199 Near The Summit Trivia

Bob Smith 0:00
What us coin was first minted because a mining tycoon had two friends in Congress

Marcia Smith 0:07
why were British sailors called limeys answers to

Bob Smith 0:10
those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and

Marcia Smith 0:15
me Marcia dear

Bob Smith 0:36
Welcome to the off ramp ha My goodness where a chance to slow down steer somewhat clear of crazy and take a side road to sanity with some fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. Okay, Marcia what US coin was first minted because a mining tycoon had two friends in Congress. Gosh,

Marcia Smith 0:59
yeah got me. A mining tycoon. I’m trying to think of what was it how did you phrase that question what

Bob Smith 1:06
US coin was first minted because a mining tycoon had two friends in Congress.

Marcia Smith 1:12
I can’t think of what what coin related to mining. I don’t know the buffalo nickel is

Bob Smith 1:18
the nickel. It is the nickel is it? Yes because the Pennsylvania mining tycoon John Wharton. He was looking for a market for his product nickel, and to friends the actual yeah actual mineral mineral nickel and he had two friends in high places Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and William D. Kelly, and they pushed through legislation authorizing the US Mint to manufacture five cent pieces made out of the metal. The first one was issued in 1866. Oddly enough, they were never officially called nickels. They were called five cent pieces. But the year they came out they first came out in 1866 been made ever since. And guess what? That’s not a good name for them. Nickel isn’t a good name for them. Right? Because they’ve never been fully made out of nickel. There’s only 25% of the coin. That’s nickel. The rest is copper. It’s an alloy.

Marcia Smith 2:17
All right. Why did American sailors call British sailors limeys? Bob, they were

Bob Smith 2:22
known across the seas for eating lemons and limes.

Marcia Smith 2:27
That’s right. And why because

Bob Smith 2:28
of the disease. Is it scurvy?

Marcia Smith 2:31
It is okay. It is scurvy was the scourge for 1000s of years. Yeah, it’s a dietary deficiency scurvy caused by the lack of vitamin C. That’s it. Okay, and the Royal Navy cracked the code and solve the mystery in the 18th century, thanks to a surgeon James Lind, who got the British Navy to give it sailors lime or lemon juice when they were out to sea and by golly, that saved their lives. The Americans finally came on board so to speak with the cure in the 1800s

Bob Smith 3:06
but they made fun of them call them limeys lives all the time. That was the smart thing to do. That’s

Marcia Smith 3:11
right. They weren’t dying and the Americans were so so who was stupid? That’s right, who changed their mind. All

Bob Smith 3:19
right, Marcia, what digital voice assistant was named after a famous ancient library. A current digital voice assistant. We have multiple ones out there. Yeah, I’m trying to think of if Siri we have Alexa. We have others. That’s still

Marcia Smith 3:35
me too. I knew

Bob Smith 3:36
well. Wow. It’s one of those ones that

Marcia Smith 3:38
help. Alexa. Yes.

Bob Smith 3:41
Alexa was named after the ancient library of Alexandria in Egypt. That’s where the name came from. It’s

Marcia Smith 3:47
cool. Yeah.

Bob Smith 3:48
According to the Bradstone book, Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos had the invention of a global empire. Amazon considered a number of names. Another one was Friday, Friday was Robinson Crusoe, his right hand assistant, and otherwise, Samantha they be which TV series which another choice was Jacqueline, that was Jeff Bezos, his mother’s name. Oh, really. But ultimately, the team decided on Alexa. I like that after the library in Alexandria, Egypt, which was a center of knowledge and learning. Okay, now, Alexa was actually embedded in Poland though. Her name was Ivona. There. He was inspired by the 2001 A Space Odyssey. Yeah, sorry, Dave. I can’t turn off your computer. Yeah. Inspired by hell.

Marcia Smith 4:33
Okay, here we go. I bet you get this one right to buy. Okay. What did Netflix just stop doing?

Bob Smith 4:39
They just stopped. They just stop issuing DVDs.

Marcia Smith 4:43
Pat’s right. Yes, that’s right. Do you know what the last Blu ray Disc they mailed out? What was it? I want to take a guess?

Bob Smith 4:51
Was it a movie? Yeah. What was it maybe like the Tom Cruise film? Oh,

Marcia Smith 4:55
that would be a good guess. But this movie goes back to 1969 Really? Yeah, the last one they mailed out was true grit.

Bob Smith 5:04
Oh, no kidding. The John Wayne version.

Marcia Smith 5:06
Yeah. Wow. Isn’t that funny? And you know what the first one they mailed that was 25 years ago. Beetle juice. So beetle juice to True Grit. Yeah. And you know, after they mailed everybody their last orders, they let everybody keep their movies.

Bob Smith 5:21
Oh, really? So they didn’t have to return that. Yeah, that was the deal. You had to return those. Yes, this Yeah. Remember, there was a time where streaming hadn’t caught on quite as much. And they said, Well, that’s it. We’re not going to do this anymore. And boy, it was there an uproar among people who said we get our DVDs from Yeah, do you mean Yeah. And they went back and did it? Yeah, I went back and kept them going.

Marcia Smith 5:41
I forgot the number. But there were a lot of disks still being mailed out every day. That’s

Bob Smith 5:46
a smart thing to keep going until it finally peters out, you know, because otherwise somebody else could pick that up and taking it over. So yeah. All right. I want to go back to Alexa. Alexa, this is interesting. You know, we think of Alexa is just in your TV or on your Amazon device. But it’s used in all kinds of things. Right now. It’s used in Garmin GPS devices. It’s used in smart home devices made by GE LG first alert, Kohler and nest. And it’s used for calming sounds by Sesame Street two. I didn’t know that. And Fitbit users. And then Alexa works with Domino’s Pizza GrubHub and Pizza Hut to all these things, including the digital voice assistants and Ford, BMW, Toyota and Lexus and Volkswagen cars are actually Alexa with many different voices and many different language. Oh, yeah. All right. So that’s like a hidden business of Amazon mazing

Marcia Smith 6:41
they got a few bits they do have a few Yes. Okay, Bob, where will you find a beach in the world that glows in the dark glows

Bob Smith 6:50
in the dark? Isn’t that cool? I always heard the there was a beach in Hawaii that was green I thought it was or something like that. Or there was a beach that had it was colored glass is what it was but glows in the dark. I don’t know the answer to that. It’s in

Marcia Smith 7:05
the Maldives. If you were wowed by remember those glow in the dark stars and ceiling? Oh yeah, the bedroom? Our kids right? All right, just book a trip to the Maldives. It’s there you can see on one of their 1000 islands in the Indian Ocean Maha Blue Island, one beach. It glows in the dark by a completely natural phenomenon. Thanks to crustaceans known as seed shrimp

Bob Smith 7:30
seed shrimp

Marcia Smith 7:32
seed seed shrimp seed shrimp pass, thanks to an effect these millimeter long creatures emit a blue light for as long as a minute or more in the dark.

Bob Smith 7:43
That’s what makes the beach glow. Yep. Hmm.

Marcia Smith 7:46
Scientists aren’t sure why they do. But some believe it happens when a mass mortality event occur. Oh

Bob Smith 7:53
dear. Sounds very sad. This

Marcia Smith 7:55
mortality never sounds fast mortality.

Bob Smith 7:58
Okay. Okay, so what feature of a US National Park was once used as a laundromat? And here’s my quote to you. You’ve been there. Oh, okay. What feature of a US National Park was once used as a laundromat?

Marcia Smith 8:14
Well, Yellowstone. Was it the sulphur pits those? Those bumbling Yes, it’s

Bob Smith 8:19
the Upper Geyser Basin where Old Faithful can be found. Yeah, and there’s scalding geothermal waters. The people that were early visitors put those things to practical use in their minds. So they not only boiled eggs in the hot geothermal waters they also wash their clothes in them. Well how did they not burn their hands? I’m sure they dunk them in and pull them out but they turned early Yellowstone into a makeshift laundromat that isn’t that funny. That comes from britannica.com That’s how they described it. I thought that was a good way to describe it.

Marcia Smith 8:50
That’s that’s an amusing visual isn’t it imagery in your head?

Bob Smith 8:54
These measures the park rangers they’re like, oh, no, no, no, we’re not doing that. Let’s

Marcia Smith 8:59
clean our socks.

Bob Smith 9:00
Get away from the buffalo. wash your clothes over there.

Marcia Smith 9:03
All right, Bob, the largest pipe organ in the world is in broadwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Hi to many pipes, approximately, do you think it hash

Bob Smith 9:14
is 600 pipes? No,

Marcia Smith 9:19
how many? 33,000 Oh,

Bob Smith 9:23
really? Can you believe sounds like that would that must be monstrous. And so you should

Marcia Smith 9:28
see. Look at the picture. Okay, the Midmar Losch pipe organ weighs over 150 tons with eight origa chambers and 32 footsteps. Wow. It also taps the world record for the loudest Oregon staff with an eardrum shattering max of 130 decibels six times louder than a train whistle.

Bob Smith 9:49
Oh, and I can’t imagine that. So

Marcia Smith 9:53
if we go honey, you can take a guided tour and climb in and out of the chambers of the pipe or you’d

Bob Smith 9:59
love me to do that. then you just hit that chord and Bob’s eardrums would vibrate and explode.

Marcia Smith 10:05
They build it. It took three years to build between 1929 and 1932. Well, that’s a feat of engineering 33,000 pipes.

Bob Smith 10:15
Did you know at one point before clocks came out before clocks and watches were made organs were considered the most complex devices. You know, inventions made by man. I

Marcia Smith 10:27
didn’t know. Yeah, pretty interesting. Makes sense. I guess. Okay,

Bob Smith 10:30
Marsha. I have a question here about a US landmark. Okay. Here’s a bit of trivia caught my eye recently. It was in an email from britannica.com. The question is what American landmark is and oficial optical illusion. Oh, really? A US landmark? That’s an optical illusion.

Marcia Smith 10:50
Oh, well, you got me. I have no idea.

Bob Smith 10:52
Another clue is it seems to be taller than it is wide. Need to?

Marcia Smith 11:01
I don’t know. I

Bob Smith 11:02
think I’m taller than I am wide. But then I see the mirrors like No, no, Bob. You’re wider than you are. Okay. It is the St. Louis Gateway Arch. Oh, really? Yeah. It seems to be when you look at it. It appears to be taller than it is why? Yeah, I’ve been there. It’s exactly 630 feet in each direction. Oh, no kidding. You’d have to be elevated in order to see it the way it actually truly looks. You went there today. Oh, yeah. been there before. To most people it appears wider than taller. But as Architectural Digest notes. The reason that is because people don’t usually see it head on head on. You’d have to be 315 feet off the ground. And it’s only 600 feet tall. So yeah, as a result, most people see that structure almost looks taller than it does wide. All right. Aside from being an optical illusion. What other distinction? Does it have? The I don’t know. I mean, in terms of being tall. Oh,

Marcia Smith 11:55
is it the tallest thing in the area? It is

Bob Smith 11:59
in that area? Yeah. But it’s the tallest National Monument. It’s taller than the Washington Monument is? Is it really? Yeah. And it’s taller than the Statue of Liberty to? Now this was built in 1967. When it finally came? Yeah. What President approved the concept for it, not the candidate design Kennedy. Kennedy. No,

Marcia Smith 12:18
no. back further. Yes. Before him? Well,

Bob Smith 12:23
Eisenhower, yes. Is No no, no, not Eisenhower. No, no, not Truman. I don’t know that Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The money of it began all the way back in 1935 when FDR designated the property along the riverfront and St. Louis to be developed as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. And it took a long time. There was a design contest in 1947. We’ll talk about that coming up. Okay, you’re listening to the off ramp with Bob Mr. Shep Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment. Oh, my ears. I thought that was like the pipe organ. This is Bob Smith with Marcia Smith. You’re listening to the off ramp. And this is a show we do for the Cedarburg, Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and their internet radio station. We’re on the air every Monday night at seven. And then after that, our show goes out all over the world. But I took that away from your Porsche cars. Our show goes out on podcast platforms

Marcia Smith 13:22
all over the world. There

Bob Smith 13:24
we go. Okay.

Marcia Smith 13:26
Okay, Bob. Born in 1936. Hooray, Mario Bergoglio but was a nightclub bouncer in his younger years. Okay. He also had jobs sweeping floors in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Okay, okay, what became of this young man? All right. What’s

Bob Smith 13:46
his name again?

Marcia Smith 13:47
Hooray, Mario Bergoglio.

Bob Smith 13:50
He became a movie star. No. Oh, okay. He became a he became a physics professor. No, I don’t know what he what happened to

Marcia Smith 13:58
him. He became and is known today as Pope Francis. Why? Yeah, he

Bob Smith 14:03
was a nightclub bouncer. Yeah. Oh, you’re kidding. No, I never heard that.

Marcia Smith 14:09
He was the people’s Pope who took his role as leader of the Catholic Church in 2013. And is still that way today.

Bob Smith 14:17
Good Lord. I had no idea. A nightclub bouncer. But a very nice when

Marcia Smith 14:25
it invites you to fight.

Bob Smith 14:28
Just a gentle little I’m sorry. You don’t have the blessings to come here. How would you turn down people if you’re a nightclub bouncer who’s going to become a pope.

Marcia Smith 14:36
He was called the People’s Pope for a reason. Wow. That’s interesting. All right,

Bob Smith 14:40
during World War Two, Marcia, what US state did America try to build a canal across the United States government tried to build a canal across a state in

Marcia Smith 14:52
the contiguous states. Yes. And

Bob Smith 14:54
it was meant to help the transportation of certain mineral

Marcia Smith 14:58
Oh, Okay, like iron ore or something like that of a certain substance, a certain substance. Was it like maybe salt from the ocean and tried to get Okay. Give me a location.

Bob Smith 15:11
Okay, it was in Florida. That’s the answer, though, right?

Marcia Smith 15:14
Yeah, I was looking for a South north or east. All right, it was Florida. I’ll

Bob Smith 15:18
tell you how can we go the project began in World War Two. And it went on and on and was finally scuttled 30 years later in the 1970s. But in 1942, Congress by a single vote, authorized the construction of a canal across the width of Central Florida. The idea was to find a way for Texas petroleum to be shipped by barge from the Gulf of Mexico to the East Coast, with minimal exposure to German submarines. Okay, that’s the reason they wanted to do it. All right. It was kind of a stop and start thing with politically connected real estate interests arguing to keep it going. And it did keep going. Till 30 years later, in 1971. The cross Florida Barge Canal was only 1/3 complete when President Richard Nixon halted the work for environmental reasons. Probably

Marcia Smith 16:03
a good thing. Oh, here’s that here’s a question in your favorite wheelhouse graveyards. Oh, thank you. Where or what is the oldest maintained graveyard in the United States?

Bob Smith 16:16
I think that is in Boston, Massachusetts. It’s either there or it’s in made it maybe it’s in St. Augustine, because that’s the oldest city that’s like 1564 So I’ll go with that. I’ll go with St. August. Oh,

Marcia Smith 16:31
very good. No,

Bob Smith 16:32
it wouldn’t be very good. No,

Marcia Smith 16:34
it’s in Duxbury. Massachusetts is in Massachusetts. Right. Okay. It is called the mile Standish burial ground. I

Bob Smith 16:42
think that’s where I think that might be where my ancestor George soul of the pilgrims relief. So

Marcia Smith 16:49
I was gonna ask you It dates back to 1638 Standish, the famous military leader of the Plymouth colony is buried there, along with other Mayflower pilgrims and I was going to ask you, I think you’re I think that’s where he is. I think we ever go out that way. Let’s take a look. Oh, I’m

Bob Smith 17:05
glad you said that. I was always planning on pulling that on us. Like I need to go to the cemetery March and you’re gonna go Oh, not again.

Marcia Smith 17:12
If there’s a wine bar close by. Oh, you can drop me off. Okay. Say

Bob Smith 17:17
Marcia, back to memorials. Okay. Okay. What National Monument did a father and son submit competing designs for? One of our famous national monuments? Was

Marcia Smith 17:29
it presidents in the mountain top? Mount Rushmore? Yeah,

Bob Smith 17:33
there was a father and son completed that. Yeah, right. This is a father and son who competed for the design for the monument. Okay. I don’t know. It’s the same one we talked about earlier. The St. Louis gateway arts? Oh, yes. Yeah, there was a contest held in 1947. And there was confusion over who won because among the 170 submissions was a design from acclaimed Finnish American aerial seryan featuring a tall stone gate, his son, Arrow also entered and several months later, a telegram arrived at the Syrian offices to inform the younger Syrian arrow that he made the shortlist however, it was addressed to Ariel his father by mistake, so T father and son both celebrated with champagne. Oh, that’s good dad and everything. Then when the administrative error came back to them saying I’m sorry, it’s not the father. It’s the son. Oh, dear. They went ahead and opened a second bottle of champagne. Yeah, and toasted Aereo instead? Well, that’s in the shed to his design is the one that resonated the most with the Joker’s, which was the big arch. Yeah, the steel arch. Yeah. That’s only two years after World War Two, that design was approved. So that was a pretty neat new design, you know,

Marcia Smith 18:44
yeah. They didn’t start building it till late 60s, mid 60s. And I went there in the early 70s. And it didn’t look like much to me, then it was all pretty crude yet on the bottom and the dirt. Was there.

Bob Smith 18:56
The landscaping? Was it done? Yeah. But I just thought, Well, what

Marcia Smith 18:59
the hell is that? But it actually, you know, it was the gateway to the west. That’s right. That’s the idea. That’s the idea.

Bob Smith 19:06
I’m glad you finally figured it out. I did. Hey, okay. Here’s another trivia question on that, since we’re on it, only one US president has ever been up inside the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Why?

Marcia Smith 19:20
Why? Because, uh, well, they can’t protect him up there.

Bob Smith 19:24
That’s right. Yeah. If you go up and you come back down, and it’s very confined space, in the Secret Service said, That is too much of a national security risk. So only one US president ever did it. And it was after he was US president who was it? Oh, after

Marcia Smith 19:39
he left office? It was. It was

Bob Smith 19:44
Ronald Reagan. No, it was Eisenhower. Okay, he took a trip up the arch Secret Service said okay, you can’t announce this. It can’t be a part of your official itinerary and it has to be outside the regular opening hours. So they did it at night in secret. He Was the President who signed off on the memorial? Oh, okay. So it was built

Marcia Smith 20:03
and he wanted to go up. He wanted to go. Alright, Bob. Ian Fleming. Yes. What did he write? James

Bob Smith 20:09
Bond books? Yes, James dirty when I was grew up did you know that he had little sex scenes in there which today are very tame, but at the time was like, I’m gonna get another one of those to read. You know,

Marcia Smith 20:20
titillated. You

Bob Smith 20:21
did oh, yeah, okay.

Marcia Smith 20:22
Well, what was his character’s name? In the rough draft in the original draft of Casino Royale?

Bob Smith 20:31
It was some kind of real lame name, wasn’t it? But I can’t remember what it was. I read about this once. Fleming

Marcia Smith 20:37
called him James secret 10. Secret.

Bob Smith 20:43
That sounds very lame does. James

Marcia Smith 20:46
secretin

Bob Smith 20:48
James Bond James Bond That’s

Marcia Smith 20:50
right. But Ian’s brother Peter suggested he named double oh seven the protagonists after a real life hero in the Secret Intelligence Service and call the guy Rodney Clarence Mortimer bond. Even worse, Rodney Bond didn’t work. But he kept the original first name James and he went with the bond James Bond. Yeah, that’s how it was

Bob Smith 21:14
James secretive or Rodney bond. Isn’t that interesting?

Marcia Smith 21:17
Right? He he compromised on that name. It was a good, obviously, iconic name.

Bob Smith 21:23
This is an interesting bit of trivia here, Marsha. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Highlander folk center in Tennessee. Know the Highlander folk center in Tennessee profited in the 1960s because it owned the royalties to one particular song What song was it? Now here’s a hint. The Highlander folk center trained a lot of civil rights activist in nonviolent protest methods. So What song did they have? Find their organization?

Marcia Smith 21:50
The only one I can think of is, we shall overcome that’s the one yeah, that

Bob Smith 21:55
song was copyrighted in Nashville by a Tennessee School teacher, Guy Karawang. The song was heard by zoafia Horton who became the director of that center, Horton taught it to Pete Seeger. They changed it around a little bit, and they added a more of a rhythmic touch to it. They worked with Karwan he copyrighted the song and he directed all royalties to the Highlander folk center. And that’s nice. They had a lot of different songs there, that they’re credited with turning into civil rights marches, like this little light of mine and we shall not be moved and we shall overcome. The song is now in the public domain.

Marcia Smith 22:29
Oh, okay. Good to know, Bob. What famous author wrote novels with a cramp

Bob Smith 22:35
with a crayon? He wrote novels with a crayon famous famous. Wasn’t that the guy who wrote the roadbook the back? Yes, wasn’t it? No, not Kerouac. No, you didn’t write with Krantz. Okay, who did? I don’t know. James choice. Oh, really? Can

Marcia Smith 22:52
you imagine? Oh

Bob Smith 22:53
my god, can

Marcia Smith 22:54
you imagine it took him 17 years to write Finnegans Wake with dreary stories. God, have you ever read an entire James Joyce don’t have you know,

Bob Smith 23:04
have you read a portion of a James Joyce novel

Marcia Smith 23:06
pieces?

Bob Smith 23:07
It has a lot of his work at Southern Illinois University in the rare book room. I remember. I don’t know it was donated by somebody there and they had a case and you could look through it and see some of the was it scary stuff? I didn’t remember crayons. No, I can’t remember. Why do you think he wrote With a cry? Did

Marcia Smith 23:24
he write with a crayons? The question. Okay. Why did he write with a crayon because he had such terrible eyesight. And he had to write big and bold so he could read it and see it. Geez. Yeah, it large crowds helped him to see what he was writing. As a child. He had a severe issue with eyesight and by the time he reached his 20s these problems only got worse with a bout of rheumatic fever. Oh, that’s sad. Yeah. So but he bounced Yes. He used to write on his belly in bed so the light would reflect off the word so we could see him. Oh,

Bob Smith 23:57
that’s just sounds terrible. Does porque doesn’t make me want to read his books? No. Okay. I have a couple of questions to wrap things up here. That monument you refer to with the faces known as Mount Rushmore. Okay. If you compare the Sphinx to Mount Rushmore, which is bigger. The Sphinx in Egypt, right? The big

Marcia Smith 24:20
Yeah, I haven’t seen either of those. So I’ll just take a guess. Okay. I’ll say Mount Rushmore.

Bob Smith 24:26
Mount Rushmore is bigger. Yeah, the Sphinx is big, but not compared to George Washington’s face. Yeah. George Washington’s face is 60 feet long. The Sphinx would fit between the end of his nose and his eyebrow. That’s how big George Washington’s face my gosh. Okay, guy who’s the only president with a mustache on Mount Rushmore. Teddy Teddy Roosevelt. Here’s another one. You think the mole on your body is big. How about that facial mole and Abraham Lincoln’s face wide. It’s a foot and a half why that’s a big mall. Better

Marcia Smith 24:58
have that look. That guy.

Bob Smith 24:59
How long did Mount Rushmore take to build?

Marcia Smith 25:02
Geez I 100 years 1414 years, 14

Bob Smith 25:06
years and how much rock was removed? Any idea how many 1000s of tons now 5000 tons of granite from the rock face of the mountain. Okay, okay, anyway Marsh rock on. Just rock on.

Marcia Smith 25:18
I get it. Well speaking of jokes What year do you think the first walked into a bar joke appeared?

Bob Smith 25:25
Oh, a guy walked into a bar. Yeah, I would think that would go way back like 1850s or 1820s or something like Oh,

Marcia Smith 25:33
you’re close. 1983 BC Oh my god.

Bob Smith 25:37
Really? They found a joke. 1983 BC the Sumerians

Marcia Smith 25:41
are credited with the first ever walked into a bar Joe. And this is rollicking, right? I guess you had to be there because it goes a dog walks into a bar and says I cannot see a thing. I’ll open this one. No, I No one can quite parse the meaning of

Bob Smith 26:01
that joke. Something is lost in the translation. Three BCE. Okay, who knows

Marcia Smith 26:06
the first joke in English. Here’s the first joke in English Bob. They could find a book of poetry from the 10th century third century AD then okay, yes, yeah, we’ve gone to the Common Era. Yeah. What hangs at a man’s thigh and wants to poke the hole that is often poked before what? What hangs that a man’s thigh and wants to poke the hole that he had has often poked before. Can we

Bob Smith 26:31
answer that on this program is a key bar.

Marcia Smith 26:35
Get your mind out of the gutter. A lot of early humor apparently relied on puns and presumed

Bob Smith 26:42
lewdness. That was 1/10 century and ancient

Marcia Smith 26:45
joke book from Greece in the fourth century, asked by the court barber how he wanted his haircut. The witty fellow replied in silence. Didn’t want his barber to talk more than 1000 years later, it’s still a relatable sentence. Of

Bob Smith 27:02
course it is.

Marcia Smith 27:03
I’m going to wrap up with a Napoleon Hill quote. If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

Bob Smith 27:11
Okay. It’s like this show. Hey, this is our 199 the next show will be our 200

Marcia Smith 27:21
we gotta have office party. Oh, yes. The two of us if nothing else, oh, Pat’s had horns and a little bubbly. That will be fun.

Bob Smith 27:29
So we hope you come back for that when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. I Bob Smith, I’m

Marcia Smith 27:35
Marcia Smith, you’re listening to the off ramp.

Bob Smith 27:40
The off ramp is produced in association with CPL radio online and the Cedarburg Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai