178 High Low Trivia

Bob Smith 0:00
Where is the only US county that borders four states,

Marcia Smith 0:04
and what movie was marketed in Sweden as? Quote, The film that’s so funny it was banned in Norway.

Bob Smith 0:13
It depends on what kind of a sense of humor they have in Norway, I guess so. Answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and

Marcia Smith 0:23
Marsha Smith.

Bob Smith 0:40
Welcome to the off ramp, a chance to slow down, steer clear of crazy and take a side road to sanity with some fun trivia. Well, Marcia, where is the only US county that borders four states

Marcia Smith 0:53
that’s hard to fathom. I

Bob Smith 0:57
know it’s not. I’ll give you choices here. Oh, thank you. New Mexico, yeah, Oklahoma, Arkansas or South Dakota, New Mexico, New Mexico. Wrong. Oklahoma, Arkansas or South Dakota, South Dakota, South Dakota,

Unknown Speaker 1:16
wrong. No, that’s wrong. Okay, I

Marcia Smith 1:18
don’t know Oklahoma, Oklahoma, but it’s so small. No, it’s not that small. It’s just configured it looks small. No,

Bob Smith 1:26
Oklahoma doesn’t look small. The tip of the Panhandle looks small. That’s where this county lies. It’s Cimarron County, the only county in the US to border four states, Kansas, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. Well, that’s amazing. It is amazing. This was part of the no man’s land before the county was created in 1907 the area was considered a lawless, dusty region of the Panhandle known as No Man’s Land. Well, today there’s 3000 people who live there, so it’s a small place, and the county seat as Boise city, but it is in Oklahoma, I’ll be darned. And within that county, you can also find Oklahoma’s highest point, Black Mesa, which is 5000 feet above sea level, and it has dinosaur tracks and fossils. Oh

Marcia Smith 2:15
my gosh. So

Bob Smith 2:16
it does a lot of things. It borders four states. It has the highest point in that state, and it has dinosaur tracks and fossils. So there Cimarron County. Well, our

Marcia Smith 2:26
our listeners are so much better informed. Well, it

Bob Smith 2:29
sounds like a good destination if you’re ever in Oklahoma.

Marcia Smith 2:32
It’s certainly interesting. I had no idea. Okay, Bob ready, what movie was marketed in Sweden as the film that’s so funny. It was banned in Norway. I will give you three choices. Okay, Borat porkies, Life of Brian,

Bob Smith 2:49
oh, I’ll bet it was Borat, no, no, okay, Life of Brian, correct,

Marcia Smith 2:54
okay, yeah, Life of Brian. And it was, it

Bob Smith 2:58
was so funny. It was banned in Norway. That’s what they said, that you can’t laugh in Norway these days, the happiest country in the world, one of the happiest countries. But still, Chelsea was there for a she was there for a semester during study when she was in college. Yeah. Maybe she could tell us why something could be so funny. It would be banned in Norway. We’ll have to ask her. All right. Marcia, ever heard of a walking room? No, I’d like to bring new business developments to the off ramp here. And there’s a new concept in office design called the walking room, where, once there were treadmill desks, individual desks you might walk behind while working. Now, an Amsterdam company is trying to popularize a big moving carpet, eight to 10 people on it, and you walk, and if you want to, you could put a desk at the very end with laptops, so you can be walking while you’re using your laptop. Wait, is the is it moving? Yes, it’s like a conveyor belt. The floor moves as a big treadmill. I’ve seen pictures of people working at these tables. They look like they’re standing behind their laptops, but actually they’re walking really. It’s called the walking room. That’s actually the name of the company, and they hope to install walking rooms in offices around the world. Wow.

Marcia Smith 4:12
Well, it could catch up. What’s that thing Chelsea has? She stands up when stand up desk. Stand up desk.

