What famous writer fought on BOTH sides of the Civil War? How much perspiration does the average person generate in 24-hours (Hint: it’s measured in pints!). Join Bob and Marcia Smith their 4th week of fun Q&A with Lockdown Trivia. On the Off Ramp.
Bob and Marcia discussed various phobias and their effects on daily life, including avoiding public places or being cautious around strangers. They also explored the transformative power of innovation and ideas in shaping society, using examples like the printing press and the healthiest period of a human being’s life. Through their conversation, they highlighted how ideas and innovations have the potential to reshape society and challenge established norms.
Outline
Perspiration, Civil War history, and phobias.
- Marcia Smith reveals average person produces 3 pints of perspiration per day.
- Henry Morton Stanley, a famous American writer, fought on both sides of the US Civil War.
Phobias and printing industry in early Europe.
- Marcia and Bob discuss various phobias, including fear of being alone (autophobia), fear of blood (hemophobia), and fear of crowds (social phobia).
- They also touch on less common phobias, such as fear of time (ochlophobia), fear of disease (hypochondria), and fear of magicians (magophobia).
- Bob Smith shares insights on the history of printing and its impact on society, including the invention of Movable Type by Gutenberg 40 years before Columbus.
- Marcia and Bob discuss the early years of printing and the impact of the printing press on society, including the publication of grammar manuals, medical and legal texts, and the Bible.
- The earliest bestsellers were not Bibles, but rather grammar manuals, followed by medical and legal texts, and single cheats on current affairs.
Inventions, diseases, and the Statue of Liberty.
- Bob Smith and Marcia Smith discuss inventions, with Bob sharing his idea for a safety pin and Marcia mentioning Walter Hunt’s invention of the safety pin.
- Marcia Smith regrets not patenting her father’s sewing machine invention, which could have made many seamstresses unemployed.
- Bob Smith and Marcia Smith discuss the healthiest age of a human being, with Bob suggesting 28 years old and Marcia disagreeing.
- The pair also discuss the designer of the Statue of Liberty, with Bob incorrectly stating it was designed by Bartholdi and Marcia correcting him with sources.
Origins of everyday items and world leaders.
- Bob and Marcia discuss the origins of the term “teetotaler” and Martha Washington’s silver service.
- Bob and Marcia discuss the depth of the oceans and the invention of the toilet, with Bob incorrectly using the term “crapper” to refer to the inventor.
- Bob Smith asks Marcia Smith trivia questions about famous world leaders and plants, with interesting origins and namesakes.
Trivia, history, and cars.
- Marcia Smith shares interesting facts, including that each fire company in Marblehead, Massachusetts is entitled to a three gallon jug of rum after responding to a fire alarm, and that the English language has approximately 500,000 words but most people only use a fraction of them in their lifetime.
- Bob Smith is fascinated by these facts and adds his own thoughts and questions, including wondering if Mickey Mouse can appear on a postage stamp despite being a fictional character.
- Bob Smith and Marcia Smith discuss the history of the 1957 Chevrolet Impala, including its production for 10 years after it was officially discontinued.
- Marcia Smith shares trivia about the car, including that it was produced by a small auto assembly plant outside of Jacksonville, Illinois, and that it was a coveted car in the 1960s.
Bob Smith 0:00
What famous writer fought on both sides of the US Civil War?
Marcia Smith 0:04
And how much perspiration does the average human being generated every day?
Bob Smith 0:09
answers to those and other questions coming up today on the off ramp with Bob and
Marcia Smith 0:13
Marsha Smith
Bob Smith 0:32
Welcome to the off ramp ah chance to slow down steer clear, have crazy and take a side road to sanity. Well, we’ve now wrapped up four full weeks of sheltering in place during this Coronavirus emergency. And Marcia and I have gathered some more fun facts and fascinating trivia to share with you yours first. Well
Marcia Smith 0:52
thank you. I find it fascinating to know how much sweat the average person generates. You want to take a guess in a 24 hour period? Don’t forget you sleep a lot of that time.
Bob Smith 1:03
Is it measured in terms of ounces or gallons or what? I hope it’s not gallons of sweat.
Marcia Smith 1:09
Well, no, not gallons ounces. No,
Bob Smith 1:13
what’s it what’s the measurement? pints? pints? Wow, that still seems like a lot does doesn’t it? Just for an average person, not an athlete. How
Marcia Smith 1:21
many ounces in a pint Bob? Oh, I don’t know. 16 ounces in a point. Okay.
Bob Smith 1:27
So I’ll say less than a pint. I’ll say a half a pint? Okay,
Marcia Smith 1:31
well, wrong. The average person produces three pints of perspiration a day. That’s an average person. Yeah, just average walk around the house that normally active human being it’s three pints. Yeah, that’s see that’s
Bob Smith 1:48
you lose three pints of liquid from your body. That’s another reason you need to hydrate no matter what you do. Absolutely. Everybody should drink water. Good. Okay, I’ve got a famous writer. He fought on both sides of the US Civil War. You know his name, but you probably don’t know he was a famous writer.
Marcia Smith 2:05
I know his name. Yes. sides of the war, both sides
Bob Smith 2:09
of the US Civil War. All right, who? Henry Morton Stanley, who later became famous saying Dr. Livingstone, I presume? Oh, in 1865, he moved from Great Britain to New Orleans, the home of his adoptive father and he was enlisted in the Confederate army at the age of 21. So he fought for the Confederates. Then he was captured. After a year of service and imprisoned and exchanged for his release. He was to serve in the Union artillery. So he served there. And then after his discharge, he served as a ship’s writer in the Navy. Later, he became a newspaper reporter. And he went on that famous assignment to find
Marcia Smith 2:47
Oh, Dr. Livingstone, I presume Dr. Livingstone. Yeah, I would have never guessed him. And
Bob Smith 2:52
I know and I never thought of him as a famous American writer, but he was a famous journalist is what he was.
Marcia Smith 2:58
Okay. Let’s go back to the Greeks and phobias. The word itself is derived from Phobos, meaning fear fright. So you got it. Yeah. You got all sorts of
Unknown Speaker 3:08
that’s a Greek word. Yes.
Marcia Smith 3:10
So there’s a whole big list of all these different phobias and some are, you know, things you could probably figure out like, what do you Pyro phobia? Fear of fire? Right. Or
Bob Smith 3:23
homophobia? Fear of homosexuality? Yeah. Auto phobia. Fears of automobiles?
Marcia Smith 3:30
Is it not a phobia that you do? But it’s not it’s fear of yourself? Yes. Oh, my God, there’s such a thing as fear of being alone. Oh, with yourself. Oh,
Bob Smith 3:41
I fear being alone with my two danger estimation, you
Marcia Smith 3:44
know, and this one is kind of self explanatory. Hemo? Phobia. Blood. Yeah. Fear of blood. So those are some obvious ones. So here’s one that we all have developed right now. It’s called Arklow. phobia, or CLO? How do you spell that? O C. H. l o phobia? Who? CHL Oh, and it’s a it’s phobia for the time. phobia of the time of this time. Fear of disease? Nope.
Bob Smith 4:14
I don’t know what is fear of crowds. No kidding.
Marcia Smith 4:18
So we’re all kind of suffering a little bit. It’s true ocular phobia right now.
Bob Smith 4:22
You know, we were talking I was talking to Ben, our son the other day, and he said, you know, used to be you take a walk. It was pleasant. But now it’s like, obviously, you see somebody coming. And you go, okay, am I gonna have to get off the sidewalk or they’re gonna get off the sidewalk and you and I were at a park the other day, and there was nobody else there. But that lady with the dog and I remember thinking, Okay, now the dog doesn’t know it’s not supposed to come close to people. Is she gonna hold the dog away? Or is that dog she’s gonna pull her towards us. All these little decisions you never thought of before? Because you like being around people.
Marcia Smith 4:53
That’s part of your zoo phobia, which is fear of animals. Zoo phobia.
Bob Smith 4:58
I thought it was a fear Have zoos? Yeah, you’d
Marcia Smith 5:00
think but no, I guess no must mean animals enrollment. But here’s, here’s one. Just I just throw this in before you go. What is trickle phobia? trickbot
Bob Smith 5:09
dri ch yo, correct Treecko Treecko trick
Marcia Smith 5:13
phobia.
