045 Laughing-In-Place Trivia

Bob Smith 00:00
How did a party in 1842 lead to today’s surgery without pain?

Marcia Smith 00:05
And in 1978 CBS paid $35 million to acquire a 20 year exclusive broadcast to watch a movie. What movie?

Bob Smith 00:15
Answers to those and other questions coming up in this edition of the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith. Welcome to the off ramp a chance to slow down steer clear of crazy. Take a side road to Saturday and get some perspective on life. Well, Marsha, it’s the end of our ninth week together for the Coronavirus, and I have my first question today revolves around medicine because medicine is a topic we’re all concerned with. How long is it going to take to get more testing and how long it’s going to take to get vaccines? So tell me this? How did a party in 1842 lead to surgery without pain?

Marcia Smith 01:14
Well, surgery without pain. Let’s see.

Bob Smith 01:17
So we’re talking about anesthesia

Marcia Smith 01:19
used to be brandy. But now it wasn’t

Bob Smith 01:23
that kind of a party.

Marcia Smith 01:27
They used ether, didn’t they?

Bob Smith 01:28
Yes. You got sir. You’re going in the right direction? Yeah.

Marcia Smith 01:31
And how would that be present at a party? What were they sniffing it for recreational use? Well,

Bob Smith 01:37
actually, the first use of ether was for laughing gas. That’s how they people used it. And a party led to a doctor discovering the anesthetic properties. The man was 27 year old physician Crawford Williamson long of Jefferson, Georgia. During the party, he found some of his friends bruised themselves but felt no pain with a falling asleep. Well, they were just having a good time and banging into stuff and you know, and nobody like oh, that didn’t that hurt your arm? No. Didn’t that hurt your leg? No. So that gave him the idea to use ether on his patients. And the first patient was a gentleman named James Venable. And he had to have a cyst removed from his neck. So he gave him ether. Yeah, and the guy didn’t feel any pain. Two years later, he used the first ether in childbirth when he administered it to his wife during the delivery of their second child. That was an 1842. But he did not publish his findings about ether until 1849. He’s the guy who was credited with it. Ah, all

Marcia Smith 02:39
right. Movie time bomb. In 1978. CBS paid $35 million to show this movie for 20 years. That’s

Bob Smith 02:48
a lot of years for 30 $35 million. Yeah, that’s probably what they would do for you know, a half hour today.

Marcia Smith 02:54
I don’t know. But that’s still a lot of bucks back in seven. So

Bob Smith 02:57
the question is Which movie? Yeah. 1978. Now let me go back. You didn’t see first run movies on TV back in the 70s. You saw TV movies or old movies? So this was probably a classic film. So I would say this was either gone with the wind or the Wizard of Oz now

Marcia Smith 03:13
for God’s sakes. No. Yes.

Bob Smith 03:16
What the Wizard of Oz? No. Gone With the Wind. Yeah. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, it

Marcia Smith 03:20
was gone with the wind.

Bob Smith 03:22
I never saw it on TV. I never did. No. That’s weird, isn’t it? Yeah.

Marcia Smith 03:26
You think it had been on all the time? Yeah. If

Bob Smith 03:29
it was going to be done like that? Yeah. Hey, I’ve got some interesting stuff. Here. I found about virtual weddings. We’ve got friends who had younger ones who were going to get married and some of them have put off their wedding. Some of them went ahead and had the wedding. Some of them went with virtual weddings. And that’s becoming a big deal right now. And turns out of this one company out of, I believe it’s out of Seattle, Washington called Windley, which is wedding planners. That’s their business. They have teamed with Zoom because they think more people are used to using zoom and doing a wedding and they’re using all these different features of zoom. I thought you might find it a little interesting what they’re doing. You know, if you go use Zoom, there’s like a waiting room. You know, there’s other things to keep people out unless you the host can say who you let in. So this way you can determine who comes into your wedding. You know, they will actually assign a person to monitor zoom and use Zoom while you’re doing your wedding. They’ll help you with setting up multiple smartphone cameras in your apartment or wherever you’re doing this so you can I have a procession that’s seen by multiple cameras. If you want to have musicians, they can hire virtual musicians. You need a backpack? Well, we know it bagpiper, then they can hire all these people to help you out. See that’s called pivoting and they even will work with your ring bearers and all these other people that would have normally participated in the wedding best man and all this stuff and have the cameras on them turn mics on and off and some people have had weddings where they may have only to like a couple in an apartment. Yeah, and maybe everybody else is watching but there may be four 100 People watching the wedding. And young people are wising up and saying hey, this is a nice way to keep the budget down well, so way to make buco bar, if you just want to use Zoom alone, it’s very inexpensive. Yeah, all you need is a, you know, a one month subscription of their pro service, which is $14.95. And you can have almost an unlimited number of people on that, but you’ll have to be working all that yourself. But if you hire a company like this, they will do it for you. They can control everything, like if the, the wedding toast gets a little out of hand, turn off the microphone. Oh, thanks, Joe. They said you can have raised hand features. So after the first toast go, you can have everybody else out there waving. And you can have them do an open mic toast. And then breakout rooms, they can cluster tables around breakout rooms. So the bride and groom can go visit that little breakout room that’s cute and talk to those six or eight people there at a time. And

