

Walt Disney, creator of Mickey Mouse, was afraid of mice.


Babe Ruth kept a cabbage leaf under his baseball cap to keep him cool. He changed it every two innings.


Hello was not always the first thing said over the phone. The first operating phone service was established in 1878 and the formal greeting was "ahoy."


One third of the world's population has never made a telephone call.


Peter the Great executed his wife's lover, then forced her to keep her lover's head in a jar of alcohol in her bedroom.


More here: http://news.discovery.com/games/discovernator-crazy-amazing-facts.htm

(BG, I followed that link and got completely sidetracked into something that had nothing to do with what I wanted to post about.)

Smallpox got its name to distinguish it from the Great Pox, aka syphilis.

You know there really ought to be a smiley, perhaps modeled on the Paul Klee painting by that title.

The Jamaican pox was distinguished from the Eurasian small pox on the the shape and size of pustules it produced, thimble shaped pustules filled with a clear serum, typically a quarter inch (6 or 7 mm) in diameter by the same height against a background of the more typical hemispherical pustules characteristic of the Eurasian pox.

How delightful that both diseases are extinct, making those 'useless facts'.

Edvard Munch's scream would be better known.

I prefer Chuck Jones' The Squeem.

http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2007/dec/12/s-not-all-folks/?print

There are four versions of The Scream: two pastel, one lithograph and one tempera.

Mmmmmm - deep fried batter

Here's the best image I found when Googling "Tempura Scream".

http://foregroundnoises.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/kill15.jpg

Here's one we saw while we were on holiday in Rome earlier this year. It was available on bookmarks, postcards and fridge magnets.

http://ifartcouldtalk.tumblr.com/post/49719298918/edvard-munch-the-scream-1893-national-gallery

Shaggy, Scooby Doo's pal and owner, his full name is Norville Rogers.

The wheels on the Mars Curiosity Rover leave Morse code in their tracks spelling out J P L repeatedly.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20120829f.html

Isaac Newton: Spent his time at Trinity College, Cambridge where he was a fellow, but he didn't believe in the Trinity (he was a secret arianist)