284 Spleen Lucy! Trivia

Bob Smith 0:00
What ancient civilizations athletes had organs removed to improve their running speed,

Marcia Smith 0:08
and what president’s dog had his own chair at cabinet meetings?

Bob Smith 0:13
Oh my gosh, answers to those and other questions coming up in this half hour of the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith.

Speaker 1 0:36
Welcome to the off ramp, and this definitely is the off ramp today with some crazy questions. The off ramp a chance to slow down, steer clear of crazy and take a side road to sanity with fascinating facts, tantalizing trivia, little known facts about well known people, places and things. There we go. Well, Marcia, you think today’s surgeries are crazy? What ancient civilizations athletes actually had organs removed to improve their running speed.

Bob Smith 1:04
It had to be the Romans or the who are the guys that –

Bob Smith 1:04
The ones who started the Olympics?

Marcia Smith 1:06
Yeah, the Greeks.

Bob Smith 1:10
That’s right, it was the Greeks, and the organ was the spleen!

Marcia Smith 1:15
Too much weight?

Bob Smith 1:16
Yes, well, that’s the idea. Ancient Greeks believed the spleen could hinder their running speed, and some runners reportedly underwent surgery to have it removed to improve performance.

Marcia Smith 1:26
Oh my gosh.

Bob Smith 1:27
The spleen was thought to produce black bile, one of the four humors in ancient Greek medicine associated with melancholy and sluggishness.

Marcia Smith 1:35
Humors?

Bob Smith 1:35
Yes, they call them humors.

Marcia Smith 1:37
I don’t think it’s very funny – I’m sorry

Bob Smith 1:38
To your point, the spleen is considered a source of heaviness in the body which could slow down runners, and so historical accounts suggest some athletes actually underwent splenectomies – that’s a spleen removal – for this reason.

Marcia Smith 1:50
Wow.

Bob Smith 1:51
And the Talmud, the heart of the Jewish religious law tradition, even refers to this in ancient texts. It actually talks about runners who had their spleens removed to increase speed during King David’s time.

Marcia Smith 2:03
Well, look at today, they do everything in advanced spandex or whatever, to increase their time with running or bicycling. Aerodynamics is everything, but spleen removal is a bit much.

Bob Smith 2:14
Okay, but they’ve got some facts on the side of this. In 1922 researchers at John Hopkins tested this idea on mice, and they found that spleenectomized Mice ran faster than those with spleens. And the Italian runner, Valeria Stenio had her spleen removed due to a medical condition, and she said that it improved her performance, though her case was unique and not linked to that ancient belief. But the Talmud in Sanhedrin 21B it discusses a son of King David who prepared 50 men to run before him, and it says that these runners were unique because they had their spleens removed. It says, “their spleens were removed by a medicine for the spleen weighs down a person, and they had no flesh on their feet and could run on thorns without harm.” These were weird guys, but it’s recorded in the Talmud. How could this be something we didn’t know about when it’s in ancient texts like that?

Marcia Smith 3:07
Bob, there’s a few things I don’t know. I think it’s pretty fascinating. Okay, all right, moving on. All right. What president’s dog had his own chair at cabinet meetings?

Bob Smith 3:19
Okay, though, the most famous dog in presidential history is Fala, who is FDRs dog. But I can’t imagine FDR having his dog at the Cabinet meeting, but I’ll go with Fala.

Marcia Smith 3:31
Ah, well, that’s a good guess, but it was President Warren G Harding’s dog.

Bob Smith 3:36
Oh, dear.

Marcia Smith 3:37
Laddie Boy.

Bob Smith 3:40
Ge actually had a chair at the Cabinet meetings?

Marcia Smith 3:42
He (Harding) was very fond of his male Airedale Terrier. He was truly beloved at the White House, and he went everywhere with Harding. And Harding even had birthday parties for him.

Bob Smith 3:54
Oh my goodness, for his dog?

Marcia Smith 3:56
Yeah. And He came to the cabinet meetings and they had a chair there for him and

Bob Smith 4:01
Geez

Marcia Smith 4:02
Harding himself was much beloved by the news boys. He was a former newspaper guy and supported the causes of newspaper boys while in office and when he died in 1923 the news boys across the country, Bob honored him by donating their pennies to have a bronze statue commissioned of his beloved dog,

Bob Smith 4:24
No kidding, Laddie Boy. Warren G Harding had – was a corrupt administration, you know.

