Trivia Bits 03 November

 

Sunday Special

• Probably named after Australian Governor Phillip’s orderly a Sergeant Baker is a type of fish.
• Baby Boomers is the idiom used to describe someone born between 1945 and 1965.
• Winchester in the TV series M*A*S*H played the French Horn.
• The Allies organized the South East Asia Command, led by Lord Mountbatten, to manage operations in the southern Pacific Theatre during World War II with headquarters from April 1944 in Kandy in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
• 1961 in the 20^th Century reads the same when printed upside down and backwards.
• Ananda, Vinyasa, Hatha, Ashtanga, Anusara are all styles of the discipline of Yoga.
• Sedia Gestatoria is better known as the Pope’s Chair.
• Former US President Cleveland defeated incumbent Benjamin Harrison in 1892, becoming the first (and, to date, only) chief executive to win non-consecutive terms to the White House.
• Fourteenth century physicians didn't know what caused the plague, but they knew it was contagious. As a result they wore an early kind of bioprotective suit which included a large beaked head piece. The beak of the head piece, which made them look like large birds, was filled with vinegar, sweet oils and other strong smelling compounds to counteract the stench of the dead and dying plague victims.
• From its completion in 125 A.D. until 1958, the Pantheon's domed ceiling was the largest unsupported concrete span in the world. It was surpassed only with the construction of the CNIT building in Paris.
• Latrophobia is the fear of going to see a doctor.
• The only fictional crime detective to be given an obituary in the New York Times in 1975 was Hercule Poirot.
• MMMDCLXXIX in Arabic numbers is 3679.
• Singer and song writer Stevland Hardaway Morris was born on 13 May 1950 and is better known as Stevie Wonder.
• According to the saying Necessity is the mother of invention.
• In the United Kingdom a County palatine ruled by an hereditary nobleman and had special autonomy and was ruled by an Earl or Count and were first established in the 11th Century.
• A female folk saint Santa Muerte (Spanish for Saint Death) is venerated primarily in Mexico and the United States being a personification of death, she is associated with healing, protection, and safe delivery to the afterlife by her devotees
• The spice Mace is obtained from the Nutmeg tree.
• Grand Rapids, Michigan was the 1st US city to fluoridate its water in 1945.
• In 1810 US population was 7,239,881. Black population at 1,377,808 was 19%. In 1969 US population reached 200 million.