Pine Cone Owls

Create some pine cone owls with colorful felt cut into shapes for horns, feathers and noses and glued to the cones. You can use googly eyes for a funny look.

Pine Cone Hedgehog

How about a hedgehog for a pine cone craft project? You could mold clay into a cone shape and paint it when it’s dry. Then glue it to the bottom of the pine cone. These would make adorable place card holders!

Leaf Votive Jars

Wine Cork Pumpkin

Paint one end of the wine corks and leg dry.  Hot glue them together in rows (see photo).  Cut a one cork in half to make the stem.  Glue to the top. Cut out and glue 2 leaves from green felt.  Wrap twine around the stem and tie into a bow.

Apple Votive Cups

Apples make a beautifully rustic tealight holder. Choose well-shaped, unblemished apples, and help your kids to cut out a recess to hold a tealight. Make sure the apple sits flat so that there’s no chance it will tip over. The heat from the tealight will gently infuse the air with the delicious scent of apples, so your decoration looks and smells great.

SOURCE: FAMILYHANDYMAN.COM

Goldenrod is a native North American perennial wildflower that is tall and slim with fluffy golden flower spikes in various shades of yellow. Once regarded as an invasive weed, goldenrod is increasingly valued by gardeners thanks to cultivars that offer better performance and more attractive flowers. Goldenrod grows best in any sunny location, survives well in average or even poor soil, and thrives in temperatures between 65 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Goldenrod Care

Here are the main care requirements for growing goldenrod.

Plant goldenrod in the spring or fall, choosing a sunny location with average soil.

Stake the taller varieties so the plants don’t flop and bend. 

Water young goldenrod plants weekly to keep soil moist until established, then only supplement in drought.

Do not overfertilize; goldenrod does not need fertilizer at all.

Light

Goldenrod craves full sun for optimal flowering. The plant will tolerate a bit of shade, though a shady location can reduce its blooms.

Soil

Goldenrod is not overly picky about soil but it must be well-drained with a pH in the acidic-to-neutral range. This plant can tolerate sandy, rocky, and clay soils. Very rich soil can cause the plant to become leggy and potentially flop over.

Water

Water new goldenrod plants weekly to maintain damp, but not soggy soil. Mature goldenrod plants are drought tolerant and rarely need supplemental watering except when rainfall is scarce.

Temperature and Humidity

The hardiness range varies a bit depending on the species, but most goldenrods thrive in USDA cold hardiness zones 2 to 8, taking heat and cold weather in stride. Goldenrod isn’t fussy about humidity, either.

Fertilizer

Fertilizing goldenrod is typically not necessary because the plants do well in lean soil conditions. However, if the soil quality is poor or you wish to give your plants a boost to increase their height, add a layer of compost in the spring.

Too much fertilization often leads to floppy green growth and reduces flower production.

SOURCE: THE SPRUCE.COM

Today is Kelsea Ballerini’s birthday (born September 12,1993).  I really love some of her songs! I’ve already discussed “If You Go Down, I’m Going Down Too” and how it described how I feel about Filly –partners in crime even if we’ve never met…LOL.

But I want to talk about another song of hers, Peter Pan.  The song discusses a man who seems to resist growing up and for the longest time, I worried my son would be a Peter Pan.

My son is a creative, hardworking man, but he seemed selfishly consumed by his own goals.  He had many girlfriends over the years, but when they got serious, he got wanderlust.

Then he met my future daughter-in-law and I was hopeful.  They dated for many months and then they broke up.  One weekend just before he graduated college, we had a long, long talk.  Being a mom, I had to ask…no plans to settle down?  His answer surprised me.  He wanted to someday move to Colorado and none of the girls he was dating wanted to even discuss moving that far away from their families. 

When he brought my future daughter-in-law to the next family function, I was again surprised.  The following week, I asked why.  “I missed her” was his answer, adding “we can always visit Colorado.”

My Peter Pan grew up.

Peter Pan

The smile, the charm, the words, the spark
Everything, you had it
And I guess I had a naive heart, ’cause boy I let you have it
You said I was your only, I never thought you’d leave me lonely

You’re just a lost boy, with your head up in the clouds, yeah
You’re just a lost boy, you never keep your feet on the ground

You’re always gonna fly away
Just because you know you can
Never gonna learn there’s no such place
As Neverland, you don’t understand
You’ll never grow up
You’re never gonna be a man, Peter Pan

Deep down, I knew that you were too good to be true
But every piece and part of me wanted to believe in you
But now it’s happily ever never, and I guess now I know better

You’re just a lost boy, with your head up in the clouds
And you’re just a lost boy, never keep your feet on the ground
Always gonna fly away
Just because you know you can
You’re never gonna learn there’s no such place
As Neverland, you don’t understand
You’ll never grow up
You’re never gonna be a man, Peter Pan

You’re just a lost boy, yeah, I know who you are
You don’t know what you lost, boy, you’re too busy chasing stars

You’re always gonna fly away
Just because you know you can
Never gonna learn there’s no such place
As Neverland, you don’t understand
You’ll never grow up
You’re never gonna be a man
Yeah, you’re never grow up, yeah
You’re never gonna be a man, Peter Pan

I found an article on HISTORY on unknown facts about 9/11.

From HISTORY.CO.UK:

September 11th was a bleak milestone of the modern age. Many think of it as the day on which the 90s ended, and the 21st century really began. While the images of New York’s stricken skyline are seared into the collective consciousness, here are some facts you might not know about 9/11.

1 Ground Zero burned for 99 days

The combination of jet fuel and combustible matter, such as office documents and furniture, meant that the wreckage of the World Trade Center burned non-stop for 99 days. Firefighters tended to this seemingly endless inferno around the clock.

One firefighter later said: “You couldn’t even begin to imagine how much water was pumped in there. It was like you were creating a giant lake.”

2 Michael Jackson was almost a victim

The night before 9/11, Michael Jackson put on a lavish concert in New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden. He then stayed up late chatting to his mother and sister. He stayed up so late, in fact, that he overslept and missed a meeting scheduled to take place at the Twin Towers the next morning.

“We only discovered this when mother phoned his hotel to make sure he was OK,” Michael’s brother Jermaine recounted.

3 Seth MacFarlane also narrowly escaped

Another celebrity who had a near-miss on 9/11 was Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. He had a seat booked on Flight 11 but missed the departure by 10 minutes. Hungover, he decided to take a nap at the airport, waking up 45 minutes later to the surreal news that the plane he should have been on had crashed into the North Tower.

4 A woman survived 27 hours in the wreckage

Miraculously, several people were pulled alive from the scorched wreckage of the World Trade Center. The last to be saved was Genelle Guzman-McMillan, a young migrant from Trinidad and Tobago who worked as an office assistant in the North Tower.

She had been making her way down a stairwell when, as she later described, “the walls burst open and the rubble came falling down”. Somehow surviving a skyscraper collapsing on top of her, Genelle remained buried for 27 long hours before firefighters finally came across her.

5 Many British people died

Other than the US, the country that sustained the most casualties on 9/11 was the United Kingdom. No fewer than 67 Brits perished that day, and many others narrowly survived. One of the lucky ones was Scottish ex-pat Andrew Cullen, who worked in the South Tower. He owed his survival to disobeying official instructions to stay put while authorities worked out what was going on.

6 The terrorists used elaborate codenames

The 9/11 attackers referred to some of their targets using elaborate codenames. They called the Pentagon ‘the Faculty of Fine Arts’, while the North Tower of the World Trade Center was ‘the Faculty of Town Planning’.

The attacks themselves were referred to as ‘the first semester’, while the 19 terrorists were dubbed ‘19 certificates for private education’.

7 A chance encounter on a train was key

The 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and several of his accomplices had originally planned to undertake their jihad by battling Russian forces in Chechnya. But, while travelling on a train in Germany in 1999, the group was approached by a stranger who was affiliated with Al Qaeda. As a consequence of this meeting, Atta’s group was introduced to Osama bin Laden, paving the way for 9/11.