Marcia Smith 05:54
you can put a background of you know, palm trees. So like you’re on an island in Hawaii with for your wedding.

Bob Smith 06:00
This just shows the creativity of people, they said they booked at virtual weddings in less than a month, eight to 10 times increase over their normal monthly bookings. And you can organize it so can everybody get up and dance to the music and I could see all the people on your screen dancing, and Dustin Smith and Aaron Hensley, who recently got married in April. He said waking up the next morning and reading all of the comments from more than 100 people who shared our day at home made me tear up. Isn’t that cool?

Marcia Smith 06:31
I love it. Do you have another question? Maybe? Okay. Michelangelo?

Bob Smith 06:36
Ah, yes, we were gonna do some art questions this time. Yeah, this, you know,

Marcia Smith 06:39
he was on his back a lot painting ceilings and stuff. But my question is, how did he convey what he wanted from the grocery store to his cook?

Bob Smith 06:53
How did you get away from art to that? Was How did Michelangelo order his food? You

Marcia Smith 06:59
know, he had a cook. Okay, this guy had you know, some gravitas?

Bob Smith 07:03
did he draw what he wanted? Yes, no kidding. Well, that’s because

Marcia Smith 07:07
his Cook was illiterate and couldn’t read. So he’d make out his grocery list. I’m sure he didn’t have you know, Piggly Wiggly on the corner. But they had something a market. And he drew a picture of fish and wines and fruits and breads that he wanted. So the cook knew what to get. And some of these have been preserved because it is by golly, Michaelangelo. And it’s hard because there are pictures of everything right. And you’ll find it at the Fitzy Museum in Florence really

Bob Smith 07:38
fast. So this guy, he was so talented, even his to do lists and white lists. His food lists are considered works of art. That’s right. And that was Michelangelo. Yeah. All right. Well, I’ve got a question about somebody else. I won’t tell you who it is. I’m going to ask you about the painting. Okay. Okay. What famous painting was so disliked by the man who commissioned it? He refused to pay the artist for his work. Very, very famous painting. You want to lease it? That’s it? That’s it? Yeah, suppose

Marcia Smith 08:10
slug pretty you know bored. Or bemused is more like it now that

Bob Smith 08:16
was done a long time ago. 1503 It’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars now. But painting small that painting. Yeah, it’s not very big. It is quite amazing. I’ve seen it twice. I saw it on our trip. And I saw it. When I was in high school. It was in New York when we visited senior trip. Yeah. Well, the painting apparently portrays the Duchess of Milan and legend has it that Madonna Lisa’s husband, Francesco del Jia condo of Florence disliked the painting and refused to pay DaVinci for it. 10 years later, Francis first the King of France bought it for 492 ounces of gold, which was a princely sum, equivalent to about a half million dollars today, but it was the king of France who bought the painting, not the man who commissioned it. And that woman, Lisa Gioconda,

Marcia Smith 09:04
yeah, yeah. What’s the name of the paint? What

Bob Smith 09:06
is Mona?

Marcia Smith 09:07
Mona?

Bob Smith 09:08
It’s a nickname for something. It’s a nickname for Madonna.

