Thursday, August 13, 2015

Trivia

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Jennie Churchill, aka Lady Randolph Churchill (1854-1921), the mother of Winston Churchill, had a tattoo of a snake on her wrist.

Jennie Churchill with her two sons, John and Winston, 1889

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What do the words MOW, NOON and SWIMS have in common?

Answer at end.

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21 December 1992, North Carolina:
Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, when, awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson .38 Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.

Confirmed as true by the Darwin Awards


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A thagomizer is the distinctive arrangement of four to ten spikes on the tails of stegosaurid dinosaurs. These spikes are believed to have been a defensive measure against predators. The arrangement of spikes originally had no distinct name; the term Thagomizer was coined in 1982 by cartoonist Gary Larson in his The Far Side comic strip, and thereafter became gradually adopted as an informal term within scientific circles, research, and education.


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Casu marzu (also called casu modde, casu cundídu, casu fràzigu in Sardinian, or in Italian formaggio marcio, "rotten cheese") is a traditional Sardinian sheep milk cheese, notable for containing live insect larvae (maggots). Although found mostly in the island of Sardinia, the cheese is also found in the nearby Corsica, where it goes by the name ofcasgiu merzu




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Arguably the most controversial album cover of all time, The Beatles "Butcher Cover" is the infamous original album cover for the 1966 US LP record titled "Yesterday and Today" that was initially authorized and manufactured for release but quickly banned by Capitol records prior to commercial distribution in 1966 due to immediate public outcry and negative response to the outrageous cover art. 

The grotesque album artwork featured The Beatles dressed in butcher smocks surrounded by raw meat and decapitated baby doll parts. The butcher scene was deemed far too gruesome and bizarre for general consumption. And this was decades before the term "politically correct" would ever come into existence. Even today, it is extremely difficult to comprehend how even The Beatles were able to get the green light for such controversial album cover art. This very question has fueled countless theories and speculations concerning the reasons and ideas behind the creation and production of the cover. These theories range from a carefully planned publicity stunt, to a political statement on the Vietnam war, to the band's answer to the American record company's policy of shorting the buying public by selling lp's with a few less songs than the British counterparts in order to be able to compile an extra lp every year or so. 



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Answer to the question above:

The words MOW, NOON and SWIMS read the same when upside down.




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