8 One company lost the majority of its staff

Many firms based in the World Trade Center were decimated by the attacks, but none more so than investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald. The company’s offices were situated above the plane’s impact site, meaning that nobody present at work that day survived.

Of its 960 New York employees, 658 were killed. The CEO, Howard Lutnick, survived because he was taking his son to school that morning, but his younger brother Gary was among the dead.

9 The co-creator of Frasier was killed

David Angell, Emmy Award-winning co-creator of the classic sitcom Frasier, was on board American Airlines Flight 11 with his wife Lynn when it struck the North Tower. By eerie coincidence, in a 1997 episode of the show, Dr. Frasier Crane receives a phone call from someone flying in on ‘American Flight 11’.

10 One of the intended targets is still a mystery

Three of the planes hijacked on 9/11 hit their intended targets: the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, was brought down after the passengers bravely rose up against the hijackers.

To date, we still don’t know for certain where the plane was heading. It’s likely to have been either the White House or the US Capitol, but experts have long disagreed on which of these iconic buildings had been on the terrorists’ radar.

11 A much bigger terrorist plot was initially proposed

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, originally wanted to have nine planes flown into a variety of targets, including nuclear power plants. A tenth plane would have then been landed at an airport, where all male passengers would have been killed in a grisly media spectacle. This plan was deemed too complex and scaled back to “just” four planes.

SOURCE: HISTORY.CO.UK

From THESPRUCEPETS.COM:

The Belgian Malinois is a medium-sized herding dog with boatloads of athleticism, energy, and smarts. These sheepdogs from Belgium thrive when then have a job, making them excellent candidates for police and military operations.

What makes them good working dogs—the intelligence and vitality, namely—might rule the Belgian Malinois out for many potential pet owners. Ever-loyal Mals need committed, active owners who are willing to provide hours of mental and physical stimulation daily.

Characteristics of the Belgian Malinois

Belgian Malinois’ temperaments are marked by their high energy level. They need lots of mental stimulation and physical activity every day. These dogs generally have a moderately affectionate and friendly personality, and they form strong bonds with their primary owners.

While these dogs have characteristics similar to the German shepherd, the breeds have a different head shape, and the Belgian Malinois is leaner and has shorter fur.

History of the Belgian Malinois

The Belgian Malinois is one of four Belgian shepherd varieties alongside the Tervuren, the Groenendael, and the Laekenois. These Belgian shepherds date back to the 1800s, and the Malinois get their name from the city of Mechelen (Malines) where they were developed. Breeders were looking to create a strong herding dog and protector with a steadfast work ethic. 

The Malinois first arrived in the United States in the early 1900s, but their shot-lived popularity dissipated after World War II. But their popularity rose again in the 1960s after the American Kennel Club recognized the Malinois in 1959.

By the turn of the 21st century, Belgian Malinois were commonly seen working as police dogs, military dogs, drug-detection dogs, and search-and-rescue dogs. The Secret Service even employs them to patrol the White House grounds. Plus, Belgian Malinois are part of Navy SEAL teams, including the one that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Belgian Malinois Care

The Belgian Malinois is not the right breed for everyone. These dogs generally aren’t well-suited to living in an apartment because they need lots of space to run and play. They’re best for owners with an active lifestyle who can provide plenty of ways for the dogs to exercise their minds and bodies. These dogs also require proper training and socialization to ensure they are well-mannered. And their grooming is fairly simple. 

Exercise

It is essential for Belgian Malinois to receive vigorous daily exercise and mental stimulation. Otherwise, they might become anxious or develop behavior problems. Aim for at least one to two hours of exercise per day, including brisk walks, running, hiking, and playing fetch. This breed also is an excellent candidate for dog sports or any activity that involves focus and endurance to challenge their brains and bodies.

Remember: Your Belgian Malinois needs more exercise than many other breeds. A couple easy walks aren’t enough—unless you run about 5 miles a day with your pup.4 Be sure to schedule time for vigorous exercise throughout the day.

Be aware that the Belgian Malinois’ herding instinct might create a tendency to chase cars, bikes, and other moving objects. So, they must be kept on leash or in a secure fenced area. 

Grooming

Grooming is likely the easiest part of owning a Belgian Malinois. They have a short, straight, weather-resistant coat with a dense undercoat. In general, little more than basic grooming is necessary. Plan to brush at least weekly to remove loose fur and prevent mats. Shedding often increases as the weather changes in the spring and fall, necessitating more regular brushing and vacuuming.

Check whether your dog needs a nail trim roughly once a month. Some dogs can go longer between nail trims if they naturally wear down their nails through activity, such as walking on pavement. Also, aim to brush their teeth daily.

Training

In general, this breed is highly trainable, intelligent, and eager to please. They respond well to positive reinforcement and consistent instruction. 

Training and socialization should begin early in Belgian Malinois’ puppyhood. Enroll in a puppy obedience class as soon as your dog meets the age requirement, and expose your dog to different people, other animals, and situations. Belgian Malinois don’t always get along with other dogs, but having positive exposure to other dogs from a young age can help. 

Likewise, this breed isn’t always appropriate for families with children. Their high herding instinct can cause them to nip at kids’ heels. Even if you don’t have kids, it’s important to train your dog to be well-mannered around children, so you’re always able to safely control situations. 

SOURCE: THESPRUCEPETS.COM

Colonel Sanders was born today in 1890.  Entrepreneur.com had an interesting article on 7 things we may not know about the Colonel.

From Entrepreneur:

Did you know the real Colonel Sanders once tried to sue KFC?

The chicken chain’s recent marketing campaign has brought Colonel Sanders back to American television screens, embodied first by Darrell Hammond and now by Norm Macdonald. The move has been controversial: any over-the-top portrayal of a real human by a celebrity is going to rub some people the wrong way. (And yes, Colonel Sanders was indeed a real human; a study referenced in the 2012 book Colonel Sanders and the American Dream showed that less than 40 percent of Americans aged 19 to 25 were aware of that.)

However, KFC’s biggest misstep has been the sanitization of the Colonel. As our own Ray Hennessey wrote, “The new Colonel is a caricature, carefully choreographed by the company and its creative hired hands. Instead of resurrecting the Colonel to lead KFC’s sales back to their former fried glory, the company has instead unleashed a childish pantomime that people old enough to remember Colonel Sanders don’t like and people too young to know him can’t possibly understand.”

KFC has been eager to celebrate kitschy parts of the Colonel’s history, while ignoring more complex attributes that made him both successful and dangerous to the brand while alive. Here are a few of the most interesting facts about Colonel Sanders that many people don’t know – including a few that KFC probably would rather gloss over.

 For most of his life, he was a terrible businessman.

Most customers probably don’t realize that the Colonel only became a successful restaurateur after failed careers as a lawyer, insurance salesman, lamp salesman and tire salesman. Sanders often made unwise business gambles and had a habit of getting into fights that resulted in being fired – something that suited him as a self-employed entrepreneur, but that was less ideal as a company spokesperson later in life.

 He once shot someone for his brand.

What Sanders lacked in business skills, he more than made up for in passion. When Sanders painted a large sign pointing potential customers from the highway toward his gas station in Corbin, Ky. (it would eventually expand into Sander’s first cafe), he enraged the owner of a competing gas station, Matt Stewart. Stewart painted over Sanders’ sign, leading to Sanders threatening to “blow [his] goddamn head off” and repainting the sign himself.

When Sanders discovered Stewart once again painting over the sign, he and two Shell officials ran to catch him red handed, heavily armed. In the resulting gun fight, the Shell manager was killed and Sanders shot Stewart in the shoulder. KFC currently has a purposefully poorly acted reenactment of the fight that gave Sanders complete control over the gas station market in the area after his competition was sent to jail for murder.

He cheated on his wife (a lot).

While KFC loves certain quirky details about Sanders personal life, one of the facts KFC chooses not to highlight is his relationship with women, especially his two wives. Sanders married his first wife, Josephine, at the young age of 19. According to Colonel Sanders and the American Dream, his second wife’s nephew said Josephine wasn’t interested in a sexual relationship after giving birth to three children. So, Sanders “found what he needed to find in other places.”

