Name: Norman Anthony Aguero
Currently a student at FIU. My major is chemistry and my minor is physics. My goal is to hopefully earn a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry.
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today
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
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December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
visited *loading* times
One-star hangover
* No pain. No real feeling of illness. Your sleep last night was a mere disco nap, which is giving you a whole lot of misplaced energy. Be glad that you are able to function relatively well. However, you are still parched. You can drink 10 soft drinks and still feel this way. Even vegetarians are craving a cheeseburger and a side of fries.
Two-star hangover
** No pain. Something is definitely amiss. You may look okay but you have the attention span and mental capacity of a stapler. The coffee you chug to try and remain focused is only exacerbating your rumbling gut, which is craving a fresh and fruity pancake breakfast. Last night has wreaked havoc on your bowels and even though you have a nice demeanor about the office, you are costing your employer valuable money because all you really can handle is surfing the Internet and writing junk e-mails.
Three-star hangover
*** Slight headache. Stomach feels crappy. You are definitely a space shot and so not productive. Anytime a girl/guy walks by, you gag because her/his perfume/BO reminds you of the random gin shots you did with your alcoholic friends after the bouncer kicked you out at 3:45am. Life would be better right now if you were in your bed with a dozen donuts and a litre of Coke watching Good Morning Australia with crater face. You've had four cups of coffee, a jug of water, two sausage rolls and a litre of Diet Coke - yet you haven't peed once.
Four-star hangover
**** Life sucks. Your head is throbbing and you can't speak too quickly or else you might puke. Your boss has already lambasted you for being late and has given you a lecture for reeking of booze. You wore nice clothes, but that can't hide the fact that you missed an oh-so crucial spot shaving, (girls, it looks like you put your make-up on while riding the bumper cars), your teeth are brown, your eyes look like one big vein and your hair style makes you look like a reject from the class picture of Revere High, '76. You would walk over your mother for one or all of the following:
1. The clock to strike 6pm.
2. The entire appetiser list from Smorgy's.
3. A time machine so you could go back and NOT have gone out the night before.
Five-tar hangover (aka Dante's 4th Circle of Hell).
***** You have a second heartbeat in your head which is actually annoying the employee who sits in the next cube. Vodka vapor is seeping out of every pore and making you dizzy. You still have toothpaste crust in the corners of your mouth from brushing your teeth. Your body has lost the ability to generate saliva, so your tongue is suffocating you. You'd cry, but that would take the last of the moisture left in your body. Death seems pretty good right now. Your boss doesn't even get mad at you and your co-workers think that your dog just died because you look so pathetic. You should have called in sick because, let's face it, all you can manage to do is bitch about your state - which is a mystery to you because you definitely don't remember who you were with, where you were and what you drank. The only thing you can do is pass out. It's when you wake up a few hours later with a lesser-star hangover that you eat a large pizza, a ham and cheese omelette and a batch of Rice Krispie treats.
Yay!!! I did extremely well this semester. So I'm patting my self on the back, this seems appropriate for a student from the FIU Chemistry Department:
Gasoline May Soon Cost a Sawbuck |
Big New Shock at the Pump Forecast by Two Analysts |
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By DAN DORFMAN Special to the Sun April 28, 2008 |
Get ready for another economic shock of major proportions — a virtual doubling of prices at the gas pump to as much as $10 a gallon.
That's the message from a couple of analytical energy industry trackers, both of whom, based on the surging oil prices, see considerably more pain at the pump than most drivers realize.
Gasoline nationally is in an accelerated upswing, having jumped to $3.58 a gallon from $3.50 in just the past week. In some parts of the country, including New York City and the West Coast, gas is already sporting a price tag above $4 a gallon. There was a pray-in at a Chevron station in San Francisco on Friday led by a minister asking God for cheaper gas, and an Arco gas station in San Mateo, Calif., has already raised its price to a sky-high $4.62.
In Manhattan, at a Mobil gas station at York Avenue and East 61st Street, premium gas is now $4.03 a gallon. Two days ago, it was $3.96. Why such a high price? "Blame the people at STOPEC (he meant OPEC) and the oil companies," an attendant there told me.
These increases are taking place before the all-important summer driving season, signaling even higher prices ahead.
That's also the outlook of the Automobile Association of America. "As long as the price of crude oil stays above $100 a barrel, drivers will be forced to pay more and more at the gas pump," a AAA spokesman, Troy Green, said.
Oil recently hit an all-time high of nearly $120 a barrel, more than double its early 2007 price of about $50 a barrel. It closed Friday at $118.52.
The forecasts calling for a jump to between $7 and $10 a gallon are based on the view that the price of crude is on its way to $200 in two to three years.
Translating this price into dollars and cents at the gas pump, one of our forecasters, the chairman of Houston-based Dune Energy, Alan Gaines, sees gas rising to $7-$8 a gallon. The other, a commodities tracker at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Fla., Sean Brodrick, projects a range of $8 to $10 a gallon.
While $7-$10 a gallon would be ground-breaking in America, these prices would not be trendsetting internationally. For example, European drivers are already shelling out $9 a gallon (which includes a $2-a-gallon tax).
Canadians are also being hit with rising gas prices. They are paying the American-dollar equivalent of $4.92 a gallon, and they're being told to brace themselves for prices above $5.65 a gallon this summer.
Early last year, with a barrel of oil trading in the low $50s and gasoline nationally selling in a range of $2.30 to $2.50 a gallon, Mr. Gaines — in an impressive display of crystal ball gazing — accurately predicted oil was $100-bound and that gasoline would follow suit by reaching $4 a gallon.
His latest prediction of $200 oil is open to question, since it would undoubtedly create considerable global economic distress. Further, just about every energy expert I talk to cautions me to expect a sizable pullback in oil prices, maybe to between $50 and $70 a barrel, especially if there's a global economic slowdown.
While Mr. Gaines thinks there could be a temporary decline in the oil price, he's convinced an overall uptrend is unstoppable. In fact, he thinks his $200 forecast could be conservative, and that perhaps $250 could be reached. His reasoning: a combination of shrinking supply and increasing demand, especially from China, India, and America.
Mr. Brodrick's $200 oil forecast is largely predicated on a combination of pretty flat supply and rip-roaring demand. Other key catalysts include surging demand in China and India, where auto sales are booming, and major supply disruptions in Nigeria and also in Mexico, our second-largest source of oil imports, where oil production has fallen off a cliff.
More factors include the ever-present danger of additional supply disruptions from volatile countries in the Middle East that are not our allies, and the unwillingness of SUV-loving Americans to trim their unquenchable thirst for foreign oil. Likewise, for the first time, emerging markets this year will use more oil than America.
Middle English
Pes:
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Another leap in weastern polyphony: singing in the round.
Yup, I know, it's the three stooges theme song, as well as three blind mice. Here a bit of trivia: Yes, my favorite rock band, sang the same round at the ending of their famous song, Roundabout.
Also, Ezra Pound did a parody:
Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, tis why I am,
Goddamm.
So 'gainst the winter's balm
Sing Goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm
Sing Goddamm, sing Goddamm,
DAMM.
Euler-Lagrange equation
The Euler-Lagrange equation or Lagrange's equation, developed by Leonhard Euler and Joseph-Louis Lagrange in the 1750s, is the major formula of the calculus of variations. It provides a way to solve for functions which extremize a given cost functional. It is widely used to solve optimization problems, and in conjunction with the action principle to calculate trajectories. It is analogous to the result from calculus that when a smooth function attains its extreme values its derivative goes to zero.
The Euler-Lagrange equation is an equation satisfied by a function f of a real parameter t which extremises the functional
where F is a given function
with continuous first partial derivatives. Here R denotes the set of real numbers and f is an X-valued function on the reals
whereas the derivative of f is defined as
so Y is the space of values of the derivative of f, i.e., Y=TX (the space of tangents to X).
The Euler-Lagrange equation then is the ordinary differential equation
where Fx and Fy denote the partial derivatives of F with respect to the second and third argument, respectively.
Field theories, both Classical field theory and Quantum field theory, deal with continuous coordinates, and like classical mechanics, has its own Euler-Lagrange equation of motion for a field,
Note: Not all classical fields are assumed commuting/bosonic variables, some of them (like the Dirac field, the Weyl field, the Rarita-Schwinger field) are fermionic and so, when trying to get the field equations from the Lagrangian density, one must choose whether to use the right or the left derivative of the Lagrangian density (which is a boson) with respect to the fields and their first space-time derivatives which are fermionic/anticommuting objects.
There are several examples of applying the Euler-Lagrange equation to various Lagrangians.
A selection from The Stereoscopic Skin Clinic, "an atlas of diseases of the skin, consisting of color stereoscopic illustrations and a text in the form of clinical lectures, designed for the use of practitioners and students of medicine." Photographed by S. I. Rainforth, M.D., of New York, and published in 1911.
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(Modified images and text ©2007 rotten.com)
The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennes- see and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. "Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did."
Bailey didn't look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and faced the children's mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like rabbit's ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding the baby his apricots out of a jar. "The children have been to Florida before," the old lady said. "You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad. They never have been to east Tennessee."
The children's mother didn't seem to hear her but the eight-year-old boy, John Wesley, a stocky child with glasses, said, "If you don't want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?" He and the little girl, June Star, were reading the funny papers on the floor.
"She wouldn't stay at home to be queen for a day," June Star said without raising her yellow head.
"Yes and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?" the grandmother asked.
"I'd smack his face," John Wesley said.
"She wouldn't stay at home for a million bucks," June Star said. "Afraid she'd miss something. She has to go everywhere we go."
"All right, Miss," the grandmother said. "Just re- member that the next time you want me to curl your hair."
June Star said her hair was naturally curly.
The next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go. She had her big black valise that looked like the head of a hippopotamus in one corner, and underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it. She didn't intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one of her gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey, didn't like to arrive at a motel with a cat.
She sat in the middle of the back seat with John Wesley and June Star on either side of her. Bailey and the children's mother and the baby sat in front and they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890. The grandmother wrote this down because she thought it would be interesting to say how many miles they had been when they got back. It took them twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of the city.
The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.
She said she thought it was going to be a good day for driving, neither too hot nor too cold, and she cautioned Bailey that the speed limit was fifty-five miles an hour and that the patrolmen hid themselves behind billboards and small clumps of trees and sped out after you before you had a chance to slow down. She pointed out interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain; the blue granite that in some places came up to both sides of the highway; the brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked with purple; and the various crops that made rows of green lace-work on the ground. The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled. The children were reading comic magazines and their mother and gone back to sleep.
"Let's go through Georgia fast so we won't have to look at it much," John Wesley said.
"If I were a little boy," said the grandmother, "I wouldn't talk about my native state that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the hills."
"Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground," John Wesley said, "and Georgia is a lousy state too."
"You said it," June Star said.
"In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He waved
"He didn't have any britches on," June Star said.
"He probably didn't have any," the grandmother explained. "Little riggers in the country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture," she said.
The children exchanged comic books.
The grandmother offered to hold the baby and the children's mother passed him over the front seat to her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told him about the things they were passing. She rolled her eyes and screwed up her mouth and stuck her leathery thin face into his smooth bland one. Occasionally he gave her a faraway smile. They passed a large cotton field with five or fix graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. "Look at the graveyard!" the grandmother said, pointing it out. "That was the old family burying ground. That belonged to the plantation."
"Where's the plantation?" John Wesley asked.
"Gone With the Wind" said the grandmother. "Ha. Ha."
