It's True! (Part 15)
Whenever you see the yellow safety barrels at a highway exit, you can thank a guy by the name of John Fitch. John is a La Mans driver whose co-pilot died in 1955 during a La Mans race. Fitch filled liquor barrels with sand and crashed into them at up to 70 MPH in his own driveway and came out grinning each time. Highways began using them in the late 1960's and an estimated 17,000 lives have been saved. Now, every time I drive past one, I call it the Fitch in the Barrel.
On May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz, a computer programmer paid 10,000 Bitcoin for two Papa John's pizzas. This was considered the first real-world Bitcoin purchase. At the time, those coins were worth about $41.00. At Bitcoin's peak, they would have been worth over $700 MILLION dollars.
No Con - It is impossible to name a folder CON in Microsoft Windows. Con is the name of a system I/O device, the Console.
The Largest swimming pool in the United States was so enormous that lifeguards patrolled it by rowboat. Fleishhacker Pool in San Francisco stretched 1,000 feet long, held 6.5 million gallons of water and could fit 10,000 swimmers at once. It was later filled in and turned into zoo parking.
San Francisco's Powell Street cable car has no reverse gear and no loop to turn around on. At the end of every run, the crew steps off and turns the Powell car by hand on a street turntable equipped with ball bearings and rollers. The 15,500-pound car swings a half circle to face the other way. Until the early 1970's, riders could hop off and help push the turntable themselves. This practice was banned for safety reasons and now only only the operator and conductor reverse the car - dozens of times every day.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall gets washed by hand every spring. Since 1996, a crew of Vietnam Veterans lines up along the black granite wall in Washington DC, with buckets, soft brushes and a garden hose. They are not Park employees but rather members of the Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 641 who clean the wall containing 58,281 Americans killed or missing from the war. In addition to the spring cleaning by the Veteran's group, Scout troops, school classes, college students and corporate volunteer groups take scheduled washings morning throughout the warm months. It's about honoring the sacrifice and memory of those who served.
The football huddle is credited to one deaf quarterback hiding his hands. In 1894, Gallaudet University, a school built for the deaf and hard of hearing, played a game against another deaf team. Quarterback Paul Hubbard called plays in sign language, open for anyone to read. So he had his teammates circle up tight before every snap. That circle became the huddle, copied by teams everywhere. Teams still huddle up today, from Friday night lights to the NFL, 132 years later.
Hugh Laurie played TV's Dr. House for eight years. Off camera, he was chasing something real: a life as a blues musician. He recruited New Orleans legends Dr. John and Irma Thomas for his debut album, Let Them Talk. It hit No. 1 on Billboard's Blues Albums chart. Two years later, his follow-up, Didn't It Rain, did it again. The TV doctor now has two No. 1 blues albums.
Sturgis, South Dakota has 7,000 residents and hosts the world's biggest motorcycle rally, which drew a record 739,000 riders in 2015. It began in 1938 with nine riders racing for a crowd under 200. Pappy Hoel had just opened an Indian Motorcycle shop and formed the Jackpine Gypsies. His wife Pearl counted the bikes the night before and cooked a picnic for every rider. She kept doing it until the 1950s, when the crowd outgrew her kitchen.
Big Tex is the 55-foot cowboy who greets everyone at the State Fair of Texas. He wasn't always a cowboy. In 1949, tiny Kerens, Texas, built a 49-foot Santa Claus to save its Christmas shopping season. Dallas bought him in 1951 and turned him into a cowboy. He debuted in 1952 wearing size-70 boots and a 75-gallon hat. He's greeted fairgoers with "Howdy, folks!" since 1953.
Gemini III astronaut John Young hid a fresh deli corned beef sandwich in his spacesuit during a space flight on March 23rd, 1965, because the astronauts were complaining about the in-flight rehydrated compressed food and how inedible it was. Two hours into the flight, Young pulled the sandwich out of his suit and offered to his commander, Gus Grissom. The crew was overwhelmed with the pungent smell of the sandwich within the craft and the rye bread started falling apart in the microgravity of the spacecraft. Thousands of loose particles started floating around the cabin, sticking to equipment and even the astronaut's eyes. The "sandwich incident" caused NASA to ban sandwiches for future flights but eventually staged better tasting food for other crews in later flights.
Love these facts!!! Not a boring one yet!!
Another learning lesson... Liked the humongous swimming pool, the lack of CON as a folder name and the football huddle, very interesting.