One outlet for Sanders’ sexual energies was Claudia Ledington, a former waitress at Sanders’ first restaurant, Sanders Cafe. Claudia and Sanders wed in 1949, after an ongoing affair and two years after his divorce with Josephine. It would be Claudia that would support Sanders in transforming KFC from a restaurant with a good chicken recipe to a national brand.

Throughout his life, Sanders was notoriously licentious. Sanders’ biographer, John Ed Pearce, recalls a woman at the Chamber of Commerce saying that whenever the Colonel came in she had to beat his hands off of her. A 1970 New Yorker article quotes him observing crowds of housewives seeking autographs saying: “Umm, that gal’s let herself go… Look at the size of that one… I don’t know when I’ve seen so many fat ones… Lord, look at ’em waddle.” In short, if the Colonel was alive today, it wouldn’t be shocking to see his name come up in the Ashley Madison leak.

He’s not a military colonel.

If you’re not from Kentucky, you may have assumed that Sanders served as a military leader at some point in his long life. In fact, he was a Kentucky colonel, a title of honor awarded by the state of Kentucky. Sanders became a colonel in 1935 as the founder and owner of the gas station-adjacent restaurant Sanders Cafe, but misplaced his certificate, receiving his second colonelship in 1949.

In the 1950s, Sanders began marketing himself as a southern gentleman and Kentucky colonel, dying his beard white, crafting a string tie and donning his iconic white suit. As he franchised his concept starting in the ’50s, selling the recipe for his Kentucky fried chicken to restaurants across the U.S., this identity as a Kentucky colonel linked Sanders to a southern ideal that lent the Indiana-born man an air of legitimacy.

He only made $2 million selling KFC.

After KFC went from a single cafe to a franchised concept, Sanders sold the business in 1964, feeling out of his league at the age of 75 as the chain rapidly grew. The $2 million, plus an ongoing salary to remain the face of the brand wasn’t a terrible deal. However, after the company’s profitable IPO, in which shareholders made millions, Sanders began to feel as though he got the short end of the stick.

At the company’s first franchisee convention after the IPO, Sanders took the stage and spent 40 minutes railing against management. He claimed executives were thinking only about the short-term and ruining his reputation. While he failed to win over the franchisees and went on to continue his duties as a spokesperson, it seems a part of him remained convinced he had been tricked into giving up his business.

He tried to sue KFC for $122 million.

After KFC was sold to Heublein in 1971, Sanders’ appetite for disruption grew. When the chain denied him the right to open an antebellum-themed restaurant selling Original Recipe chicken, Sanders sued the company for $122 million. He eventually settled out of court for $1 million and a promise that the Colonel would stop embarrassing the company. Sanders did not keep up his end of the bargain.

According to him, KFC doesn’t use the famous secret original recipe of 11 herbs and spices.

While very few people in the world know exactly what is in Colonel Sanders’ mix of 11 secret herbs and spices, we do know that the Colonel said many times in his life that KFC stopped using his recipe. As KFC is intensely protective of the recipe, it is a difficult matter to fact check. The chain reports that it keeps Colonel Sanders’ handwritten recipe of 11 herbs and spices safely locked away in a vault, utilizing two suppliers to preserve that secrecy of the ingredients.

Whether or not the Colonel’s original recipe is in use today, it is clear that Sanders was dismissive of KFC’s menu in his final years. In 1970, the New Yorker quoted him saying the company’s new gravy recipe “ain’t fit for my dogs.” While the chain turned business around and reportedly improved food quality in the ’80s under new leadership, Sanders’ wasn’t around to see it. He died on Dec. 16, 1980, at the age of 90.

SOURCE: ENTREPRENEUR.COM

From HISTORY.COM

The deadliest natural disaster in American history remains the 1900 hurricane in the island city of Galveston, Texas. On September 8, a category four hurricane descended on the town, destroying more than 3,600 buildings with winds surpassing 135 miles per hour.

Estimates of the death toll range from 6,000 to 12,000, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. Tragically, the magnitude of the disaster could have been lessened if the U.S. Weather Bureau hadn’t implemented poor communication policies.

When the storm picked up in early September of 1900, “any modestly educated weather forecaster would’ve known that” it was passing west, says Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over in Cuba, where scientists had become very good at tracking storms in the hurricane-prone Caribbean, they “knew that a hurricane had passed to the north of Cuba and was headed to the Gulf of Mexico.”

The Weather Bureau in Washington, however, predicted that the storm would pass over Florida and up to New England—which was very, very wrong.

“I mean they were just way off target,” he says.

The Weather Bureau—predecessor to the National Weather Service—was only 10 years old, and hurricane science in the U.S. wasn’t very advanced. “Galveston occurred at a very interesting time in the science of hurricanes,” Emanuel notes.

The bureau’s director, Willis Moore, “was so jealous of the Cubans that he shut off the flow of data from Cuba to the U.S.,” he says. At the same time, Moore told regional U.S. forecasters that “that they could not on their own issue a hurricane warning, they had to go through Washington”—not a very quick or easy task, in those days.

The combination of blocking information from Cuba, while also making it difficult for local forecasters to report hurricanes, turned out to be deadly.

In the couple days before the storm hit, the Weather Bureau’s chief observer in Galveston, Isaac Cline, began to suspect that Washington’s forecast had been off. He tried to warn the city, but it was too late. Cline’s wife was killed, the port city was devastated, and Galveston was never able to fully recover.

The 1900 hurricane was a wake-up call that the Weather Bureau needed to have better communication channels if it wanted to keep people safe.

“The Galveston hurricane made people realize you can’t play politics with a weather bureau,” Emanuel says. “If you make it political, people will die.”

U.S. hurricane science wouldn’t really take off until the 1940s. But after Galveston, the bureau began to open up communication channels both internationally and within the country. Although the U.S. had begun to send wireless messages out to sea before the hurricane, the practice became more widespread after Galveston.

Today, the United States has advanced systems in place to accurately forecast hurricanes and communicate storm paths to affected areas. “We have come light-years from where we were in 1900,” says Jay Barnes, a hurricane historian who has written about storms in North Carolina and Florida.

The bigger problem, which Galveston would still have faced if it had been properly warned in 1900, is the logistical challenge of evacuating large metropolitan areas in short amounts of time, Emanuel says.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in part because of government negligence (levee failures and inadequate aid after the storm), not an inability to accurately predict and communicate the storm’s path. Hurricane Harvey, which wreaked havoc in Houston as well as modern-day Galveston in August 2017, was also well-forecasted. But without effective emergency plans for mass evacuations, cities still end up suffering from natural disasters—even if they can see them coming.

SOURCE: HISTORY.COM; BECKY LITTLE

Fact: The French-language Scrabble World Champion doesn’t speak French

New Zealand native Nigel Richards memorized the entire French Scrabble dictionary, which has 386,000 words, in nine weeks to earn his title. He has also won the English World Scrabble Championship three times, the U.S. national championships five times, and the U.K. Open Scrabble tournament six times. This comes 20 years after a 28-year-old Richards first played the game.

Fact: A woman called the police when her ice cream didn’t have enough sprinkles

The West Midlands police in England released a recording of a woman who called 999 (the U.K. version of 911) because there were “bits on one side and none on the other,” she says in the recording. She was even more upset when the ice cream truck man did not want to give her money back.

Fact: Uncle Ben’s rice was air-dropped to World War II troops

German chemist Erich Huzenlaub invented a process of parboiling rice to keep more nutrients in the rice and lessen the cooking time. The “Huzenlaub Process” had another unexpected benefit: It stopped bug infestations. The quick-cook, bug-free rice was a big advantage during World War II, and converted rice (as it was then known) was air-dropped to American and British troops. After the war, the company rebranded itself and became Uncle Ben’s Original Converted Brand Rice, named after one of the company’s best rice suppliers. The product hit grocery store shelves in 1947.

Fact: The British Empire was the largest empire in world history

The British Empire was most powerful in the 1920s, when it controlled 23 percent of the world’s population and approximately 13.7 million square miles of territory—or nearly a quarter of the Earth’s land area, according to a report from Statista.

Fact: South American river turtles talk in their eggs

Turtles don’t have vocal cords, and their ears are internal, so scientists believed that turtles were deaf and didn’t communicate through sounds. But research has found that turtles actually communicate at an extremely low frequency that sounds like “clicks, clucks, and hoots” that can only be heard through a hydrophone (a microphone used underwater). These sounds even come from the egg before the turtle hatches. Researchers hypothesize that this helps all the turtle siblings hatch at once.

Fact: Penicillin was first called “mold juice”

In 1928, bacteriologist Alexander Fleming left a petri dish in his lab while he was on vacation—only to return and find that some liquid around the mold had killed the bacteria in the dish. This became the world’s first antibiotic, but before naming it penicillin, he called it “mold juice.”

Fact: The first stroller was engineered to be pulled by a goat (or animal of similar size)

William Kent, a landscape architect, invented the first stroller for the third Duke of Devonshire in 1733. But upper-class parents were hardly expected to put effort into transporting their children around, so Kent designed his model to be pulled by a small animal, like a goat.

Fact: May 20, 1873, is the “birthday” of blue jeans

According to the Levi Strauss company, this was the day that Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis, the innovators behind the sturdy blue jeans we all love, got a patent on the process of adding metal rivets to men’s denim work pants. The pants were called waist overalls until 1960, when baby boomers began calling them jeans.

Fact: 170-year-old bottles of champagne were found at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

The bottles of bubbly are believed to have been traveling from Germany to Russia during the 1800s when they sank to the bottom of the sea, according to New Scientist. It turns out that the bottom of the sea, where temperatures are between two and four degrees Celsius, is a great place for wine aging. Wine experts sampled the champagne and described it as “sometimes cheesy” with “animal notes” and elements of “wet hair.” Mmm.

Fact: The MGM lion roar is trademarked

At the start of any movie made by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, the iconic lion roars at the audience. While MGM has gone through several iterations of lion mascots, the sound of the roar is always the same. The company trademarked the “sound mark” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in the 1980s.

Fact: Neil Armstrong’s hair was sold in 2004 for $3,000

The lucky buyer, John Reznikoff, holds the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of hair from historical celebrities, reports NBC. But Armstrong’s lawyers threatened to sue Marx Sizemore, the not-so-lucky barber who cut the former astronaut’s hair; they said he violated an Ohio law that protects the rights of famous people. Sizemore said he wouldn’t pay, and Reznikoff said he wouldn’t give back the hair but that he’d donate $3,000 to charity.

Fact: Irish bars used to be closed on Saint Patrick’s Day

You might associate Saint Patrick’s Day with wearing green and drinking so much you think you actually see leprechauns. But until 1961, there were laws in Ireland that banned bars from opening on March 17. Since the holiday falls during the period of Lent in the heavily Catholic country, the idea of binge-drinking seemed a bit immoral.

Fact: Nikola Tesla hated pearls

The electrical engineer paved the way for current system generators and motors; the way electricity gets transmitted and converted to mechanical power is thanks to his inventions. But despite his patience with scientific experimentation, he apparently had no tolerance for pearls. When his secretary wore pearl jewelry one day, he made her go home.

Fact: Thomas Edison is the reason you love cat videos

After inventing the kinetograph in 1892, Edison was able to record and watch moving images for the first time. He filmed short clips in his studio, some of which feature famous people like Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill. But the real stars of these early videos are the Boxing Cats—adorable cats that he recorded in a boxing ring circa 1894.

Fact: Brad Pitt suffered an ironic injury on a film set

In Troy, based on Homer’s Illiad, Pitt plays the brave (and buff) Greek hero Achilles. Legend has it that Achilles could not be defeated unless hit in his heel. (It’s where we get the term “Achilles’ heel,” meaning a vulnerable point.) While filming an epic battle scene, Pitt ironically hurt his Achilles tendon—an injury that set back the film’s production by two months.