When the children finished all the comic books they had brought, they opened the lunch and ate it. The grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an olive and would not let the children throw the box and the paper napkins out the window. When there was nothing else to do they played a game by choosing a cloud and making the other two guess what shape it suggested. John Wesley took one the shape of a cow and June Star guessed a cow and John Wesley said, no, an automobile, and June Star said he didn't play fair, and they began to slap each other over the grandmother.
The grandmother said she would tell them a story if they would keep quiet. When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic. She said once when she was a maiden lady she had been courted by a Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden from Jasper, Georgia. She said he was a very good-looking man and a gentleman and that he brought her a watermelon every Saturday afternoon with his initials cut in it, E. A. T. Well, one Saturday, she said, Mr. Teagarden brought the watermelon and there was nobody at home and he left it on the front porch and returned in his buggy to Jasper, but she never got the watermelon, she said, because a nigger boy ate it when he saw the initials, E. A. T. ! This story tickled John Wesley's funny bone and he giggled and giggled but June Star didn't think it was any good. She said she wouldn't marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother said she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentle man and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man.
They stopped at The Tower for barbecued sand- wiches. The Tower was a part stucco and part wood filling station and dance hall set in a clearing outside of Timothy. A fat man named Red Sammy Butts ran it and there were signs stuck here and there on the building and for miles up and down the highway saying, TRY RED SAMMY'S FAMOUS BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED SAMMY'S! RED SAM! THE FAT BOY WITH THE HAPPY LAUGH. A VETERAN! RED SAMMY'S YOUR MAN!
Red Sammy was lying on the bare ground outside The Tower with his head under a truck while a gray monkey about a foot high, chained to a small chinaberry tree, chattered nearby. The monkey sprang back into the tree and got on the highest limb as soon as he saw the children jump out of the car and run toward him.
Inside, The Tower was a long dark room with a counter at one end and tables at the other and dancing space in the middle. They all sat down at a board table next to the nickelodeon and Red Sam's wife, a tall burnt-brown woman with hair and eyes lighter than her skin, came and took their order. The children's mother put a dime in the machine and played "The Tennessee Waltz," and the grandmother said that tune always made her want to dance. She asked Bailey if he would like to dance but he only glared at her. He didn't have a naturally sunny disposition like she did and trips made him nervous. The grandmother's brown eyes were very bright. She swayed her head from side to side and pretended she was dancing in her chair. June Star said play something she could tap to so the children's mother put in another dime and played a fast number and June Star stepped out onto the dance floor and did her tap routine.
"Ain't she cute?" Red Sam's wife said, leaning over the counter. "Would you like to come be my little girl?"
"No I certainly wouldn't," June Star said. "I wouldn't live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks!" and she ran back to the table.
"Ain't she cute?" the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely.
"Arn't you ashamed?" hissed the grandmother.
Red Sam came in and told his wife to quit lounging on the counter and hurry up with these people's order. His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones and his stomach hung over them like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. He came over and sat down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and yodel. "You can't win," he said. "You can't win," and he wiped his sweating red face off with a gray handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to trust," he said. "Ain't that the truth?"
"People are certainly not nice like they used to be," said the grandmother.
"Two fellers come in here last week," Red Sammy said, "driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?"
"Because you're a good man!" the grandmother said at once.
"Yes'm, I suppose so," Red Sam said as if he were struck with this answer.
His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates all at once without a tray, two in each hand and one balanced on her arm. "It isn't a soul in this green world of God's that you can trust," she said. "And I don't count nobody out of that, not nobody," she repeated, looking at Red Sammy.
"Did you read about that criminal, The Misfit, that's escaped?" asked the grandmother.
"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he didn't attack this place right here," said the woman. "If he hears about it being here, I wouldn't be none surprised to see him. If he hears it's two cent in the cash register, I wouldn't be a tall surprised if he . . ."
"That'll do," Red Sam said. "Go bring these people their Co'-Colas," and the woman went off to get the rest of the order.
"A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more."
He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside into the white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the lacy chinaberry tree. He was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a delicacy.
They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The grandmother took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady. She said the house had six white columns across the front and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off to get to it. She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors were still standing. "There was a secret:-panel in this house," she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were, "and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found . . ."
"Hey!" John Wesley said. "Let's go see it! We'll find it! We'll poke all the woodwork and find it! Who lives there? Where do you turn off at? Hey Pop, can't we turn off there?"
"We never have seen a house with a secret panel!" June Star shrieked. "Let's go to the house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can't we go see the house with the secret panel!"
"It's not far from here, I know," the grandmother said. "It wouldn't take over twenty minutes."
Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. "No," he said.
The children began to yell and scream that they wanted to see the house with the secret panel. John Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung over her mother's shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never had any fun even on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do. The baby began to scream and John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard that his father could feel the blows in his kidney.
"All right!" he shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. "Will you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don't shut up, we won't go anywhere."
"It would be very educational for them," the grandmother murmured.
"All right," Bailey said, "but get this: this is the only time we're going to stop for anything like this. This is the one and only time."
"The dirt road that you have to turn down is about a mile back," the grandmother directed. "I marked it when we passed."
"A dirt road," Bailey groaned.
After they had turned around and were headed toward the dirt road, the grandmother recalled other points about the house, the beautiful glass over the front doorway and the candle-lamp in the hall. John Wesley said that the secret panel was probably in the fireplace.
"You can't go inside this house," Bailey said. "You don't know who lives there."
"While you all talk to the people in front, I'll run around behind and get in a window," John Wesley suggested.
"We'll all stay in the car," his mother said.
They turned onto the dirt road and the car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust. The grandmother recalled the times when there were no paved roads and thirty miles was a day's journey. The dirt road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous embankments. All at once they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on them.
"This place had better turn up in a minute," Bailey said, "or I'm going to turn around."
The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months.
"It's not much farther," the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder.
The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the driver's seat with the cat gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose clinging to his neck like a caterpillar.
As soon as the children saw they could move their arms and legs, they scrambled out of the car, shouting, "We've had an ACCIDENT!" The grandmother was curled up under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.
Bailey removed the cat from his neck with both hands and flung it out the window against the side of a pine tree. Then he got out of the car and started looking for the children's mother. She was sitting against the side of the red gutted ditch, holding the screaming baby, but she only had a cut down her face and a broken shoulder. "We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed in a frenzy of delight.
"But nobody's killed," June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the car, her hat still pinned to her head but the broken front brim standing up at a jaunty angle and the violet spray hanging off the side. They all sat down in the ditch, except the children, to recover from the shock. They were all shaking.
"Maybe a car will come along," said the children's mother hoarsely.
"I believe I have injured an organ," said the grandmother, pressing her side, but no one answered her. Bailey's teeth were clattering. He had on a yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots designed in it and his face was as yellow as the shirt. The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in Tennessee.
The road was about ten feet above and they could see only the tops of the trees on the other side of it. Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall and dark and deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away on top of a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them. The grandmother stood up and waved both arms dramatically to attract their attention. The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again, moving even slower, on top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black battered hearselike automobile. There were three men in it.
It came to a stop just over them and for some minutes, the driver looked down with a steady expressionless gaze to where they were sitting, and didn't speak. Then he turned his head and muttered something to the other two and they got out. One was a fat boy in black trousers and a red sweat shirt with a silver stallion embossed on the front of it. He moved around on the right side of them and stood staring, his mouth partly open in a kind of loose grin. The other had on khaki pants and a blue striped coat and a gray hat pulled down very low, hiding most of his face. He came around slowly on the left side. Neither spoke.
The driver got out of the car and stood by the side of it, looking down at them. He was an older man than the other two. His hair was just beginning to gray and he wore silver-rimmed spectacles that gave him a scholarly look. He had a long creased face and didn't have on any shirt or undershirt. He had on blue jeans that were too tight for him and was holding a black hat and a gun. The two boys also had guns.
"We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed.
The grandmother had the peculiar feeling that the bespectacled man was someone she knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she had known him all her life but she could not recall who he was. He moved away from the car and began to come down the embankment, placing his feet carefully so that he wouldn't slip. He had on tan and white shoes and no socks, and his ankles were red and thin. "Good afternoon," he said. "I see you all had you a little spill."
"We turned over twice!" said the grandmother.
"Once", he corrected. "We seen it happen. Try their car and see will it run, Hiram," he said quietly to the boy with the gray hat.
"What you got that gun for?" John Wesley asked. "Whatcha gonna do with that gun?"
"Lady," the man said to the children's mother, "would you mind calling them children to sit down by you? Children make me nervous. I want all you all to sit down right together there where you're at."
"What are you telling US what to do for?" June Star asked.
Behind them the line of woods gaped like a dark open mouth. "Come here," said their mother.
"Look here now," Bailey began suddenly, "we're in a predicament! We're in . . ."
The grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring. "You're The Misfit!" she said. "I recognized you at once!"
"Yes'm," the man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be known, "but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me."
Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to his mother that shocked even the children. The old lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened.
"Lady," he said, "don't you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don't mean. I don't reckon he meant to talk to you thataway."
"You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" the grandmother said and removed a clean handkerchief from her cuff and began to slap at her eyes with it.
The Misfit pointed the toe of his shoe into the ground and made a little hole and then covered it up again. "I would hate to have to," he said.
"Listen," the grandmother almost screamed, "I know you're a good man. You don't look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!"
"Yes mam," he said, "finest people in the world." When he smiled he showed a row of strong white teeth. "God never made a finer woman than my mother and my daddy's heart was pure gold," he said. The boy with the red sweat shirt had come around behind them and was standing with his gun at his hip. The Misfit squatted down on the ground. "Watch them children, Bobby Lee," he said. "You know they make me nervous." He looked at the six of them huddled together in front of him and he seemed to be embarrassed as if he couldn't think of anything to say. "Ain't a cloud in the sky," he remarked, looking up at it. "Don't see no sun but don't see no cloud neither."
"Yes, it's a beautiful day," said the grandmother. "Listen," she said, "you shouldn't call yourself The Misfit because I know you're a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell."
"Hush!" Bailey yelled. "Hush! Everybody shut up and let me handle this!" He was squatting in the position of a runner about to sprint forward but he didn't move.
"I pre-chate that, lady," The Misfit said and drew a little circle in the ground with the butt of his gun.
"It'll take a half a hour to fix this here car," Hiram called, looking over the raised hood of it.
"Well, first you and Bobby Lee get him and that little boy to step over yonder with you," The Misfit said, pointing to Bailey and John Wesley. "The boys want to ast you something," he said to Bailey. "Would you mind stepping back in them woods there with them?"
"Listen," Bailey began, "we're in a terrible predicament! Nobody realizes what this is," and his voice cracked. His eyes were as blue and intense as the parrots in his shirt and he remained perfectly still.
The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going to the woods with him but it came off in her hand. She stood staring at it and after a second she let it fall on the ground. Hiram pulled Bailey up by the arm as if he were assisting an old man. John Wesley caught hold of his father's hand and Bobby I,ee followed. They went off toward the woods and just as they reached the dark edge, Bailey turned and supporting himself against a gray naked pine trunk, he shouted, "I'll be back in a minute, Mamma, wait on me!"
"Come back this instant!" his mother shrilled but they all disappeared into the woods.
"Bailey Boy!" the grandmother called in a tragic voice but she found she was looking at The Misfit squatting on the ground in front of her. "I just know you're a good man," she said desperately. "You're not a bit common!"
"Nome, I ain't a good man," The Misfit said after a second ah if he had considered her statement carefully, "but I ain't the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. 'You know,' Daddy said, 'it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!"' He put on his black hat and looked up suddenly and then away deep into the woods as if he were embarrassed again. "I'm sorry I don't have on a shirt before you ladies," he said, hunching his shoulders slightly. "We buried our clothes that we had on when we escaped and we're just making do until we can get better. We borrowed these from some folks we met," he explained.
"That's perfectly all right," the grandmother said. "Maybe Bailey has an extra shirt in his suitcase."
"I'll look and see terrectly," The Misfit said.
"Where are they taking him?" the children's mother screamed.
"Daddy was a card himself," The Misfit said. "You couldn't put anything over on him. He never got in trouble with the Authorities though. Just had the knack of handling them."
"You could be honest too if you'd only try," said the grandmother. "Think how wonderful it would be to settle down and live a comfortable life and not have to think about somebody chasing you all the time."
The Misfit kept scratching in the ground with the butt of his gun as if he were thinking about it. "Yestm, somebody is always after you," he murmured.
The grandmother noticed how thin his shoulder blades were just behind his hat because she was standing up looking down on him. "Do you every pray?" she asked.
He shook his head. All she saw was the black hat wiggle between his shoulder blades. "Nome," he said.
There was a pistol shot from the woods, followed closely by another. Then silence. The old lady's head jerked around. She could hear the wind move through the tree tops like a long satisfied insuck of breath. "Bailey Boy!" she called.
"I was a gospel singer for a while," The Misfit said. "I been most everything. Been in the arm service both land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet," and he looked up at the children's mother and the little girl who were sitting close together, their faces white and their eyes glassy; "I even seen a woman flogged," he said.
"Pray, pray," the grandmother began, "pray, pray . . ."
I never was a bad boy that I remember of," The Misfit said in an almost dreamy voice, "but somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary. I was buried alive," and he looked up and held her attention to him by a steady stare.
"That's when you should have started to pray," she said. "What did you do to get sent to the penitentiary that first time?"
"Turn to the right, it was a wall," The Misfit said, looking up again at the cloudless sky. "Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was a floor. I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set there, trying to remember what it was I done and I ain't recalled it to this day. Oncet in a while, I would think it was coming to me, but it never come."
"Maybe they put you in by mistake," the old lady said vaguely.
"Nome," he said. "It wasn't no mistake. They had the papers on me."
"You must have stolen something," she said.
The Misfit sneered slightly. "Nobody had nothing I wanted," he said. "It was a head-doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy but I known that for a lie. My daddy died in nineteen ought nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it. He was buried in the Mount Hopewell Baptist churchyard and you can go there and see for yourself."
"If you would pray," the old lady said, "Jesus would help you."
"That's right," The Misfit said.
"Well then, why don't you pray?" she asked trembling with delight suddenly.
"I don't want no hep," he said. "I'm doing all right by myself."
Bobby Lee and Hiram came ambling back from the woods. Bobby Lee was dragging a yellow shirt with bright blue parrots in it.
"Thow me that shirt, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. The shirt came flying at him and landed on his shoulder and he put it on. The grandmother couldn't name what the shirt reminded her of. "No, lady," The Misfit said while he was buttoning it up, "I found out the crime don't matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you're going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it."
The children's mother had begun to make heaving noises as if she couldn't get her breath. "Lady," he asked, "would you and that little girl like to step off yonder with Bobby Lee and Hiram and join your husband?"
"Yes, thank you," the mother said faintly. Her left arm dangled helplessly and she was holding the baby, who had gone to sleep, in the other. "Hep that lady up, Hiram," The Misfit said as she struggled to climb out of the ditch, "and Bobby Lee, you hold onto that little girl's hand."
"I don't want to hold hands with him," June Star said. "He reminds me of a pig."
The fat boy blushed and laughed and caught her by the arm and pulled her off into the woods after Hiram and her mother.
Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice. There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun. There was nothing around her but woods. She wanted to tell him that he must pray. She opened and closed her mouth several times before anything came out. Finally she found herself saying, "Jesus. Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing.
"Yes'm, The Misfit said as if he agreed. "Jesus shown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn't committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course," he said, "they never shown me my papers. That's why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you'll have something to prove you ain't been treated right. I call myself The Misfit," he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."
There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report. "Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't punished at all?"
"Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I know you wouldn't shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I'll give you all the money I've got!"
"Lady," The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, "there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip."
There were two more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a parched old turkey hen crying for water and called, "Bailey Boy, Bailey Boy!" as if her heart would break.
"Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.
"Maybe He didn't raise the dead," the old lady mumbled, not knowing what she was saying and feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her.
"I wasn't there so I can't say He didn't," The Misfit said. "I wisht I had of been there," he said, hitting the ground with his fist. "It ain't right I wasn't there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now." His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children !" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.
Hiram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the ditch, looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.
Without his glasses, The Misfit's eyes were red-rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking. "Take her off and thow her where you thown the others," he said, picking up the cat that was rubbing itself against his leg.
"She was a talker, wasn't she?" Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel.
"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
"Some fun!" Bobby Lee said.
"Shut up, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life."
A mole can dig a tunnel 300 feet long in just one night!
A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off - it dies from starvation!
A crocodile always grows new teeth to replace the old teeth!
A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein!
A hard working adult sweats up to 4 gallons per day. Most of the sweat evaporates before a person realizes it's there, though!
A hedgehog's heart beats 300 times a minute on average!
A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall child inside!
A hummingbird weighs less than a penny!
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second!
A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court!
A quarter has 119 grooves on its edge, a dime has one less groove!
After eating, a housefly regurgitates its food and then eats it again!
Apples are more efficient than caffeine in keeping people awake in the mornings!
Bulls are colorblind, therefore will usually charge at a matador's waving cape no matter what color it is -- be it red or neon yellow!
Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand!
Cat urine glows under a black-light!
Dogs and cats, like humans, are either right or left handed... or is that paws?!
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie!
Human teeth are almost as hard as rocks!
Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete!
If you counted 24 hours a day, it would take 31,688 years to reach one trillion!
Most lipstick contains fish scales!
No piece of square dry paper can be folded more than 7 times in half!
Nose prints are used to identify dogs, just like humans use fingerprints!
One ragweed plant can release as many as one billion grains of pollen!
Over 10,000 birds a year die from smashing into windows!
Over 2500 left handed people a year are killed from using products made for right handed people!
Porcupines float in water!
Skepticisms is the longest word that alternates hands when typing!
Smelling bananas and/or green apples (smelling, not eating) can help you lose weight!
The average ice berg weighs 20,000,000 tons!
The average life span of a major league baseball is 5-7 pitches!
The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year!
The Earth weighs around 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons!
The electric chair was invented by a dentist!
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds!
The most used letter in the English alphabet is 'E', and 'Q' is the least used!
The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven!
The original name for the butterfly was 'flutterby'!
The placement of a donkey's eyes in its head enables it to see all four feet at all times!
The poison-arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people!
The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." uses every letter of the alphabet!
The sloth (a mammal) moves so slowly that green algae can grow undisturbed on its fur!
The state of Florida is bigger than England!
The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth!
The world's termites outweigh the world's humans 10 to 1!
There are more than 10 million bricks in the Empire State Building!
Thomas Edison, lightbulb inventor, was afraid of the dark!
Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland!
Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day!
You're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206!
101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan are the only two Disney cartoon features with both parents that are present and don't die throughout the movie.
142857 is a cyclic number, the numbers of which always appear in the same order but rotated around when multiplied by any number from 1 to 6. 142857 * 2 = 285714 142857 * 3 = 428571 142857 * 4 = 571428 142857 * 5 = 714285 142857 * 6 = 857142
A barnacle has the largest penis of any other animal in the world in relation to its size.
A dragonfly has a lifespan of twenty-four hours.
A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why.
A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
A flush toilet exists that dates back to 2000 BC.
A fully loaded supertanker traveling at normal speed takes a least twenty minutes to stop.
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
A lion's roar can be heard from five miles away.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
A rhinoceros' horn is made of compacted hair.
A species of earthworm in Australia grows up to 10 feet in length.
A ten-gallon hat holds three-quarters of a gallon.
A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking in the background -- when they say "walla-walla" it looks like they are actually talking.
A whale's penis is called a dork.
According to Genesis 1:20-22 the chicken came before the egg.
Actor Tommy Lee Jones and vice-president Al Gore were freshman roommates at Harvard.
After human death, post-mortem rigidity starts in the head and travels to the feet, and leaves the same way it came -- head to toe.
Albert Brooks's real name is Albert Einstein.
Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never phoned his wife or his mother. They were both deaf.
Alexander the Great was an epileptic.
Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.
All of the officers in the Confederate army were given copies of Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, to carry with them at all times. Robert E. Lee, among others, believed that the book symbolized their cause. Both revolts were defeated.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.
Ancient drinkers warded off the devil by clinking their cups.
Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the deaths of their cats.
Anteaters prefer termites to ants.
Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.
Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
Barbie's full name is Barbra Millicent Roberts.
Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
Bela Lugosi died during the filming of "PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE". Director Edward D. Wood Jr. used a taller relative who held a cape in front of his face so the audience wouldn't know the difference so he could complete filming.
Bingo is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box.
Blonde beards grow faster than darker beards.
Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.
Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Zimmerman.
Bob May played the Robot on "Lost In Space" (1965-68) and Dick Tufeld was the voice.
Boris Karloff is the narrator of the seasonal television special "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."
Both Hitler and Napoleon were missing one testicle.
Boys who have unusual first names are more likely to have mental problems than boys with conventional names. Girls don't seem to have this problem.
Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.
Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to SLOW a film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.
By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand.
Casey Kasem is the voice of Shaggy on "Scooby-Doo."
Cat urine glows under a black light.
Catgut comes from sheep not cats.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
Cheryl Ladd (of Charlie's Angels fame) played the voice, both talking and singing, of Josie in the 70s Saturday morning cartoon "Josie and the Pussycats."
Chop-suey is not a native Chinese dish, it was created in California by Chinese immigrants.
Chrysler built B-29's that bombed Japan. Mitsubishi built the Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in a joint plant call Diamond Star.
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down -- hence the statement "to get fired."
Clark Gable used to shower more than 4 times a day.
Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, the reverse of how a record works.
Crickets hear through their knees.
Crocodiles swallow stones to help them dive deeper.
Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps.
Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.
Despite the hump, a camel's spine is straight.
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth, and whose shame created the statement for ignominy, "His name is Mudd."
Dr. Seuss and Kurt Vonnegut went to college together. They were even in the same fraternity, where Seuss decorated the fraternity house walls with drawings of his characters.
Due to gravitational effects, you weigh slightly less when the moon is directly overhead.
During the chariot scene in 'Ben Hur' a small red car can be seen in the distance.
During World War II, W.C. Fields kept US $50,000 in Germany 'in case the little bastard wins'.
Earth is the only planet not named after a God.
Elvis had a twin brother named Jesse Garon, who died at birth, which is why Elvis' middle name was spelled Aron; in honor of his brother.
Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation was taken by Harold Edgerton.
Every Swiss citizen is required by law to have a bomb shelter or access to a bomb shelter.
Evian (the bottled water) spelled backwards is "naive."
February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
Flying from London to New York by Concord, due to the time zones crossed, you can arrive 2 hours before you leave.
Former US President Ulysses S. Grant had the boyhood nickname 'Useless'.
Four people played Darth Vader: David Prowse was his body, James Earl Jones did the voice, Sebastian Shaw was his face and a fourth person did the breathing.
From the age of thirty, humans gradually begin to shrink in size.
George Washington grew marijuana in his garden.
Gerald Ford pardoned Robert E. Lee posthumously of all crimes of treason.
Gilligan of Gilligan's Island had a first name that was only used once, on the never-aired pilot show. His first name was Willy. The skipper's real name on Gilligan's Island is Jonas Grumby. It was mentioned once in the first episode on the radio newscast about the wreck. The Professor's real name was Roy Hinkley, Mary Ann's last name was Summers and Mrs. Howell's maiden name was Wentworth.
Halloween took place in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois but almost all the cars in the film had California license plates.
Hara kiri is an impolite way of saying the Japanese word "seppuku" which means, literally, "belly splitting."
Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by Bayer.
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
Hindu men believe(d) it to be unluckily to marry a third time. They could avoid misfortune by marrying a tree first. The tree ( his third wife ) was then burnt, freeing him to marry again.
Human birth control pills work on gorillas.
Human hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after death.
Hummingbirds can't walk.
If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
If a surgeon in Ancient Egypt lost a patient while performing an operation, his hands were cut off.
If the population of the Earth continued to increase at its present rate indefinitely, by 3530 A.D. the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass of the Earth. By 6826 A.D. it would equal the mass of the known universe.
If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning before you will die of oxygen deprivation.
If you can see a rainbow you must have your back to the sun. If you don't, you can't see it.
If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer, its stomach will explode.
If you multiply 526,315,789,473,684,210 with any number you will always find the original number in the result!
If you pause "Saturday Night Fever" at the "How Deep Is Your Love" rehearsal scene, you will see the camera crew reflected in the dance hall mirror.
If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
Iguanas, koalas and Komodo dragons all have two penises.
In Ancient Peru, when a woman found an 'ugly' potato, it was the custom for her to push it into the face of the nearest man.
In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam." Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson." Captain Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty," but he did say, "Beam me up, Mr. Scott."
In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
In most watch advertisements the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch (and make it look like it's smiling.)
In the 40's, the Bich pen was changed to Bic for fear that Americans would pronounce it 'Bitch.'
In the Andes, time is often measured by how long it takes to smoke a cigarette.
In the film 'Star Trek : First Contact', when Picard shows Lilly she is orbiting Earth, Australia and Papa New Guinea are clearly visible .. but New Zealand is missing.
It is a criminal offence to drive around in a dirty car in Russia.
It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear.
It is illegal to be a prostitute in Siena, Italy, if your name is Mary.
It takes 8.5 minutes for light to get from the sun to earth.
It was illegal to sell ET dolls in France because there is a law against selling dolls without human faces.
It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
It's rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a breath-alyzer to read 0.
Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been over mixing the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since.
Jacques Cousteau invented scuba gear while in the French resistance during World War II.
James Doohan, who plays Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott on Star Trek, is missing the entire middle finger of his right hand.
Jean-Claude Van Damme was the alien in the original "PREDATOR" in almost all the jumping and climbing scenes.
Jet lag was once called boat lag, back before jets existed.
John Larroquette of "Night Court" and "The John Larroquette Show" was the narrator of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and was found in a warehouse. Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and was found in a theatre.
John Wilkes Booth's brother once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln's son.
June Foray, the voice of Talking Tina from the classic Twilight Zone episode "Living Doll", was also the voice of Rocky the talking squirrel from "Rocky & Bullwinkle".
Kathleen Turner was the voice of Jessica Rabbit, and Amy Irving was her singing voice.
King Kong is the only movie to have its sequel (Son of Kong) released the same year (1933).
Lady Astor once told Winston Churchill 'if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee'. His reply ' if you were my wife, I would drink it!'
Leonardo De Vinci invented the scissors.
Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
Liquid paper was invented by Mike Nesmith's (of the Monkees) mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, in 1951.
Lizzie Borden was acquitted.
Look at the number four on a clock face that uses Roman numerals. If the clock is made correctly then the Roman numeral four is wrong. The standard and correct way to write the Roman numeral four is "IV," but the traditional way to show it on a clock face is "IIII." Legend has it that a clock was made for a British king. When he saw the clock he mis- informedly corrected the clock maker who re-did the clock face to show a "IIII" instead of an "IV" thus not risking offending the king. Other clock makers followed suit so as not to embarrass the king. Now it is the traditional way to make clocks.
Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."
Lynyrd Skynard was the name of the gym teacher of the boys who went on to form that band. He once told them, "You boys ain't never gonna amount to nothin'."
Melanie Griffith's mother is actress Tippi Hendren, best known for her lead role in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.
Men leave their hotel rooms cleaner than women do.
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."
Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds.
More money is printed daily for the Monopoly game than by the U.S. Treasury.
More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.
Most Americans' car horns beep in the key of F.
Mozart was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.
Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
Nine pennies weigh exactly one ounce.
Ninety eight per cent of the weight of water is made up from oxygen.
No animal, once frozen solid (i.e., water solidifies and turns to ice) survives when thawed, because the ice crystals formed inside cells would break open the cell membranes. However there are certain frogs that can survive the experience of being frozen. These frogs make special proteins, which prevent the formation of ice (or at least keep the crystals from becoming very large), so that they actually never freeze even though their body temperature is below zero Celsius. The water in them remains liquid: a phenomenon known as 'supercooling.' If you disturb one of these frogs (just touching them even), the water in them quickly freezes solid and they die.
No matter its size or thickness, no piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.
Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
Oak trees do not have acorns until they are fifty years old or older.
Of the six men who made up the Three Stooges, three of them were real brothers (Moe, Curly and Shemp.)
On 15 April 1912 the SS Titanic sunk on her maiden voyage and over 1,500 people died. Fourteen years earlier a novel was published by Morgan Robertson which seemed to foretell the disaster. The book described a ship the same size as the Titanic which crashes into an iceberg on its maiden voyage on a misty April night. The name of Robertson's fictional ship was the Titan.
On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand corner of the "1" encased in the "shield" and a spider hidden in the front upper right-hand corner.
On the new one hundred dollar bill the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10.
One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers -- they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.
Only female mosquitoes bite.
Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
Other than humans, black lemurs are the only primates that have blue eyes.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
Pamela Lee-Anderson is Canada's Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada's independence.
Panama hats come from Ecuador not Panama.
Peanuts are used in the production of dynamite.
Pearls melt in vinegar.
Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eyes."
Pogonophobia is the fear of beards.
Polar bear fur is not white, it's clear.
Race car is a palindrome.
Ralph Lauren's original name was Ralph Lifshitz.
Residents of the island of Lesbos are Lesbosians, rather than Lesbians. (Of course, lesbians are called lesbians because Sappho was from Lesbos.)
Revolvers cannot be silenced, due to all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel.
Rhythm and "syzygy" are the longest English words without vowels.
Robert E. Lee, of the Confederate Army, remains the only person, to date, to have graduated from the West Point military academy without a single demerit.
Roosters can't crow if they can't fully extend their necks.
Russians generally answer the phone by saying, 'I'm listening.'
S.O.S. doesn't stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls" -- It was chosen by an 1908 international conference on Morse Code because the letters S and O were easy to remember and just about anyone could key it and read it, S = dot dot dot, O = dash dash dash.
Samuel Clemens's pseudonym "Mark Twain" was the nickname of a riverboat pilot about whom Clemens wrote a needless nasty satirical piece. Apparently, Clemens felt guilty later and adopted the nom de plume as some sort of expiation. The phrase "mark twain" from which the river pilot got his name does not mean two fathoms (twelve feet.)
Sharon Stone was the first "Star Search" spokes model.
Smithee is a pseudonym that filmmakers use when they don't want their names to appear in the credits.
Snails can sleep for 3 years without eating.
Soda water does not contain soda.
Some Eskimos have been known to use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing.
Soweto in South Africa was derived from SOuth WEst TOwnship.
Spain literally means 'the land of rabbits.'
Speak of the Devil is short for "Speak of the Devil and he shall come". It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract his attention and he would appear.
St. Bernards, famous for their role as alpine rescue dogs, do NOT wear casks of brandy around their necks.
Steve Young, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, is the great-great-grandson of Mormon leader Brigham Young.
Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.
Talk show host Montel Williams had a nose job.
Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music.
The "Grinch" singer and voice of Tony the Tiger is a man named Thurl Ravenscroft.
The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
The allele for six fingers and toes is dominant in humans.
The Andy Griffth Show was the first spin-off in TV history. It was spun-off from the Danny Thomas Show.
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
The average scalp has 100,000 hairs. Redheads have the least at 80,000; brown and black haired persons have about 100,000; and blondes have the most at 120,000. (That is more than a thousand hairs in each square inch!)
The band "Duran Duran" got their name from an astronaut in the 1968 Jane Fonda movie "Barbarella."
The bat on the Bacardi symbol is there because the soil where the sugar cane grows is fertile from the excessive guano (bat droppings.)
The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.
The bubbles in Guiness Beer sink to the bottom rather than float to the top like all other beers. No one knows why.
The car in the foreground on the back of a $10 bill is a 1925 Huptmobile.
The car manufacturer Henry Ford was awarded Hitler's Supreme Order of the German Eagle.
The childrens' nursery rhyme 'Ring-a-Round-The-Rosies' actually refers to the Black Death which killed about 30 million people in the fourteenth-century.
The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' depicts two women living under one roof'.
The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself."
The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
The dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, conceals a billiards room. In Jefferson's day, billiards were illegal in Virginia.
The dunce cap of schoolhouse fame originates from a paper cone that was placed on the heads of accused witches during the Middle Ages. When Joan of Arc was martyred, she was wearing one of them.
The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one-mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
The famous split-fingered Vulcan salute is actually intended to represent the first letter ("shin," pronounced "sheen") of the word "shalom." As a small boy, Leonard Nimoy observed his rabbi using it in a benediction and never forgot it; eventually he was able to add it to "Star Trek" lore.
The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.
The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
The first inter-racial kiss on TV was in an original "STAR TREK" episode entitled "Plato's Stepchildren". The kiss was between Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner.
The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.
The first safety razor was not actually invented by King Gillette himself but by a man named William Nickerson who was Kings partner. They believed that the label bearing Nickersons name would be bad for business, plus it was Kings idea anyway.
The first time the word "hell" was spoken on TV was in an original "STAR TREK" episode entitled "City on the Edge of Forever". The exact quote was "...let's get the hell out of here...", spoken by William Shatner.
The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".
The 'Hundred Years War' lasted 116 years.
The largest eggs in the world are laid by a shark.
The launching mechanism of a carrier ship that helps planes to take off could throw a pickup truck over a mile.
The lead singer of The Knack, famous for "My Sharona," and Jack Kevorkian's lead defense attorney are brothers, Doug & Jeffrey Feiger.
The Les Nessman character on the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati wore a band-aid in every episode. Either on himself, his glasses, or his clothing.
The lifespan of a tastebud is ten days.
The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called 'mantles') are radioactive--so much so that they will set of an alarm at a nuclear reactor.
The longest U.S. highway is route 6 starting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts going through 14 states, and ending in Bishop, California.
The magic word "Abracadabra" was originally intended for the specific purpose of curing hay fever.
The mask used by Michael Myers in the original "Halloween" was actually a Captain Kirk mask painted white.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz."
The name of the Vulcan's heaven is Sha Ka Ree, this is a play on the name Sean Connery who was considered for the part of Sarek, Spock's father.
The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."
The names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru: See no evil, Mikazaru: Hear no evil, and Mazaru: Speak no evil.
The national flag of Italy was designed by Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence - he invented dynamite.
The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
The NY phone book had 22 Hitlers before WWII. The NY phone book had 0 Hitlers after WWII.
The only member of the band ZZ Top without a beard has the last name Beard.
The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is lost. The copy in Washington D.C. is what is referred to as a holograph. That is a term for a handmade copy of a document and is not the same as a laser produced hologram.
The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
The pet ferret (Mustela putorias furo) was domesticated more than 500 years before the house cat.
The Phillips-head screwdriver was invented in Oregon.
The phrase ' The 3 R's ' ( standing for 'reading, writing and arithmetic' ) was created by Sir William Curtis, who was illiterate.
The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't
