2022 Ato Z Mashup part one

 

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So I'm a little late on my annual mauling of the well-respected A to Z April blog challenge.  The proper way to do this is a post for each letter of the alphabet each day of the month, weekends excepting.  Well, as that's never gonna happen here, I decided long ago to 'play along' by doing two posts, one toward the beginning and one in the middle, splitting little factoids about each letter of whatever the subject is between the two.  As it is already about halfway to the halfway point, I'll probably do the other one towards the end.  So what's my subject this time?  I used a random word generator to give me a random noun for each letter, and now I will look for a random factoid to give for each- call it "Random²"!

 

Now, let's see if I can find the random factoids...

A is for ARTISAN

In ancient Egypt, the artisan was stuck below the scribe in the bureaucracy.  Which is kind of funny, since the most highly skilled artisans were the stone carvers, and what were the scribes' hieroglyphics written on? You can see it now... "Take a letter, Thutmose..."

B is for BIRTHDAY

The first cakes with candles were made and lit in ancient Greece, not exactly for birthdays, but to worship the Moon Goddess Artemis.  The candles were lit to represent her symbol, the moon.  They would have to wait to worship her brother the sun-god Apollo until they invented little electric floodlights... 

Hope he only wanted one per cake...

C is for CUSTOMER

Wikipedia has a definition for the origin of the word "customer" that really could use a 'for idiots' version.  Boiling it down, the customer is a client who buys from a seller, helping the seller to establish a "custom" of making, promoting, and selling his item in an efficient way.  Is it just me, or does the word seem dumber now that you know?

D is for DITCH

My randomizer did me no favors here.  First, it gave me description, which when put into the sentence "Random facts about..." makes Google give you random facts, assuming you want the description of a random fact.  Its second choice was "definition" which I didn't even bother with because you KNOW I'm going to get the exact same thing.  Third try, it gave me "ditch".  I thought, surely this will lead down an interesting path.  What I got was, "Did you mean, 'Dutch'?"  And the realization that when Google asks that question, it gives you no way to tell it, NO!

E is for EAR

 So I learned the human ear is supposed to be able to hear as low as 20 Hz and as high as 20,000 Hz.  Not knowing what that meant, I consulted YouTube, which has videos for each sound.  The 20 Hz, with my ear right up against my speaker, was what I imagine a hummingbird's growling stomach might sound like from about 10 yards.  The 20,000- complete with a warning to "adjust your speakers"- was a 'sweep' from 20 TO 20,000- which I lost around 12 or 13,000 Hz.

 

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F is for FARMER

So I clicked on "The six weirdest farming facts you ever heard", and this self-explanitory piece was at their #1...

 

While the answer to the above question ("What kind of milk do brown cows produce") might seem obvious to many people, an online survey conducted by the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy uncovered a shocking statistic. They discovered that approximately 7% of the adult U.S. population believes brown cows produce chocolate milk.

Apparently, that’s not the only cow fact that the adult population is confused about. A study conducted by the Department of Agriculture in the early 1990’s, revealed that almost 20% of adults didn’t know hamburgers were made with beef.

 

G is for GROWTH

One site said, "Babies triple their birth weight their first year.  Imagine if adults did that?" I'm not doing the calculations clear out to MY age, but if I did that starting now for the next two years, I'd weigh a ton.  It also said that if we grew at the rate a baby does height wise, most of us would be 70 feet tall by the age of 50.  That would make for a lot more skyscrapers, I'd warrant...

 

H is for HAT

So there is a National Hat Day- January 15th.  Why this day?  Because a legendary (and quite possibly fictional) haberdasher named John Hetherington was arraigned that day in 1797 for wearing the first top hat in public, causing...

"several women fainted at the unusual sight, while children screamed, dogs yelped and a younger son of Cordwainer Thomas was thrown down by the crowd which collected and had his right arm broken".

 It should be noted that the first recorded mention of this story didn't come out until a hundred years later- supposedly in the Hatter's Gazzette, which I'm sure was a riveting read.

I is for INVESTMENT

From The Motley Fool...

Sure, there are stock markets for shares of companies offering various products and services, and bond markets, for debt obligations that investors trade. But did you know that even pirates have had a market, and not so long ago? The Wall Street Journal covered it in 2011, saying: "The world's first pirate stock exchange was established in 2009 in Harardheere, some 250 miles northeast of Mogadishu, Somalia. Open 24 hours a day, the exchange allows investors to profit from ransoms collected on the high seas, which can approach $10 million for successful attacks against Western commercial vessels."

 

"Well, my broker is EF Hutton, and EF Hutton says..."

 

J is for JELLY

Our second choice here, as "Judgment" didn't pan out.  Didja know that Dr Thomas B Welch- who would go on to invent Welch's grape jelly, started with juice clear back in 1869. Almost 40 years later, he made his first jam, which he called "Grapelade".  The US Army, stocking its troops for WWI, bought his entire inventory.

 

 

 

K is for KING

 

This one isn't exactly a "king story," or exactly accurate as it was first found by me, but...

At Tsar Nicholas II's coronation party about 1389 people died after being trampled due to a rumor that there wasn't enough free beer and food.  

 So, let me get at the real story.   This was the 1896 crowning of the last Tsar of Russia, the ill-fated (and ill-qualified) Nicholas II.  Second, while there may have been beer (more likely vodka) involved, it is not mentioned in the kindly-supplied source material.  Instead...

Thrilled by the coronation and excited by the prospect of the carnival to be held at Khodynka Field, the people were “stirred up and restive.” (1) The night before, thousands thronged to the area and camped out in the open, waiting for dawn, when the turnstiles would open and they could enter the fairgrounds. As the group waited, a rumor began to spread, "that there would not be enough gifts or food to go around. They had been promised sausage, bread rolls, sweets, nuts, gingerbread and a precious keepsake – a pink enamel mug bearing the arms of the city of Moscow and the words “In memory of the Holy Coronation,” all wrapped together in a colored kerchief stamped with the tsar and tsarina’s pictures.”

 About dawn, the people pushed through the barricades- a crowd of a half-million with about 100 Cossacks trying to control it.  At first, "Nicky" wanted to call off the whole thing- but since their French allies were planning a celebratory ball at HUGE expense, he started his reign off as he performed it throughout- by being talked into the wrong thing.  They cleaned up the bodies and went on as if nothing happened.

Finally, L is for LITERATURE

The best selling NOVEL of all time is Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, from which comes the title of this blog.  That's it for today, now excuse me while I snap this stupid keyboard into tiny little pieces....