277 Colly Wobbles Trivia

Marcia Smith 0:00
Who was the only president to have met both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln?

Bob Smith 0:05
Wow, that’s a great one. Okay, and all of these creatures who live in Europe and North America were born in the Bermuda Triangle.

Marcia Smith 0:14
Oh, really.

Bob Smith 0:16
What creatures? Answers to those and other mysteries coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob

Marcia Smith 0:22
and Marcia

Bob Smith 0:22
Smith.

Welcome to The Off Ramp, a chance to slow down, steer clear of crazy and take a side road to sanity with fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. Speaking of that, Marcia, tell me. Tell me. Tell me. This is a presidential question I’ve never heard.

Marcia Smith 0:55
I know

Bob Smith 0:56
So there was a US president who actually knew George Washington

Marcia Smith 1:00
and Abraham Lincoln and met them personally.

Bob Smith 1:02
He met George Washington and Abraham Lincoln personally.

Marcia Smith 1:05
Yeah.

Bob Smith 1:05
So it was somebody between them, I would assume, somebody like Martin Van Buren, or somewhere around that period.

Marcia Smith 1:13
I don’t know, Bob, you tell me.

Bob Smith 1:15
Okay, I will say Martin Van Buren.

Marcia Smith 1:17
No, it was John Quincy Adams.

Bob Smith 1:19
Oh, no, kidding,

Marcia Smith 1:20
Yep. Abraham Lincoln was born a decade after George Washington died, which is to say their only overlap actually comes on the list of Greatest US presidents. John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, was a 22 year old law student when he met Washington in 1789 while visiting his father,

Bob Smith 1:41
His father who became president, but his father was vice president at that time, right?

Marcia Smith 1:45
That’s right John Adams, he so he went to see John, and he got to meet the old man. It was pretty exciting for him, and he really revered him, and he got to see him again later. Adams meeting with Lincoln came more than a half a century later, in 1847 when both men were serving in the House of Representatives, wow, it was Lincoln’s sole term in Congress 13 years before he was President. The meeting came shortly before Adam’s death in 1848 he collapsed after standing up and voting nay on a measure to honor veterans of the Mexican American War.

Bob Smith 2:21
Well,

Marcia Smith 2:21
He voted nay on that.

Bob Smith 2:23
Well, the Mexican American War was a very controversial thing.

Marcia Smith 2:26
He strongly opposed it. And he died two days later. And Lincoln was there in the House chamber when Adams collapsed.

Bob Smith 2:33
Wow.

Marcia Smith 2:34
And he was even named to the committee to be in charge of his funeral. So anyway, Adams met them, both of the great presidents of all time.

Bob Smith 2:42
Wow. That is a fascinating fact. So John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, knew both Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

Marcia Smith 2:51
Yeah, you can’t say that about many.

Bob Smith 2:53
No, you can’t. No, you can’t. And then, based on what you mentioned there, John Quincy Adams went into the legislature after he was presidency.

Marcia Smith 3:00
Yeah, did you know that?

Bob Smith 3:01
Yeah, right.

Marcia Smith 3:02
I didn’t know that.

Bob Smith 3:03
Yeah. So that’s that’s why it sounds strange that he was in the legislature with Lincoln, because he became president and then went back into service in the House of Representatives.

Marcia Smith 3:11
Okay, that’s why, when I read that, I thought what’s he doing in the house he was already president, but I didn’t realize that

Bob Smith 3:17
That’s fascinating. Okay, very good. That’s an excellent, excellent, excellent trivia question, Mrs. Smith.

Marcia Smith 3:24
Well that’s only because you love your presidential trivia, okay?

Bob Smith 3:28
And you love animals, so tell me this.

Marcia Smith 3:30
Okay.

Bob Smith 3:30
All of these creatures who live in Europe and North America were born in the Bermuda Triangle, and they returned there to spawn. What kind of creatures? Well, I’ll give you a hint. They’re slippery.

Marcia Smith 3:43
Well, eels?

Bob Smith 3:45
That’s right.

Marcia Smith 3:46
Geez.

Bob Smith 3:46
Essentially, all of the eels living in North America and Europe are born in a nursery on the sea the Sargasso Sea, in the Bermuda Triangle That’s about 1,800 miles east of the coast of the United States and 3,000 miles from the coast of Europe.

Marcia Smith 4:01
What do you mean a nursery? You mean it’s a man made nursery?

Bob Smith 4:04
It’s kind of considered a floating rain forest. There’s all kinds of things that growthere. And it’s an area bounded by Bermuda, Puerto Rico and the Azores. And remarkably, all of the eels, no matter where they go, always return there.

Marcia Smith 4:17
Huh?

Bob Smith 4:18
Each winter.

Marcia Smith 4:18
No kidding.

Bob Smith 4:19
Millions of tiny, leaf shaped eel larvae emerge from their eggs. They hitch a ride on the Gulf Stream up the coast of North America. Some go inland there. Others go all the way to Europe. How long do they live away from their nursing grounds?

Marcia Smith 4:31
Well, I’ll say they are born there and die there. So I don’t know how long eels life is. So I’ll say 12 and a half years.

Bob Smith 4:38
It’s double that. 25 years, 25 to 30 years. Okay? The US Fish and Wildlife Service says there’s only one freshwater eel species in North America, and they spend 10 to 25 years in North America, some say 30, and grow from tiny see through babies to yellow skin eels up to four feet long before they’ve. Return to the Sargasso Sea, and they travel from Greenland and the Great Lakes as far as the Mississippi River to get back there. Some travel over land.

Marcia Smith 5:09
I didn’t know that was possible.

Bob Smith 5:10
They only need some moisture to scurry across land. And in Europe, they’ve been found as far east as Russia and Finland and Estonia. It’s an amazing story.

Marcia Smith 5:19
A little eel history there. Thank you, Bob.

Bob Smith 5:22
Don’t you want to know how they navigate?

Marcia Smith 5:24
No.

Bob Smith 5:24
Okay, well, we’ll tell the people that later.

Marcia Smith 5:26
I think that’s

Bob Smith 5:28
Go ahead. What’s your next question? Not curious. Marcia! yYou went into great detail about John Quincy Adams, and I enjoyed that.

Marcia Smith 5:36
All right, Bob, which of these words is not a word? Collie, wobbles, boar, bore Ignis or hobbledy.

Bob Smith 5:42
Boy, I’d say none of those are real words. You made them all up.

Marcia Smith 5:46
But you’re totally wrong.

Bob Smith 5:48
Okay,

Marcia Smith 5:49
All three are true words. All three are real words, according to wordsmarts.com Colly Wobbles. Now we have to guess what it means.

Bob Smith 5:57
How do you spell that, Colly wobbles?

Marcia Smith 5:58
Just like it sounds, C, O, L, L, Y, W, O, B, B, L, E, S,

Bob Smith 6:04
Collie wobble. It sounds like something it’s moving in a strange wobble.

Marcia Smith 6:07
Yes, okay, that’s true.

Bob Smith 6:09
And so what is it?

Marcia Smith 6:10
It’s a dog.

No, it’s a stomach ache or nausea.

Bob Smith 6:14
You said it moves!

Marcia Smith 6:17
Well, it kind of well, it’s your

Bob Smith 6:19
I said it sound slike something moving. You said it is.

Marcia Smith 6:22
Wwell, it’s kind of roiling your stomach.

Bob Smith 6:24
Oh, okay.

Marcia Smith 6:25
It’s from the 1800s and is most likely a mash up of the not so fun colic, a medical condition involving severe abdominal pain and the slightly more fun wobble, which was basically the old fashioned version of a tummy ache. So you would use this in a sentence. I have a big presentation this afternoon, and I’ve had Collie wobbles all day.

Bob Smith 6:48
Jeez. What are the other two words you mentioned?

Marcia Smith 6:50
Borboigmas.

Bob Smith 6:50
Borbo Ignis.

Marcia Smith 6:51
You want to guess what? That’s another stomach thing.

Bob Smith 6:54
How do you spell that?

Marcia Smith 6:55
B, O R, B, O, R, Y, G, M, U, S, Bob. I had to look up the pronunciation of all these.

Bob Smith 7:02
Borborygmos. Okay, now, what’s that?

Marcia Smith 7:04
That is the sound of a stomach rumbling. Oh, that’s it. Everyone has, everyone has experienced

Bob Smith 7:12
Borborygmus, the signature sound.

