i never even thought zip was an acronym.

Zip codes, you write them without even thinking about why you need it, i figured that indeed the real reason was to make mail faster to deliver hence calling it a zip code like for zippy, but in fact the Zip in zip codes stands for Zone improvement plan and they aren’t as old as you think. They started only 50 years ago to make mail a little easier to deliver and sort. In 1963 a large pr campaign used mr. zip a lil cartoon mail man to encourage everyone to use this new number. And it worked because by the late 80’s everyone was sending letters with Zip codes.

Also did you know that there are 42,000 zip codes in the us, and the white house has and empire state building j.w. Westcott a mail delivery boat have their own personal zip codes.

But while 130 countries also use this type of code for mail delivery, there are some countries that do not use them like, Peru, Botswana, and Trinidad and Tobago.

how the blind dream.

Blind dreams

Today I found out how the blind dream, I was always fascinated by this and it turns out its just what I expected. They dream in sound and reports extremely heightened senses during their dreams. Also it depends at what age they went blind that determines how their dreams are. If they went blind after the age of 5 or 7 they will usually dream like people who can see, but if they have been blind before they turned those ages, they tend to only have dreams with sound. Super fascinating!

tiny lights!

You know those little lights that appear in your eyes when you rub them to hard while tightly closed. Today I learned that are called phosphenes and they happen because you are stimulating the cells of the retina and it tricks your brain into thinking it’s seeing light. they are also caused by stong magnetic fields and certain kinds of medications. weird!

where saying you suck is an accomplishment.

Drinking straws.

Today as I sat across from my lovely boy at shakeys I played endlessly with my straw as he made me laugh with super inappropriate jokes, its okay that’s totally how we roll. But I started to think about straws and where they came from. Turns out they’re super old. The oldest straws have been found in ancient Sumerian villages which were made out of gold and probably used to drink beer since there would be a lot of sludgy stuff on the bottom of their glasses. They have also been found in old Argentinean and surrounding areas made of silver and used for drinking yerba mate tea.

The modern day straw was invented by Marvin C. Stone in 1888. While he was dinking a mint julep, he was using an old fashioned reed straw made from a reed plant, but he noticed that it gave the drink a weird flavor, instead he rolled a piece of paper on a pencil and drank it from that. Eventually he began to coat the papers with wax and that’s how the modern day straw was born

So from drunken Sumerians to drunken Americans, I’m glad liquor prompts ideas!.

sing your heart out.

Karoke means "empty orchestra" in Japanese.
i dont know what to make of this. but found it interesting none the less...
i also learned its relatively new with the first kareoke machine being invented in japan in the early 70s.

bees, likeable events, detestable insects.

When I was in 4^th grade I was in the school spelling bee, I was awesome, I studied so many word lists and my vocabulary sky rocketed, and to this day I am still so angry that I was disqualified for the word “seventeen” one of the stupid judges said I didn’t say the second e. wtf I had just spelled pedometer, you really think I wasn’t gonna know how to spell seventeen…yea, grudges, anyway why is a spelling bee called a spelling bee, here’s a quick excerpt from this site: spelling bees! which taught me why.

“While no one knows exactly where the word derives from, the “bee” in “spelling bee” simply means something to the effect of “gathering” or “get together”.  The earliest documented case of this word appearing with this meaning was in 1769, referring to a “spinning bee”, where people would gather to protest purchasing goods from Britain due to the high taxes on those items.

Other gatherings that were commonly labeled with “bee” were: apple bee, logging bee, quilting bee, barn bee, hanging bee, sewing bee, field bee, and corn husking bee, among others.  Basically, any sort of major competition or work gathering, with a specific task in mind, tended to get the “bee” label added on the end.  With many of these bees being tedious work events, it was also customary to serve refreshments and provide entertainment at the end of the task.

The first documented case of a spelling bee called such was in 1825.  However, it is likely that there were spelling bees before this date.  This was simply the first time someone seems to have written down in print that has survived to today “spelling bee”.”

Awesome!...ima have a cookie bee! Who wants to join me!

alright french, you win this snack item.

French fries.

Oh French fries I seriously always keep a bag of frozen fries in my freezer for those days when I come home from work angry and need a salty soothing snack. Yea that’s totally how I roll. Anyhoo who came up with frying up potatoes? A genius!...im sure, but was it seriously the French?

Turns out that potatoes were brought to Europe through Spanish explorer folk. They got em from Columbia and called them truffles. Oddly enough as a side note the word potato comes from the Haitian word batata which the Spanish turned into patata, which English speaking nations turned into potato…

Anyhoo they brought em and in the 17^th century the first recorded record of fries goes to Belgium. They were totally frying up a bunch of them during winter months when they couldn’t fish. In fact the French totally didn’t think potatoes were good enough to consume. They used them as hog feed cause they thought if you ate them you would get leprosy. (insert eye roll here..) but Antoine-Augustine Parmentier, some dude who was held captive during the seven years war was fed only potatoes while in captivity. So when he was freed he totally went on a mission to let the world know about the awesomeness that is potatoes. Eventually the French were like, yea these things are good, and little French fry carts started to pop up everywhere!

Its weird to know that there was a time in recent history that people where weary of food that we now count on as staples. And another random fact, Ben Franklin was one of the first Americans to have French fries. He was invited to a fancy dinner made specifically to tout the awesomeness that was the potato. When he came back he even hosted a white house dinner that included “potatoes fried in the french manner” on the menu!

wanna know more: french fries

bubble teas can kill you!

Cyanide in apples.

Oh no, today I feel like my drink/snack life has been shattered! Apples and boba contain cyanide. Yes. Deadly deadly cyanide. Well only if you eat a bunch of apple seeds and only if they don’t cook the boba properly, either way, scary and definitely good to know. “The seeds of apples, also known as “pips”, contain a sugar/cyanide compound called “amygdalin”, which turns into hydrogen cyanide when it is metabolized in your body. Hydrogen cyanide was one of the key ingredients to Zyklon B, the trade name of the pesticide used by the Nazis in their gas chambers.”… “And Tapioca is another plant that contains a cyanide precursor, namely linamarin.  If the roots aren’t processed correctly (drying, soaking, and baking them for a certain amount of time), they are extremely poisonous.”

So notes to self, totally spit out all the apple pips …heheh I like that the seeds are called pips and just avoid boba…. Or not. But its better to be safe than sorry!

want to know more: cyanide in apples

Oscars galore! Only in Hollywood!

Today I didn't learn something new, but rather did something I've always wanted to do thanks to the help of my wonderful boy. I got to set foot in the academy of arts and motion pictures headquarters in Beverly hills,you know the home of the oscars! Not only that but I got to watch a screening of a Goddard film, "breathless" which was awesome. But I got to watch it in the theater where Oscar movies are first screened to get nominated. It's a total L.A. Thing to do and I had such a great time :).... It's good to DO new things!

hair so perfect.

Hair Spray.

I’m not a huge fan of the john waters movie, or the remake. In any case, I’ve used the product. I loved it in middle school and the pictures prove it super still pulled back pony tails, how horrible. Now I don’t even buy it and can’t stand the smell. But who was the genius that made it first. Turns out it has been around since the 1920’s in small spray cans, but it wasn’t until after WWII that the aerosol can caught on. Developed in American laboratories for bug spray, soon beauty product developers realized it would be totally awesome for their hair product and the modern day hair was born.

So there you have it from bug spray innovations to keeping your hair safe from wind. Hurray!

first shopping carts now meters, oklahoma city is on a roll.

Parking meters

Today I had to park at a meter, oh bane of my existence as I so very rarely carry quarters. So in my head I thought who the fuck came up with this idea and was mad.

So today I learned about the ultimate douchebag that designed metered parking. Just another way to suck money from me, really im just mad cause I had no change. I seriously have no problem with the new card reader meters…haha

Holger George Thuesen and Gerald A. Hale designed the first working parking meter, the Black Maria, in 1935.The world's first installed parking meter was in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935. The city of Oklahoma paid these engineers to design them. I totally woulda been like “NO!”  but that’s just me. Also another curious fact is that since these worked so effectively it really didn’t have to change until the early 80s when they installed digital times rather than the little needle that pointed to the time. In the late 90s meters began taking credit cards. Thanks, I guess. Also another fun lil fact, In New York City the term meter maids was born because they only hired women to check out the meter times. It was until 1967 that they hired a male meter maid…hehehe

i hated riding in them, my chunky little legs would hurt .... :\

Shopping carts.

I very rarely use shopping carts now that I’m on my own, except when I go to target, oh target your plastic large carts are the best and I love you for it. So who was the smarty that realized the more you can carry the more you buy.

One of the first shopping carts was introduced on June 4, 1937, the invention of Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain in Oklahoma City. This in fact was exactly why he invented them forget making shopping easier he wanted people to buy more stuff. At first shopping carts where totally lame and no one wanted to use em. Guys thought they were super girly and ladies thought it was like a baby carriage and didn’t wanna deal with yet another thing to take care of while shopping. So Goldman decided to pay actors to push around his car in the store and get people to want to shop using it. Low and behold it worked. After this ploy people started to use them and they really caught on.

 The shopping cart really hasn’t changed much since its original version. European countries however use a different method to loan out their carts; they usually implement a coin mechanism that allows the user to get their coin back if they put their cart back which eliminates the theft and extra employees to round up the carts. I think that’s kinda smart, but it sucks if you show up at the market and have no change for the cart, lame. Recently target has won awards for using recycled materials to make their carts, pioneers in cart engineering.

not the best way to make money, an odd myth none the less.

Tooth fairy.

So I’ve been seeing a lot of post from parents on my facebook about their kids loosing teeth and calling on the tooth fairy. Oh tooth fairy, I once believed in you in my simple youth. My mom seriously would leave quarters and it wasn’t until I found all my baby teeth in a lil box when I was like 10 that I was like OMG!...yea I was pretty naive. Oh well... in retrospect a fairy that comes and visits when youre sleeping sounds pretty frightening now. creepy. no wonders tons of scary movies have been made with a tooth fairy as the scary ass protagonist. in any case where did this mysterious lil pixie come from?

In early Europe, it was a tradition to bury baby teeth that fell out. When a child's sixth tooth falls out, it is a custom for parents to slip a gift or money from the tooth fairy under the child's pillow, but to leave the tooth as a reward. Some parents also leave trails of glitter on the floor, representing fairy dust.
In a lot of Latin American countries, instead of a fairy there is a mouse, or ratoncito perez that comes and leaves a gift for the teeth. And even better in some parts of Ireland there is a fairy mouse, totally the best of both worlds. Most people believe that a mouse is used to represent bringing in new teeth because a mouse has permanent teeth for life and if he brings you your new teeth, chances are they are for life. Clearly he failed me because I’ve had 3 root canals... that’s what I get for believing in the tooth fairy and not a lil mouse.

The reward left varies by country, the family's economic status, amounts the child's peers report receiving and other factors. A 2011 study found that American children receive $2.60 per tooth on average. Those are some rich kids. I only got a 50 cent piece. I thought I was fancy!

nuggets of love for your belly.

Chicken nuggets

Chicken nuggets were the only thing I actually ate at school during lunch time. Seriously I would not eat at school probably until the 7^th or 8^th grade. It was always super gross to me except for the chicken nuggets and some turkey and rice thing. So the older I got the more my nugget fascination became obsession. Which fast food chain had the best ones and could I make my own fresh ones, and in a world that has slowly migrated to “chicken fingers” which are awesome as well, I at heart am still a nugget girl. So where did it come from?

“The chicken nugget was invented in the 1950s by Robert C. Baker, a food science professor at Cornell University, and published as unpatented academic work. Dr. Baker's innovations made it possible to form chicken nuggets in any shape using a meat slurry, (yea meat slurry doesn’t sound very appealing but I don’t care I love me some nuggets.) McDonald's recipe for Chicken McNuggets was created on commission from McDonald's by Tyson Foods in 1979 and the product was sold beginning in 1980.”

So there you have it a 50’s classic that took 30 years to become awesome. Great now I want some nuggets.

tea bags, ( okay feel free to insert dirty jokes here)

Tea bags

On this lovely rainy day, I was sitting having a lovely cup or jasmine fruit tea and wondered who was clever enough to stick tea into convenient little bags for me to make the perfect amount of deliciousness.

“The first tea bags were hand-sewn silk bags and tea bag patents date as early as 1903. First appearing commercially around 1904, tea bags were successfully marketed by the tea and coffee shop merchant Thomas Sullivan from New York, who shipped his tea bags around the world. The loose tea was intended to be removed from the bags by customers, but they found it easier to prepare tea with the tea enclosed in the bags. Modern tea bags are usually made of paper fiber. The heat-sealed paper fiber tea bag was invented by William Hermanson, one of the founders of Technical Papers Corporation of Boston.”

So free samples from a clever merchant changed the way we made tea. Awesome!

wanna know more: tea bag

Prancin' like a pony! Rockin that tail! :)

Hair ties, ponytail holders, scrunci, whatever you call it. Every girl knows what they are. I personally had a special srunci holder in my youngun' days. Yea, I really liked ponytails. So who came up with this ever so practical idea?

The hair tie was first invented by Mary Lasswell Smith in the mid 1920's. Mary was a clumsy woman who had very long hair. Her long hair constantly got in the way so she used a small, stretchy band to tie her hair back. Her trend caught on and became quite popular.

filling my world with color since 1984!

crayons

Crayons, I love them and I still color with them. I might be the only adult ever buying crayons for children.. oh well. So today I learned the origin of the word crayola. The word “Crayola” was originally thought up by Alice Binney. Binney, a one-time school teacher, combined the French word “craie”, meaning “chalk”, with “ola”, shortened from the French word “oléagineux”, meaning “oily”. 

Crayola crayons started being mass produced for children in 1903. Really crayons were around before but were only used to label crates in factories. Binney & Smith who produced these crayons sought a way to make them less toxic and sell them to children. Hurray for art!

for your feets!

Socks

You wear them so often you forget about them completely, I think its one of these things that you can technically go without. But then your shoes get all smelly and gross. In any case who was like I need to separate my bare foot from this outer shoe thing, my guess is someone who was really cold.

In the 8^th century BC ancient Greeks wore socks from matted animal hair for warmth.. By the 5^th century AD socks were called “puttees” and were worn by holy people to symbolize purity. By 1000 AD socks became a sign of wealth and nobility. Also did you know that when a sock has designs on the side its called a clock..

And that’s pretty much it.  In 1589 the knitting machine made making socks super fast and easy. The introduction of nylon in 1938 pretty much brings us t modern day socks, I mean its one of those that things that when you do it well you really don’t need to change it. Those Greeks were not messing around, and seriously how can you mess up a sock…so there you have it.

clever kids making my favorite snacks!

Im a little obsessed with making popsicles, I love all kinds, totally have popsicles in my freezer right now, so today I discovered the history of popsicles!

“In 1905, 11-year-old Frank Epperson left a mixture of powdered soda, water, and a stirring stick in a cup on his porch. It was a cold night, and Epperson awoke the next morning to find a frozen pop. He called it the "Epsicle."

It was a hit with his friends at school, and later with his own kids. They constantly called for "Pop's 'sicle." So in 1923, Epperson changed the name and applied for a patent. A couple of years later, Epperson sold the rights to the brand name Popsicle® to the Joe Lowe Company in New York.” – (via popsicle website)

So there you have it a forgetful kid sparked a wave of awesomeness in the United States!

things clearly named by men.

popcorn kernels.

this ones short but sweet, well actually not very sweet, more like really messed up, but funny none the less. did you know pop corn kernels that dont pop are called spinsters or old maids. Yes, insert mad blank stares at someones witty humor... hahaha, but i did laugh. oh sometimes things are better left unlearned!

i would name my gold fish carrot....

Gold fish.

While my Samuel passed away only after a day, hes still missed. I wonder how it would have been with him happily swimming in his lil container. In any case one must move on and ive been contemplating getting a gold fish. Ive always heard so many myths about them being really dumb and having a 3 second memory. Today I learned that’s totally false!.

Gold fish actually have a super awesome memory and can be trained unlike other fish, they respond to color and levers. Researchers actually discovered that a gold fish can remember stuff it learned a whole year ago if trained correctly with food. Anyone can be trained using food… J

balls......talkin 'bout sports balls.

Soccer balls

I really don’t like sports, yea I said it. I’ll go to a baseball game to cheer and eat ice cream and hot dogs and hang out, but technically I don’t follow it and if I ever did it was to seem super awesome to old boyfriends….lol, well not that that’s off my chest. I can move on to soccer balls, I did always wonder why there were two toned, like why so fancy soccer ball, you’re only gonna get kicked around anyway. So today’s fact is kinda random, but fun.

“Soccer balls were originally painted with the now classic black and white checkered look in order to make them more visible on black and white TV during the 1970 FIFA World Cup.  Naturally, people wanted to buy balls that looked like those that the professionals used on TV and thus everybody bought the black and white checkered soccer ball instead of the previous traditional solid color ball.”

and there you have it, tv makes sports history.

babies having babies, literally.

Youngest pregnant

It is common knowledge that I do not like babies, I know,im a horrible person. But today I found out that the youngest person to ever give birth was 5 years old!!! SERIOUSLY!

Her name was lina medina and she was born in Peru in 1933, she had a rare condition in which her sexual organs became fully mature by age 3 and so it was not entirely unreasonable that she become pregnant by age 5. Her mother took her to the doctor when she noticed her stomach was inflamed and it was then discovered that the 5 year old was pregnant when she was already 8 months along.

The child was raised as her brother and the identity of the father was never revealed.

Creepy!.

want to know more: youngest person to give birth.

why your face is gross, in the mornings....yes, just in the mornings :)

Eye crusties.

Eye crusties, we alllll get em, what the fuck is it, and why is it all up on you each morning.

Well it turns out that its called “gound”. “Gound is made up of a mixture of dust, blood cells, skin cells, etc. mixed with  mucus secreted by the conjunctiva, as well as an oily substance from the meibomian glands.

The meibomian glands are a type of sebaceous gland that line the rim of the eyelids with about fifty on the top and twenty five on the bottom of each eye.  They secrete an oily substance called meibum that performs a variety of functions including: helps seal your eyes in an air tight fashion when they are closed; prevents tears from spilling onto your cheeks; and helps keep tears that coat your eyes from evaporating.  It is this oily substance that is one of the primary components in gound, mixed with mucin from the conjunctiva and various foreign particles in your eye.”

When you’re awake this oily substance kinda evaporates as you blink which is why you don’t develop it during the day. Since you’re not blinking at night, obviously, it all kinda collects in the corners of your eye and dries up and bam, eye crusties.

want to know more: eye crusties

byes are ever rarely good. but okay, i get it now.

Goodbye

I realize that this would be an awesome thing to post at the end of my blog like forever, oh well I learned this today and it blew my mind because we so rarely think where everyday words come from. Today I learned the origin of the word goodbye.

Goodbye” comes from  the phrase “God be with ye”. Which first appeared as “godbwye” think of it as the “btw” of the year 1565 and 1575. “The first documented use of the “Godbwye” appeared in a letter English writer and scholar Gabriel Harvey wrote in 1573.  In it, he wrote, “To requite your gallonde of godbwyes, I regive you a pottle of howdyes.”  As time went on, it is believed the phrase was influenced by terms like “good day” and “good evening”, transitioning then from “god be with ye” to god-b’wye to good-b’wy and finally ending in today’s blessing of goodbye.”

Crazy, I wonder if in years to come “lol” will refer to laughing in general...language is such a fascinating thing!

birthday yums!

Oreos

I love all cookies but oreos, hld a special place in my heart. Theres nothing more satisfying that duinking them in milk and having them melt in chocolately goodness in your mouth. So Happy birthday Gladys and oreos! today while my very lovely friend Gladys is turning a mere 27, the oreo cookie is turning 100 years old today!.

So in honor of its birthday here are some fun oreo facts I learned today.

Oreo sells 95 million cookies in over 100 countries.

In other parts of the world they have different flavor or the cookie like berries and mango flavored. And in mexico they even have an oreo that’s filled with cookies and cream fliing. Which in fact wuld turn out to be an oreo stuffed with a crushed up oreo…lol

The name oreo comes from the French word for gold ("or") because the cookies once came in golden packaging.

“It takes 59 minutes for a bakery to make an Oreo.

The tiny pattern pressed into the wafer is a combination of 12 flowers (each made of 4 triangles), 37 dots, and 12 dashes. Each cookie also has 90 ridges running along its edges.”

Yay oreos!

want to know more: oreo fun facts

orange you glad i didnt think of a witty title...har har har.

Oranges.

What came first the color or the fruit? this was a question that always puzzled me. Today I learned it was indeed the fruit. The word orange comes from the Spanish word “naranja” which comes from the sanskirt word “nāraṅga” which meant orange tree. The English speaking world took the word naranja and dropped the n, eventually the word became the modern word we know today. Before the word orange old English speaking countries called the color “geoluhread” which literally translated to yellow-red.

why did they choose a goose over all other poultry? that I dont know.

Goosebumps

goosebumpies skin!

No not the R.L. Stien books, although those were pretty fucking awesome. Im talking about actually goosebumpies on your skin, you know the kind you get when you pop out of the shower or when you feel embarrassed or scared. Those!. So why do you get them? Apparently it goes way back like caveman pre human monkey people way back times.

Goosebumbs are caused when tiny lil muscles that are attached to hair follicles contract and crate a depression in your skin, which then makes the surrounding areas look like they have been raised and makes your hair stand up. For our old timey ancestors, this came in handy during chilly times, because they had fur. “In animals with a thick hair coat this rising of hair expands the layer of air that serves as insulation. The thicker the hair layer, the more heat is retained. In people this reaction is useless because we do not have a hair coat, but goosebumps persist nevertheless.”

Funny huh? We don’t need it but we have it. When it comes to goosebumps for scary or stressful situations, scientists attribute that to the release of adrenaline in your system. it’s just one of the added side affects of your body trying super hard not to freak out. In people with anxiety disorders (aka:me L) this is broken…haha your body cant deal with stress like other folks and so it just mega freaks out. During some of my scariest anxiety attacks, I’ve had goosebumps repeatedly for hours!...

And so there you have it. Old timey skills and adrenaline junkies.

i thought it was because you said mmmmmm when you ate them...

M&M’s

You put any type of chocolate in front of me, and chances are I’m going to eat it. Deliciousness! M&M’s are however some of my favorite in sharing situations. I give you two and I eat 3 and so forth…until all said lil chocolaty nuggets are gone from the bag. Yes, that is fair. So where did the  name M&M name come from?

Well it turns out it’s actually a boring reason. I don’t know what I thought it would stand for but I didn’t think it would just be names. Turns out that there was 2 chocolate men that formed together to make a WWII chocolate awesomeness super power! In 1941 Forrest Mars sr. from the mars candy company saw that there was totally gonna be a chocolate shortage when WWII started and he wanted to develop a new hard shelled chocolate so he called Bruce Murrie who’s dad was William Murrie aka Hershey chocolate president. Mars and Murray made a deal and bam! M&M’s were born.

So there you go war time troubles and rich dudes getting richer. Whatever I’ll take those peanut butter M&M’s any day!

$ - because whenever i write the money sign, i have to say cha-ching!

Monies.

I love money, who doesn’t? and popular to contrary belief I’m pretty sure money can buy happiness, because I sure as hell know it wouldn’t hurt. If you would like to test this theory please send me money and lets see if it affects my happiness the more you send the happier I’ll probably be. At least that’s my theory…

Anyway why do we use $ for our currency and where did it come from. Well it turns out that the first written documentation was in the 1770’s when it was found on some paperwork for transactions between English Americans and Spanish Americans. Before this people would use the Spanish abbreviations “p” for pesos . when people would have 1 peso they would write it as 1p but if there was more than one they would use “p^s“. eventually the s just merged with the p, and created the modern day sign we know today. Soon after the U.S. began minting its own coins and the symbol became known for U.S. currency.

aprons!

Aprons

Super hard core blacksmiths wear them and so do I, I prance around in my lil red apron and it has saved me from many a wardrobe catastrophe. But did you know that that was not its original name. Originally aprons were called naprons from the French word napperon meaning mat. Since people would very frequently misunderstand “a napron” as “an apron” it kinda just stuck…weird huh?