This informative post will be posted on Saturday along with my usual writing.  We can all appreciate some of the lesser known facts from around the world.

Assigned to cover the 1933 Indianapolis 500, a Denver journalist called his Colorado newspaper and promised, “. . . will overhead winner,” meaning he would send the name of the winner via the overhead wires (the telegraph).  The editor, however, misunderstood the message and interpreted it to mean that the name of the winner was “Will Overhead.”  As a result, the headline running in the WORLD INDEPENDENT the next morning read, “Overhead wins Indianapolis Race.”

A muskmelon that was brought from Armenia to Italy in the fifteenth century was planted and cultivated in the gardens of the papal estate near Rome.  The estate was Cantaluppi, so the fruit crop that resulted became known as cantaloupe.

These facts have been discovered in I NEVER KNEW THAT by David Hoffman (2009).

This informative post will be posted on Saturday along with my usual writing.  We can all appreciate some of the lesser known facts from around the world.

Musician Gordon Sumner got the nickname “Sting” because he once performed wearing a black-and-yellow rugby shirt that bandmates said made him look a bumblebee.

“Dumbledore,” an old English word for “bumblebee,” was picked by author J. K. Rowling as the name of Harry Potter’s headmaster because she imagined him wandering around the castle, humming to himself.

These facts have been discovered in I NEVER KNEW THAT by David Hoffman (2009).

This informative post will be posted on Saturday along with my usual writing.  We can all appreciate some of the lesser known facts from around the world.

Before the 1900s, people rarely wore wristwatches.  Men carried pocket watches and women often attached watch fobs to their dresses.  During World War II, however, the Army issued wristwatches to soldiers in order to give them quicker access to time, and when these veterans returned home, they brought the wristwatches back and popularized them.

Not only was the couple depicted in the painting “American Gothic” not husband and wife (or father and daughter), they weren’t even farmers.  The man was artist Grant Wood’s dentist; the woman was Wood’s sister.

These facts have been discovered in I NEVER KNEW THAT by David Hoffman (2009).

This informative post will be posted on Saturday along with my usual writing.  We can all appreciate some of the lesser known facts from around the world.

Only red neon lights actually contain neon gas.  The yellow lights contain a sodium gas, and the blue lights contain mercury.

Louis Pasteur first developed pasteurization in the 1850s as a way to prevent wine spoilage.  Only later did he realize that this method could be used on other substances, like milk.

These facts have been discovered in I NEVER KNEW THAT by David Hoffman (2009).

This informative post will be posted on Saturday along with my usual writing.  We can all appreciate some of the lesser known facts from around the world.

When Mexican vaqueros described the hats they wore as “tan galan” (meaning “so elegant”), the Texas cowboys who had also taken to wearing them misunderstood–and their signature headgear became known as the “ten-gallon” hat.  Despite the name, however, a ten-gallon hat only holds about three quarts.

Martial arts actor Bruce Lee was so fast that many of his scenes had to be shot in 32 frames per second (rather than the normal 24 frames per second) in order to slow down the film so viewers could see his moves.

These facts have been discovered in I NEVER KNEW THAT by David Hoffman (2009).

This informative post will be posted on Saturday along with my usual writing.  We can all appreciate some of the lesser known facts from around the world.

Rain falls at a maximum speed of eighteen miles per hour.

Both President Lyndon Johnson and tenor Luciano Pavarotti spent several years as elementary school teachers after graduating from college.

These facts have been discovered in I NEVER KNEW THAT by David Hoffman (2009).

This informative post will be posted on Saturday along with my usual writing.  We can all appreciate some of the lesser known facts from around the world.

The Batmobile was built on the chassis of a Chevy Impala.

Charles Dow, the financial report who founded The Wall Street Journal and created  the Dow Jones Industrial Average, never graduated from high school.

These facts have been discovered in I NEVER KNEW THAT by David Hoffman (2009).

This informative post will be posted on Saturday along with my usual writing.  We can all appreciate some of the lesser known facts from around the world.

Alexander Graham Bell never set out to invent the telephone.  It was a by-product of his efforts  to create a device that might help his wife and mother, both of whom were deaf, hear and communicate better.

American dentists use 26,000 pounds of gold per year for fillings, crowns, and inlays.

These facts have been discovered in I NEVER KNEW THAT by David Hoffman (2009).

This informative post will be posted on Saturday along with my usual writing.  We can all appreciate some of the lesser known facts from around the world.

The rock song with more cover versions than any other is Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday.”  It has been recorded by more than three thousand artists.

Honey never spoils . . . ever!

These facts have been discovered in I NEVER KNEW THAT by David Hoffman (2009).

This informative post will be posted on Saturday along with my usual writing.  We can all appreciate some of the lesser known facts from around the world.

Irish step dancing (now recognizable worldwide, thanks to “Riverdance”) was created after the British conquest of Ireland in the 1600s outlawed music, and cultural traditions had to be performed secretly.  The dance form that evolved–body and arms kept stationary, movement confined to the feet–ensured that if the English glanced at the locals through a window, they would be unable to tell that anyone was dancing.

The odds of a good golfer making a hole in one are 1 in 8,606, which averages out to one in every 478 rounds.

These facts have been discovered in I NEVER KNEW THAT by David Hoffman (2009).