172 All Over The Map Trivia

Marcia Smith 0:00
What is the Marie Antoinette syndrome,

Bob Smith 0:03
And what future Roman emperor was kidnapped by pirates when he was 25 years old? Answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob. I’m Marcia Smith. You Music.

Welcome to the off ramp. A chance to slow down, steer clear of crazy and take a side road to sanity, the Marie Antoinette syndrome?

Marcia Smith 0:42
Take a guess. I want you to think about it.

Bob Smith 0:44
Well, is it the let them eat cake syndrome? Is it something like that? No, no. What is the Marie Antoinette syndrome then?

Marcia Smith 0:50
Well, it’s not that common, but during times of extreme stress, your hair can turn white overnight. Okay, I’ve heard of that, but I didn’t know it was true. Well, it apparently happened to her, the queen of France, Marie Antoinette, before the morning she walked to the guillotine. That would be a bit stressful.

Bob Smith 1:07
Oh, yes. And then just remember, she and Louis the 16th were taken by a mob from Versailles from the palace. You know, they broke into the palace. Must have been horrible. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 1:16
Lord, and you heard of us. Sir Thomas More, his hair turned white overnight in when he was in the Tower of London. Remember that before his execution? So it happens. And the good news is that doctors think that sometimes your hair can revert back. They did one study in 2021 that showed a woman this doesn’t seem like a big gain to me, but she regained five hairs with color after she took a two week

Bob Smith 1:43
holiday. How can you find just five hairs and know that they change? Because

Marcia Smith 1:46
if your whole head is white and then suddenly, hey, here’s some new hair. I suppose it can grow back under different and unusual circumstances. Well, this

Bob Smith 1:55
is another ancient oriented story, okay, even more ancient, actually, what future Roman emperor was kidnapped by pirates when he was 25

Marcia Smith 2:04
it wasn’t ancient Roman. What future Roman emperor

Bob Smith 2:09
was kidnapped by pirates when he was 25

Marcia Smith 2:12
I don’t know that many. Well, just think of one. There, Caesar, Julius

Bob Smith 2:16
Caesar. Yes, it was him. I never heard the story. He was the victim of the Mediterranean seas pirate problem. They had a pirate problem. There’s always something, isn’t it, in 75 BC, he was a 25 year old Roman nobleman on his way to Rhodes to study oratory when he was kidnapped, and apparently he wasn’t a very good captive. He laughed when the pirates told him they sent his ransom demand at 25 talents, he said, If they knew who he was, they would have asked for twice that. So they asked for more. So he set his own ransom, and then he sent his entourage out to gather the money to pay for this. Meanwhile, he bossed the pirates around. He shushed them to be quiet when he was sleeping. Oh, forgot. He made them listen to speeches and poems he wrote while in captivity, and he also told them, from time to time he would have them all crucified. And guess what? They laughed at him for that, and he did, didn’t he? Yes, bad for them. 38 days passed, Caesar’s ransom arrived. He was set free, but instead of going home, he raised a naval force, went back to the island, and when he had the pirates arrested, the Roman governor wasn’t enthusiastic about punishing these so he went to the prison himself where they were being held, and he had them crucified, good lord and heaven. Okay, so don’t mess with Julius Caesar, even when he’s 25 years old, Lord. Okay. I thought that was a good character study. I did. I never heard that story before.

Marcia Smith 3:38
Yeah, obviously he had leadership qualities not always good. Okay, so Bob, here’s something I suspect you’ll know, but I’d like to throw you a bone once in a while, who issued the first credit cards and when think

Bob Smith 3:53
that was a was that a restaurant? It was a dining, dining, dining card, the dining card, the dining club.

Marcia Smith 4:01
Card, the Diners Club. Oh, okay, Diners Club, okay, yes,

Bob Smith 4:05
that’s the one, yeah, and the year was, I would say, in the 1950s but maybe I’m wrong. No, you’re right.

Marcia Smith 4:11
1950 actually, before then, gas companies and hotel chains just issued cards that were exclusively good for their services. But in 1949 businessman Frank McNamara was dining at major’s cabin grill, a New York City restaurant, okay, and when the check game discovered he had no cash, that’s my grandpa. Did that once.

Bob Smith 4:35
I know guys who’ve done that before and walked out on their dates too.

Marcia Smith 4:39
It was his wallet was in the other suit, and fortunately, McNamara’s wife rescued him, but Frank resolved he’d never be embarrassed like that again. Frank McNamara, so that was his name, and that’s why he invented something we have all learned to love and hate, the modern credit card,

Bob Smith 4:57
and that was just for restaurants at that time. Yeah. Soon they expanded it,

Marcia Smith 5:01
yeah. So he expanded it, and it was made it a fee based card that was good for a large number of totally unrelated businesses. Okay, and soon after that, American Express climbed on board and BankAmericard in 1959 now issued the first bank credit card and called it visa. Okay, so there we are, and MasterCard came in 1966 seemed like they’ve always been around. It

Bob Smith 5:27
does, doesn’t it? Well, in most people’s lives, they have today, you know. And just

Marcia Smith 5:31
imagine how they paid cash for most things. Imagine that. But to

Bob Smith 5:35
be there and to realize I don’t have any cash, oh my gosh, how embarrassing. And it was a business dinner, yeah? That had to be very embarrassing for him, yeah. Okay, so those are the mother of invention. There. There was a embarrassment at a dinner that created the first credit card. Marcia, what famous Asian language has a Portuguese name?

Marcia Smith 5:55
Well, got me there. Bob, tell me what it

Bob Smith 5:57
is. It’s Mandarin Chinese, really? Yeah. The language itself is known as put on qua meaning common speech. The word Mandarin comes from the Portuguese word Mandarin, which Portuguese explorers used to describe Chinese officials during the 16th century. So the rest of the world calls it Mandarin Chinese, but it’s a Portuguese name. Chinese. Don’t use that term.

Marcia Smith 6:21
Yes, okay, Bob, you’ll like this. Why is listening into a private conversation called eavesdropping? Oh,

Bob Smith 6:30
there’s a good one. Eavesdropping eaves. Okay. Did it have anything to do with the eaves of a house? For instance, a design of the eaves or the eaves of a tree? Yes, the first one a house, okay? So people would hear by listening through the attic or

Marcia Smith 6:46
something like that. Well, you’re dancing around it, shall I? Well, I’d like to dance about it. In medieval times, houses did not have roof gutters to carry off rain water. Okay? Instead, they have eaves which protected their mud walls from rain that was dropping off the roof during sudden downpours, people would take refuge under the eaves to get out of the rain. The mud walls of the houses in those days weren’t that thick, so if you were standing under the eaves, you could often hear what people were saying inside the house. Oh, no kidding, and you became a

Bob Smith 7:19
eavesdropper dropping in. How interesting. So it came from the structure of the houses. Yeah, wow, yeah. I wouldn’t have guessed that. I wouldn’t have guessed it either. Okay, that’s good, well, and nice to know that it relates directly to the word being part of a house structure, eavesdropping so they would hang around, get

Marcia Smith 7:37
out of the rain, and then, oh, long as I’m here, I’ll see what Harry and Mildred are talking Oh, they’re having

Bob Smith 7:42
a problem, having a fight over there, and it’s over, Jolene. I didn’t know that Harry liked Jolene. Oh, good lord. Is

Marcia Smith 7:48
that a medieval name? I don’t think so. No, all

Bob Smith 7:50
right, okay, Marcia, when was the first movable type with metal letters made? Ah, now we think about Gutenberg, right? Yeah, that was 1450 but he wasn’t the original guy.

Marcia Smith 8:04
Oh, was it before then? Yes. Oh, well, then, I don’t know. I’ll give you a year. Okay, okay, 1353

Bob Smith 8:11
Wow, you’re not too far off. It goes back to Asia, where a lot of the early inventions were, but they were kind of provincial in terms of not getting out to the rest of the world. But the Chinese were the first to use Movable Type. They had ceramic and wood Movable Type, that is, letters made of ceramic materials or wood by 1040 ad, Oh, my. But movable metal type with individual letters made of metal, what people associate with Gutenberg was actually invented by the Koreans. That was in 1234 when the first books known to have been printed in metallic type were published in Korea. So you can thank the Koreans for metal type. Drop them a line. Okay, we have a quote from a Korean king in 1403 he remarked to his courtiers around him, and this is recorded somewhere, if the country is to be governed. Well, it’s essential that books are read widely. It’s my desire to cast copper type so we can print as many books as possible. So that was 50 years before Gutenberg that was advanced thinking, huh? Now, the interesting thing about Gutenberg is his job was not as a printer. You know what his profession was, dancer. He was a gold Smith. So he was used to working with metal too. So that’s where it came from. He was a metallurgist. You know? He’s a person who is a Smith working with metal, just like the Koreans who did the first Moveable Type. I didn’t know that.

Marcia Smith 9:32
I didn’t either. All right, Forbes magazine, Bob, they did an article about a survey done by big seven travel. They surveyed 1.5 million people and asked them to name their top destinations for their bucket list. Okay, okay, they found most people had a list of 11 places and hoped to visit at least seven before they kicked the bucket. So can you name any of the top 10 bucket lists? As destinations. It’s these are mostly cities, okay? Paris,

Bob Smith 10:03
France, I just think that’s a romantic capital. Most people think of it is,

Marcia Smith 10:07
and it was. That’s number seven. Beijing, China, not on the top 10, okay? London, that’s not on the top 10. Okay. Are there

Bob Smith 10:17
any parks or landmarks, or, you know, natural features that people mention. No,

Marcia Smith 10:22
there’s only one place in the United States on the top 10. And I want to guess this one, New Orleans, really? Yeah, it’s number two.

Bob Smith 10:30
Well, it has a certain distinction for people, yeah,

Marcia Smith 10:33
because it’s so unique, yeah. And so number one was Bali, Indonesia, because of their beaches, volcanoes, Komodo dragons, all things that you and I just crazy about. I love the Komodo dragons. Number two is New Orleans. Three is Carrie Island. Mary Ireland, okay, and they have perfect little small towns there in the Killarney National Park there. Number four, Marrakesh, Morocco. Number five, Sydney, Australia, the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, Paris, number seven, Cape Town, South Africa, Dubai. And number 10 is Bora Bora, French, Polynesia,

Bob Smith 11:12
Bora, Bora, yeah, I never think of that. Those are like old names for me.

Marcia Smith 11:16
So there aren’t a lot on this list that you and I would find absolute must do before we do the what did I hear a comedian say? My bucket list, I changed the first letter of that. Okay, Bob, you got one? All right? Marcia, what is

Bob Smith 11:32
the best selling novel of all time? Now this is in terms of the number of copies published and circulated. Is this one. I know it’s one, you know, but I was surprised. This is considered the best selling novel of all time. Was

Marcia Smith 11:46
it like back in the 1800s this goes back to

Bob Smith 11:49
400 years ago. Okay.

Marcia Smith 11:53
What is it? Bob. It is

Bob Smith 11:55
Miguel Cervantes 1615, work Don Quixote, kale, really? Yes, its numbers are hard to beat. It’s estimated that over the centuries, more than 500 million copies have been sold, and that’s considered the best selling novel of all time.

Marcia Smith 12:12
Give me, give me a line from one of those songs in Don Quixote. I

Bob Smith 12:15
am i Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha. I love it. The Man of La Mancha based on that. All right, a

Marcia Smith 12:23
couple of quick ones. Bob, okay, during your life, your hair grows, it falls out and regrows about how many times in your lifetime, your hair, yeah,

Bob Smith 12:33
grows falls out like, I don’t know. I have no idea.

Marcia Smith 12:36
I would have thought it been more, but it’s 20 times in your lifetime, is the average. So only

Bob Smith 12:41
20 times in your life you have a new, whole new set of hair, yeah, when you think about that, that’s about every four years. So you know, in a general lifetime,

Marcia Smith 12:49
okay, okay, here’s another quick one, okay, and we all know how colonies of ants are little worker bees, yeah. So what percent of worker ants in a typical colony are just lazy butts.

Bob Smith 13:04
So there are actually lazy ants. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 13:07
very lazy. These researchers really studied. I know that the

Bob Smith 13:10
ants we had that one thing about ants getting drunk and their co workers would throw them into water news. So apparently ants have problems. Yeah, so there are some ants that don’t just don’t work out in the colony. Do they get thrown out of the colony? They, well, they don’t work.

Marcia Smith 13:24
Just give me my answer and then, okay, let’s say 5% 5% No. Research shows that up to 40% of worker ants remain idle while all the other ants do the work. Really,

Bob Smith 13:37
somebody, maybe they’re just doing something different. It’s like your it’s

Marcia Smith 13:41
like your average office. No, they no. They were studied biologists with the University of Arizona observing ant colonies in 2015 found that many of the ants seem to slack off, doing nothing, while other ants perform chores. So I love this. They put a.on the lazy ones to see what would happen when the lazy ants were removed from their nests, if anything changed in the nest, and nothing did. But then they did the reverse and left the lazy ants alone without the worker bees, and they got to work.

Bob Smith 14:14
So also, they were letting other people do their work for them. Yeah.

Marcia Smith 14:18
So anyway, after the scientists discovered that the worker bees got to work. If the busy guys were gone, they decided that they were not lazy, but they were part of a reserve force. In other words, if, as the worker bees dropped dead from exhaustion, the lazy bums would step in. So they’re not lazy after all. Well, that’s their that’s their theory, but 40% of that’s a lot. That is a lot. I

Bob Smith 14:43
just can’t believe that they’re 40% of ants aren’t working. And did

Marcia Smith 14:46
you know that the oldest fossilized ant found in New Jersey, no less, was 92 million years old,

Bob Smith 14:52
and he was still working.

Marcia Smith 14:55
And an estimated 20 quadrillion ants are alive today. Okay, and living in our backyard, that’s

Bob Smith 15:01
that’s where they all are. Okay? All right, let’s take a break now. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith, we’re back. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith, we do this every week for the Cedarburg Public Library, and then we post it on our website and it goes out over all the podcast platforms. Okay, we have a question here, Marcia about how much were congressmen originally paid? Now, they were congressmen. They were all men originally. This goes back to 1789 didn’t they work for free? No, they didn’t work for free, and only half of them did work. But that’s another story. That’s still the case. Okay, 1789 members of the United States Congress were paid how much per day a Bucha, 6006 times what you thought they were approximately $900 a year. But that was a lot of money. Then you say, No, not really adjusted for inflation, their salaries were only worth $30,000 a year in today’s money. So it was not seen as a way to get rich or to get famous. Okay, you went there to do some work, and you kept your job. You kept your other work. That was the idea. But the first congress people were paid $6 a day, or $90 a year, equivalent to $30,000 a year. Today, that’s according to britannica.com

Marcia Smith 16:17
All right, if you don’t mind, I have one more ant question. Oh, dear God, sorry. So what is unique about the yellow goo ant, also called the colobosis. The colobosis, it lives in South East Asia, but the name they give it is the yellow goo

Bob Smith 16:37
ant, I never heard of this. Oh, you

Marcia Smith 16:40
didn’t Okay. Well, you know what’s unusual about that? What they can explode themselves.

Bob Smith 16:44
Oh no.

Marcia Smith 16:47
They are tree dwelling ants, and they build their nests high up in the canopies. And as a last ditch effort to protect their homes from invaders, they apply pressure to their abdomen and burst their bodies in self sacrifice, good lord, yeah, they release a sticky, odorous and toxic substance that drives away the invaders. And they’re they’re dead, but their little ant house is still there.

Bob Smith 17:12
Okay, last, that’s the last ant question of today. Yes, it is. Okay, okay. Marcia, what mobile technology does this describe? Okay, it’s a word processor. It operates in the glacial cold or torrid heat or on turbulent flights or during tumultuous sailings. It has a continuous power supply. Again, this is a word processor. It needs no battery or electrical outlet. It offers instantaneous print outs in two colors, without peripherals. While using it, you never get a pesky email, text or Slack message from an editor. You can spill your coffee on it, knock it off the desk, or stop a bullet with it, and it’ll keep working. What is that mobile technology? That word processor? It’s a typewriter. That’s description of a portable typewriter, when you think about it, yeah, that was the description in the New York Times of a royal typewriter that they’ve added to their museum, and it belonged to a former reporter. But I thought that was just so cute. I mean, it really describes it.

Marcia Smith 18:12
Yeah, it was we still do. We still have our typewriters. We have typewriters

Bob Smith 18:16
we haven’t. I think we have an old royal like that

Marcia Smith 18:19
as well. I think my Underwood is gone. It was just too dying heavy, but the

Bob Smith 18:23
portable typewriter they have in their possession was Lester Bernstein wrote the initial bulletins for the Times Square, electric bulletin board announcing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 he worked for the times from 1940 to 1989 his daughter was also a reporter at The Times from 1995 until she retired in 2016 and she left her father’s royal typewriter to the times as a parting gift. Oh, that’s cool. I like that.

Marcia Smith 18:49
Okay, you might know this one too. The Pony Express Mail Service was around for how

Bob Smith 18:55
long? Not long. It was, like, less than a year. Maybe it was, it was more than a year, 18 months. Yes, okay, yeah, bingo.

Marcia Smith 19:02
The service was expensive, around $130 in today’s dollars for just a half ounce of mail. Did you know that? Wow, that’s pretty expensive. There were cheaper alternatives, like mail sent by stagecoach or ship, but let’s face it, it took a while, so not many people could afford it. And so I bet you know this, besides being expensive, why did they only last 18 months?

Bob Smith 19:25
I think because the railroads came through. Well, that changed something else.

Marcia Smith 19:29
Okay, what was it? Western Union? Oh, telegraphs. That telegraph line introduced a safer, much faster, more reliable way to deliver urgent messages. Still, for its brief existence, the Express, the Pony Express, bridged an important communications gap, delivering around 35,000 pieces of mail.

Bob Smith 19:50
Yeah, 35,000 that’s amazing. All delivered by horse, yeah, okay, all right, Marcia, who is America’s highest paid public employee these days. Is it the president? Is it a cabinet secretary? Is it a university chancellor?

Marcia Smith 20:05
The chancellor?

Bob Smith 20:06
No, okay, none of those. Oh, who is it? It’s

Marcia Smith 20:09
none of the ones you gave me. Tell me

Bob Smith 20:12
it is a football coach, a college football coach. But is that a the University of Alabama’s football coach? Nick Saban. His annual salary averages out to $11 million a year, making him the highest paid public employee in the United States. So

Marcia Smith 20:30
you’re a public employee if you’re a University football coach, really? Yeah,

Speaker 1 20:34
well, a college football coach at the University of Alabama, it’s not a private school, all right, interesting. We talked about a lot of different animals. So far in this show today, we talked about ants, apparently, too much an item I might add. Okay, how big was the boom in pets during

Marcia Smith 20:52
the pandemic? All right, do I give you what do you want to how do i percentage of

Bob Smith 20:56
households in the United States that added a dog or a cat, that

Marcia Smith 20:59
added a dog, or how many? I’ll say, 37%

Bob Smith 21:04
according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, more than 23 million US households, which is nearly one in five, acquired a dog or a cat during the pandemic. So what’s the percentage? 20% one in five. Okay,

Marcia Smith 21:17
yeah, just looking at our nuclear family, both kids got animals during the COVID. Interesting. That’s pretty amazing. I’ve

Bob Smith 21:27
got another question here about a famous Transportation Innovation. This was a deal that was sealed during an Alaskan fishing trip. If you build it, I will buy it. What was the Transportation Innovation that launched it was in the mid 60s. If you build it, I will buy it. Two men fishing. Two men fishing. William Allen is one, and the other one was one trip a I

Marcia Smith 21:55
don’t know what I will buy it. If you build it, it wasn’t like the Segway or something. This is

Bob Smith 21:59
bigger than that. Yeah, okay, I’ve got the answer. The two men were William Allen, the president of the Boeing airplane company, and Juan trip, a the head of Pan American Airways. And Allen had just finished describing his concept for a brand new plane three times bigger than any jetliner. It would move more people faster and cheaper than any plane before. If you build it, I’ll buy it. Said, trippy. If you buy it, I’ll build it. Replied, Alan. And the answer was, the Boeing 747, okay, and it opened Air flight to more millions of people than anything else would reduce the cost of travel. That’s the reason you’re flying today is because this revolutionized the airlines. How many Boeing 747, were manufactured, 1574 and the last one just had its ceremonial send off in january 2023, 53 years after the first Pan American passenger flights between New York and London. So in 53 years, they assume that 6 billion passengers have flown 60 billion nautical miles on 747, that’s the equivalent of 144,000 trips to the moon and back. Okay, I just think that’s fascinating. And because now we don’t need planes that big anymore, they can be more fuel efficient if they’re smaller and different engines and everything, but that made a big difference. I mean, you you’ve been on those planes before. Yeah, what year again was that? It started in 1966 but these are the planes you go down. There’s two aisles, and there’s seats all across, you know, big, big, too

Marcia Smith 23:36
big for my taste, but these are the ones

Bob Smith 23:39
that go across the ocean. So it was the big pajama party in the sky. I called it

Marcia Smith 23:42
all right. We never watched the program Bob, but everyone thinks, including us, of Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher in murder. She wrote, right. Okay, want to guess what two famous people turned down that role before they hired Jessica. Was

Speaker 1 24:00
one a man. Were they thinking of it as a man’s role too? No, they were both women. Okay, so it’s a two famous actresses. I will bet I’m just thinking of Katherine Hepburn probably was offered it. No, no. Was it somebody else like that? No, okay, then I don’t know the answer. Marsh

Marcia Smith 24:16
Doris Day, really, and Edith bunker, Jean Stapleton, oh, no kidding, yeah, it’s nearly impossible to imagine anyone but Angela Lansbury playing the part. But she wasn’t a shoe in for the job. Doris Day couldn’t do it, and Edith bunker declined, partly because she didn’t feel ready. After All in The Family, to jump into another sitcom, she would have been busy a long time. Jean Stapleton said, every time I saw Angela during those years she was playing Murder, She Wrote, Angela would say, Thank you Jean.

Bob Smith 24:48
So Lansbury thanked Jean for letting her lead.

Marcia Smith 24:50
Every time they ran into each other, she’d say, Thank you, Jean.

Bob Smith 24:54
And they were both great stage actors before they became big on television.

Marcia Smith 24:58
Okay, what percent of American cowboys were black?

Bob Smith 25:02
Oh, I heard this. This was a, this is a deceptive one. And there were a lot of cowboys that were black back in the day. I think there were like 30% of American cowboys were African American. Weren’t they?

Marcia Smith 25:12
You’re not far off. 25% 25% that stunned me. You know, I thought, when we see them in movies and TV programs today, I always go, I’ll bet there weren’t that many black cowboys back then. But nay, there were Yes, and

Bob Smith 25:25
they were taken out of the picture by filmmakers. They didn’t want to depict black

Marcia Smith 25:29
Yeah, cowboys, those days are over. Yes, when wealthy American enslavers moved to Texas, first, it was a part of Spain, then Mexico, but in the early 1800s to start cattle ranches, they brought enslaved people with them in droves, but after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 that made slavery illegal, these ranchers started having a lot of trouble with runaway cattle. So the recently freed black Americans who had been enslaved on cattle ranches, they were highly skilled and wrangling, and they were suddenly in high demand, so many of them took up the cowboy trade while they faced high levels of discrimination at the ranches in towns and on the plains alike. They forged tight bonds with their white and Mexican colleagues, so they were

Bob Smith 26:17
known and they were trusted co workers, and I appreciate it among their co workers. There they were, okay, yeah, okay. Well, that’s a great that’s a great tidbit. 25%

Marcia Smith 26:27
one in four. You want me to finish up with my quote? Sure. All right, it’s by Bill Murray, okay, the best way to teach your kids about taxes is by eating 30% of their ice cream. This is how it works. I think that’s an excellent illustration. It is good, yeah, and it is text time. So there we go. Is all relevant? So

Bob Smith 26:49
much fun. All right. All right. Well, that’s it for today. We hope you’ve enjoyed the show, and we invite you to submit any questions or thoughts you might have by going to our website, the off ramp, dot show and scrolling all the way down to contact us.

Marcia Smith 27:03
Thank you for joining us today. I’m Bob Smith. I’m Marcia Smith. Join us

Bob Smith 27:07
again next time when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia here on the off ramp.

The off ramp is produced in association with CPL radio online and the Cedarburg Public Library. Cedarburg, Wisconsin, the.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai