The Road to Spermology

If you have ever aspired to be a spermologist, this will give you a good head start.

The distance from the Earth to the Sun, in meters, is reported to be 149,597,870,691. I'm unsure which spot on or in Earth they measured from, but I assume it matters.

Niagara Falls is constantly eroding. It will continue to do so until it carves another four miles upstream. There, the limestone ends and the river bed becomes shale, which will turn the falls into rapids.

A purple finch is mostly red.

Sparky Anderson was once a USC batboy.

One of the reasons Ramses the Great was so named is because of his towering height, which was about five feet, eight inches. Maybe nine with sandals.

At five feet, six and one-half inches, Napoleon, who once characterized history as "a set of lies that people have agreed upon," was slightly taller than the average Frenchman of his day.

You probably know who is buried in Grant's tomb. But do you know what language King Richard the Lion-Hearted of England spoke? If you guessed English, you guessed wrong.

In 1922, Hungarians endured a heavy downpour of rain that was infested with spiders. Sadly, no photographs are available.

A day on Mars lasts 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds.

At 8 minutes and 32 seconds, Don Mclean's "American Pie" was the longest number one hit in American rock single history (not counting LP releases). The Doors epic "The End" was much longer, but never approached the top of the charts.

You and I, however, have topped the Billboard charts at least as many times as The Who.

Sir Isaac Newton's landmark treatise Mathematical Principals of Natural Philosophy (the Principia) was almost withheld from publication. Newton didn't care much whether it was published, and the original publisher, The Royal Society of London, decided not to back it after they were embarrassed by the failure of their prior offering -- another scientist's work entitled "The History of Fishes."

Your pillow, if average, is about six years old, and roughly one-tenth of its mass consists of dead skin, dust mites, and dust mite excrement.

Einstein reportedly used to say "God doesn't play dice with the Universe." Well, almost. The exact quote is "It seems hard to sneak a look into God's cards. But that He plays dice and uses 'telepathic' methods...is a something that I cannot believe for a single moment."

Some dates in history are noteworthy for more than one reason. Take December 7, 1941, as an example. Most Americans recall that this was the day Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan. Fewer might recall that, on the same morning, Nazi technicians quietly ushered in the Holocaust by gassing their first group of prisoners at the Kulmhof death camp in Poland under the new Nacht und Nebel program.

February 12, 1809 is notable as the date of birth for both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. July 4, 1826 was not only the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence; but it also saw the death of Thomas Jefferson (its author), and the president who went before him, John Adams. CNN, if it existed then, would have been going berserk.

One evening Calvin Coolidge, a man of few words, was enjoying a meal when a guest tried to draw him into conversation. "I have made a bet, Mr. Coolidge," she began, "that I can get more than two words out of you." Calvin replied: "You lose." Wasn't that nice of him? It would have been much crueler to say: "You might."

John Kerry is, in the opinion of some, an exergasiast, assuming that such term would be used to describe one who regularly engages in exergasia.

IOU is an abbreviation of "I owe unto."

Some claim that China and New Jersey have exactly the same number of wild silkworms. But few would dispute that Jersey trails badly in the domesticated silkworm trade.

The chief geophysicist of the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado is named Waverly Person.

Isaac Tigrett, one of the founders of the Hard Rock Cafe, and noted collector of Rock & Roll relics, married Ringo Starr's ex-wife.

The South Atlantic was host to exactly zero hurricanes during my lifetime, until this year. No one knows how long we might have to wait for the second one.

Some parts of Canada, albeit few, are farther south than certain parts of California.

By the way, a spermologist, as most of you already knew, is a person who collects little bits of trivia. Or seeds. But I wasn't talking about seeds.

Comments

[keith dunkelbarger]

If a spermologist collects little bits of trivia, then what does a spermologer do?

[Terrence E. Ring]

Did you know that The Golden Apple, a musical by Jerome Moross is the final performance in Summerscape?

[Steve Dean]

Did you know that summerscape officially ends on August 28

[Retro Girl]

Your post about the purple finch being primarily red reminds me of something I heard this morning: That salmon really isn't pink. It's really a greyish whitish color, therefore to make it more appealing, they use pink dye. I wonder if this is true? I could look it up, but I'm too lazy tonight to do much of anything but wonder about it. Arn't I just interesting as hell? ;)