Bob Smith 4:18
So this is like a walking room with a stand up desk,

Marcia Smith 4:22
pretty so pretty soon, it’ll be the jogging desk. Here’s

Bob Smith 4:26
what will happen about 20 years from now, they’ll say all those people who had those walking rooms and stand up desks, they’ve got bad arches. Didn’t they know? Didn’t they have any idea this would be bad for them?

Marcia Smith 4:38
No. No, no. Okay. So here’s another movie pop quiz. I’m giving you Bob questions from good old AARP for people over 50, which I am, but I won’t say how far. And I just thought, how far beyond 50 are you, Mark? I just thought, we are a movie family, and this is a fun little quiz to give my husband. Okay. Ready? Yes, I’m ready to land the part of a Navy patrol boat crewman in Apocalypse Now, Lawrence Fishburn convinced director Francis Ford Coppola that he was 18 years old. How old was he? Oh, he must have been younger than that. Huh? You have three choices. Okay, this is our but it’s not Marcia. It’s much kinder.

Bob Smith 5:19
Oh, thank you. Goodness,

Marcia Smith 5:22
1416, 30.

Bob Smith 5:24
I’ll bet he was 14, that’s correct. No kidding, years 14 years

Marcia Smith 5:29
old, and he talked his way into that. Bravo. That takes some good spot. That is good. Yeah. Okay, Marsh.

Bob Smith 5:35
Tell me, what’s the difference between a marsh and a swamp? Are they the same thing?

Marcia Smith 5:40
A marsh and a swamp? Yes, there is a difference. Okay, can you tell me there’s the difference in a marsh,

Bob Smith 5:46
there’s more grass in a marsh? Yes, well, that’s kind of close. Okay, they’re both wetlands. Yes, a swamp can also be compared to a low land forest, as it’s classified based on the type of tree that grows in its ecosystem. For example, depending on the predominant tree, a swamp can be classified as a hardwood swamp, a cedar swamp or a cypress swamp. We determine what it is is by the type of tree that grows. To your point, a marsh has no trees and instead is dominated by plants and grasses that live on water logged soil. So

Marcia Smith 6:20
what is the Everglades? Well, that’s

Bob Smith 6:22
a good question. A lot of people think that’s a swamp. It’s actually the largest Marsh system in the USA, and before it was partially developed, it took up an astonishing 4000 square miles of the Florida landscape, really. But the Everglades is a marsh, not a swamp, okay, okay, I’ll remember just want to make sure you know that. Well, yeah, okay, you got another one? Yeah?

Marcia Smith 6:44
Okay, Renee Zellwegers accent in Bridget Jones diary. Remember that? Yes, yes. Was so convincing that costar Hugh Grant thought she was British. In fact she was from which country was it Canada, United States or Liechtenstein?

Bob Smith 7:01
No kidding, I did. I thought she was British too. Yes, okay, so she must be Canadian. Then, no, it’s

Marcia Smith 7:07
United States. No kidding.

Bob Smith 7:09
See, I, you know, I haven’t seen her in that many things, so, oh, no kidding. So, man, to fool a British actor. Yeah, that’s

Marcia Smith 7:16
pretty who’s had training? Yeah,

Bob Smith 7:18
she did a good job. Then, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 7:20
she did. That was a good movie too. That was great. All right?

Bob Smith 7:23
Marcia, speaking of entertainment, what country has more than 80 opera companies operating at any given time now? This is kind of a lost art for many places, opera companies, 88 zero opera companies operating at any given time. I

Marcia Smith 7:39
imagine it would be like something like Russia or

Bob Smith 7:42
Italy, Russia or Italy? No, no, I’ll let you know what it is. It’s Germany. Really Germany. It’s the launch pad for many in the opera scene. It has numerous opportunities for training and employment in opera. They have more than 80 full time opera companies more than any other country. Now, one reason is in contrast to Italian opera, which was generally composed for the aristocratic class, German opera was generally composed for the masses and tended to feature simple folk like melodies, so it was much more popular. The other is they have state and federal governments providing the majority of funding for the 80 some opera houses. Well,

Marcia Smith 8:22
that had helped. And you know what? When I said Russia, I bet I was thinking more ballet? Oh, yes,

Bob Smith 8:27
of course, they were big on ballet. But they have, they have state and federal government supplying roughly $3.3 billion a year to fund music and theater. No kidding, that’s amazing. You took me to my first opera. You remember that you took me to opera? I took you to see rock and roll. That was

Marcia Smith 8:46
it. And here we are, 40 years later, doing trivia. Which sitcom star played a police officer at the end of the movie psycho? Was it Don Knotts, Ted knight or Bob Newhart

Bob Smith 9:01
really at the end of psycho, yeah, the original psycho Yeah, there was a sitcom star, yeah. He

Marcia Smith 9:07
played a police officer.

Bob Smith 9:09
I’ll bet it was Bob Newhart, wrong. Okay,

Marcia Smith 9:12
who was it? Ted Knight. No

Bob Smith 9:14
kidding,

Marcia Smith 9:15
yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 9:16
These are like, merry

Bob Smith 9:19
with a little notepad. Wait,

Marcia Smith 9:20
is that? Is that? Is that mom over there in the rocking chair? Do that? Is that voice

Bob Smith 9:25
that your mother over there? Why isn’t she talking rocking is that your mother in the rocking chair over there?

Unknown Speaker 9:33
Okay, okay, okay, go ahead. What do you got? Oh, I’ve

Bob Smith 9:38
got two of the world’s most unusual beaches now, one is in the Northern Hemisphere, the other is in the southern hemisphere. Two of the world’s most unusual beaches. What do they have in common?

Marcia Smith 9:52
Sand?

Bob Smith 9:53
They do have sand, but no, no, that’s not a ding. Ding. Thing. I found this from an article on unusual beaches, and two of them had this characteristic, very unusual for a beach, okay, tell me thermal features? Oh, really, yes. One Beach is at Lake lugarva in Iceland. You can bake bread in sands heated by volcanic lava. There at the shoreline, there are cracks in the tectonic plates that send scalding water up to the beach surface. And locals dig holes in the boiling sands, and then they put dough in metal pans and they bake their bread. So people go there for picnics. They have fresh bread and butter

Marcia Smith 10:36
hard boiled eggs. Let’s go for a swim and make some bread. They

Bob Smith 10:39
can also boil the hard boiled eggs there and then smoke their fish, and they have tasty picnics. So that’s one of the beaches that’s in Iceland in New Zealand in the southern hemisphere, is hot water beach, and there thermal springs filter hot water up through the sands between the high and the low tides. And beach goers there either bring or rent shovels and they dig their very own hot tubs right there on the shore.

Marcia Smith 11:03
That’s so cool.

Bob Smith 11:05
Aren’t those two very odd beaches? Yes,

Marcia Smith 11:08
okay. Bob, before the break, here’s a question the actor for which famous voice role was nearly mute for years as a child, was it Woody? Tom Hanks, Shrek, Mike Myers, or Darth, Vader, James Earl Jones.

Bob Smith 11:25
Well, I think it was James Earl Jones, because he had a stammer or a stutter. I know that’s what he had. So did he have? Was he mute before that, too? Yeah, he

Unknown Speaker 11:34
was okay.

Marcia Smith 11:36
He had a bad stutter, but before that, apparently he was also almost mute.

Bob Smith 11:41
That’s amazing, yes, amazing for somebody to overcome both of those and have this beautiful, mellifluous voice he used in the movies and things.

Marcia Smith 11:49
I think he did what Joe Biden did, who was a terrible stutter growing up when he got his voice and put stones in his mouth to overcome it. Wow. Pretty remarkable. I never

Speaker 1 12:00
heard about that. Yeah, you did. I knew people sang and that got them over stutters, you know. All right, let’s see. You got more movie questions coming up, I think don’t you do? All right, we’ll be back with more of that when the off ramp continues. I’m Bob Smith, I’m

Marcia Smith 12:14
Marcia Smith, we’ll

Speaker 1 12:15
be right back. All right, we’re back. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. We do this for the cedar brew public library every week, and then we put it out on the podcast platforms all over the world. So all

Marcia Smith 12:28
over the world. Okay, that’s what I said, yeah, just emphasizing, Bob, God,

Bob Smith 12:34
you’re all over this. How much coffee did you have today?

Marcia Smith 12:36
I’ve switched over. It’s not morning anymore, Bob.

Bob Smith 12:38
Okay. I just saw this the other day, and I thought this was interesting. You know, Devil’s Tower, that’s that famous feature of the land out in Wyoming. It looks like something. It’s growing up out of the Yeah. You know, it was in the movies. What was that called close encounters? Yes. So the Devil’s Tower, I always thought that was a volcanic plug, but now they’ve come up saying, No, that’s not what it was. Why is it? Well, it looks like it was thrust up out of the ground. It’s a massive rock formation, 1267 feet above the grassland area around it. It’s believed that the rock is made of magma that’s molten rock, but it’s no longer believed to be a volcanic plug. They think instead that the rock around it eroded away. All the rest of the surface of the Earth eroded, leaving that there. That’s amazing. Yeah, it’s called a proto light Porphyry rock. The surrounding softer rock was stripped away. It’s just, it’s amazing, by the way. Where did it get its name? Devil’s Tower? They think it may be a result of a bad translation.

Marcia Smith 13:43
Oh, yeah, for Indian translation. That’s right, wow. What

Bob Smith 13:45
is it? The site was known by the Indians as Bear Lodge. That’s what the Native Americans called it. Then they think it was associated with bears rather than evil spirits. It’s suspected a bad translation led the men to confuse the word for bear and bad God. So they confuse those two. So that’s happened more than once. So because it was bad, God, it must be the devil, the Devil’s Tower over there.

Marcia Smith 14:07
Okay, you’ll like this. That’s another voice over question. Okay, Albert Brooks was not the original choice to voice Nemos father in Finding Nemo. We all enjoyed that movie. Yes, uh huh. Which more dramatic actor was cast and then released. Was it Sean Penn, William Macy, or Daniel Day Lewis?

Bob Smith 14:27
Gee, any of those, any of those guys, would be very different, no

Marcia Smith 14:30
kidding, totally different. Feel Sean Penn

Bob Smith 14:33
would be a very snarky Nemo, Finding Nemo. Where is he at? Let’s see. I’ll say Daniel Day Lewis,

Marcia Smith 14:39
oh, good choice. But no, it is William Macy.

Bob Smith 14:41
Oh No kidding, yeah,

Marcia Smith 14:43
he was cast to do the voiceover. Well, he

Bob Smith 14:45
can be pleasant.

Marcia Smith 14:46
He can Yeah, okay, okay. Bob in the first draft of Toy Story, okay, one of our faves, instead of being a cowboy toy, Woody was what?

Bob Smith 14:57
Instead of a cowboy toy? Yeah?

Marcia Smith 14:59
Um, was he a toy soldier, a Ken doll or a ventriloquist dummy? Oh,

Bob Smith 15:05
that would have been funny. A ventriloquist dummy, who’s a toy Oh, my goodness, I would think it was probably a toy soldier.

Marcia Smith 15:13
Ah, good guess. But no, you it was the funny one. Oh, ventriloquist dummy. Yes, that would have been music, because that’s been

Bob Smith 15:20
used as a very creepy thing in movies before, yeah, but I wonder why they dropped that and went to the

Marcia Smith 15:25
cowboy. More universal. Kids like it. They don’t get the creepiness, I guess

Bob Smith 15:29
so. It is okay. Okay. Marcia, what is the least frequently used letter in English? Is it p, q, X or Z?