Marcia Smith 7:16
That technical sounding word is perhaps more polite description for what you might call Tommy rumble.

Bob Smith 7:22
Okay.

Marcia Smith 7:22
So to use it in a sentence, you’d say, please excuse my borborygmus, I skipped lunch today.

Bob Smith 7:29
What’s the third word?

Marcia Smith 7:30
Hobbledy

Bob Smith 7:31
Hoy, that’s a stomach one too?

Marcia Smith 7:34
No,

Bob Smith 7:34
Oh, what’s that one?

Marcia Smith 7:35
That’s a clumsy or awkward young person? A hobbledy hoy, yes, I’ve known those people, yes, the mid 16th century was a tough time. Bob. You remember, they didn’t have running water, and they had religious disputes, and things were breaking out all over Europe.

Bob Smith 7:52
And worst of all, no television!

Marcia Smith 7:53
Yes, and that’s why the teens were cranky. They were so bad that the new word was coined to describe the clumsiest of the bunch, as if they didn’t have enough problems, they called him hobbledy hoy In a sentence, you would say John was a hobbledy hoy for a few years, but he’s gained a lot of confidence inhis 20s.

Bob Smith 8:13
Sounds like a hobby horse,

Marcia Smith 8:15
It does. Hobbledy Hoy.

Bob Smith 8:16
Hobbledy Hoy,

Marcia Smith 8:17
Clumsy or awkward young person.

Bob Smith 8:19
Well, as fascinating is all that is Marcia, not as fascinating as how these eels navigate. So we’re going to talk about that now, whether you want to or not.

Marcia Smith 8:29
You’re giving me Collie wobbles, okay?

Bob Smith 8:31
They believe, scientists believe the eels use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate.

Marcia Smith 8:37
That makes sense.

Bob Smith 8:38
They have tracked them in different ways, and they seem to integrate magnetic field information with other clues, such as water temperature. So that’s the story. All of these eels living in the rivers and streams in eastern North America and much of Europe were born in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. And guess what? On the other side of the globe from the Sargasso Sea, the Japanese eel makes a similar pilgrimage. It goes 3000 kilometers from Japan and surrounding countries to the Western Mariana ridge in the western Pacific Ocean, and they have the same kind of an ecosystem there, where the eels in Asia are born at sea, alrighty. Then fascinating. More fascinating than a COVID Wobble.

Marcia Smith 9:18
I don’t think so, I disagree.

Bob Smith 9:21
Oh no.

Marcia Smith 9:22
We can agree to disagree.

Bob Smith 9:23
Oh no! Colly Wobbles are fascinating. Marcia, but not as fascinating as that.

Marcia Smith 9:27
If you get an eel in your tummy, then what do you got?

Bob Smith 9:30
Oh dear.

Marcia Smith 9:30
Okay, we’re gonna play aka to cheer you up.

Bob Smith 9:33
I don’t need to be cheered up. I don’t have a CollyWobble problem.

Marcia Smith 9:37
Actually, that’s not aka yet. I’m gonna give you a fifth grade Grammar Test. Mr. Smith, oh, thank you. Okay, I’ll give you the singular word off the fifth grade test, and you give me the plural. Some of them are very easy, and maybe some are not. We’ll see. Ready? Tooth.,

Bob Smith 9:37
Teeth.

Marcia Smith 9:39
Person.

Bob Smith 9:45
People.

Marcia Smith 9:57
Moose

Bob Smith 9:58
Meese, mooses. Moose and moose, same thing. Moose.

Marcia Smith 10:02
Correct.

Bob Smith 10:02
like fish and fish.

Marcia Smith 10:03
Ccorrect, okay, cactus.

Bob Smith 10:05
Cacti.

Marcia Smith 10:06
Memorandum

Bob Smith 10:07
Memorandi – no memos, no memorandums,

Marcia Smith 10:12
Memoranda.

Bob Smith 10:13
Oh, geez, okay,

Marcia Smith 10:14
Okay, that’s the plural.

Bob Smith 10:16
I missed it, yes, fifth grade. I gotta go back now.

Marcia Smith 10:18
All right. Neurosis

Bob Smith 10:21
Neuroses.

Marcia Smith 10:22
Good and last one, son in law.

Bob Smith 10:24
Sons in law.

Marcia Smith 10:26
That’s it. Only got one wrong memorandum. Good for you. You can go on to sixth grade after a remedial course.

Bob Smith 10:33
All right, Marcia, word origins. Here we go. What’s the origin of the phrase jump the gun? How far back? Does this go.

Marcia Smith 10:41
Jump the gun? Well, I think that has to go back to Revolutionary War, or way before then, to the Romans. Did they have guns? No, no, they did not. I know that. I know you know that. I know that. Okay, so the answer is, I don’t know.

Bob Smith 10:56
It doesn’t go back that far, only back to the early 20th century, and according to the phrase finder researcher Gary Martin, jump the gun is an American phrase from early 20th century Track and Field races. It was preceded by the phrase beat the gun, or beat the pistol. That was the earliest printed reference. Goes back to croffler and rules rowing and track athletics, published in 1905 then it was printed again in the Iowa homesteader. But the meaning of jump the gun, you were cheating at a race because you were trying to start the race faster than the pistol, of course. Uh huh. And then there are other similar jump phrases. What’s the jump phrase? From

Marcia Smith 11:33
mining, from mining. We remember

Bob Smith 11:37
it from a Sherlock Holmes story. What is it? Jump someone’s claim.

Marcia Smith 11:42
Oh, jump the claim.

Bob Smith 11:44
That’s from the Gold Rush, yeah, that’s for mining. That’s what I said. Oh, okay. And from the Navy, there’s a jump phrase, jump ship, okay? And from everyday life, when people wait to take turns, they jump the bunny, jump the line, okay? Or in England, jump the queue, okay, all right, so those again, failures again for Marsha on all those. All right, so let’s go on to the next question. What do you

Marcia Smith 12:08
have there? How many of the 10 oldest cities in America can you still visit today? These are the 10 oldest continuously inhabited cities in the United States. Okay, that you can still visit today. Now, I know you know two of them.

Bob Smith 12:22
Yes, we’ve been to St Augustine and we’ve been to Santa see what is New Mexico? Well, there’s the city there, Bob, I know I’m trying to think of

Marcia Smith 12:32
it. It’s not Albuquerque, no, no, it’s Mr.

Bob Smith 12:35
Claus. Santa Fe, yeah, Santee Fe, New Mexico. That’s right. Okay, all right. And then the other those are two of the other oldest cities are all on the East Coast. God, they go up to Massachusetts and higher, even up to Maine, I believe. But they’re in Virginia. I can’t name them all, yeah? Like Newport

Marcia Smith 12:52
News. And most of them, you’re right, are in Virginia. I’ll name them because it’s just too hard. Okay? And the oldest is St Augustine, 1565,

Bob Smith 13:01
yeah, still a city there, yeah, a nice town, actually, a nice place to visit. Had cocktails

Marcia Smith 13:05
there with you. Nice

Bob Smith 13:06
bars, yeah,

Marcia Smith 13:07
looking the great fort we Donna veranda, and then 1607 there’s two. Jamestown, Virginia, right? Santa Fe, so they tied for 1607 and then 1610 Hampton, Virginia, key, cockton, Virginia, 1610

Bob Smith 13:26
Albany, New York, that’s right, that’s an old one. It’s 1614 Yeah, that was a trading post,

Marcia Smith 13:31
yeah? Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1620 Newport News, Virginia, well,

Bob Smith 13:37
that’s where they have the big naval base there. I didn’t know since the days of the Revolutionary War. So when was Newport News founded,

Marcia Smith 13:44
1621 well, why mouth Massachusetts, 1622 and Jersey City, New Jersey, 1623

Bob Smith 13:51
Gosh, that’s fascinating. That’s amazing that many cities that are still continuously inhabited, yeah, you know, that’s a long time ago for this continent, it is some of the islands. It goes back even farther, like we were talking about some of the islands that have had churches since 1504

Marcia Smith 14:07
so. And you get to the middle United States, like us and our little historic town, you know, everything goes back to 1800s 1840s Yeah, historic, historic sea. I remember we came back from England or Paris. You know,

Bob Smith 14:21
historic cedar Bergen seemed like yesterday. Yeah, geez. Really. 1800 Okay, Marcia, based on birth rates, what’s the most fertile country in the developed

Marcia Smith 14:31
world? In the developed world, the most fertile country, I will say, let me see, would it be us? No,

Bob Smith 14:39
it isn’t the United States? No, okay, England, no, it’s in the Middle East. Oh, yeah, okay, it’s Israel. Israel is the most fertile country in the developed world, with 2.9 children per woman. Count all the women, you’ve got 2.9 children per women. I would have guessed that. And what happened to the average height of the Americans in the 19th. Century,

Marcia Smith 15:00
they started to get taller. That’s right, how much taller I’ll say the 19th century.

Bob Smith 15:06
Yeah, from the beginning of the 19th century. So the 1790s on, I’ll say three and a half inches. Well, you’re pretty close. American men gained nearly four inches of height in that one century, and American women gained two inches of height.

Marcia Smith 15:21
I just look at the clothes that your father had. Yeah, you know, his army uniform is hanging in there, and you couldn’t get that over half your body. Oh, it looks so small, doesn’t it is. It’s tiny, but it was so tiny, diminutive, smaller than they are now. And we’re their children, and we’re months well, you know what it is? They’re monsters. It’s, it’s the baby vitamins we mothers take,

Bob Smith 15:43
and the we eat too with too much food people eat as well, obviously.

Marcia Smith 15:46
Well, that’s girth. I’m just talking about height. Okay, okay, I think it’s time for a break.

Bob Smith 15:54
Okay, you’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment. All right, we’re back. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. We do this each week for the seedburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and we put it on streaming podcast platforms.

Marcia Smith 16:11
Time for Yes, aka, also known as, all right, Marsha’s favorite card game and the category today, Bob Sesame Street characters. Oh, dear. I might know some of these. You know who all these people are, okay, but I know if you’ll get all the clues, okay, all right. If I say mega chicken, who’s the character? Big Bird? Oh, I’m giving you a platform. Golly. Mr. Hooper, sorry, okay, yeah, I’ve give it’s another one. I’m just handing to

Bob Smith 16:39
you. Ticklish guy. That’s Elmo, right? Yeah,

Marcia Smith 16:44
I didn’t get that one. I didn’t know he was ticklish. Oh, yeah. This is funny. Pissed off De La Hoya.

Bob Smith 16:51
Isn’t that? Oscar the ground, yes, it is so upset about everything. And he was inspired by a waiter that they used to go to the restaurant, yeah? Jim Jim Manson and other

Marcia Smith 17:01
people, you’ll like this one too. Biscotti beast.

Bob Smith 17:03
Biscotti beast. Biscotti beast, this doesn’t click.

Unknown Speaker 17:09
Cookie Monster, Cookie

Bob Smith 17:12
Monster. Cookie I love Cookie Monster, all right.

Marcia Smith 17:15
Reynolds or bacha rack. Bert, right? Bert. Ernie, okay. Category again, Sesame Street. Characters, President, Cleveland. Grover, right now, think this through, okay, what boxers are down for? We’re talking about boxers in the ring, pugilists,

Bob Smith 17:36
I see, I guess, fighters. Okay, the count, that’s it goes. That’s

Marcia Smith 17:41
it. So you got 234, I think you got them all. I do.

Bob Smith 17:45
What’s your favorite song that ever came out of not

Marcia Smith 17:49
easy being green? I think that came out of Sesame Street. No, did that come out of the movie? I think

Bob Smith 17:53
it was a Muppet Movie. Oh, but the one I remembered that everybody used to sing was “Rubber Ducky, Joy of Joys. When I squeeze you, you make noise.” And who did that? That was Burt and Ernie,

Marcia Smith 18:05
Teah. And you know what other one I love? Letter B.

Bob Smith 18:11
That’s right, I still think it’s one of the best shows ever

Marcia Smith 18:14
for children. It’s wonderful. I thought so too,

Bob Smith 18:17
okay, Marcia, even the best skateboarder skills take time to be successful. Tony Hawk, yes, I remember him. How long did it take him to land what is now called the 900 that’s the trick that involves completing two and a half turns in the air.

Marcia Smith 18:32
I taught my son that one.

Bob Smith 18:36
How long did it take Tony Hawk to learn that? I’ll say, two years. 10 years, really, he finally achieved the feat when he was 31 years old. You’re doing that at 31 I know. How nuts can

Marcia Smith 18:49
you be? Yeah, I’m so glad our son stopped after college.

Bob Smith 18:53
Talk about injuries, right? Oh, Lord. Well, speaking of injuries in a typical season, this is a good question. How many major league pitchers spend time on Major League Baseball’s injury list. Now we think of football as being the big injury prone sport, but how about baseball pitchers?

Marcia Smith 19:09
I don’t know how many pitchers there are, so

Bob Smith 19:12
Well, I’ll tell you the answer. The answer is 390 pitchers in the major leagues spent time on the injury list in one year. How? That means they missed more than 33,000 total days of play.

Marcia Smith 19:26
All right, Bob, why is a blue ribbon a symbol of champions?

Bob Smith 19:30
Well, that’s a good question. Why isn’t it a red ribbon or a green ribbon or a yellow ribbon? Why is it a blue ribbon? Did the color have to do with a game that established that particular hue, saying, This is the color of champions. Ah,

Marcia Smith 19:47
now we got to go back to the 1300s Wow. Yeah, all those wacky Royals, they’re responsible for a whole lot of traditions handed down through the centuries. Yes, blue happened to be Bob the Fauci. Favorite color of King Edward the third who, in 1348, created the Royal Order of the Knights of the Garter. That’s the hot Don’t laugh. Sorry. It’s considered and still is the highest honor in Britain, but its memberships are still limited to the Royals themselves, so nobody can get unless you’re, you know, a Duke or a duchess or a king, and blue the insignia of the Royal Order is a blue garter, okay? And because of this, blue ribbons have come to be a reward for Supreme achievement all over the world.

Bob Smith 20:35
So blue ribbons today trace their origins back to Blue garters, yes. And in the 1300s

Marcia Smith 20:40
Yes. And King Edward the third, who liked blue?

Bob Smith 20:44
What a strange, strange fact. Good lord. Okay, all right. All right. Marcia, what food company invented cheese balls. You’ve liked cheese balls all your

Marcia Smith 20:56
life. You can’t stop eating cheese balls once you start, good lord. And then you’re you turn orange from face to hands everywhere. Okay, what was the question?

Bob Smith 21:07
What food company invented cheese balls? No, no, not Frito Lay. I don’t know. Their trademark has a monocle. Well, that’s Mr. Peanut. That’s right. And that

Marcia Smith 21:17
would be planters,

Bob Smith 21:18
planters, yes, planters, cheese balls. They were an iconic snack by them in the 80s and the 90s, but in 2006 they stopped making them in an effort to focus on their core nut business. After more than a decade of fans signing petitions and creating online advocacy groups, planters finally revived the planters orange snacks in 2018 so they they are now back to doing I mean, yeah, you must have had a terrible five or six years there. I couldn’t find any,

Marcia Smith 21:49
but my keyboards were not orange. You ever snack while you’re on the computer? Oh, my God, planters,

Bob Smith 21:58
yeah. Well, you know, it’s funny those kinds of things. Usually it’s like college term papers had orange on them, you know, Fritos and everything, yeah, oh, my. Okay,

Marcia Smith 22:07
here’s a quick one, and I’ll bet you get it. Okay, why is the head office of a corporation called the flagship?

Bob Smith 22:13
Well, the flagship was the ship of the line. That was the main ship of a fleet of ships in the military. That was the flagship. Which military? The British military, British navy, probably,

Marcia Smith 22:25
that’s right, it derives from the Navy where a flagship carried the admiral and flew his flag. Oh, the admiral ship was always the largest in the fleet, and flew his flag the flagship. And that’s what, how it got its name,

Bob Smith 22:40
okay? Another food question. Okey doke, again, quote, food, unquote, because we’re talking snack food. What sweet drink was originally developed as an ice cream topping? I’ll give you choices here. Okay, Tang, Gatorade, Hawaiian Punch or high C. I don’t like any of those. Well, I didn’t ask if you liked any of those. Marcia, nobody cares if you like those. Do you know the answer? Which of those was originally developed as an ice cream topping?

Marcia Smith 23:06
I’ll say Tang. No, no. I’ll say Gatorade. No, no, no. It was that orange stuff.

Bob Smith 23:15
No, no, not high C, no. It was Hawaiian Punch. Oh, really. Hawaiian Punch was invented in 1934 by three men, a W Leo, Tom Yates and Ralph Harrison. They created the recipe in their garage to sell as part of their line of ice cream toppings. They wanted a sweet syrup with a tropical flavor that could be poured over Sundays, just like chocolate or strawberry syrup. The original name was Leo’s Hawaiian Punch, okay, and it was sold to ice cream parlors as syrup, and their customers soon discovered the syrup could be mixed with water to create a drink. So that’s how Hawaiian Punch grew from an ice cream topping originally

Marcia Smith 23:52
good to know how many American presidents, Bob were British subjects?

Bob Smith 23:58
Let’s see. The first seven, I think, no, the first eight, no. Okay, how many the first nine? The first nine? Because they were all born before the United

Marcia Smith 24:06
States. Yes, that’s correct. First nine American presidents were born in Britain’s American colonies before the Constitution was ratified in 1788, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy, Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren and William Henry. Harrison, who was born in 1773 and was the last president born as a British subject,

Bob Smith 24:32
many of those guys born in Virginia, so that’s they had more of presidents there than any other state. Bob,

Marcia Smith 24:38
yes, what would you die of? First, lack of oxygen or too

Bob Smith 24:42
much carbon dioxide. How about not getting my next question, maybe that would be, you jumped

Marcia Smith 24:46
on one of mine. I thought I see. Okay, very good. Pro, cold, cool, baby. What’s that? Again? Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Good. Pro, course,

Bob Smith 24:57
your Latin coming from today. Okay, all right, the question. Question

Marcia Smith 25:00
again, what would you die of? First, lack of oxygen or too much carbon dioxide?

Bob Smith 25:05
I think it would be carbon dioxide, that’s right. If

Marcia Smith 25:09
you were in a totally sealed off room and you couldn’t get any oxygen before you die from lack of oxygen, you would die of your own emissions of carbon dioxide. You’d poison yourself. Yeah, for every breath you take in, you blow out equal amounts of carbon dioxide. Hmm, something to think about when you go to bed tonight.

Bob Smith 25:31
I don’t want to think about that before I go to bed. Are you mentioned breakfast food that was taken into space, and what was it? Tang? Tang. Right? NASA bought the tang powder in bulk packages with the generic label, orange drink. So that’s all the astronauts knew, and they did it. Then you can’t pour powder into a cup in zero gravity space. So here’s the way the astronauts had to drink Tang using a needle. The astronauts would squirt water into a vacuum sealed pack of Tang, shake the bag, then insert a straw and drink. John Glenn was the first Yes,

Marcia Smith 26:02
and remember, he was in a Frasier episode. He said he’s so sick of hearing people talk to him about Tang,

Bob Smith 26:10
and from tang to today, eating in space has come a long way over the years, world renowned Michelin starred chefs have prepared gourmet dishes enjoyed by the astronauts. Are you kidding me? Yeah, on Skylab and the International Space Station, no kidding. And additionally, crops of lettuce are being grown on board, and experiments preparing food using 3d printers are underway now. Wow. That came from an article I read called eating in space, from Michelin starred chefs to self sufficiency, and it was in the spring of 2025 so it’s a recent article,

Marcia Smith 26:41
okay? Napoleon Bonaparte, think about that. Last Name. Bonaparte, okay? He said, never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Bob Smith 26:52
That’s right. Don’t get it his way. Let him continue. Or was that you

Marcia Smith 26:56
always like to say when you won the argument? Marcia, shut up.

Bob Smith 27:02
I didn’t say that. Yeah, we used to say, when you get the order, shut up. That’s sales. That’s what they say. You got the order. Okay, shut up.

Marcia Smith 27:10
And here’s Igor Stravinsky, too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

Bob Smith 27:18
From a man who knows, Yeah, isn’t that great? Oh, my goodness. All right, that’s great. Well, hopefully you’ve enjoyed this half hour of Fun and frolic here on the off ramp. I’m Bob Smith, I’m Marcia Smith. Join us again next time when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia here on the off ramp. The off ramp is produced in association with the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, visit us on the web at the off ramp dot show at.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai