Entries Tagged 'Miscellany' ↓

¹ Google “crocodile goose egg size” and you will get a page of results that repeats the assertion of “size of goose egg = size of crocodile egg.” But I have been unable to find a good source of information on how big a goose egg is. According to the Poultry Club, a good goose egg should weigh 5-7 ounces depending on the breed, though they decline to give a dimensional specification. Egg artists buy eggs that are measured around the longest axis — which at one retailer vary from 8 to 12.5 inches. The best known use of eggs for art is pysanky.

² This makes sense: heat rises (or “cold falls” as some will say), but I’ve never actually measured this for myself. Sounds like a kitchen science class is in order!

³ According to the Energy Information Administration, the US consumed about 1,066 millions of short tons of coal in 2002. That is 142 times more used than in 1895. Compare the population in 1900 (the closest I can get to 1895): 76.1 million, to the population in 2002: 287.9 million. It is an increase of less than 4 times (3.78). It makes you want to go turn off your air conditioner, television and computer. Well, maybe not the computer.

⁴ Princess Margrethe of Savoy (1851-1926) (apparently also called Margherita). I am unable to find out about her bicycle, though.

⁵ This doesn’t mean that people weren’t hanged in England after 1861. The last ones were executed in 1964.

⁶ Ah, so it’s France’s fault we’re so litigious.

⁷ A recent report from eurocare suggests the Swedish mortality rate due to alcohol (direct and indirect) is about 3.5%. Quite an improvement in 100 years.

⁸ Oh no! Past my prime already?

⁹ I haven’t been able to find any pictures or information about “stovepipe” hats in the mid-1600′s in England, so I can’t figure out just how much things have changed. However, looking here, I see that perhaps the editor meant French hats of the same time period.

¹⁰ No idea. Perhaps they were looking at some costuming book from the 17th century.

¹¹ Most of the sites I saw mentioned aprons, but mostly for working women. You can see some contemporary engravings at about.com.

¹² The hazard of not having a classical education. Tiberius reigned around the turn of the millennium (AD 14-37).

¹³ The Donzetti Society reports nearly 70 operas, three of which built his reputation. And yes, they are still performed today.

¹⁴ Cambric is also known as chambray

¹⁵ Biggins are close-fitting hair protectors worn under other caps or hats. Not pointy, as far as I can tell.

This article should not have been called “Curious and True” — it should have been called “Fashions from three to four hundred years ago misremembered, with a few other bits thrown in.”

Reviewing it does bring a question to my mind, however. How many “fact books” exist today that are completely half-truths? Where does the true information lie? Not in the internet to be sure (even using my methodology: I try to find several unrelated versions of the information, and sometimes it isn’t possible). What is the true nature of “fact” and why do I feel like I know less now than I ever did?

The editor of the PC&FV was using the original definition of “stock market” i.e. a livestock market.

A centralized livestock market was established in Chicago in 1866, which heralded the age of “improvements” in livestock breeds. Not that improvements weren’t already being made, but the focus was not only better meat, but better marketing. For instance, the International Live Stock Exhibition had as one of its goals to break down foreign resistance to American-bred meat.

Our meat animals and meat-food products must become so excellent and desirable that they will be demanded by consumers abroad in preference to the similar products of any and all other nations, and that in the face of this demand foreign legislators will not legislate against them.

Andrew Johnson was being impeached about this time. So, did the farmers think that Johnson was a goat or a scapegoat?

This is from a pinkish-hued flyer found in a box. I tried to represent the basic layout (and all the typos are as set), but if you’ve ever looked at an auction ad, you know what it looks like. Because we have no frame of reference for goats and cows, it took us a while to realize it’s a joke (and quite rustic, though funny).

The only “real” information, as near as I can determine, is the name JA Simpson and the “Chas E Gallup Co at the First National Bank in Ann Arbor” There’s a park and canoe livery named for a “Gallup.” This one is going to take some library research.

422 S. 13th St. Harrisburg, PA also exists (at least according to MapQuest). At the very least there’s a place on 13th Street in Harrisburg that could be #422. Hmm…

The history of H. H. Holmes is ghastly. I read the whole thing here. Read it yourself, but not in a darkened room!

Just a few tidbits from today’s DP effort.

The numbers… how precise they are. I know they came out of a table somewhere from some sort of almanac. Perhaps I’ll find it someday in the Pile o’Books.

shorthand — The most common shorthands in use in English today are Pittman and Gregg. Although I wonder if people are starting to use Graffiti in writing if they’re good at entering stuff on their Palm? And what happened to the others? There are several collections of shorthand examples in libraries. I suppose they’re most frequented by scholars of the Voynich Manuscript?

oranges — The rise of the Calfornia orange industry was probably helped by the Big Freeze in the northern Florida groves.

income — That would be about $6.5 million today. The Daily Telegraph was recently sold for about $1.33 billion. Well, sold isn’t correct. It’s the pre-lawsuit price. But still, it seems its fortunes have improved.

Tennessee iron — According to the Tennesee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, Tennessee’s production in 1894 wasn’t very much:

In 1870, however, the census reported only six producers of iron ore in the state producing just over 34,600 tons of ore worth nearly $132,000. Tennessee had fallen to ninth among twenty-one states in iron ore production from its position of fourth in 1850.

census — There is no good way to verify this number, since the 1890 Census was destroyed by fire in 1921. What a loss to historians, genealogists, and others who care about the demographic changes in the United States.

milch kine — a pair of words we don’t use anymore, unless you spend a lot of time reciting 1st Samuel 6:7. Too bad.

apricots– A 1910 brochure touting southern California fruit growing indicates that one could sell apricots for $30/ton. So the Pomona farmers were getting about $22k for the bad season. But who knows? Maybe the year before was an especially good year? According to more recent apricot industry information, 69,000 tons were sold in 2001, with 20% going to the “fresh market”.

Cold Spring Harbor is also known for the Laboratory that focuses on genetics and molecular biology. But did you see this?

While eugenics was indeed popular, it was poor science and it was rejected on scientific grounds. However, the hereditarian social attitudes that supported popular eugenics remain in the public consciousness to this day.

largest map — is now about 100 feet in diameter.

Bucharest is “one of the few cities in east-central Europe with gambling.” A different type of swindling, to be sure, but a still a way to play on one’s greediness to part one from one’s money.

flax — now primarily a dietary supplement and an ironing-hater’s nightmare. Recently production has been about half a million acres in the US, and 12 million world wide. Flaxseed oil is also commonly known as linseed oil, but I suppose most people wouldn’t want to take capsules of an ingredient in varnish, would they?

beer — I’ve forgotten a bottle of wine in the freezer once or twice, but not beer. However, thawed frozen beer, while not harmful, probably doesn’t taste very good. Sunday laws which pre- and proscribed citizens behaviors were common in the US until quite recently, but now about the only remaining laws control the sale of liquor.

This is the article that was the source for the title of this blog. What a random agglomeration of information! It is so much like many blogs today, where you see a link to something that you think is interesting, but often the context just doesn’t make sense. It’s also enlightening to see that we’re not so different from our ancestors–obsessed with triva, numbers, miscellanea, context- and content-free typing… we live lives of Odd Ends.

Books. Ahhh….. books. 10,000 volumes would make a nice library, but this collection probably contained multiple copies of bestsellers. American bestsellers lists are considered to have started in 1895 with The Bookman: A Literary Journal. According to one researcher, the “bestseller list” didn’t cannibalize sales of low-popularity books, but rather increased the market for all books.

Of course, books are now commodities. Except for copyright questions (let’s not even start), just about the only organized theft in relation to books these days is the textbook racket. Ooops… Did I just say that?

Blind thief… either a poker player, a short story, a character in Zelda or a Christian music publisher, but not, evidently, a Missouri miscreant.

Rich Indians… not. The information in the linked aricle is dated, but still probably not too far off.

£5,000… would be about £500 today (about 1/4 of the budget for a “victim” of What Not to Wear). Still, it’s a pretty interesting way of using money to make money.

Bone-boiling… the source of Jell-o. The Kraft/Jell-o site doesn’t show meat jell-o salads anymore. For that you have to go back about 70 years, when they called it aspic.

Don’t think I would have liked to travel with Mr Pierce.

This, folks, is what is known as filler. Page 10 was pretty far in the back of the paper.