1. Joey Ramone is Jewish.

2. Namibia was a colony of South Africa. Namibia was mandated to South Africa by the league of nations in 1920. It was the only mandated territory not to become independent after WW2. South Africa ignored all UN demands to withdraw

3. Carter was the governor of Georgia. In his inaugural address he said the elimination of nuclear weapons was his ultimate goal. But the arms trade increased under his administration.

11/29/12

1. In an interview, George w Bush confused the Taliban with an all girl pop group (Chaos).

2. Gertrude Bell killed herself with sleeping pills and is buried in Iraq (Stuff). 

3. The Dakota uprising of 1862 ended with the largest execution in United States history of 38 Dakota men in Mankato, Minnesota. 

10/30/12

1. By 1970 more bombs had been dropped on Vietnam than on all targets in the whole of human history (Rise to Globalism).

 2. The Tet offensive was launched on the major Vietnamese holiday of Tet. Tet is the Vietnamese New Year and it happens on the same day (but 1 hour later because of the time difference) as the Chinese New Year (Rise to Globalism).

3. Senator Eugene McCarthy almost won the democratic primary nomination against incumbent LBJ (Rise to Globalism).

1. It wasn't until the kanas city massacre that the FBI was allowed to carry weapons (Stuff). - must read and wiki more about this!

2. There is more plasma in the universe than any other state of matter. Plasma is responsible for the northern lights (Spoon).

3. Chewing gum is illegal in Singapore (economist)

1. Henry Ford was obsessed with soybean research - he had several labs at the Ford factory dedicated to it. In 1941 he had built a plastic car from soybean plastics. He also wore a suit made from soybean threads and invited newpaper reporters over to have primarily soy-based meal in his mansion (which had such amenities as heated bird baths) (Stuff).

2. Cesar Chavez and Coretta Scott King were vegans (Eating Animals).

3. The first Islamic caliphate is the first known government to successfully end slavery practices (debt)

10/3/12

1. The united states has the highest college dropout rate in the world (This American Life).

2. Jack London, HG Wells, Kerouac and Faulkner all dropped out of school (Flavorwire).

3. Galileo sent Kepler an anagram telling him he had discovered rings around Saturn - Galileo deciphered the anagram wrong to read, "Be greeted, double knob, children of Mars" and thought the message was that Mars had two moons - which was discovered to be correct hundreds of years later . Galileo sent Kepler a second anagram letting him know that Venus has phases similar to the moon having phases, which was strong evidence for the heretical theory that the Sun is the center of the universe. Galileo deciphered this to be that Juipiter has a red spot that moves in a mathematical fashion - which again is a wrong translation, but was discovered to be correct hundred of years later (This American Life).

9/13/12

1. Jay-Z bought Zadie Smith a fish sandwich (Slate). 

2. Congregation Shearith Israel, often call The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, is the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. It was established in 1645 and is now on the Upper West Side. Justice Cardozo, 2nd Jewish Supreme Court member ever, was a member (Wiki).

3. The first Jewish Supreme Court Justice was. When he graduate from Harvard Law he had the highest GPA in the history of law school. He was a pre-WW2 Zionist. His nomination for the Supreme Court was bitterly contested the nomination, but he was confirmed in 1916 (wiki).

9/2/12

1. Marie Curie had an affair with Paul Langevin who was married and a friend of her late husband Pierre. When their love letters were published in a Paris newspaper, Marie was asked not to attend her own Noble Prize award ceremony. She went anyway (Spoon).

2. Modern industrial fishing lines can be as long as 75 miles - the same distance from sea level to space (Eating Animals). 

3. It is legal in 44 states to eat dog (Eating Animals). 

Hilary Clinton

1. Hillary Clinton was the only First Lady to be subpoenaed, for her involvement with the Whitewater controversy in 1996, and to repeatedly be deposed as part of ongoing criminal and civil investigations, including Travelgate and Filegate. Bill and Hillary were the only First Couple to be fingerprinted by the FBI.

2. Hillary was the first First Lady to hold a postgraduate degre.

3. As a young adult, Hillary was an active Republican and even campaigned for Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Liechtenstein

So many fun tidbits for such a small place!

1. Its reigning sovereign is a prince, not a king, hence why its the Principality of Liechtenstein.

2. Germany is its national language, but it is the only Germany-speaking country not to border Germany.

3. Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan are the only two countries in the world that are doubly landlocked - both are surrounded by other landlocked countries.

4. Liechtenstein is the last country in Europe to give women the vote in 1984.

5. It has no army.

6. In 1937 a gold crown was added to its red and blue striped flag after it was realized it and Haiti had identical flags (Internetz).

China and Texas

1. There are more Chinese on the internet than internet users in Canada, the united states and Mexico combined (This American life)

2. Because Texas Medicaid only covers up to 25% of the poverty line, if you make $3,000 a year, you are to wealthy to qualify for Medicaid (slate).

3. The Falun Dong was started in 1992 (Wiki)

7/30/12

1. Amelia Earhart was an editor for Cosmo (aviation editor) and had her own clothing line (Stuff).

2. The French philosopher Auguste Comte made a positivist calendar with 13 months named after intellectual fources: Moses, Homer, Aristotle, Archimedes, Caesar, Saint Paul, Charlemagne, Dante, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Descartes, Frederic, Bichat (Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love). 

3. Rousseau was into submission, spanking and public flashing (Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love). 

Giants

1. King Solomon  had 700 wives and 300 concubines (in our times)

2. Edison did not invent the incandescent light bulb, he only popularized it (charles)

3. The us in 1993 stopped counting farmers because less than 1% of Americans are full-time farmers. Over half of china is (this American life)

Blind and Deaf Jews in Rome in the Capitol Building

1. There were Jews in Rome before there were Christians. (Hitlers Pope)

2. The war of 1812 was the holy attack on the us capitol building. The British burned down the capitol building and the white house, you can still see the scorch marks in the basement of both buildings. After that there was a run on the us government and it had no credit causing it to bankrupt, functionally ending the war. (History Extra)

3. Laura Briggman, the first documented blind and deaf person to be educated, is from Hanover, New Hampshire. She was popular adn well known and little girls were said to poke out their dolls' eyes and name them Laura. She met Helen Keller when Helen Keller was 8 years old and Helen Keller annoyed Laura by stepping on her foot. (Stuff You Missed)

Hemingway Skateboarding the Russian Calendar

1. From 1929 until 1931 the Russian Gregorian calendar had 5 day weeks. Each day of the week was given either a color or a Roman numeral and each worker was assigned a color or a number to identify their 1 day of rest. There was some experimentation with a 5 day work week. The 7 day work week was reintroduced June 1940. The October Bolshevik revolution occurred in October 1917 of the Julian calendar, but November of the Gregorian.

2. Hemingway committed suicide in 1961. The years before he died he had been treated with electro-convulsive therapy at the Mayo clinic under a false name.

3. Tom Schaar is the first person in history to complete a 1080 - a skateboard trick of 3 full revolutions. Shaun White tried, Tony Hawk tried, Tom Schaar is 12 years old. 

Coupled Cousins

1. Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico from 1876 to 1911, who fell to the Mexican Revolution, married his niece Delfina Ortega Diaz. The 35 years in which Díaz ruled Mexico are referred to as the Porfiriato. 


2. Voltaire and Fredrick the Great are rumored to have been lovers. The German king gave him a stipend and he wrote Micromegas, perhaps the first piece of science fiction ever, where ambassadors from another planet watch the follies of humankind. When he wrote Diatribe of Doctor Akakia, a book criticizing the President of the Royal Academy of Science at Berlin, he had all the copies of the document burned and arrested Voltaire at an inn.


3. Edgar Allen Poe married his cousin Virginia Clemm at age 27 when she was only 13, though her age is listed as 21 on their marriage certificate. Her death from tuberculousis at age 24 is considered an inspiration for The Raven and Annabel Lee. Their marriage is believed to never have been consummated.

1. Ladybugs be pretty holy. The Yiddish word for ladybug is meshiekhl - little Messiah. In French the ladybug is called Marienkaefer - Mary's beetle and in French its bete a bon dieu - the dear L-rd's animal." In England the insect is called ladybird, short for 'Our Lady's bird' - our lady being the Virgin Mary (Kvetch).

2. Maine is the only 1 syllable state (Blanca).

3. In Yiddish, a woman's three collective mitsves - hadloke (lighting the candles on Shabbat and other fesitvals), khale (burning a piece of baked Challah to commemorate the challah that would have been set aside for the priests if the Temple were still standing) and nide (ritual bath after menstration) - are Khanoh - Khale, Nide, Hadloke. In a similar fashion you can say that someone speaks spek yidish - bacon Yiddish - based on Shmuk, Puts, Kugl - about as much Yiddish as they goyim are likely to know (Kvetch).

Sartre, Druze and Cucumbers

1. Jean-Paul Sartre, existentialist author, declined the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature alongside all other honors because he felt that, "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."

2. The Druze are a monotheistic religion that embodies predominately Israel, Syria and Lebanon with over a million followers. The name Druze comes from the name Anushtakin ad-Darazi who was an early preacher, even though the Druze consider him a heretic. In Druze religious books he is narrow minded, hasty and refered to as the "insolent one."

3. A great idiom for "I don't care" in Spanish is "me importa un pepino" - I care a cucumber. Also, as far as I can tell, there is no Spanish word for vegan.

Unexpected Catholics, Arabic Numbers and Betty Friedan

1. 98% of East Timor is Catholic, but East Timor's first Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri (May 2002) is a Muslim.

2. All parts of Arabic are written right to left, except for Arabic numerals, which are written left to right.  And while the written form is in descending unit measurements, you would say "four and twenty" rather than "twenty four."

3. Betty Friedan, writer of the Feminine Mystique was opposed to the 1991 Pornography Victim's Compensation Act. The Act would have made it legal for the victim of sexual assault to sue a pornography company if they were attacked if their attacker had been spurred or driven by pornography they had previously watched.

Anarchist Russians, Princes in the Towers and Jewish Bonfires

1. Dmitri Mendeleev, credited with creating the periodic table, was also a Russian anarchist. Mendeleev proposed to, and married, his second wife before he was divorced from his first wife. Even still he was a bigamist because the Russian Orthodox Church requires 7 years in between remarriages. When pressed to punish Mendeleev the Russian Czar responded, "Mendeleev has two wives, yes, but I have only one Mendeleev"(The Disappearing Spoon).

2. During the War of the Roses, Richard usurped the throne from his 12 year old nephew, Edward the V, son of Edward the IV. Edward the V and his brother Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York were the two princes in the tower. The War of the Roses ended at the Battle of Bosworth Field where Richard was killed and Henry was named king, thus beginning the Tudor dynasty (In Our Times).

3. Lag BaOmer is a Jewish holiday is most well identified with its custom of lighting bonfires. The holiday originally was a celebration of the death of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, a Mishnaic rabbi and on the same day he revealed the secrets of kabbalah in the Zohar (foundational Kabbalahist text). Zionist have repurposed it as a celebration of the success of the Bar Kokhba revolt - or the Third Jewish Revolt - in 132–136 CE against the Romans, the success of which allowed an independent Jewish state to exist for 2 years. But then the Jews lost hardcore.