Marcia Smith 0:00
What was the first item ever dispensed from a vending machine?

Bob Smith 0:05
Hmm? And why was the first traffic light a disaster for the police who operated it? answers to those another questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and

Marcia Smith 0:16
Marsha Smith

Bob Smith 0:34
Welcome to the off ramp a chance to slow down steer clear of crazy. Take a side road to sanity with some fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia tantalizing. Well, why was the first traffic light a disaster for the police who operated at Marcia?

Marcia Smith 0:49
They were colorblind. No. That

Bob Smith 0:53
wouldn’t be bad, wouldn’t it? Yeah.

Marcia Smith 0:54
They hadn’t figured out the red green yellow idea yet.

Bob Smith 0:58
They did not have that.

Marcia Smith 0:59
This was a stoplight or a stop sign. Traffic Light. Traffic Light. Yes. All right. Well,

Bob Smith 1:05
this is an 1868. So this is a long time ago. What

Marcia Smith 1:09
is this for horses?

Unknown Speaker 1:10
It was for traffic? Yes. Traffic of horses. Well,

Marcia Smith 1:14
they had tell me, okay. You’re

Bob Smith 1:18
coming up with something clever there.

Marcia Smith 1:20
I had something clever but okay. I’ve moved on. Well, according

Bob Smith 1:22
to Smithsonian Magazine, here’s the problem. It was powered by gas and it exploded. Geez. Yeah. The world’s first traffic light was erected outside the house of parliament in London in 1868. A way to ease congestion and protect pedestrians, right? Uh huh. It was operated by hand by a police officer. So

Marcia Smith 1:42
they had to have on there. Why didn’t he just stand in the middle of the road? And well, they didn’t

Bob Smith 1:46
want to do that they wanted a gas lamp with two red outstretched arms that rose when the traffic should stop and fell when the traffic was free to flow. Okay, well, it didn’t last long because in January 1869, a leaky gas pipe filled the lamps tower and caused an explosion Oh Lord, which injured the police officer operating. So the world’s first traffic light intended to reduce accidents ended up

Marcia Smith 2:09
causing one instead. And I hope he lived. I think he

Bob Smith 2:13
did don’t know that they did retire the traffic light, though. 45 years later was the first electric traffic light was installed. But it wasn’t in England. Where was that? Where was the first electric traffic light installed was Erica, who’s in the United States. What

Marcia Smith 2:28
city was New York City.

Bob Smith 2:32
It was not New York City.

Marcia Smith 2:34
It was not Boston, Washington DC. Oh, it was not Chicago Milwaukee.

Bob Smith 2:39
I could have given you. But no, nevermind. The answer is Cleveland. I thought so. Oh, yeah, of course. Cleveland in 1914. The traffic signals did return to London in 1925. They were still operated by policemen in 1925. They went to their first automated signal in 1926. But the very first traffic light a gas operated thing blew up. It was a disaster in England in 1868.

Marcia Smith 3:05
All right. Okay, Bob. I’ll give you more information. But I want to hear your first guess. Okay. What was the first item ever dispensed from a vending machine? Hmm.

Bob Smith 3:15
I think a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum. Well, that’s

Marcia Smith 3:18
a good guess.

Bob Smith 3:19
Was that it?

Marcia Smith 3:20
Not in the first century? No.

Bob Smith 3:22
Is this something it was edible? Well,

Marcia Smith 3:25
no, I it could be ingested, I think but I came up with this. Well, that’s where I’m going. Bob, a Greek engineer and mathematician named hero Alexandria.

Bob Smith 3:37
Oh, it’s Giro, sandwiches. That’s it. The hero sandwiches he was for no dispensed hero sandwiches. Oh, sorry.

Marcia Smith 3:44
He created a machine that accepted a coin and actually dispense something back in the first century in Greece. So what do you think it was cigarettes?

Bob Smith 3:52
Cigarettes? Do they smoke cigarette back in ancient No, I don’t know what the pencils. Pencils. Yeah, y’all

Marcia Smith 3:59
never guessed this. Okay. Holy Water.

Bob Smith 4:05
You had to buy hold

Marcia Smith 4:06
water? Yes, yes. He created a machine that accepted a coin and dispensed holy water. Oh, dear. The vending machine was located at all the local temples where people worship,

Speaker 1 4:18
of course, great distributorship there, and the

Marcia Smith 4:22
device helped to ensure that people were not taking more than their fair share of the holy water. Apparently that was the deal. And

Bob Smith 4:29
don’t tell me the mob had a cut of every vending machine.

Marcia Smith 4:33
That’s pretty funny. Okay. That’s a chortle. Anyway, that’s definitely the invention of necessity. Wow.

Bob Smith 4:40
So the first vending machine dispensed holy water for a coin. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 4:44
you know, the plebeians over there George are kind of taken too much holy water. Can we do something

Bob Smith 4:51
to regulate the flow of holy water? Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, Marcia, this is also ancient history, what well known places in it Ireland and France are named after and were colonized by Vikings. These are well known places in Ireland and France. Were calm.

Marcia Smith 5:08
I got a Viking question to Oh, do you? Yeah. Okay. To Viking day here at the off ramp.

Bob Smith 5:14
Let’s start with Ireland. Okay, what city in Ireland was founded by the Vikings Sablan.

Unknown Speaker 5:19
How did you know? I just guessed. Yeah.

Bob Smith 5:23
Ireland had many wealthy monasteries, when the Vikings first arrived and they would raid or trade with those monasteries. And around 840 ad they established a year round settlement in what is now modern day Dublin. And it was a apparently a base they used to raid the inland settlements and obtain timber and eventually over the centuries, they formed alliances and fought battles and established the kingdom of Dublin. And the city of Dublin became a strategic Viking trading port, one of the longest lasting Viking settlements outside of Scandinavia. All right now France, what in France is named after and was settled by the Vikings

Marcia Smith 6:01
from France. It is your

Bob Smith 6:03
home country, one of your home countries is nice. No, I was going to give you a hint if you want one, please. It was the site of a great invasion during World War Two. Oh,

Marcia Smith 6:14
that would be you know,

Bob Smith 6:16
you know,

Marcia Smith 6:17
the one that everybody knows Yeah,

Bob Smith 6:19
the one everybody knows. That’s right. It’s named for the Vikings who pillage plundered and settled there. From 1790 on the Latin name for the Vikings was not money. You know what that meant? Not money. No, the men of the North is what it meant. Oh, okay. And eventually not money became Normandy. But did you know the Vikings made it to Paris eventually.

Marcia Smith 6:40
They don’t seem to fit in with wine and cheese do.

Bob Smith 6:44
A Danish Viking expedition sailed up the Seine River to read and occupy Paris and 845 ad. Vikings. They just really got around as

Marcia Smith 6:53
I was reading little guys. Okay, Bob, why did those wacky Vikings wear those iconic horned head dresses we always see depicted?

Bob Smith 7:01
Did they actually wear those horned headdresses as my question? No. Okay,

Marcia Smith 7:07
they did it. There’s a lot of theories where it came from but

Bob Smith 7:10
I think it came from an opera didn’t they? Isn’t that a Wagnerian? Wagnerian opera? Wagner?

Marcia Smith 7:16
Absolutely. Okay, so it was a culture heist. I guess the closed dresser in that opera was the costumer. The costumer in that upper was a little over the top. Let’s put horns on these guys

Bob Smith 7:26
that was never in the actual artifacts,

Marcia Smith 7:29
but the football team seems to embrace it. Well of course. Stupid. Okay, this

Bob Smith 7:36
is a food question. The name Veena schnitzel. Ah, vino schnitzel uses the German word for which nation’s capital

Marcia Smith 7:44
for which nation? It’s not a German nation. No, it’s not a German nation. And it’s a capital

Bob Smith 7:49
capital of a German neighborhood country. Okay,

Marcia Smith 7:53
I will say Vienna schnitzel. That’s

Bob Smith 7:56
right. Vienna schnitzel. Vina schnitzel borrows his name from Vienna, Austria have thin breaded veal cutlet, Vienna. Schnitzel is German for Vienna cutlets. I’ll be darned. So that’s what Vienna schnitzel means? Vienna cutlet.