Fact: Pregnancy tests date back to 1350 B.C.E.

According to a document written on ancient papyrus, Egyptian women urinated on wheat and barley seeds to determine if they were pregnant or not, reports the Office of History in the National Institutes of Health. If wheat grew, it predicted a female baby. If barley grew, it predicted a male baby. The woman was not pregnant if nothing grew. Experimenting with this seed theory in 1963 proved it was accurate 70 percent of the time.

Fact: Martin Luther King Jr. got a C in public speaking

The world remembers Dr. King as a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, and people often quote his “I Have a Dream” speech, which he delivered in 1963. Yet more than a decade before that legendary speech, while attending Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, he earned a C in public speaking during his first and second term.

Fact: Bees can make colored honey

In France, there’s a biogas plant that manages waste from a Mars chocolate factory, where M&Ms are made. Beekeepers nearby noticed that their bees were making “unnatural shades of green and blue” honey. A spokesperson from the British Beekeepers’ Association theorized that the bees eating the sugary M&M waste caused the colored honey.

Fact: Bananas glow blue under black lights

To the everyday eye under normal conditions, ripe bananas appear yellow due to organic pigments called carotenoids. When bananas ripen, chlorophyll begins to break down. This pigment is the element that makes bananas glow, or fluoresce, under UV lights and appear blue.

Fact: Wimbledon tennis balls are kept at 68 degrees Fahrenheit

The temperature of a tennis ball affects how it bounces. At warmer temperatures, the gas molecules inside the ball expand, making the ball bounce higher. Lower temperatures cause the molecules to shrink and the ball to bounce lower. To make sure the best tennis balls are used, Wimbledon goes through more than 50,000 tennis balls each year.

Fact: Adult cats are lactose intolerant

Like some humans, adult cats don’t have enough of the lactase enzyme to digest lactose from milk, causing them to vomit, have diarrhea, or get gassy. Cats only have enough of that enzyme when they’re born and during the early years of their lives.

Fact: Albert Einstein’s eyeballs are in New York City

They were given to Henry Abrams and preserved in a safety deposit box. Abrams was Einstein’s eye doctor. He received the eyeballs from Thomas Harvey, the man who performed the autopsy on Einstein and illegally took the scientist’s brain for himself.

Fact: The Pope can’t be an organ donor

Pope Benedict XVI was issued an organ donor card in 1970. Once he ascended to the papacy in 2005, the card was invalid, reports the Telegraph. According to the Vatican, the Pope’s entire body must be buried intact because his body belongs to the universal Catholic Church.

Fact: A one-armed player scored the winning goal in the first World Cup

Héctor Castro, who accidentally cut off his right forearm while using an electric saw as a teenager, played on the Uruguay soccer team during the first-ever World Cup in 1930. In the last game between Uruguay and Argentina, Castro scored the winning goal in the last minute of the game. The final score was 4–2, making Uruguay the first country to win the World Cup title.

Fact: The world’s oldest toy is a stick

Think of how versatile a stick is. You can use it to play fetch with your dog, swing it as a bat, or use your imagination to turn it into a light saber. That’s why, in 2008, the National Toy Hall of Fame inducted the stick into its collection of amazing toys as, very possibly, the oldest toy ever.

SOURCE: Reader’s Digest: Elizabeth Yuko

September starts the apple season here, so today’s offering is Apple Pecan Pound Cake!

Apple Pecan Pound Cake

Ingredients:

2 cups of sugar

1 ½ cups of vegetable oil 

2 tsp. vanilla

2 eggs

2 ½ cups of all-purpose flour 

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt 

1 tsp. baking powder 

3 cups diced apples 

1 cup of chopped pecans  

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350*.

Grease and flour a bundt pan. Mix sugar, oil, vanilla and eggs together. In a separate bowl whisk flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Add to the mixture in the first bowl gradually.  When batter becomes stiff, mix by hand. Stir in apples, pecans. Pour into greased and floured 10 in. bunt pan.
Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Cool in pan for 15 minutes before removing from pan to cool completely. 

Enjoy!