Marcia Smith 09:12
I was going to say Madonna. Yeah. Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Right. Do you have another question? Cyndi Lauper. Okay, in 1948, and it’s not been tapped yet. A purebred Belgian stallion named Brooklyn supreme was considered and still is the heaviest horse on record. Really? How much did he wave?

Bob Smith 09:36
Is it a racehorse?

Marcia Smith 09:38
Well, they call him a stallion I don’t know if he I can’t believe he’d be clapping in a race with this kind of way down him but he’s a big dude.

Bob Smith 09:47
I don’t know what horses weigh. So I will go with like 600 pounds. Well, that’s

Marcia Smith 09:52
pretty far from what it is. He weighed 3208

Bob Smith 09:58
years kill over a tongue, this horse weighed more than a ton. I had no idea he

Marcia Smith 10:05
was six feet six inches tall. And yeah, which is 19.2 Hands in case you’re wondering. It’s

Bob Smith 10:12
interesting. I just was looking for some trivia items today. And I found one about when Christopher Columbus landed, they had horses onboard the ship at one of his voyages. So they landed and the horses come off the ship and the Indians said they were the biggest dogs they ever seen. They thought they were some kind of dogs because even though horses were native to North America centuries before, by that time, there were there were no horses here. So they thought they were huge dogs. Wow. All right. I have another art question for you here.

Marcia Smith 10:44
Okay.

Bob Smith 10:45
What did 116,000 People miss? In 47 days of viewing on Rima T says Lovato. What did they miss? 116,000 people this is going way back to 1961 when the painting hung in of all places New York’s Museum of Modern Art for 47 days. What did everybody who saw it missed? The fact that it was upside down 116,000 people passed in front of that thing before one of them notice the painting had been hung upside down. That’s

Marcia Smith 11:20
very funny and that says a lot but I wonder if I would have caught that. I don’t think so.

Bob Smith 11:24
Here’s another art question of sorts. How long can a Persian rug last? You love Persian rugs? You love those? Those beautiful rugs from the Middle East?

Marcia Smith 11:33
Well, I’d say 500 years. That’s exactly right. Yeah, some can

Bob Smith 11:37
last as long as 500 years before they were out. A fine quality Persian rug contains as many as 1 million knots in every three square feet.

Marcia Smith 11:46
That’s why they’re so expensive. And cat. Three square feet. 1 million nuts. Wow. That’s, that’s a whole lot of work.

Bob Smith 11:55
You know, this is another thing about the Coronavirus. Scientists are racing to design a face mask that can rip the Coronavirus apart. Yeah, what can rip the Coronavirus apart well as what substance can Lorax know. This This comes from a Fast Company article. Yeah, I don’t know. Okay, what can rip Coronavirus apart is copper. Copper is a metal that if almost any virus goes on and it just it just kind of tears it apart. Is that right? Yeah. It’s it’s toxic to a virus, which is what I was thinking, well, let’s make everything out of copper for a while. Yeah, because doorknobs used to be made out of you have maybe a copper threads and a man. That’s what they’re doing. That’s what they’re working on. So turns out that there are all kinds of companies working on this. Some are already on the market. They’re working on copper infused anti microbial apparel and masks. So that’s possibly something that could help our first line workers well,

Marcia Smith 12:55
this is sort of related, not copper, but um, question about gold. Okay, gold is the most ductile of all the chemical elements. You know what that means? It’s malleable. It’s able to be drawn out into a thin wire. Okay. Okay. So, how long do you think a one ounce piece of gold can be a stretch basic wrenched into a length of wire?

Bob Smith 13:21
Well, no, that’s a good question. I know gold is used in gold leafing. It’s used in all kinds of ways where you can basically flatten it out and spread it. Yeah. And it’s very soft.

Marcia Smith 13:30
Yeah, this is one ounce like in a really good bring.

Bob Smith 13:32
Oh, so are we talking feet or what do you can you tell you can

Marcia Smith 13:36
it can be feet yards or miles Bob whatever. God guess.

Bob Smith 13:40
Well, I’ve sent you said miles. I go for a half a mile.

Marcia Smith 13:42
43 miles.

Bob Smith 13:44
You are kidding. One ounce of gold. One ounce of gold can basically be stretched into

Marcia Smith 13:50
43 miles of wire.

Bob Smith 13:52
Holy cow. That’s amazing.

Marcia Smith 13:55
I thought so. Good. Lord. Yes. You’re

Bob Smith 13:58
talking about why are you talking about stretching out? I saw some funny sayings online today about the deal with the Coronavirus. And this is what about toilet paper. And a person said I used to spin that toilet paper like I was on the wheel of fortune. Now I turn it like I’m cracking a safe, barely using anything. Well, speaking of things, I’m looking ahead to the Fourth of July, and I still haven’t decided where we should go the living room or the bedroom. The family room, where should we go for that?

Marcia Smith 14:29
Maybe the basement. Okay, what do you got there? All right, this publication was the first magazine in history to sell 1 billion copies in a single year. Wow. And this is in the 70

Bob Smith 14:44
publication. So this is a periodical something that would come out on a regular basis regularly.

Marcia Smith 14:48
Yes. 1974. I’m thinking you’re 50 years old that year.

Bob Smith 14:53
No, I wasn’t 50 years old that year. I’m just thinking that was about the time Life magazine can and it reached its peak, but I’ll bet it was Reader’s Digest.

Marcia Smith 15:02
TV Guide. Oh,

Bob Smith 15:04
that’s right. TV Guide was a huge magazine. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 15:08
back in 1980. It had a paid circulation of 19 and a half million copies. Wow. That’s long since changed the Oh yeah, that that was the first publication in history to sell a billion copies in a single year.

Bob Smith 15:24
That is amazing. All right. We’ll be back with more amazing questions and answers in just a moment. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith. We’re back here on the off ramp. I’m Bob Smith. I’m Marcia. And we have trivia again, this is our ninth week of doing the trivia show during the lockdown here in the Coronavirus. I’ve got some questions for you on Vincent van Gogh ready? Yeah. What did he do before he became an artist? And I’ll give me a hint. He worked with his brother. Oh, yeah. What was his brother?

Marcia Smith 15:58
It was Van Gogh enterprises? No. on the go with the band goal? No, it

Bob Smith 16:05
was actually the Graupel and see, see IE was the name of the company in The Hague. And what was it? What did they do? They made we’ll know they were art dealers. So he was a he was an art dealer before he became an artist and he was not very good at it either. He came to art after he was fired the age of 27. He did do some teaching. He tried to career as a preacher like his father, but his first attempt at missionary work in a Belgian mining village was a failure. And after, after six months, he made so little headway that the evangelical committee that sponsored him decided, nah, this isn’t good for you. He’s unfit for work.

Marcia Smith 16:43
Yeah, he didn’t get much better. So

Bob Smith 16:45
he did. He tried to teach. He tried to do all kinds of things. He eventually became an artist himself. The timespan of his work. Most of his work occurred during a How long was the period? I think it was 10 years. 10 years. Yeah. From 1882 At night, so he died at the age of 37. So asylum, yes. Where did he paint his last painting in the asylum asylum? Yeah. Bad news. All right. And many artists signed their work what was unusual about Vincent Van Gogh’s signature?

Marcia Smith 17:16
Did When did he do a mirror image?

Bob Smith 17:18
I’m asking you, Marcia, you are you What did the art questions I’ve got are questions that mirror image. He was so confident in his brand that he only signed his paintings. Vincent.

Marcia Smith 17:28
That’s right. Of course. Yeah. I should have said that. Okay,

Bob Smith 17:33
okay. Then the painting you’re talking about the last painting that was painted in an asylum was Starry Night? Yeah. He and He voluntarily admitted himself to that asylum.

Marcia Smith 17:41
That was after he sliced up his ear. Yeah. Okay. Do you know off the top of your pretty little head, though, what year was the hottest on record? In Alaska? No.

Bob Smith 17:54
Well, I know sometimes it’s funny. I remember, many times when I used to do weather in the radio and TV, the temperature in Alaska might be warmer than where you were. Yeah. So that makes us a difficult question to answer for me. Yeah. But I will say it’s an recorded time. So it’s, I’d say it’s the last 100 years, let’s say 1958.

Marcia Smith 18:17
Yeah, it certainly is within the last 100 years. It wasn’t 2019 Oh, really? Guess when the hottest day was? What year that was? It wasn’t 2019. The hottest day ever recorded in the state of Alaska was 100 degrees. Really? Yeah. And so what year was that?

Bob Smith 18:38
You don’t even expect that it with Alaska? 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Go together? Yeah, let’s just go back into the last century for this one for the hell of it. 1869 Wow,

Marcia Smith 18:47
that’s not you know, that far off? It was 1915. Really? Yeah. So it was 100 degrees on June 27 1915, at Fort Yukon, and the lowest recorded temperature occurred in 1971. And that was 80 degrees below 00. How’s that for a variance? Oh, 80 below to 100 above that,

Bob Smith 19:12
I think and I think living in Wisconsin we have Yeah, varying of a range went from like 105 down to 20 below. And I just

Marcia Smith 19:19
found all that interesting in the context that last year was the warmest summer on record. So but the highest and the lowest were a long time ago. That 1915 One.

Bob Smith 19:31
Okay, back to Vincent. One more question. I’m done said okay. To whom did he always great success, his brother. Now think about that for a second. To whom did he always great success. Vincent van Gogh?

Marcia Smith 19:45
I don’t know. Well,

Bob Smith 19:46
how many paintings did he sell in his lifetime?

Marcia Smith 19:48
I don’t know if he sold any one or two at the most? Yeah.

Bob Smith 19:51
He died in 1890 as his greatest success came after that. So to whom did he always great success.

Marcia Smith 19:59
I don’t know. his sister in

Bob Smith 20:00
law Joe Van Gogh Bomgar after Theo died in 1891 Theo’s wife, his brother’s wife, inherited tons of Vincent’s art Oh, okay. And she spent years organizing exhibitions promoting his work across Western Europe. He was forgotten by this. And she made him pop and she got his pieces in public art collections and in 1905 Thanks to her effort, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam hosted a retrospective. And now Vincent van Gogh exhibitions are blockbusters around the world 100 years after his death his portrait of Dr. geshay sold for at $2.5 million setting a record for a single painting after he died penniless yeah

Marcia Smith 20:44
yeah, I’m amazed so common back then but his sister

Bob Smith 20:48
in law yeah is responsible for people remembering who he is.

Marcia Smith 20:52
I wonder if she was just savvy and thought if I could make these worse something we’ll have some money we’ll

Bob Smith 20:57
see my husband died his brother died I got nothing here. Let’s work with some of this stuff. Let’s work with let’s make myself a retirement plan. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 21:04
I think I don’t mean to be jaded. But yeah, that’s

Bob Smith 21:08
Oh, I think that’s a that’s probably what happened Don’t you think?

Marcia Smith 21:11
Yeah, I think that’s part of it. Okay, Bob.

Bob Smith 21:14
Like I got another funny thing people are saying these days if you want just one of those for to chuckle

Marcia Smith 21:19
give me a chart. Well, this

Bob Smith 21:20
is just a hint for everyone listening during the Coronavirus if you’re still in the shot and still in lockdown still and shelter in place. Every few days. Here’s a tip try your jeans on just to make sure they fit. Pajamas will have you believing all as well in the kingdom. All is well in the kingdom works for me, Jonathan. Sweatpants will have you believing things that are true and

Marcia Smith 21:44
Zoom as long as you look good from the waist up. You’re fine. Yes. Right. What’s the problem? Yeah. Okay, ready? Yeah, this record so 2.1 million records before the first copies went on sale. Really? Yep. Went to give me 2.112 point 1 million records before the first copies went on sale.

Bob Smith 22:06
This was either this is my thinking. Yeah, either the Beatles or Bing Crosby.

Marcia Smith 22:11
All right. Which one? You’re right. It’s one of those.

Bob Smith 22:14
I’ll say the Beatles.

Marcia Smith 22:16
That’s right now. Second part. Was

Bob Smith 22:19
it saw God. Oh my god. I don’t know the answer to that. I’ll

Marcia Smith 22:25
give you a year. Maybe that’ll help. Okay. 64, 64

Bob Smith 22:28
It wasn’t yesterday. That was 65 It wasn’t like I want to hold your hand or something like that. Can’t Buy Me Love. No kidding. Yeah. It sold 2 million copies before it was even on sale. Yeah. Wow.

Marcia Smith 22:42
It read the song quickly zoom to number one, replacing another hit. She loves you. I’ll be darned. I’d The Beatles. So I

Bob Smith 22:50
have a another clarification. Remember we were talking about the white house the other day and you were talking about the White House was burned to the ground like said it never actually was one thing we didn’t cover there was why did they call it the White House? Obviously it’s white. Right? But how did it get that way? Did you know what’s underneath all that white? sandstone? Okay, sandstone. Now a lot of people think because of the War of 1812. They whitewashed it because the walls were dark and everything from the fire, which is true. But the white washing actually began shortly after it was after it was built. Because even in 1798 when the walls were erected, the builders knew this is sandstone, so water and whether it could erode them over time. So back in those days, what they did was they used a whitewash a lime based liquid to prevent water from leaking into the porous stone and freezing so it sealed it. Hmm. So the whitewashing is not because of the War of 1812. It was because they wanted to seal that now here’s another fact they did finally go to paint in 1818. That’s when they switch to white leaded paint question. How many gallons of white paint were needed to cover the White House in 1818? Well,

Marcia Smith 24:03
by golly, I’ll just take a stab here. 1200 cans

Bob Smith 24:11
1200 gallons. That’s a little more than twice what it took. It actually took 570 gallons, but it would take a lot more today because they’ve added the East Wing, the West Wing and other additions.

Marcia Smith 24:21
So maybe I was talking about half gallons.

Bob Smith 24:26
You said you told me 1200 gallons. Okay, you didn’t say 100?

Marcia Smith 24:32
gallons. Okay,

Bob Smith 24:33
who chose the site for the White House? Ah, we know the first president.

Marcia Smith 24:39
Was it John Adams. No.

Bob Smith 24:42
It wasn’t George. Yes, it was. George Washington is near his house. He chose the side and 1791 that

Marcia Smith 24:50
command was much better for him.

Bob Smith 24:53
It was just going to be called the Executive Mansion at the time and the city was going to be called capital city makes sense. And then they did sited to change it all to

Marcia Smith 25:00
watch out. His name wasn’t Humperdinck or

Bob Smith 25:04
offerding City Humperdinck

Marcia Smith 25:05
DC. All

Bob Smith 25:07
right now I’ve got one last question that comes around 360 degrees to where we are today with Coronavirus COVID-19. In the 13th century Pope Gregory the ninth declared war on cats. Wow. Why did he do this? And what catastrophe do some people think this caused? The

Marcia Smith 25:27
plague? The exactly because they ate the rat.

Bob Smith 25:31
That’s right. Okay. So in the 13th century, the pope believed cats carried the spirit of Satan. And that sparked the notion that black cat symbolizes bad luck. That’s where the bad luck for black cats came. Yeah. And in response, the Catholic Church and all of its followers initiated the extermination of cats. Yeah. Some historians believe this massacre of cats contributed to the plague because the abundance of rodents carrying the disease and the lack of a natural predator, the slaughters did stop for the most part after the death of Pope Gregory the ninth but not soon enough. Wow. So that’s the unintended consequences of a decision.

Marcia Smith 26:12
Do you know what was the biggest killer the biggest plague to ever hit the world? No. Smallpox really killed more people than anything. In the 18th century it killed check this 400,000 Europeans every year well, in the 20th century, it killed three times as many people as world wars combined holy cow and played a significant role in the fall of the Aztec and Inca empires after European sailors introduced it so that was the killer of mankind the beggar of all time yeah killer of all time of mankind

Bob Smith 26:51
All right,

Marcia Smith 26:51
let’s hope it stays in the past

Bob Smith 26:53
All right, well, maybe we should close with something it’s kind of amusing

Marcia Smith 26:57
uplift a little bit here. Give

Bob Smith 27:00
me this is a classified ad I saw it’s a sign of the times Okay. Okay. Single Man with toilet paper seeks woman with hand sanitizer for good clean fun. And that’s it for today. Here on the off ramp. I’m Bob. I’m Marcia Bob and Marsha Smith here. We hope you’ll join us again next time when we come back with more Coronavirus trivia

Marcia Smith 27:21
more fun and games with Bob and Marsha.

Bob Smith 27:23
There we go. buy buy buy buy. The off ramp is produced in association with CPL radio and the Cedarburg Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

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