Know It All

The plastic tip on each end of a shoelace is called an aglet. The holes that the shoelaces are laced through are called eyelets.

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Varieties of vinegar include white, distilled, cider, rice, balsamic and wine.

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Humpty Dumpty met Alice in Lewis Carroll’s (1832-1898) book “Through the Looking-Glass” (1871). Alice encounters Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall and asks him “Don’t you think you’d be safer down on the ground?” Dumpty assures her he won’t fall, but of course, he does.

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With help from his friend Thomas Edison (1847-1931), Henry Ford (1863-1947) invented the charcoal briquette in 1920. Ford created the briquette using the wood scraps and sawdust from his Model T car factory. A relative of Ford’s, E.G. Kingsford, put the invention into commercial production.

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A dollar bill is 2.61 inches wide and 6.14 inches long.

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Norm, the barfly on the sitcom “Cheers” (1982-1993), frequently ate at a restaurant called The Hungry Heifer. His usual order was a huge piece of beef called the Feeding Frenzy. Norm was played by George Wendt (born 1948).

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Since 1971, the official state neckwear of the state of Arizona has been the bola tie. A fad of the 1960s and 1970s, a bola tie is a necktie consisting of a piece of cord fastened with an ornamental clasp.

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A fully-grown camel weighs around 1,500 pounds and is 6 feet tall at the shoulder and 7 feet tall at the hump.

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After Elvis Presley (1935-1977) performed in 1956 at the in Shreveport, La. fairgrounds, the concertgoers crowded the exit to try to see Elvis as he left. In an attempt to disperse the crowd an announcement was made that said “Please, young people ... Elvis has left the building. He has gotten in his car and driven away ... Please take your seats.”

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Do you know what the total is when you add up the numbers 1 to 100 consecutively (1+2+3+4, etc.)? See answer at end.

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American parapsychologist J. B. Rhine (1895-1980) invented the term ESP in his book “Extrasensory Perception” (1934). In the book, Rhine stated that clairvoyance and telepathy could be studied from a scientific standpoint.

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The first movie shown Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood was “The King of Kings” (1927) by Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959). The silent movie was about the life of Christ. The film was in black and white, except for the resurrection scene, which was filmed in Technicolor.

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Aesop’s Fables originated from an ancient Greek slave named Aesop (620 B.C.–560 B.C.). The stories, passed down by oral tradition, have a moral lesson. Aesop’s fables such as “The Tortoise and the Hare” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” are told throughout the world.

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“Good stuff Maynard” was a catchphrase of the 1980s. It came from a 1983 commercial for Malt-O-Meal hot cereal in which a boy, Maynard, is having breakfast with his father and the boy claims his imaginary friend ate his cereal.

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Answer: The total is 5,050.

Know It All is by Kerry McArdle. It runs in the weekend edition of the Daily Journal. Questions? Comments? Email knowitall(at)smdailyjournal.com or call 344-5200 ext. 128.