Marcia Smith 8:10
Okay, ready? Yes. This is from in the news. Okay, I new category.

Unknown Speaker 8:16
Thank you.

Marcia Smith 8:19
I was just in the first century with vending machines. And now I’m in the news. Who are what Bob is stealing surfboards from people surfing in Santa Cruz, California.

Bob Smith 8:29
Why somebody or something is stealing. So who or what? What must mean it’s an animal. Maybe a dog app makes

Marcia Smith 8:37
sense. Or dolphins maybe getting a little closer? Okay, what’s the it’s an otter. Oh, okay. And not just any otter. It’s a female pregnant otter. Oh, dear, who likes to take a few bites at your board. She jumps up the surfers board while they’re surfing. And, you know, that knocks them off and then starts munching on the board. Oh, dear, you know, could be better if she was craving pickles during this time. But people authorities warn this is not cute. They could start chewing on you and do not take a liking to them too much. And they they’re trying to capture her and put her somewhere safe because she’s becoming a big hazard.

Bob Smith 9:17
That’s interesting. Yeah, animals kept strange things. They do don’t yeah,

Marcia Smith 9:21
obviously. She’s a little off base right now with her hormonal hormonal problems.

Bob Smith 9:27
Okay, I have a question for you. Now. This is a famous folk singer. This folk singer had a mother who was Anglo Scottish and a Mexican father who was a physics professor

Marcia Smith 9:37
Joan Baez.

Bob Smith 9:38
How did you know that? I

Marcia Smith 9:39
was trying to think of someone who

Bob Smith 9:41
that’s That’s it? That’s a you caught that. Wow. I just as an odd question. I thought for sure. You’d never get that. Yeah, she was. She was Well, that’s true. She was born on Staten Island, but her father’s appointments took her to Paris, Rome, Switzerland and Baghdad. He was a physics professor. Okay.

Marcia Smith 9:56
Yeah. Interesting. Woman. Okay, I’ve

Bob Smith 9:59
got another Pop singer who is related to somebody famous. All right, why famous pop and rock singer had a grandfather who won a Nobel Prize in Physics. The hint is this person recently died. This woman recently died was a woman. Her grandfather won a Nobel Prize in Physics. She dropped out of school to be an entertainer.

Marcia Smith 10:20
Really? Yeah. Well, you certainly got my curiosity up. Another

Bob Smith 10:25
Koshi was in some movies. He was in a movie with John Travolta famous. Oh,

Marcia Smith 10:29
it was, what’s her name? Yeah, that’s who it was March. They named the blonde and everybody loved her. I bet you did, too. Didn’t check. She had three names. Yeah. Olivia Newton John. That’s it. Hey, I can pull it up. And

Bob Smith 10:42
her grandfather was Nobel Prize winning German physicist Max Born and if you look at him, he won like four or five huge international titles and awards. Her father Olivia Newton John’s father wanted to be an opera singer. But he yielded to family pressure to become a professor. He collected 1000s of records though, from Chopin to Tennessee, Ernie Ford. And that’s what hooked her on music. She became a high school dropout. She quit school at age 15. But her grandfather was a Nobel Prize winning physicist Olivia Newton John.

Marcia Smith 11:13
Okay, Bob. Here’s an interesting question. What’s the most expensive human made object in history? The

Bob Smith 11:20
most expensive human made object? I would assume it would be one of the rockets that took the astronauts to the moon that cost billions of dollars. Probably. No, no. Wait a minute. Let me see categories was it wasn’t a food? No. Was it something that was manufactured in a factory?

Unknown Speaker 11:38
Well, parts of it. Parts of it.

Bob Smith 11:42
Was it a transportation item? Yeah,

Marcia Smith 11:44
it’s the International Space Station. Okay. Well, I was close. Yeah, you were curling around the edge. So that

Bob Smith 11:50
is the most expensive human made object in history. $100 billion.

Marcia Smith 11:54
Wow. It launched in 1998. After more than a decade of careful and often difficult planning. The station is a collaboration between five space agencies from Can you name the countries

Bob Smith 12:07
that would be the United States? Russia, Japan or Yes, yes. My sweats three I get three France. Maybe. Combine

Marcia Smith 12:15
that with Germany Franco German, and you get Europe? Okay. Oh, okay. and Canada. Oh, no. Cute. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 12:24
those were the five and it was $100 billion. The

Marcia Smith 12:27
most expensive human made thing in history so far. So far. Well, well, the next Star Wars movies.

Bob Smith 12:37
That’s true. Okay, Marsha. I have a food question for you. And this is something you like a lot. Okay. I’m going to ask you what food was introduced to help a country establish a new national identity. I’ll tell you this happened in the 1930s during the Great Depression,

Marcia Smith 12:53
okay, geez, that’s it’s a country a whole country whole country was identified with a food it wasn’t the Wiener Schnitzel? No, it wasn’t.

Bob Smith 13:03
And they did two things that year. They changed the name of their country and they had a contest and came up with his food item. They changed the name of their country. Was it french toast Scotch egg, Danish pastry or Pad Thai?

Marcia Smith 13:18
Pad ties Pad Thai it was for Thailand. Yes. They were called before that Siam. That’s right. Yeah. Was the King of Siam. You will Brynner Well, that’s, that’s

Bob Smith 13:29
the movies and then the king and ash stage but after helping to an Siams absolute monarchy, the new prime minister of Siam Luang ki Bong soo Grom, he took steps in the 1930s to modernize and unite his country. And among other things, the government decided to rename the country of Siam. They named it Thailand, and they held a food competition for a new Thai national dish. And the contest was intended to encourage Thais to move away from rice as their primary food staple because they wanted to be able to sell more rice stocks as exports to help the country out of the Great Depression. Hmm, weird.

Marcia Smith 14:05
So they went to noodles and Pad Thai. Yeah, so

Bob Smith 14:08
Pad Thai, a stir fry noodle recipe one my favorite Thai food. Yeah. And guess what Chinese immigrants who came to Thailand introduced that and then it’s been adapted using local ingredients. And then that became quickly a symbol of Thai identity Pad Thai. Well, then the Japanese invaded Thailand and eating Pad Thai became a patriotic act in itself a symbol of resistance to colonial powers. But after the war, what did the government do to promote pad tie? This is interesting. They really took an active role after the Second World War did

Marcia Smith 14:39
they do to promote it? They bought up all the noodles, franchises, and

Bob Smith 14:44
there were no noodle franchises back then. Yeah, I

Marcia Smith 14:47
didn’t know. No, I’m kidding. No, I don’t know.

Bob Smith 14:49
The Public Welfare Department launched a campaign to teach and sell Pad Thai across the country. They took street vendors and trained them to make the dish using standard rest pizza ingredients and pad thai became a popular street food. And then it eventually became a staple in Thai restaurants around the world.

Marcia Smith 15:07
I’m getting hungry. I love that stuff. Okay, it’s a you know, and they adapt

Bob Smith 15:11
that to all kinds of regional tastes, preferences. Some Pad Thai dishes include tofu chicken or shrimp and others might use different vegetables or spices. What’s your favorite is usually

Marcia Smith 15:19
Chicken,

Bob Smith 15:21
chicken. Okay,

Marcia Smith 15:22
no tofu. That ain’t gonna happen.

Bob Smith 15:25
Anyway, I thought that was interesting. So that’s a food that was introduced by a government to help the country establish a new national identity. Yeah.

Marcia Smith 15:31
Okay. I have a quick question before we go to break. Okay. What’s the first city in the world to reach a population of 1 million people? I

Bob Smith 15:39
thought it was London, England. But I bet it was Beijing, China or some other country. Wait a minute. Something in the ancient world?

Speaker 2 15:47
Yeah. A million people mind 33 BC?

Bob Smith 15:51
Well, I would think it would be China or India somewhere. All right. Where is it? Rome,

Marcia Smith 15:55
Italy. Oh, no kid in Rome. First one to reach a million people in when? 133 BC holy cow. Hard to think about that.

Bob Smith 16:05
Isn’t it? Just think of the sewage problems you’d have with a

Marcia Smith 16:08
million people they were busy with via docks and stuff as I recall. They

Bob Smith 16:11
were good engineers. They handle all that stuff, didn’t they? Yeah. Well, material

Marcia Smith 16:14
handling, and they had little Roman skid steers.

Bob Smith 16:17
Okay. We’ll be back with more in just a moment. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob

Marcia Smith 16:22
and Marsha Smith.

Bob Smith 16:25
Okay, we’re back. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith. We do this every week for the Cedarburg Public Library’s Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and it’s internet radio station after that. We put it on podcast platforms and it’s distributed around the world. So Marsha, what’s your next question? Why

Marcia Smith 16:40
is money Bob often called dough? I don’t have any dough in my wallet. Yeah. Where does that come from?

Speaker 1 16:47
Is it related to being associated with food in some fashion? Indeed. Okay. Okay, so money was related to dough because it was traded and in exchange for things at one point, I don’t have any dough. So I didn’t have any food in order to trade with you.

Marcia Smith 17:03
Sorry, dad. Not really, but just buy and sell actually, around the mid 1800s British school boys would often spend their pocket money on sweets or baked dough from the pastry shop. Okay, when their allowance ran out, they would ask their folks for more dough money. Oh, that makes sense. I want more dough money. Soon the words became interchangeable and money became just dough. I didn’t

Bob Smith 17:28
know that’s where it came from. Yeah. Huh. Dough money. And other food question. They originated in China, but Europeans thought they came from Iran. Were they apples? plantains? Peaches, papaya or pineapple? What did the English and the French and the Germans all think came from a RAM but they actually came from China originally.

Marcia Smith 17:48
I’ll say peaches. That’s it. By I’m guessing good today.

Bob Smith 17:52
And you talk about going back in time, peaches have been cultivated in China for at least 8000 years.

Marcia Smith 17:59
No kidding. That’s amazing. That’s a lot of peaches. Holy. Come on. The fruit made

Bob Smith 18:03
its way to Persia, a region of Iran where it flourished and ancient Romans believed Persians were the ones who created them. So they call them per succumb or Persian apples, but they came originally. Peaches from China. Okay,

Marcia Smith 18:18
Bob 50% of American kids today. wear braces. That’s harder. It’s pricey. Yeah. So why is it so commonplace now? Why your teeth so crooked? Yeah. Just commonplace. So many kids have I would imagine

Bob Smith 18:33
some of it is just the fact that people want cosmetic perfection if possible. So that’s available. And it’s it’s interesting because they have you know, not just the metal but like those ones I’ve used before those plastic see through yeah, those are great. People don’t even need to do but why? I don’t know why. According

Marcia Smith 18:51
to history, facts that come. The advent of agriculture changed the human diet, which led to a smaller job than around 10,000 BCE, our hunter gatherer predecessors child on much tougher food and much bigger, stronger jaws. They had to have to get through it. But over time, agriculture brought softer foods a more gentle way of eating, you’d have to rip everything apart. Yeah, right. Yeah, we still had 32 teeth, but they didn’t fit quite so comfortably into a smaller job. And our jaws kept getting smaller, and teeth have gotten smaller, but they’re much slower to downsize. So what’s the reason again, our teeth are too crowded in our mouth. Our jaws have gotten smaller than the good old days when we were hunter gatherers. So we haven’t evolved properly. That’s right. This is history.com pop.

Bob Smith 19:42
Oh, no, they get into dentistry there. That’s interesting. history.com and your dentist, that information.

Marcia Smith 19:51
Anyway, the answer is agriculture is the reason that we have so many kids with braces. Wow, that

Bob Smith 19:57
is really a stretch, isn’t it? I

Marcia Smith 19:58
thought so. That’s why is here. Okay, I’m

Bob Smith 20:01
glad to finally get to that answer. I didn’t know where we were going there. Marcia, how did the feet of ancient horses differ from the horses of today?

Marcia Smith 20:11
They were bigger. No. No. I they had more toes. They

Bob Smith 20:20
had more toes. Oh, yeah, I did it again. Oh, my toes two horses have now.

Marcia Smith 20:24
I never counted them. I’ll say for no, they have one

Bob Smith 20:29
tau, one tau and tau encased in a hoof, you know, hard, hard shell. But originally, horses once had hooved toes. Instead of a single hoof. They check the hoof prints and foot bones of modern horses and compared them with fossil records. They found that ancient horses had four toes in front and three behind a total of seven toes. These are all little toes. Yeah, each was individually hooved in an underlying footpad. So the footpads is think of your dog or something. They have little foot. Yeah, well, horses had those but originally had seven with toes in each one. So

Marcia Smith 21:05
why did they evolve out?

Bob Smith 21:07
It was agriculture martial? No, I don’t know why. I just thought I’d say that. Anyway, by contrast, modern equids that’s what they call horses, zebras and asses. They have one toe, the leftover original third toe on each foot, and that toe is encased in a thick walled hoof. So that’s it, instead of seven toes each individually hooved. Today’s horses have one toe encased in a single hoof. And that’s due to evolution. I don’t think agriculture had anything to do with it.

Marcia Smith 21:35
That’s a curious evolutionary process. Let’s reduce the toes on these animal there’s

Bob Smith 21:41
a reason they didn’t need them after a while. Apparently. Toes in the backward to help be stable. Yeah.

Marcia Smith 21:45
Interesting. Now, did they get stable? Oh, no, no,

Bob Smith 21:49
they can stand up on their own two feet, so to speak, although they have four, don’t they?

Marcia Smith 21:53
Okay. One word of mouth question. Another

Bob Smith 21:56
mouth question. Oh, my God. Okay. What is this one?

Marcia Smith 21:59
What major event helped to normalize daily toothbrushing in the United States,

Bob Smith 22:05
a major event? Yeah. Help to normalize toothbrushing? Yeah. Was this a political event? In a manner of speaking? Was there an invention or something that caliber? No,

Marcia Smith 22:15
no, I’ll tell you. When the boys marched off to World War Two, the army required them to brush their teeth every day because they can’t afford for everybody to have two things and infections and everything while they’re out on the battlefield. So they got in the habit of doing that. And they brought that habit home with them. I’ll be darned. And taught it to their family. The health of everybody Yeah. Yeah. And wasn’t the single one but it was a big thing. United States anything

Bob Smith 22:42
that’s not that long ago. It took that long for us to come up with modern toothbrushing everyday techniques.

Marcia Smith 22:49
Some people just do it here and there. Geez, I

Bob Smith 22:51
don’t know that’s strange. Okay. Think of all those people like kissing and everything in those 20 songs and they weren’t brushing their teeth. Oh, Lord. Well, you don’t know that. Well, apparently wasn’t a big habit everybody had what you just told me all right, Marcia, let’s go back in time what song and what group received the first gold record? For more than 1 million copies of a disk? Group? What song and what group bounties?

Marcia Smith 23:17
That’s not asking.

Bob Smith 23:19
Oh, come on. Martin. Can

Marcia Smith 23:20
you give me a decade? Yes.

Bob Smith 23:21
I’ll give you the 40s Okay, early 40s.

Marcia Smith 23:24
Okay. Would it be like the Andrew sisters? No. Would it be like the Andrew brothers?

Unknown Speaker 23:32
Thanks. So it’s a band it says Oh,

Marcia Smith 23:35
data in the mood was it him?

Unknown Speaker 23:39
You got the right band? Goodman? No, that’s not any good Mitch?

Marcia Smith 23:42
No, wait a second. Who was it?

Bob Smith 23:46
Well, that’s like a salad soup names or Misha? No, it’s not.

Marcia Smith 23:50
It’s yeah, I know the song and I know the

Bob Smith 23:53
new the song. The song is about a train chat to new god choo choo. That’s it. That’s the song. Bye.

Marcia Smith 24:00
Bye. Hold on that that that.

Bob Smith 24:04
Glenn Miller, I’ll give it to you.

Marcia Smith 24:05
Thank you. I know Glenn Miller. We have his records. That was 1942

Bob Smith 24:08
RCA Victor sprayed a copy of the recording with gold paint and present it to the orchestra leader. Now there were million sellers before but the gold record tradition started with RCA and Glenn Miller and Chattanooga Choo Choo was the song. Our

Marcia Smith 24:24
son Benjamin when he was five Glenn Miller was one of his favorites.

Unknown Speaker 24:29
He liked in the mood. Oh, absolutely did interesting.

Marcia Smith 24:32
I loved it. Okay. I’m gonna give you a multiple choice here.

Bob Smith 24:36
Oh, thank you.

Marcia Smith 24:36
Because you often give me that. Yes, I

Speaker 2 24:38
do. Okay, what is the most stolen food in the world? The most stolen food in the world? Yeah.

Marcia Smith 24:45
Is it wine? Is a cheese, nuts or meat? This is the world wine.

Bob Smith 24:51
Cheese. Nuts are meat. I bet it’s nuts. Bet more people steal nuts than anything else wrong. Okay, then. Is it meat? No, like Hot Dogs. Okay. Like I said, it’s none of those can’t be wine. Is it?

Marcia Smith 25:05
No. Okay, so

Bob Smith 25:06
what was the other one? Cheese? No, it’s not that people steal cheese more

Marcia Smith 25:11
than anything else in the world time. A Time magazine survey reported that an estimated 90 point 6 million tons of cheese is stolen every year. Wow. That’s 4% of the world’s production is stolen. Yeah. And unlike other commonly shoplifted items, cheese is rarely protected with security tags, you know? Yeah, Cheez Its desired. It’s can be very expensive. It’s small, and it’s bacteria.

Bob Smith 25:39
You’re stealing bacteria. Oh my god.

Marcia Smith 25:42
So the answer Bob is cheese. Wow.

Bob Smith 25:44
Who would have thought? Okay, Marcia, there are 143 million US passports today. How many do you think there were in 1989 1989?

Marcia Smith 25:53
Yeah, I’ll say 75 minutes?

Bob Smith 25:57
No, in 1989, there were only 7 million, 7 million passports for a population of approximately 245 million people. In other words, 30 years ago, less than 3% of the US population had passports. Today. 40% of people in the US have passports. It’s got to be higher than almost anywhere else in the world. I don’t

Marcia Smith 26:19
know. Just an amazing one on their traveling boots and got those passports.

Bob Smith 26:23
Wow, that is just incredible. What year did you get your first passport? Oh, gee, not until 19 Miles 1989. As a matter of fact, yeah. That year. Wow. We

Marcia Smith 26:34
go to Paris. 1998. Yeah, so Okay,

Bob Smith 26:39
amazing. 40% of us people today have passports only 3% had them 38 years ago.

Marcia Smith 26:45
Okay. I’m gonna wrap it up with a couple of quotes. Robert. first started going to Buddha. Three things cannot be long hidden. The sun, the moon and the truth.

Speaker 1 26:55
That’s good. That’s very good. Yeah. Nice, elegant. On

Marcia Smith 27:00
that subject. George Orwell, in times of deceit. Telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Bob Smith 27:06
It is a revolutionary portions of time recently. We’re telling the truth is revolutionary.

Marcia Smith 27:12
That’s why I used it. Yes, it certainly seems that way.

Bob Smith 27:15
Wow. That’s great. Yeah. Well, we would like to remind you, we would love it if you would rate and review us on the podcast platform on which you listen to our show. And we would invite you to submit any questions if you’d like to to us, you can go to our website, the off ramp dot show and scroll down to contact us by Bob Smith.

Unknown Speaker 27:34
I’m Marcia Smith. Join us again next

Bob Smith 27:35
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.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai