Know It All

Women were first allowed to compete in the Olympics in 1900. That year, allowed to compete in golf and tennis only, 19 women out of a total of 1,225 athletes competed in Paris.

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Volleyball has been an Olympic sport since 1964. Beach volleyball, played in sand with teams of two people, became an Olympic sport in 1996.

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There was a planned television movie sequel to the movie "Beaches.” The 1988 movie starred Bette Midler (born 1945) and Barbara Hershey (born 1948). Barbara Eden (born 1934) from "I Dream of Jeannie” (1965-1970) was going to star in the television sequel, but it never came to fruition.

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Bette Midler graduated from Radford High School in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1963. She majored in drama at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.

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C&H Pure Cane Sugar has a refinery close to San Francisco in Crockett, near the Carquinez Bridge. Do you know what the C and H stand for? See answer at end.

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The Hawaiian Islands were formed by volcanoes. The largest volcano in the world is the Mauna Loa volcano. It makes up half of the Big Island of Hawaii.

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In 1792, British officers of the H.M.S. Discovery surveyed the northern Pacific coast. They named Mount St. Helens after British diplomat Alleyne Fitzherbert (1753-1839) who had the title of Baron St. Helens.

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Prior to the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington, the volcano had been dormant since 1857.

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On Aug. 17, 1907 eight farmers brought their wagons to the corner of First and Pike in Seattle. There were 10,000 shoppers that day. That was the beginning of Pike Place Market, one of the Seattle’s top tourist attractions.

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The Seattle Space Needle stands 605 feet high. It sways one inch for every 10 mph of wind.

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At the top of the Seattle Space Needle is a rotating restaurant. It was the second rotating restaurant in the world. The first was in the Mauna Loa shopping mall in Hawaii.

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The city of San Francisco has one rotating rooftop restaurant, the Equinox, located in the 17-story Hyatt Regency Embarcadero hotel.

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The first Hyatt hotel was opened in 1957 near the Los Angeles International Airport. It was originally named the Hyatt House and it was owned by entrepreneur Hyatt R. von Dehn.

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The average room rate for a hotel in the 1940s was $3.21. In the 1950s, it was $5.91. In the 1960s, it was $10.81, in the 1970s, it was $19.83, in the 1980s, it was $45.44, in the 1990s, it was $58.70 and in the 2000s, the average hotel room rate was $83.26

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The tallest hotel in the world is also one of the most expensive. The Burj Al Arab Royal Suites hotel, in Dubai in the Middle East, stands 1,053 feet high. The rooms are all suites that cost $6,850 per night. Burj Al Arab has its own submarine ride to an underwater restaurant complete with a shark aquarium.

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Answer: C& H stands for California and Hawaiian. The C&H Sugar Refining Company opened in Crockett in 1906. The refinery receives raw cane sugar from the Hawaiian Islands. Today, the Crockett refinery processes over 700 thousand tons of cane sugar annually.

Know It All is by Kerry McArdle. It runs in the weekend and Wednesday editions of the Daily Journal. Questions? Comments? E-mail knowitall@smdailyjournal.com or call 344-5200 x114.