Bob and Marcia discussed various historical and cultural trends, including the origins of words in place names, the history of chain letters, and the consequences of tax evasion. Bob shared interesting facts about the Victorian era, while Marcia discussed the impact of chain letters during the Great Depression and the history of Native American citizenship. They also explored the cultural and historical significance of Aboriginal Australians as the world’s oldest continuous living culture, highlighting their diversity across Australia. Bob provided interesting facts about Windsor Castle’s long history and Gone with the Wind’s impressive box office performance, while Marcia shared her knowledge of cultural and historical highlights.
Outline
Unusual fashion trends and solar eclipses stopping wars.
- Bob and Marcia discuss the Alexandra limp fashion trend in Victorian England and the influence of royalty on fashion.
- Marcia and Bob discuss a solar eclipse in 585 BCE and how it ended a war, as well as the Post Office’s hiring during the Great Depression.
Historical events, chain letters, and inflation.
- Marcia and Bob discuss the popularity of chain letters during the Great Depression, with the post office hiring extra help to handle the volume of mail.
- Some people complained about weather forecasting when it was first introduced in the mid 19th century, with Bob’s mother showing him a chain letter and Bonnie next door to him in class.
- Bob Smith discusses the consequences of forecasting weather in the 1920s and 30s, including the impact on newspaper prices and the value of money.
Word origins, inflation, and place names.
- Bob Smith and Marcia Smith discuss the history of Native American citizenship and voting rights, with Bob sharing information about the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 and Marcia expressing surprise at the lack of voting rights for Native Americans until 1957.
- Bob Smith and Marcia Smith also discuss post-World War Two inflation, with Bob sharing his personal experience of seeing prices double in Mexico in the 1980s and Marcia expressing shock at the rapid inflation in Hungary after the war, with prices doubling every 13 and a half hours in July 1946.
- Bob Smith explains the difference between “great” and “grant” in place names, with “great” indicating British origin and “grant” indicating French origin.
- Bob Smith also shares an interesting fact about President Andrew Jackson funding his political campaign by playing poker.
Richard Nixon’s poker skills and island living.
- Richard Nixon’s poker winnings funded his political campaign.
- Marcia and Bob discuss the Shinkansen bullet train, with Bob mentioning its speed and Marcia sharing interesting facts about the train’s history and purpose.
- Bob Smith discusses how well-behaved individuals can receive more lenient sentences from the IRS, using Al Capone and Ty Warner as examples.
- Warner, the inventor of Beanie Babies, was convicted of tax evasion but received a more lenient sentence due to his contrite behavior and willingness to pay back taxes.
Film history, culture, and UNESCO World Heritage sites.
- Marcia and Bob discuss the highest grossing film ever adjusted for inflation, Gone With the Wind, and its impressive box office numbers.
- The Windsor Castle in England is the longest continuously inhabited castle in the world, with a history dating back nearly 1000 years.
- Marcia Smith: Aboriginal Australians have the oldest continuous culture in the world, with genomic data showing they arrived in Australia 50,000 years ago.
- Bob Smith: Italy has the most World Heritage sites (59) among all countries, followed by China (57), France (52), and Germany (52).
- Marcia Smith and Bob Smith discuss the rumored burial of a mobster in a cement mixer, and the possibility of him being part of a New York highway system.
- Singer-songwriter Sam Cooke is quoted as saying “a lovely sunset at the end of the day, someone helping a stranger along the way is heaven to me.”
Bob Smith 0:00
True or False solar eclipses can stop wars and why was
Marcia Smith 0:05
limping a fad in Victorian England?
Bob Smith 0:11
Okay, answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and Marsha
Marcia Smith 0:17
Smith
Bob Smith 0:34
Welcome to the off ramp a chance to slow down, limp along steer clear of crazy and take a side road to sanity with fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. So limping became a fad in the Victorian era. Yes, Sally. Yeah,
Marcia Smith 0:50
you thought hula hoops were weird. Well, Alexandra of Denmark, she was Princess of Wales and she became Queen Alexandra. Everybody loved her fashion sense and did whatever she did. And after the birth of her third child in 1867, the princess developed a severe case of rheumatic fever that left her with a stiff knee and a pronounced limp, and she sometimes used aids like walking sticks to get around. It was far from a style choice but high society ladies were so eager to imitator that they adopted her gait known as the Alexandra limp. Oh my goodness at first able bodied imitators wore mismatched shoes to get the walk. But eventually retailers as they always do took notice and they started making pairs of shoes with two different heel styles.
Bob Smith 1:41
Oh my goodness.
Marcia Smith 1:44
And even at the time, the trend was considered in very poor taste and thankfully it passed quickly.
Bob Smith 1:50
Holy cow royalty really has influenced fashion a lot over the centuries because of things like that. Well she limps we have to do it too. It
Marcia Smith 2:00
makes perfect sense now walking stick and make a deal out of it makes
Bob Smith 2:04
you realize how silly fashion is yes.
Marcia Smith 2:06
It’s not any less silly today.
Bob Smith 2:08
Okay, Marcia, true or false? Solar eclipses can stop wars.
Marcia Smith 2:13
Yeah. Now that makes sense. I mean, I would think especially in the days of your right if you’re out there waging battle on your enemy, and everything goes dark in the middle of day the scare the living bejesus out.
Bob Smith 2:25
That’s exactly right. That’s what happened 2500 years ago, the Greek historian Herodotus records that in 585 BCE, a border war near present a turkey and the Halley’s River, rage between the Lydians and the Medes. The war had gone on for over five years, everything was brought to a halt by a sign from the skies. On May 28 585 BCE, the sounds of fighting slowly came to a halt as the sky darkened and day turned to night. And both sides looked at each other looked at the sky, and they interpreted that as a sign to end the war. So they did but guess what to seal the agreement in typical royalty fashion, the daughter of the king of Lydia had to be married to the son of the king of Medes. Really, yes. Aryans the daughter of Lydia married to the king of Medes well what the Lydians in the meets failed to realize was this sign from the sky was just a total solar eclipse rare Yes, but a totally natural event like the one happening in our era. Okay,
Marcia Smith 3:27
Bob, why was the post office virtually the only place during the depression that was still hiring? I
Bob Smith 3:34
would imagine just because it was a government program and the government had more money than anybody else but maybe because they decided let’s expand the that was probably the only way to get people money some checks and things like that that’s
Marcia Smith 3:46
very benevolent but no an actual event happened that made them get more people into the post office to deal with it wasn’t Social Security. No. Okay, cuz
Bob Smith 3:56
that started them he’ll love this.
Marcia Smith 3:58
Okay, I love the headline on this share this fact with 10 of your friends it was the chain letter. Oh
Bob Smith 4:03
no. Yeah, so it was a fad Yeah, chain letters. Yes.
Marcia Smith 4:07
And one of the ways hard pressed Americans tried to make a buck during the Depression was the chain letter which originated in the mid 30s as a get rich quick scheme it’s still around today despite the fact that they failed to make anybody rich chain letters became so popular Bob that the post offices had to hire extra help to handle the volume of mail Good lord virtually the only place during the depression that did any hiring I
Bob Smith 4:34
remember this my mom showing me a chain letter and she got we get these in the mail once in a while and it was always about if you pass this on riches will come to you and then so and so broke the chain it was always like Colonel so and so broke the chain and died of a mysterious death. Remember all that?
Marcia Smith 4:51
Well. My mother never showed it to me Bonnie next door to me in class. She said Look at this. Okay, and we put our money in and we
Bob Smith 4:58
have the social Media has the equivalent now where it’s like post this you know all that kind
Marcia Smith 5:03
of stuff with 100 friends and good things will be follow you. Well. Isn’t
Bob Smith 5:07
that amazing? So that’s when it happened. That’s when chain letters started back in the 30s and became very popular. You
Marcia Smith 5:13
can see why during depression anything that you think if you could make a buck
Bob Smith 5:17
Well, that’s true things were so tough. Yeah. Marcia, why did some people complain about weather forecasting when it was first introduced? We’re talking the mid 19th century now really the places Great Britain Why
Marcia Smith 5:31
did they complain because they didn’t want to No, no, no, because I it I don’t know.
Bob Smith 5:38
Well, this is from the everybody has an axe to grind department I still do. When the British media illogical office was founded in the mid 19th century. What group of businesses objected any idea? Ship salvagers? Really people who profit from ship disasters, especially those in disastrous storms. Were ships going out in bad weather that meant fewer disasters to profit from? So ship salvagers actually complained to Parliament that this new government service this forecasting the weather harmed their ability to earn a living, unintended
Marcia Smith 6:13
consequences of forecasting a bubble with a thought that hey, there’s not going to be more chips crashing and we won’t make money. Okay, I got I got a bunch of interesting things from Bob the 1920s and 30s. Out of the good old days, my asbach Okay, here’s even for Excel. Yeah. Here’s another one. Roughly, Bob, how much did a newspaper cost you in? 1923? Germany, this is pre pre depression. 1923. Oh, this
Bob Smith 6:40
is during the wine Mar Republic when there was incredible inflation, right? Yes. So I would assume a newspaper might have cost you maybe $1,000 for a newspaper as opposed to fibers. 10 sets a
Marcia Smith 6:53
wheelbarrow full of money. Bob wasn’t enough to buy a newspaper. Wow, can you imagine that? You’re right, the word is hyperinflation at the peak of Germany’s hyperinflation in 1923. A wheelbarrow full of money wasn’t enough to buy a newspaper and few bothered to collect the change when they spent the new 1000 billion mark note, can you like God? Can you imagine they didn’t stay for the change? I love this story. One student at Freiburg University ordered a cup of coffee priced on the menu at 5000 marks for a cup of coffee. It’s gonna be a good one. And then he ordered a second one. When the bill came, it was for 14,000 marks the price had jumped in between cups. Wow. If you want to save money, the clerk said you should order them both at the same time. While
Bob Smith 7:42
that’s hyperinflation. Now that we think we laugh at that those were the conditions that led to Adolf Hitler coming to power. See Germany?
Marcia Smith 7:52
Yeah. All right. That’s a good, good parallel,
Bob Smith 7:55
Bob. All right, Marcia. I have a good question. You know, we know when women got the right to vote when blacks got the right to vote. When were Native Americans first granted citizenship. Oh, the surprise. Really? Yeah.
Marcia Smith 8:07
I never thought of that.
Bob Smith 8:09
Yeah. So we’re talking Indians or Native Americans? Yeah. When did they first get citizenship? They been here forever.
Marcia Smith 8:15
Yeah. And I didn’t know they didn’t. Well, I didn’t recall they did. Okay, tell me.
Bob Smith 8:20
After women were granted citizenship. Really. June 2 1924, Congress enacted the Indian Citizenship Act, which granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the US, however, the right to vote was governed by state law. So until 1957, some states barred Native Americans from voting 1957. Up to that point, a lot of Native Americans weren’t able to vote in their citizens of this country. It
Marcia Smith 8:47
just boggles the mind. Isn’t
Bob Smith 8:48
that amazing? A Native American rights advocate Dr. Joseph Dixon, he documented the Native American experience during World War One, there were 12,000 Native Americans serving in the US Army during World War One. He documented that in hopes that would help the country grant them citizenship. And that was some of the documentation used like look, these people are fighting for you.
Marcia Smith 9:08
Yeah,
Bob Smith 9:09
we’re all together here. Why can’t they vote to
Marcia Smith 9:12
Yeah, that just grinds my beans. Okay. Here we go. Post World War Two inflation. Bob was rough on countries like Hungary. How much time had to pass for prices to double on your purchase of everything from a loaf of bread to an automobile? Hopefully
Bob Smith 9:29
it wasn’t as bad as it was in print. With the coffee, Germany. Yeah,
Marcia Smith 9:33
that was just for a cup of coffee. But this is on everything. Incidentally,
Bob Smith 9:37
I found that kind of inflation when I went to Mexico once on a business trip back in the 80s. Yeah, I couldn’t believe how much the cost had gone up. By the time I left the country. From when I got there. How much food and everything was costing really, things can get that’s scary dangerous when countries aren’t really that stable.
Marcia Smith 9:55
Yeah, how much time has to pass for prices to double after World
Bob Smith 9:59
War Two? Oh, yeah, okay, so I would say maybe two months 13 and
Marcia Smith 10:04
a half hours just
Bob Smith 10:05
as bad as this pre war Germany thing. Holy cow. Even America’s
Marcia Smith 10:10
worst bouts with inflation were nothing compared to post World War Two Hungary, setting a record for the most rapid monthly hyperinflation in July 1946. prices doubled every 13 and a half hours. That’s an annual rate of 41.9 quadrillion percent she’s trillion percent but
Bob Smith 10:32
that reminds me of you were recently in the computer and you were trying to buy some airline tickets and you saw them jump up in price
Marcia Smith 10:39
from all I was trying to buy on jays, but nothing like that. Nothing
Bob Smith 10:43
like that. Thank God. Alright, Marcia, we’d like word origins. And this kind of goes along with word origins. What is the difference between great and grant? Those are two terms. Yeah. Great. And grant in place names in America. Is there a significant difference? And
Marcia Smith 11:00
what does he mean? Like the Grand Canyon? Grand Rapids? Great Lake? Yes. Is there a difference? Yes. Well, I said grand bigger than great. Great
Bob Smith 11:09
is English for big if something has got a name great in front of it, a town name or a city name or location. Great. That means it was probably named by the British. The Great American Desert, the great divide the Great Lakes, all named by the English grant is French for big. So that’s usually in names given by French speakers. That makes sense. The Grand Banks, the Grand Canyon, Grand Rapids, all those places were probably more likely named by French and the order of words in names can also indicated what they’re translated from, for example, Lake of the Woods. You’ve heard of places named like that lake Lake of the Woods. Oh, up north. Yeah, that betrays a direct translation of French Lake of the Woods, not Woods lake but Lake of the Woods. Morley Lake of the Ozarks, not Ozarks lake. So those places generally mean it was translated directly from French. And that big lake at the top of the great lakes. Lake Superior. Yeah, not superior Lake. Lake Superior the adjective? The noun. Yeah, so that’s named by the French. And guess what superior met in Old French. It didn’t mean better. It meant higher in position. So Lake Superior meant the Upper Lake the highest geographically speaking, not the biggest. We think it means the biggest Yeah, like superior. Yeah, superior mount a higher level in terms of positioning. Yeah, okay. I never thought it by this lake north. That comes from a book I’ve had around the house for years, which I just recently looked at, again, it’s called speaking freely a guided tour of American English from Plymouth Rock to Silicon Valley, by Stuart Berg. flexure and an souk and now it’s a great book. You can find it at used bookstores these days. It’s oversized book sounds titillating. It is interesting. It’s kind of fun stuff like that. And it made you happy.
Marcia Smith 12:52
Okay. All right. All right, Bob, what President funded his first political campaign by playing poker.
Bob Smith 13:00
What Yeah, he funded his first campaign by playing poker and winning. You know, that sounds like something Andrew Jackson would have done it does somebody from that era, is it? No, no, not from that era? Is it somebody from a later era or early? Yes,
Marcia Smith 13:14
later?
Bob Smith 13:15
Okay. Not Teddy Roosevelt.
Marcia Smith 13:18
Now this is someone in your voice repertoire. Really? Yeah.
Bob Smith 13:22
That’s not Ronald Reagan, not Richard Nixon.
Marcia Smith 13:24
i Oh, yes, it is. Yes, he
Bob Smith 13:27
started to fund his political campaign with Piper Liang. POGIL. Kitty tell me before
Marcia Smith 13:31
he was President Richard Nixon was a prolific poker player, and he amassed enough weddings to help fund his very first political campaign. Oh, no kidding. In January 1944. Nixon was stationed in the South Pacific while serving in the US Navy. And it was during this time that he became something of a card shark. Though it’s rumored he had no idea how to even play poker upon his arrival there. So I guess he was a quick study, he took interest in learning the game and spent hours studying strategy before putting his money at risk. His hard work proved fruitful, and the future president raked in around 40 to $50 each night translate today to about 700 876 a night. That’s pretty good, man. Yeah, his winnings were substantial. And in 46, Nixon decided to enter the world of politics and run for Congress and he took all his winnings from his poker days.
Bob Smith 14:25
I’ll see you would raise you. I’m not a crook. Good poker player. All right. All right. Marsh. I think it’s time for a break.
Marcia Smith 14:34
All right,
Bob Smith 14:35
you’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment. We’re back. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith. We do this weekly for the Cedarburg Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin. It airs on their CPL radio station. It’s the only internet radio station by a library in the United States. And after that, it goes out over the podcast platform
Marcia Smith 14:57
Oh over the world.
Bob Smith 14:59
That’s Right. Okay,
Marcia Smith 15:00
Bob. In 1964, Japan introduced the Shinkansen high speed rail line known in English by what nicknamed the bullet train. Oh, very good.
Bob Smith 15:10
Yeah. Remember that as a kid?
Marcia Smith 15:11
Did you go on it? Oh, no, I’ve
Bob Smith 15:13
never been to Tokyo
Marcia Smith 15:14
now. Okay, but the bold train travels between 186 and 200 miles per hour. And it was built for the Japan Olympic Games, and connects the biggest metro areas in the country. So five of the major cities that connects
Bob Smith 15:29
interesting a lot of these transportation innovations. They actually were ways for the countries to show off their technological gammarus. Yeah, let’s do a bullet train. Yeah,
Marcia Smith 15:37
they are Olympics quickstarts. A lot of projects everywhere. You’re on
Bob Smith 15:42
an island. It’s not that big, but we need bullet trains between cities. You
Marcia Smith 15:46
know, I didn’t think of that till you just said that. But how? Oh, yeah.
Bob Smith 15:50
Okay, Marcia. I have a question for you. All right. Barbara, had all those things about islands about the most populous island, the least populous island? So any idea what’s considered the most densely populated or most overcrowded island on Earth?
Marcia Smith 16:05
Japan? No, I don’t know. It’s an island you never
Bob Smith 16:07
heard of? Well, you probably heard of the name Santa Cruz. That’s a famous Yeah, but this is on the northern coast of Colombia. Now picture this. More than 500 people live there. It’s only the size of two football fields.
Marcia Smith 16:19
Oh my God.
Bob Smith 16:22
And the island has no toilets or sewage and drinking water, food and other necessary supplies have to be important. They don’t have toilets. No. 12,000 square yards the size of two football fields for some reason. 500 people want to live there. Yes,
Marcia Smith 16:35
really? Well, that’s just interesting. Okay. And that is where again, that’s off the coast of Colombia. Okay. Take that off the list of must
Bob Smith 16:44
do. You don’t think you want to go there? And I’m not okay. Okay. Hey, this is one of those deep dive things. I got a comparison. It’s kind of interesting here. How well you behave can make a difference in how the IRS treats you. Do you ever thought about that? No. I’ve got two examples here. The first one is Al Capone. Yeah, we know that in 1931. He went to prison for 11 years for tax evasion. That’s right. He was fined $50,000 Charge $7,692 for court costs. And then $250,000 interest on back taxes. He could have paid all that he was a multi multimillionaire, but he served eight years in prison and died after serving eight years, his illegal empire in the 30s was worth at least 300 million, maybe more. So who’s one of the most famous tax evaders of our time? This is another person who was convicted of tax evasion. Okay, uh huh. But he was a well known inventor of something that everybody loved people love they bought them for
Marcia Smith 17:40
their kids. Was it apple? No, no, I don’t know. Okay,
Bob Smith 17:44
back the question originally how well you behaved can make a difference in how the IRS treats you. Okay, so Al Capone, small fines. Big years in prison. Yeah. The inventor of the beanie babies. Oh, really those cute plush toys. Ah, Ty Warner. His toy sales once exceeded a billion dollars annually. 2014. He was convicted of failing to report more than $24 million in income. And he evaded nearly 5.6 million in federal income taxes makes me nuts. But guess what? He didn’t have to go to jail. Oh, he had to pay fines. He paid more than $53 million in a civil penalty. 27 million in back taxes and interest and at $100,000 Fine. So he paid up. He paid up and he admitted to his crime. The inventor of the beanie babies got two years probation and the US district judge said society will be best served by allowing him to continue his good works good work. Well, the toys Al Capone was given a far worse sentence no doubt because his income was all criminals. You know, we had booze gambling protection rackets, prostitution and murder. But the Beanie Babies guy he got off because he paid it back. That’s right. How you behave is contrite. How well you behave can make a difference in how the IRS treats you. I just thought that was interesting. He evaded taxes never served a day in jail. He’s still alive. And his net worth still is more than $5 billion. Each tie Warren really today. Yeah,
