To stay fit, Herbert Hoover and his personal physician invented a new sport, which they creatively named Hooverball.
(Source: youtube.com)
The valuable stallion Nearco being led out of his personal bunker (yes, you read that correctly — a horse was worth so much someone built a bunker just for him). Taken at the Beech House stud farm in Great Britain in 1941.
(Source: iliketowastemytime.com)
March 1942, in Washington, D.C. “Dancing class at an elementary school.” Photo by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information
My lovely followers, does anyone know what this photo is of? I stumbled across it, and their faces caught my interest. Help please?
(Source: shorpy.com)
Cycladic figures (like the one above) range in size from a few inches to more than five feet tall, and share a number of general characteristics: usually female with small carved breasts, their necks are elongated and cylindrical, the heads are oval-shaped and tiled back, and usually only the nose is carved, their arms are most often folded and their legs are together.. Many of the figures appear to have been painted. Hundreds of cycladic figures have been found scattered across the Cyclades Islands, in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Greece.
The purpose of the figurines are not known. Some have been excavated in homes on the islands, others were clearly exported to nearby regions. Since so many were found in graves, it is speculated they had something to do with death. However, since some larger cycladic figures were broken to fit into smaller graves, they were likely made for other purposes as well, and then put into graves.
The city of Buffalo was very large around the fin de siecle, because it was where electricity started. Niagara Falls provided clean energy for much of western New York State (and Canada, but no one remembers Canada). It was also the gateway to the Great Lakes, and the terminal of the Erie Canal.
Kids, you haven’t truly lived unless somewhere somebody puts a sign up because of something you did.
Due to J. Edgar Hoover’s abuses of power, the Director of the FBI is limited to ten year stints.
(Source: Wikipedia)
The British And Their Tea
Since 1945, all British tanks have come equipped with everything you need to make a proper cup of tea.
(Source: wtffunfact.com)
Albert Einstein went through a rather nasty divorce, several years before he got his Nobel prize but after he had already become known among a certain circle. In his divorce settlement, he put in a provision on how the prize money from his not-yet-won Nobel would be split. Normally, this would be a story about hubris but since Einstein did get that Nobel, it seems more like good planning.
And This Is Why Classic Rock Is Awesome
A large percentage of the budget for Monty Python and the Holy Grail was donated by members of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.
(Source: mentalfloss.com)
Ranunculus, according to floriography (the language of flowers), mean that the person you give them to is “radiant with charms.”
Chichen Itza was built by the Maya Civilization, who were known as fantastic mathematicians, credited with the inventing ‘zero’ within their counting system. At 78 feet tall, the structure of El Castillo (or ‘castle’) within Chichen Itza is based on the astrological system. Some quick facts about this mathematically interesting building are:
- the fifty two panels on each side of the pyramid represent the number of years in the Mayan cycle
- the stairways dividing the eighteen tiers correspond to the Mayan calendar of eighteen months
- the steps within El Castillo mirror the solar year, with a total of 365 steps, one step for each day of the year.
(Source: tripbase.com)
Black Beans, Nuns, and the Working Poor
Black beans were known as aphrodisiacs. So much so that St. Jerome forbade nuns to eat them in 400 A.D., for fear that the beans would lure them into breaking their vows of chastity. This did not stop black beans from becoming known as “poor man’s meat” in the Americas.
(Source: ehow.com)
Narcissus, that vain Greek youth, was turned into a Narcissus flower after falling in love with his own reflection in a pond. The flower is more commonly known today as the daffodil, and if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere should be appearing about now.