Marcia Smith 15:40
I should know this. I do my cryptograms every day. Q, no, X, no,

Speaker 1 15:48
Z, yes, actually, X or Z are right, because several different textual analyzes of English have confirmed that Z appears least often in writing, but the letter X fewer words start with x than any other letter.

Marcia Smith 16:06
Yeah. I wonder why?

Bob Smith 16:09
Because of people like you. Marcia, yes, okay,

Marcia Smith 16:11
all right.

Bob Smith 16:12
Marcia, I have a question to you about a restaurant. Now we if you went to New York City, there’s a lot of great restaurants you might go to. Let’s go, yeah. Okay, well, what would be the oldest restaurant in New York City that you might want to go to? Have I ever heard of this restaurant? Yes, well, if you know about American history,

Marcia Smith 16:27
you’ve heard of it. Oh, is this some place that

Speaker 2 16:30
the George Washington is associated with this? Okay, I’ll

Marcia Smith 16:35
say the Washington Inn and restaurant and pub.

Bob Smith 16:39
They already named it for him when he was alive. Yeah, no, I’ll give you some names here. Okay, okay, sweets, Francis tavern, the old homestead, or Pete’s tavern.

Marcia Smith 16:48
I like Pete’s. No, it’s not pizza that first one.

Bob Smith 16:53
It’s France’s tavern, okay? And if you’re a student of American history, that name should ring a bell, because that’s where George Washington bid farewell to his troops after the Revolutionary War in 1783 it’s the oldest restaurant in New York City. It’s on the corner of Broad and pearl in lower Manhattan, and it’s been in business since 1763 so more than 260 years. The building dates back to more than 300 years to 1719, and several floors of that building are now a museum, which is free to enter.

Marcia Smith 17:27
I’d like to look at their menu online. Yeah,

Bob Smith 17:29
that’d be fun, wouldn’t it? Okay? Another

Marcia Smith 17:31
movie pop quiz question who was originally cast as Indiana Jones for Raiders of the Lost Ark, but couldn’t get out of his TV series contract. I

Bob Smith 17:42
think it was Magnum PI. What was his name? What’s the guy’s name? The guy with the mustache, the original Magnum PI guy, come on.

Marcia Smith 17:51
Oh, all right. Was it Don Johnson? Was it Ted Danson? Was it maybe Tom Selleck? It was

Bob Smith 17:56
Tom Selleck. Oh, there you go. So they wanted him, yeah,

Marcia Smith 18:00
he was supposed to be Indiana Jones. I wonder if he’s ever felt bad about that. That guy has had a huge career. He has had a terrific career, anybody, I mean, on TV, yeah, yeah. And he’s always the star, and he’s made a zillion dollars. He’s been great in that role, though, yeah, but he would have had to run around and jump around with stakes this way right now, what’s he doing that one show, and he gets to sit at a Sunday night dinner and ahead of the table and

Bob Smith 18:26
the Blue Bloods, I think it’s called, isn’t it? He’s the family cop, family of cops. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 18:30
we got to watch that sometime, and start at the beginning. Okay, what do you got?

Speaker 1 18:34
What did the first US consumer protection law deal with? And when was it? Now, I’ll let you know what year it was. Oh, thanks. This is the first US consumer protection law, and it was in 1872 what did it deal with?

Marcia Smith 18:48
Do I have choices? No,

Bob Smith 18:51
this is the Marcia method. No choices. I’m giving you choices for the first time in years.

Marcia Smith 18:58
Thank AARP,

Bob Smith 19:00
pat yourself on the back.

Marcia Smith 19:01
I’m doing it. Okay, I don’t know, but the first US

Bob Smith 19:05
consumer protection law dealt with the use of the mail for fraudulent purposes. Oh, really. Back then he that was first enacted in 1872 making it a federal offense to use the mail for fraud. The post office, Chief, specialist, Agent pa Woodward, prosecuted professional cheats, as he called them, who were working the most wholesale and bare faced operations, mostly through the males without fear of punishment. So

Marcia Smith 19:30
be darned well. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. Okay, ready. You’ll like this too. Okay. What famous director made a cameo as a clerk at the Cook County Assessor’s Office in the movie The Blues Brothers. Remember that? Yes, was it Steven Spielberg, Quentin, Tarantino, or Ron Howard?

Bob Smith 19:51
Hmm, I wouldn’t imagine any of those guys doing that. No, I’ll say, I’ll say Ron Howard.

Marcia Smith 19:57
Steven Spielberg,

Bob Smith 19:58
no kidding, yeah, in the. Lewis brothers, yeah, I had no idea he was

Marcia Smith 20:02
the Cook County Assessor, the clerk, yeah, I got to go back and watch. Yeah, me too. Isn’t that funny? It’s

Bob Smith 20:08
funny. We saw that not long ago. That didn’t hold up real well to me. The only thing that holds up well in that movie are the musical performances. The story sucks. It just sucks. Yeah, it

Marcia Smith 20:17
is stupid. But we were into stupid at that point in our lives.

Bob Smith 20:22
What do you got next? Okay, this goes back to 1980 All right. We all know there are a lot of news men around these days. What was the ratio of news reporters to convention delegates at the 1980 Democratic National Convention? What was the ratio, the ratio of newsmen or news people to delegates, really. So

Marcia Smith 20:41
it was like two to one. It was three to one. Oh, my God, three

Bob Smith 20:44
to one. News men outnumbered delegates, three to one. Actually, news people, but probably mostly men who

Marcia Smith 20:50
was running at that race. What was it 1980

Bob Smith 20:53
you said, Yes, that was whoever was running against Ronald Reagan that year. Do we know that must have been Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter’s

Marcia Smith 20:59
here. So obviously, it drew an enormous amount of attention. TV networks

Bob Smith 21:03
outspent the Democratic Party seven times over that year, and there were 11,500 press credentials issued that year. The Democratic Party spent just $4 million to conduct the convention. The network spent 30 million. I wonder if that’s the way it’s going to be coming up in 2024 Well, I can’t wait for that. The two major party conventions within 80 miles of each other. Yeah, Milwaukee will be the Republican Convention, and the Chicago is going to be the Democratic Convention. That’s going to be quite interesting. If

Marcia Smith 21:34
you want to protest, you just have to hop on the expressway. It’s an hour and a quarter way,

Bob Smith 21:40
drive 80 miles either way and get to the other convention. Easy,

Marcia Smith 21:43
squeezy. Okay? Bob the carpet in the bad neighbors, kids house in Toy Story, remember there was a bad neighbor? Yes, in Toy Story is an homage to the set of what horror film? Was it? Psycho The Shining or the last house on the left. Wow,

Bob Smith 22:01
I don’t know, because I only saw one of those films. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 22:05
and good, good for you.

Bob Smith 22:08
Let’s see. I saw parts of the shining and then I saw psycho, parts of psycho. I’ve never seen the whole film, just not good. I don’t like horror films. Yeah, it’s all right, Bob, it’s

Marcia Smith 22:18
one, I know it’s one of the things I like about but not whining. Don’t do that. Okay, okay, the answer the carpet in the bad neighbors kids house was from The Shining, no kidding,

Bob Smith 22:31
so they used something that looked exactly like that.

Marcia Smith 22:34
Yeah, wow, that’s you got to really know your movie tidbits to know that. Okay, got another one. I’ve got

Bob Smith 22:40
a movie star question, okay, what movie star had a background of family members involved in sports, including a grandfather who won three Olympic events. He was the most versatile oarsman in US history. Oarsman, oarsman. He was from Philadelphia. Oh,

Speaker 2 22:58
I really follow that. Oarsman. Was movie star, famous movie star? Was

Marcia Smith 23:03
it somebody like Burt Lancaster? No, okay, who was it? It

Bob Smith 23:07
was Grace Kelly. Oh, really? Her grandfather was John B Kelly of Philadelphia. He won three Olympic championships, stroking pairs, fours and eights to victory. And his son, John Jr, was also a celebrated figure in sculling. So she came from a very athletic family, primarily involved in water, and then she came along and became an actress, but the Kellys of Philadelphia

Marcia Smith 23:29
were very well known. Yeah, be done. All right. Bob, last question, another

Bob Smith 23:34
movie question. Yeah, a final movie question. In your final

Marcia Smith 23:38
answer, okay, which actress was the first pick for the lead role in one of your favorite movies, alien, which eventually went to six Coronavirus. Weaver, yeah, right. Was it? Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep, or Goldie Hawn,

Bob Smith 23:54
oh, my god, I can’t imagine any one of those in there. You can’t Goldie Hawn, going, oh, you know, covering her mouth. Jane Fonda, I could see her daring them. Let’s see and who’s the other one? Meryl Streep, that just seems like a little bring down for Meryl Streep to be in that movie, but she probably was the right age at the time, a young woman, so I’ll say Meryl Streep,

Marcia Smith 24:14
ding, ding, ding, you finally got one right?

Bob Smith 24:17
What do you mean? Finally got one right?

Marcia Smith 24:19
That is exactly right. She was the one they originally picked.

Bob Smith 24:23
I didn’t know that. Yeah, that would have been very different. Yeah, when did yeah? These,

Marcia Smith 24:27
these choices always you can’t picture once you’ve loved a movie, you can’t ever picture anyone else in them,

Bob Smith 24:35
yeah, because the person who took the role really turned it into something. It created a feeling that the other person wouldn’t replicate.

Marcia Smith 24:43
That’s right, and it’s their signature, yeah, that’s their signature role, exactly.

Bob Smith 24:47
I have a question that’s kind of interesting, okay, how did an eclipse in 1764 do something that affected generations of thoroughbred horses?

Marcia Smith 24:58
Really? Yes.

Bob Smith 25:01
How did an eclipse in 1764,

Marcia Smith 25:05
yeah, did what it

Bob Smith 25:08
did, something that affected generations of thoroughbred horses. Well, the

Marcia Smith 25:12
time they ate their dinner or something. It’s

Unknown Speaker 25:14
a little bit of a trick question here. Okay,

Bob Smith 25:17
the horse’s name was Eclipse. Probably the greatest race horse in all of history. He was born in England during the sun’s eclipse of 1764, and was bred by the Duke of Cumberland. Now eclipses descendants made up most of the thoroughbred breeds of horses. Up into the 1990s he was considered so fast that horses running against him were rated 100 to one long shots, holy commodity. And in one race at York, England, carrying 168 pounds, Eclipse ran four miles in eight minutes flat. And when Eclipse died, a hoof was set in gold and preserved for posterity. That was in 1789 that horse died in all of England mourned, wow, Eclipse. I had no idea. So there’s a little bit of a trick question for you there. Thank

Marcia Smith 26:06
you, dear. All right, I’m going to finish up with a quote from Moliere. Okay, holy Moliere, who would have guessed that he had some I had no idea. He said so many interesting things. Did you know that philosopher he was? Yeah, I went. I read a lot of them, but here’s one that I like life is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think,

Bob Smith 26:29
what do you think of that? Marcia,

Marcia Smith 26:31
holy moly, yeah, I don’t know. You have to think about that. The more

Speaker 1 26:34
you think about it, the funnier you get. Okay, hey, if you’d like to send us a question or a quote. You can do that by going to our website. The offramp dot show scrolling all the way down to contact us and leave us a message. We’d love to hear from you. That’s it for this week. I’m Bob Smith. I’m

Marcia Smith 26:52
Marcia Smith. Join us again next

Bob Smith 26:53
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