Marcia Smith 19:08
rich people that don’t pay their taxes make me crazy. I mean, yeah, okay, Bob, this is in your wheelhouse. What is the highest grossing film ever when adjusted for inflation? when adjusted for inflation, there is one that exceeds all others. Okay, could this be
Bob Smith 19:27
when it goes back to the silent era? Now, back that may be one of D.W. Griffith’s films or something because they sold millions and millions of tickets back then for five cents apiece or something. All right. So is this like Gone With the Wind it is
Marcia Smith 19:42
that yes, released in 1939 or 40. Gone With the Wind made for a then whopping cost of $4 million. That was the budget to make it Yeah. $4 million. David O. Selznick’s Opus proved worth the investment when audiences flocked to watch Scarlett and Rhett match what’s on the screen? Keep in mind tickets then were quarter yeah small so gone with the wind took home $189 million during its initial domestic release. Wow. jaw dropping amount considering how cheap it was to go to the movie even
Bob Smith 20:18
today a movie that makes 189 million is not bad. No. Wow. So
Marcia Smith 20:22
worldwide the feature grossed approximately 393 million. That’s the equivalent today of more than three and a half billion dollars. Holy cow, which puts the Hollywood classic above more recent blockbusters
Bob Smith 20:36
No kidding. Yeah. 3.4 billion. If you take the money, it was
Marcia Smith 20:39
more than that. So over that this is this figures are a couple years old, and that’s not even
Bob Smith 20:44
counting how much money it made when it was on television and all of that. This is just ticket sales. Yeah, back in the 30s. equivalent of 3.1 again, and a half billion 3.5 billion today. Amazing. All right, Marsha, what is the longest continuously inhabited castle in the world?
Marcia Smith 21:05
Oh, is it where Elizabeth I was went Bill what is that? Baltimore Baltimore. Oh, Balmoral. Yeah. No, it’s not. Oh, okay. But it is where Elizabeth Webb? Yeah. One of her castles? Yes. Okay. I don’t know them all. It’s the 16,000
Bob Smith 21:19
acre grounds of the Windsor estate. The Windsor Castle is part of it. And that is the longest continuously inhabited castle in the world for nearly 1000 years. It’s been lived in and refurbished by successive monarchs. Guess who chose the site for that castle? William the Conqueror? Oh, my God, William the Conqueror in 1070. That was a day’s march from the Tower of London. And it was intended to guard the Western approaches to the capitol today, its lakes grassland and the tree line path known as the long walk. Draw 5 million visitors a year, the Windsor Castle, the longest continuously inhabited castle in the world.
Marcia Smith 21:57
Okay, Bob, who is the world’s oldest continuous living culture?
Bob Smith 22:03
Who is the world’s oldest continuously living culture? You’re talking human culture? Yeah. We’re not talking about a Petri dish culture. Nothing like that. That’s the world’s oldest culture there. Okay. The oldest continuously living culture? We’re not talking Egypt is a China No. Is it? India In India? No. Okay. Where
Marcia Smith 22:24
is it? It is Australian Aboriginals. Okay. aborigines? Yeah, the oldest continuous culture in the world, in the land down under the Aboriginal Australians. A study in 2016 by an international team of researchers gathered genomic data that showed this group first arrived on the continent some 50,000 years ago, after leaving Africa about 70,000 years ago. No
Bob Smith 22:51
kidding. So they came from Africa to Australia. Think of the seafaring peoples they must have been to get there. That’s, that’s amazing.
Marcia Smith 22:59
It is. They’re far from homogenous. After the first peoples arrived on the continent, they quickly spread across Australia forming isolated pockets that developed independently of one another. Okay,
Bob Smith 23:11
so you always think of these people as one culture. No.
Marcia Smith 23:15
And by the time the Europeans arrived in the late 18th century, some 200 nations 200 nations, of Aboriginal Australians, each with their own language, wow, lived throughout the continent. So they all separated down there and develop their own culture and language. That’s amazing.
Bob Smith 23:33
And it’s overlooked because they were off into the wilderness. Yeah, but that is the oldest known continuous living culture. Holy cow. Yeah, I
Marcia Smith 23:42
guess that nobody does that we know. Well, speaking
Bob Smith 23:44
of ancient things, we use a designation from the UN called UNESCO for World Heritage sites. These are sites all around the world worth preserving, right? Ancient ruins, landmarks and natural wonders. They all have legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. That’s what UNESCO stands for more than 1000 of these sites in the world. What country has the most of them?
Marcia Smith 24:12
Oh, gosh, I’ll say they’re in
Bob Smith 24:16
168. Countries All told, I know. It’s a Western nation in Europe, one of the two big centers of culture in Europe, where ancient times yeah,
Marcia Smith 24:25
was Rome and and Greece, Greece. Okay.
Bob Smith 24:29
Which one? Would it be? Greece? No, it’s wrong. It’s okay. It’s Italy. Italy has the most sites. It’s got 59 sites. And then the next is China. They have 57. Then you have France and Germany with 52 each. How many do you think the United States has? I don’t know how many do we have? 25. And it’s interesting because it includes a lot of things you wouldn’t think of Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Everglades and the Smoky Mountains National Park. Plus places like the Statue of Liberty Independence Hall, Mammoth Cave Carlsbad Caverns and three Frank Lloyd Wright architectural sites really including his schools, Taliesin in Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona. Those are World Heritage Sites.
Marcia Smith 25:10
I didn’t know that. Yeah,
Bob Smith 25:11
I didn’t either. It’s quite interesting. So Italy has more world heritage sites than any other country of total of 59 out of 168 countries.
Marcia Smith 25:19
Okay, before I get to my quote of the week, where is mafia mobster? Harry you Western supposedly buried?
Bob Smith 25:29
Harry Westone. Yeah, I never heard of Harry westoe You never will? Well, we’ll never find him probably. Oh, I don’t think she lived under a freeway or a parking lot. somewhere good. That
Marcia Smith 25:41
was your go to? Well, he is considered part of the New York highway system. Literally. In 1940. The Associated Press reported a gang land rumor that the assassins and Murder Inc simply tossed mobster Harry West stone into a cement mixer. Oh, gosh, thoroughly coated a was then added to the paving of a new highway in New York. So today, maybe he’s just another bump in the road ever No. Or a pothole. Hey, that must have been hairy back back. Wherever
Bob Smith 26:13
the mafia had inroads into an industry. That’s where these people went. Yeah, write it up and put into these things. Oh, my God. All
Marcia Smith 26:20
right, Bob. I’m going to close with a quote, okay, from singer songwriter Sam Cooke. And his song that’s happened to me. Okay. This is one of our son’s favorite singers to quote a little flower that blooms in May a lovely sunset at the end of the day, someone helping a stranger along the way. That’s heaven to me.
Bob Smith 26:43
Well, that’s nice. Sweet. I like that. Yeah, me too. It’s not bad. Is it? Okay. All right. Well, hopefully we’re a little bit of heaven for your ears. Okay, is that asking too much? Too much. Okay. Bring it down and heaven to us as if you contact us on our website that transition by going to the off ramp dot show and scrolling all the way down to contact us and leave us a message or a question you want to one of us to pose to the other. We’d love doing those kinds of things. And we get those occasionally Sometimes people even send us entire books of things, which is great. It’s great. It’s fun. All right, good.
Marcia Smith 27:18
Send money to if you want No,
Bob Smith 27:20
Marshall. No, we’re not gonna solicit money. by Bob Smith by Marcia Smith. Join us again next time when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia here on the off ramp.
Marcia Smith 27:37
I went too far.
Bob Smith 27:37
You always do you always do. The off ramp is produced in association with CPL radio online and the Cedarburg Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin, visit us on the web at the off ramp dot show.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