Bob Smith 5:15
Fear of magicians I
Unknown Speaker 5:17
don’t know what this is so stupid
Marcia Smith 5:22
I have this first thing in the morning fear of hair. Fear of fear of hair, you know when you look at your hair in the morning, and I don’t want to see what I look like with a first thing in the morning. Oh, but yeah, there’s a million of them here, Bob. But that’s funny. We’ll stop with those. You
Bob Smith 5:43
know, I found an interesting fact about some things that how some of these great epidemics changed history. And this is one that happened in when Napoleon the Third not the Napoleon were talking about when he rebuilt Paris in the mid 19th century. One of his objects was to protect against cholera because that was a big problem. So that is why Paris has broad boulevards where the sun and light can disperse the miasma, meaning bad air. Interesting. So and then the construction of houses that led to all kinds of different types of regulations on how that major city came about. So these big, beautiful broad streets the Paris has related to the cholera epidemic. Oh, that’s interesting. 19th century. Yeah.
Marcia Smith 6:32
What about Sydow phobia.
Bob Smith 6:34
Oh, there must be is a fear of cities.
Marcia Smith 6:37
Now spelled si t o Seto phobia,
Bob Smith 6:42
not a fear of sitting now. Is this English or some other language?
Marcia Smith 6:45
I think this is probably all Greek stuff. It’s all Greek to me. I’m not sure but it’s a fear of food.
Bob Smith 6:52
A fear of food is sin. Oh, phobia, or Saito phobia? All right.
Marcia Smith 6:57
That’s it for my phobias.
Bob Smith 6:58
Well, a lot of phobias, lots of fear going around right now.
Marcia Smith 7:02
That’s for sure. All right,
Bob Smith 7:03
I got a just an interesting thing about you know, we’re all reading more, I would imagine, one way or another because that’s the book people have books and magazines and their reading of the web and everything else. Okay. So we all know, Gutenberg was the person who kind of invented Movable Type, or at least popularized it. They say the Chinese may have invented that earlier. But between 1452 and 1454, that’s when he published the Gutenberg Bible. So now that’s 40 years before Columbus, okay. It was the first major mass produced book in the world, but how big of an industry was printing in its early years? Just give me some thoughts on that. Oh,
Marcia Smith 7:43
how can I? How do you quantify
Bob Smith 7:45
how big it was like the internet of this time? Yeah. Books.
Marcia Smith 7:48
They went nuts. Printing the Bible, because no one had ever read it.
Bob Smith 7:52
Yeah. Because the only the priests could read the Bible. But yes, days,
Marcia Smith 7:56
yeah. It was something I have no idea about? Well,
Bob Smith 7:59
there’s this new group that’s been out from Oxford University, they’ve, they’ve really launching a digital treasure hunt to find all the books that were published in the early years of publishing. So they made the assumption based on what they found out that the, in the first 50 years following the invention of movable type, millions of books were circulating throughout Europe by 15 107 100 years later, now, more than half a million of those books still survive. Isn’t that incredible? People are building a huge electronic map to track down each book and its journey over time and including when possible, who owned it, you know, based on notations? Yeah, so there are 500,000 Surviving books, the first 50 years of printing and they’re scattered over 4000 Libraries. That’s when there be something they have. And one more question What were the earliest bestsellers? The Bible you think the Bible, no, the first best sellers were not Bibles. They were grammar manuals to teach people to read and write. Excellent. After that came medical and legal texts. And then there were single cheats on current affairs, and were almanacs, books on astrology, poetry and songs in the languages around Europe. And, and while we think of Germany as the as the birthplace of publishing, Italy was the early main publishing center Venice, Venice became Europe’s most important publishing center because of its banks, insurers and transportation because the economy, printers had the technology content managers were the authors, and then the bankers, all three of those had to come together to bring books
Marcia Smith 9:31
how exciting it must have been to see first books come into existence, and just it was a game changer for everybody. And
Bob Smith 9:39
it was a wild west there were people you know, books were published that were burned and people were put thrown in prison for publishing because, you know, you’re spreading ideas that were dangerous. Yes,
Marcia Smith 9:47
like the Internet. The you know,
Bob Smith 9:50
and you remember you mentioned the Bible that when the Bible was first published in the other languages like English and German, a lot of those publishers were thrown in prison or burned at the stake because That was not supposed to be done. Yeah. So anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting. And of the Bible 180 copies were published by Gutenberg how many remain 50 known copies survived, but only 21 are complete copies.
Marcia Smith 10:13
Just parts. Yeah. 21 Yeah. So
Bob Smith 10:16
there’s a you know, communication. Museums. I’ve got them all. Marcia thinks I’m a hoarder. Yeah, they’re in the library, right? See the bookshelves, those old dusty things you want me to throw away? I
Marcia Smith 10:26
believe those are Gutenberg Bibles. All right. Here’s your grid. Okay. They’re worth loving on. Okay. Can you tell me what animal a tie gun is? T I gon? Oh,
Bob Smith 10:38
is this a hybrid animal? Is this like a tiger and a tiger and something else?
Marcia Smith 10:44
Uh huh. You’re on the right.
Bob Smith 10:45
I don’t know what the gun is.
Marcia Smith 10:47
It’s a lie on a really a tiger. Okay, gun. Well, yeah, there’s very specific a Thai gun is a animal that has a lion for a mother and a tiger for a dad. And the reverse. If you got a tiger mom, and a lion, a lion, cheatin dad. That’s called a lie, tiger, slugger. Okay, so those are tygon and a leg or depending on who B or mama. All
Bob Smith 11:15
right. We were talking about this being a time of invention with people trying to come up with cures for diseases or ways of treatment. And, you know, there’s all kinds of things with respirators people are trying here is a question. What was the inspiration for this invention that you’ve used all of your life? And you take for granted? The safety pin? What was the inspiration for that? Invention?
Marcia Smith 11:37
Diapers? No. Okay, well, then, there were no buttons.
Bob Smith 11:42
Well, it’s a fastener. True, but what what? Inspired How long ago was Walter hunt? This was back. Oh, gee, it was the turn of the 19th century, I think.
Marcia Smith 11:53
Okay, hold on. Let me okay. I was in New Yorker, a Quaker. The Quakers. I don’t know Carrie is oatmeal around. Okay,
Bob Smith 12:02
here it is. He was in debt for $5. He needed $5. So he thought of all the products that were sorely needed, he came up with an idea for a pin that held different pieces of clothing together, but it would not injure the wearer. So he created that loopy little thing called the safety pin. He worked it down on a sketch, he produced a tiny model. And he sold the invention for just $400 that could have made him wealthy beyond his dreams. Yeah, but he needed $5. Understand, and he also had many other inventions, including a sewing machine, which he suggested his daughter could manufacture. But he dropped his idea you’d never patented it. She told him it would put too many seamstresses out of work. So they didn’t invent that as a result.
Marcia Smith 12:46
Oh, wow. See? Oh, hindsight, huh? Oh, geez.
Bob Smith 12:50
So now since we’re talking about disease, what is the healthiest period of a human beings life? Say again? What is the healthiest? The one of the healthiest years of a human beings life?
Marcia Smith 13:02
Well, that’s interesting. I’m gonna take a guess here and say, and 28 years old? No,
Bob Smith 13:10
no, do you think that would be good? Because that’s when you’re kind of maturing. Everything’s coming together. Right? Yeah. Then after that, it’s just down. Cheese. I remember 20. He said, Yeah, what is it? It’s not the ages of five and 15, between the ages of five and 15. So when you’re below five, you’re more vulnerable. And between five and 15, that’s when resistance to disease is at its strongest, despite the childhood diseases we see. Really? Yeah. And resistance to infections decreases, starts decreasing in the 20s and goes down from the 30s Onward, the body’s efficiency decreases. So please stay in your house. Which we’re doing right. Wow. Yeah, I thought that was kind of interesting.
Marcia Smith 13:52
Okay, and Mr. MC smarty pants, Mr. Mix, smarty pants. I like that. That’s okay. We call you that? Yeah. All right. What person designed the Statue of Liberty for United States? It’s,
Bob Smith 14:05
I fell right. Mr. I felt very good. Yeah,
Marcia Smith 14:08
I knew you’d know that.
Bob Smith 14:10
Bartholdi I think invented designed the statue, but it was the superstructure inside is what I felt designed, as I believe, isn’t it? My,
Marcia Smith 14:19
my your sources? What are your sources? Sources didn’t say exactly what he did. But that was in 1876. And he didn’t do the Eiffel Tower, which little arrogance going on there. The till 1887. So it was almost you know, 20 years later that he did one for Paris. But yes, we got the Statue of Liberty God bless him from France. And Eiffel designed it you and
Bob Smith 14:46
I saw a picture of the Eiffel Tower the other day on the on the web and and it was just the perspective of it showed how huge that is. And you know, we were there. We were in Paris once years ago. And it was so amazingly Big. I thought oh my god that looks like a battleship up ended. You know, I could see how the initial reaction to that was, I guess is horrible what? They got to tear this down after the world’s fair but they didn’t. That was built for a world square. I
Marcia Smith 15:14
love what they do now they lit it up, which is beautiful.
Bob Smith 15:18
Yeah, absolutely. Looks great. All right. We’ll take a break here and we’ll be back with more in just a moment. I’m Bob Smith,
Marcia Smith 15:26
Marsha Smith,
Bob Smith 15:27
and you’re listening to the off ramp, podcast Coronavirus, emergency. We’ve heard that one of the things people first had a run on was toilet paper when this whole thing began. Right. Another thing I’ve read that people were we had a run on for product was alcohol initially Yeah, yeah. So here’s the question. Where does the term teetotaller come from? That means abstaining from drinking. Right, right. Okay. And how old is that word? How old is that word? Marcia has
Marcia Smith 15:54
nothing to do with golf fighting.
Bob Smith 15:56
It’s older than me.
Marcia Smith 15:59
Okay, well, I don’t know Bob, and I don’t know where it came from.
Bob Smith 16:04
It came from 1833 When an English prohibitionist our Turner’s spoke at Preston England on abstinence from alcoholic beverages. He stammered throughout the speech. And he was trying to talk about total abstinence. Uh huh. But he said he told Tito Tito, I was just kidding. So a teetotaller is kind of a derogatory term. stuttered. Yeah, because he stuttered. I’ll be done. But it became a new term and a new word in the language. The origin
Marcia Smith 16:34
of some things is amazing, preposterous. It is. It is that they just keep carrying on one more
Bob Smith 16:42
origin. Sure. Where did the silver come from to make the first US coins? Well,
Marcia Smith 16:47
I would assume they mined it, but that would be too well,
Bob Smith 16:51
it was mined. But where did they get it? I mean, what country? No, no, no, where did the silver come from and had to become from a source there was a supplier of silver?
Marcia Smith 17:01
Long, John
Unknown Speaker 17:06
that’s pretty good.
Bob Smith 17:10
Excuse me. Let’s take a pause here. Okay. No, was it was Martha Washington’s silver service,
Marcia Smith 17:16
Martha. Oh, my gosh, they melted
Bob Smith 17:18
down to use some of the with that stuff. But I mean, it makes you wonder how much silver did Martha has? Yeah,
Marcia Smith 17:25
I don’t know, first coins and they had financial problems. Because they put all their money into the tea service. Oh,
Speaker 1 17:34
well, I don’t know. All right. Wow. I thought that was quite interesting.
Marcia Smith 17:37
So yeah, but how many could her tea so that’s what I mean, is
Bob Smith 17:41
that I think that’d be like four or five coins? That’s it? No, no, Martha musta had a bunch of these things. A blank load of silver. Oh, God. Oh, oh, I found a statistic that it goes along with your Lake Superior statistic. Okay. Okay. Okay. So the oceans of the world, they are so vast and deep if the Earth had a level crust, how high would the oceans be over them? How deep would the oceans be if they were laid on a flat surface? That was the Earth’s crust? Five feet is what Lake Superior? And if it was the oceans, yeah. How much water would that be held?
Marcia Smith 18:16
For the whole earth? Yeah, how much underwater would Oh, tall. Would
Bob Smith 18:21
the oceans be more than five feet?
Marcia Smith 18:24
I think so. Okay, I’ll say I have no idea.
Bob Smith 18:28
This is astounding. If the Earth had an absolutely level crust, the sea would form an envelope over of 8000 feet. 8000 feet deep. So that’s that’s over a mile. High of water over the crust of the earth. That’s how big Oh, that’s like a mile deep. That’s pretty more than a mile deep. Okay,
Marcia Smith 18:47
Bob. Okay. The inventor of the toilet. We’re talking we’re talking 18 seconds. So
Bob Smith 18:54
many things I could have said there. Yes. Okay, but functional,
Marcia Smith 18:57
wonderful thing that we all have if we’re lucky. 1878 Queen Victoria was so impressed that she needed the inventor for his service to the public. I thought it was in cooler they did it but in the century that is followed the flush toilet has undergone very little change out amazing, isn’t it? Yeah. Okay, so here’s the question. Okay, who was this inventor? That became a knight? I’ll give you three choices. Okay. Thomas butts. Thomas Crapper or amo toy leg.
Bob Smith 19:39
Now, I’ve always heard the crapper was the name of the guy but I don’t know if it’s true or not. I’ll go with doily.
Marcia Smith 19:47
The French make everything sounds good to me. But No, Sir Thomas Crapper was the one said God scrapper. He was knighted so you get the title. And that was Where
Bob Smith 20:00
the expression comes from? Take Oh my goodness. Oh, that’s hilarious. That is absolutely hilarious. Sir Thomas not just Tom crapper.
Marcia Smith 20:12
Hey, Tommy.
Bob Smith 20:13
No, no, It was Tom Crap. Oh my goodness crapper. All right. So you’re talking about the origin of something there we all use right? So I got an origin question for you about a great world leader. All right, so you tell me the answer to this question. Listen up here. All right, please put your pink pencils down in your paper down. What great world leader was born in a lady’s cloakroom, at a party.
Marcia Smith 20:38
Oh, I like that. Do we have any year or anything that has be
Bob Smith 20:42
the 1800s is a world leader. He was a world leader became a world leader.
Marcia Smith 20:47
I’ll say I’ll say, Winston Churchill.
Bob Smith 20:50
That’s exactly who it was. And his mother was an American. Of course she married. If you’d like to Downton Abbey, she married a British nobleman, you know, and she was at a party with her husband. They were attending a dance in the British ancestral castle of Blenheim. When she prematurely delivered in the ladies cloakroom.
Marcia Smith 21:08
He’s one of my all time favorite people. Interesting beginnings. That’s fascinating. And I got it right, which is you did get it right. Even more fascinating.
Bob Smith 21:17
And also, I’ll ask you one more question, of course. Okay. And this is a name. Okay. What popular plant is named after an American government official who introduced it into the United States? It wasn’t the bush
Okay, wasn’t one of the bushes so, okay. What popular plant was named after an American government official who introduced it to the United States?
Marcia Smith 21:46
Vera cutting worth the aloe vera plant? No,
Bob Smith 21:50
I wouldn’t be good. Yeah. The poinsettia. Oh, it was named after a 40 year old Joel Roberts. Poinsett. Uh huh. He was the ambassador to Mexico. And he had returned to his native South Carolina in 1820 90. had been there for four years and Mexico City and brought with him this winter blooming sub tropical plant, which he discovered so that’s how it became a popular flowering winter plant the poinsettia. Yeah, I named it after a government bureaucrat. Okay, I know you got some more fun stuff there. I can see you sorting through it. So give me another one.
Marcia Smith 22:22
According to all law, each fire company that responds to a fire alarm in Marblehead, Massachusetts is entitled to a three gallon jug of rum.
Bob Smith 22:31
Oh, that’s good. That’s how they that’s how they help the fire people. Everybody shows up that way. That’s good. That was interesting. The English
Marcia Smith 22:40
language has approximately 500,000 words, but almost everybody just uses this many English words in their entire lifetime. How many words would that be? Remember, there’s about a half a million not counting technical and scientific 15,000? No, I would have guessed that to something in that but it’s 60,000. Really?
Speaker 1 23:01
60,000 words. That’s a lot of words. What one more?
Marcia Smith 23:06
One of the oldest and most reliable calendars is the Gregorian Stonehedge. Oh, yeah, I guess it is a prehistoric stone structure on Salisbury Plain in England, constructed with huge blocks of stone which were hauled over a great distance. The monoliths required an estimated 1.5 million man hours of labor. Just amazing to be properly placed. Now who figured that out?
Unknown Speaker 23:33
The people who did it?
Marcia Smith 23:36
Hey, Ralph, I think we got 1.5 million don’t put in on our salary stub. One more in 1733 and outbreak of influenza was so widespread in the United States that nearly three fourths of the entire population was
Bob Smith 23:52
affected. That’s an amazing I saw that statistic. Isn’t that fascinating? 1733
Marcia Smith 23:56
not the good old days three fourths.
Bob Smith 23:59
That’s really that’s a fascinating thing.
Marcia Smith 24:02
Here’s a quick one. Okay. The US government forbids want to appear on any American postage stamp.
Bob Smith 24:11
A living person? Yes. How
Marcia Smith 24:13
did you know that?
Bob Smith 24:14
I always heard that. That was true. But it seems to me recently there was a living person that appeared on a postage stamp but well,
Marcia Smith 24:20
maybe since this trivia bit came out maybe maybe
Bob Smith 24:24
they made some changes. I don’t know. I’m yeah, that was kind of a I think a way to make sure this was kind of reflective reflective of something serious. Yeah.
Marcia Smith 24:33
But Mickey Mouse made it didn’t Mickey Mouse. He lives forever.
Bob Smith 24:36
And then Mickey Mouse never lived. So why he only lived
Marcia Smith 24:41
in the height what? You’re crushing my soul.
Bob Smith 24:45
I am so sorry. I didn’t know that was hurt your feelings. Move on. Okay. All right. What model us automobile was manufactured clandestinely for 10 years after it was officially discontinued. The car was manufactured cheered for 10 years clandestinely after it was officially discontinued.
Marcia Smith 25:07
Well, odd. Very odd. I have no idea. I’ll say the Nash.
Bob Smith 25:12
No, this is a car you liked actually, the Edsel? No, this is so such a shame. That was such a Oh, you’re full modern. You know, the so was named
Marcia Smith 25:25
Ford son, guy who
Bob Smith 25:27
died later. But yeah, everyone does. And the car did too. But it was a modern car had all kinds of fancy things. My uncle had one. Oh, yeah, it was really cool. But this car was manufactured clandestinely for 10 years after it was officially discontinued. It’s one of your favorites. It’s a Chevy Impala.
Marcia Smith 25:46
57 Chevy. Really 57 Chevy went on for 10 years. I learned to drive on that. Well, what happened was long after 57,
Bob Smith 25:55
General Motors, stylist engineer r del malware, he quit GM in mid 1957, when he found out that Chevy was going to drop its 1957 styling and go on to the longer lower wider 1958 model. So he and other 57 Chevy enthusiast produced over 200,000 You’re kidding model 57 Chevys from 1957 to 67 in a small auto assembly plant outside of Jacksonville, Illinois.
Marcia Smith 26:25
Well, that’s amazing. So there, I know there was a market. It’s the 1960s. And I’m bombing downtown Bob in the AV we used to call it taking my dad’s car and it was, you know, middle late 60s. And a kid pulled up next to me and asked me if I’d sell the car. My dad’s really older, it’s funny. And I realized then that it was a coveted car.
Bob Smith 26:50
And he thought maybe I can, maybe I could,
Marcia Smith 26:52
but I was in enough trouble as it was. Well, he stopped
Bob Smith 26:56
production because he was he heard GM was getting wise to him and he really didn’t notice. Well, apparently these cars kept coming out and every was oh, here’s a nice mint condition. Yeah, was produced by this guy. Oh, wow. That’s amazing. It is. And this was an amazing show. Marcia, thanks for all your great trivia.
Marcia Smith 27:15
Bob, nice to be here with you.
Bob Smith 27:20
You know where else to go. So everybody treat each other nice, please. And if you’re living alone, we’ll come into your house and entertainment, but only only through the internet. That’s it for today for trivia for the off ramp. I’m Bob Smith.
Marcia Smith 27:35
I’m Marcia Smith. Join us again next
Bob Smith 27:37
time when we come back with more fun and interesting information here on the off ramp.
The off ramp is produced in association with CPL radio and the Cedarburg Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai