Friday Trivia
Things I Learned Today Reading Mental Floss
1. The President and his family actually pay for their own food and incidentals (like toothpaste) while living in the White House. They get a bill once a month. The government only pays if it's a state dinner or the family are entertaining official guests of the US.
2. Google is building a server facility in Oregon that, when completed, will consume as much electricity as the entire city of Tacoma. Look into solar power, Google.
3. Aunt Jemima and Betty Crocker were inventions of companies and advertisers, but Chef Boyardee was a real person (although his name was really Boiardi). He was head chef at the Plaza Hotel in New York, and later opened his own restaurant, where so many customers asked to take home jars of his spaghetti sauce that he started a retail business.
4. The man who sings "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" is the same man who provided the voice for Tony the Tiger, and who has the totally awesome should-be-a-vampire name of Thurl Ravenscroft, and who was not actually credited for his work. Dr. Seuss mentioned Ravenscroft's singing in the show as often as he could to combat the misconception that the song was sung by the show's narrator, Boris Karloff. Ravenscroft also provided about a jillion voices for various Disney rides and recordings. Incidentally, Theodore Geisel started using his pseudonym in college so he could continue writing for the campus paper...he couldn't do so under his real name anymore because he'd been suspended from extracurriculars for throwing a kegger (this was during Prohibition).
5. The Paramount mountain is the oldest surviving film studio logo.
6. Lincoln Logs were not named after President Lincoln, but rather after their inventors' famous father...Frank Lloyd Wright, who was born Frank Lincoln Wright.
7. You know how everything tastes awful right after you brush your teeth? It isn't just the taste of the toothpaste. It's the sodium lauryl sulfate, which is a surfactant, in other words it's a wetting agent that allows you to spread the toothpaste around better and creates foam. But it also inhibits your taste buds in a way that prevents you from detecting sweetness and increases your perception of bitterness. Hence, yuck. You don't need it, and there are toothpastes that don't contain sodium lauryl sulfate (my guess would be to look at Whole Foods) if you just can't wait ten minutes after brushing to have your OJ.
This post has been brought to you by the Department of Useless Information, and the letters R, Y and G.
1. The President and his family actually pay for their own food and incidentals (like toothpaste) while living in the White House. They get a bill once a month. The government only pays if it's a state dinner or the family are entertaining official guests of the US.
2. Google is building a server facility in Oregon that, when completed, will consume as much electricity as the entire city of Tacoma. Look into solar power, Google.
3. Aunt Jemima and Betty Crocker were inventions of companies and advertisers, but Chef Boyardee was a real person (although his name was really Boiardi). He was head chef at the Plaza Hotel in New York, and later opened his own restaurant, where so many customers asked to take home jars of his spaghetti sauce that he started a retail business.
4. The man who sings "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" is the same man who provided the voice for Tony the Tiger, and who has the totally awesome should-be-a-vampire name of Thurl Ravenscroft, and who was not actually credited for his work. Dr. Seuss mentioned Ravenscroft's singing in the show as often as he could to combat the misconception that the song was sung by the show's narrator, Boris Karloff. Ravenscroft also provided about a jillion voices for various Disney rides and recordings. Incidentally, Theodore Geisel started using his pseudonym in college so he could continue writing for the campus paper...he couldn't do so under his real name anymore because he'd been suspended from extracurriculars for throwing a kegger (this was during Prohibition).
5. The Paramount mountain is the oldest surviving film studio logo.
6. Lincoln Logs were not named after President Lincoln, but rather after their inventors' famous father...Frank Lloyd Wright, who was born Frank Lincoln Wright.
7. You know how everything tastes awful right after you brush your teeth? It isn't just the taste of the toothpaste. It's the sodium lauryl sulfate, which is a surfactant, in other words it's a wetting agent that allows you to spread the toothpaste around better and creates foam. But it also inhibits your taste buds in a way that prevents you from detecting sweetness and increases your perception of bitterness. Hence, yuck. You don't need it, and there are toothpastes that don't contain sodium lauryl sulfate (my guess would be to look at Whole Foods) if you just can't wait ten minutes after brushing to have your OJ.
This post has been brought to you by the Department of Useless Information, and the letters R, Y and G.