Marcia Smith 4:29
But the news boys loved him, because he’s fought for their causes, and according to news headlines of the day, they raised 19,314 pennies, which is a little over $200 and had a bronze replica of the dog. The statue was supposed to go to Mrs. Harding, but she died before she got it. She had already given the dog to her body guard, and the body guard got the bronze statue.

Bob Smith 4:53
Oh, dear

Marcia Smith 4:54
of Laddie Boy

Bob Smith 4:55
What a strange legacy in the White House.

Marcia Smith 4:56
Yes, but

Bob Smith 4:57
Warren G Harding.

Marcia Smith 4:58
How sweet that they –

Bob Smith 4:59
That’s when they had the Teapot Dome scandal. That was his administration.

Marcia Smith 5:04
What in a sentence, what was the Teapot Dome scandal?

Bob Smith 5:08
That was the scandal regarding the oil that was in the reserves of the United States, and people were dipping into the money. It was like Grant. Neither one of those guys were considered corruptible, but their friends and cronies who came in the administration took advantage of things.

Marcia Smith 5:23
Oh, yeah.

Bob Smith 5:24
So, all right, Marcia, contrary to popular opinion, the first woman on a US postage stamp was not a first lady.

Marcia Smith 5:32
No, it was Stanton, nor, or was it I had a picture of her on my T shirt.

Bob Smith 5:39
Don’t know who that was, Marsh.

Marcia Smith 5:40
Oh, yes, old lady with white hair.

Bob Smith 5:43
Who,?

Marcia Smith 5:43
(Laughs)

Bob Smith 5:44
Okay, she wasn’t a politician, she wasn’t an inventor, she wasn’t a humanitarian or an athlete. In fact, she wasn’t even a United States citizen. Who was the first woman on a US postage stamp?

Marcia Smith 5:58
Was it Saca Sacajawea?

Bob Smith 5:59
No

Marcia Smith 5:59
Would you? No, she was. Was born here.

Bob Smith 6:02
This woman was the queen of another nation.

Marcia Smith 6:05
Oh, okay, just tell me,

Bob Smith 6:06
Queen Isabella of Spain.

Marcia Smith 6:09
Why?

Bob Smith 6:09
She appeared with Christopher Columbus on a set of commemorative stamps in 1893 for the Columbian exhibition the Chicago World’s Fair. So Queen Isabella, the first of Spain, was the first woman to appear on a US postage stamp. Martha Washington would get her own stamp nine years later, in 1902

Marcia Smith 6:28
Bob. Where does the term bleeding hearts, as in bleeding heart liberals, com from

Bob Smith 6:33
Bleeding hearts, that’s a good one. Where does that come from?

Marcia Smith 6:37
You’re a bleeding heart liberal? Where would that phrase have originated?

Bob Smith 6:41
Was it it in warfare? Did it come from warfare? Maybe?

Marcia Smith 6:44
No,

Bob Smith 6:44
Okay, was this, I’m thinking of some kind of an insignia, or a coat of arms that had a heart bleeding basically, the people wearing that became individuals who are under derision by others. You know, all those bleeding hearts?

Marcia Smith 6:56
No.

Bob Smith 6:56
Okay, so that’s not the answer. What is it?

Marcia Smith 6:59
An expression that entered politics back in the 1930s but it originated in the Middle Ages, if you can believe that that’s when a socially conscious group known as the order of the bleeding heart was formed to honor the Virgin Mary.

Bob Smith 7:14
Oh, my goodness

Marcia Smith 7:15
Whose quote, heart was pierced with many sorrows.

Bob Smith 7:19
So it has a religious tradition.

Marcia Smith 7:21
Yeah,

Bob Smith 7:22
I had no idea.

Marcia Smith 7:23
And the Virgin Mary of all people

Bob Smith 7:25
Yeah, okay, that’s a big, bleeding heart.

Marcia Smith 7:28
Okay, jeez.

Bob Smith 7:30
Marcia, this came from a listener, Gordy gray of Grafton, Wisconsin, who asked, didn’t the Native Americans chew bark to aid in making their birch bark canoes make it soft. Well, apparently, guess what? It turns out, they didn’t chew bark. At least there’s no documentation for that I could find on the web. But spruce roots used for stitching the bark to the canoe frame were often softened by soaking or steaming, and in some cases, the canoe builders might chew the ends to make them more pliable for threading. It’s a technique that’s seen in Indian basketry. Yeah, yeah. So while birch bark itself wasn’t chewed, apparently spruce roots were chewed, and that helped with canoe building. So our thanks to Gordie gray of Grafton, Wisconsin for that question. He gets an off ramp pen as a thank you. If you contribute, you get something from this

Marcia Smith 8:21
show. That’s great, great. We have enough pens for everybody. Yes,

Bob Smith 8:25
chewing spruce roots may have occurred as a practical way to prepare stitching material for canoes for Native

Marcia Smith 8:31
Americans. Okay? Bob, aka also known as and today’s topic is Tom Cruise movies. Oh, good. I believe you’ve seen every one of these. I don’t know if I have. Well, there’s one we didn’t and I’d like to see it. But okay, ready? All right, if I said the name of this movie is uppermost rifle. Uppermost rifle, also known as Top Gun, that’s it. Okay, that’s how the game works. Okay. Okay. Drizzle, dude, what’s the movie?

Bob Smith 9:01
Rain Man, very good. I forgot about that one. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 9:04
yeah. Everybody thinks of Dustin Hoffman, but I forget his brother was Tom Cruise trying to help him out. That’s right. The title of this movie is three quality males.

Bob Smith 9:15
Three quality males. This is the three kings, right? No, okay, what is that? Three quality males. Three quality males. Something good. Good men are good men. What was that called? A Few Good Men, right? Very good. That was the one with Jack Nicholson, yeah, Jack Nick You can’t handle the truth. That’s it. Okay, that’s it.

Marcia Smith 9:36
Assignment, unachievable. Mission, impossible. Uh huh. Rooster, follow, Rooster, follow, uh huh. Rooster, follow. What’s a rooster?

Bob Smith 9:48
That’s a chicken or a cock, cock? Robin,

Marcia Smith 9:52
yeah, it’s cock. And follow, I don’t know, cocktail. That’s the move. I forgot about that. That’s the movie we. Haven’t seen, let’s look. We’ve seen

Bob Smith 10:01
that this when he was a young bartender, and he was doing all the tricks. Yeah, remember he had to learn all kinds of bartender tricks and flipping and everything. I saw the trailer. I don’t think I ever saw the movie that was like in the disco era. Oh, okay. I mean, that’s what it reflected, all right.

Marcia Smith 10:16
Perilous Corporation. Perilous Corporation, also known as, what movie was it? The firm? No, think about it. Perilous corporationless Corporation. Let’s go backwards. Then, what’s a corporation?

Bob Smith 10:29
What’s a company or firm or

Marcia Smith 10:34
business? Yes,

Bob Smith 10:35
dirty business, oh, yes, I know what it was. Risky business, that’s another one I kind of forget about because about because he was so young.

Marcia Smith 10:44
Yeah, that’s the first one. Really had a great career. He sure has, and he’s still having it. Yeah, green silver and copper,

Bob Smith 10:51
green silver and copper, green silver and that one, I don’t know, the color

Marcia Smith 10:56
of money. Oh, okay, that was the last one. Well, that’s good. Uh huh. You did very well. And just

Bob Smith 11:03
think of all the other movies he’s done since, yeah, my goodness. All right, well, a lot of his movies have been about the military, so I have a military question for you here. All right, I found this fascinating. What’s unusual about the fuel used by NATO and the United States military? What’s unusual about it? We’ll get to the answer in just a moment. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith,

Marcia Smith 11:25
I guess you call that a teaser, huh, Bob. They’re just waiting by the radio.

Bob Smith 11:32
We’re back. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. We do this each week for the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and after that, we put it on podcast platforms where it is heard all over the world. Yes, it is okay. Marsh, all right, okay. The question again, what’s unusual about the fuel used by NATO and the United States military? This is something they standardized on in the 1980s

Marcia Smith 11:59
ethanol. No, no, some of it’s from garbage.

Bob Smith 12:02
No, it’s not that way. I don’t know. Tell me. Okay, in the late 1980s NATO and the US military adopted a NATO single fuel concept. Oh, and since then, virtually all their vehicles, including helicopters, tanks, Humvees and trucks, run on JP eight, which is a special type of jet fuel, really. Jet fuel is kerosene. I don’t know if you knew that or not, but you know that’s one of the oldest things that ever came out of petroleum. They used it for lamps. So jet fuel is kerosene. It’s a refined type of kerosene specifically formulated for jet engines. Isn’t that really dangerous? It is very dangerous. But the JP eight that’s called jet propellant. Eight is militarily optimized, designed for extreme altitudes, freezing cold and scorching hot climates like deserts. The additives they add ensure that the fuel doesn’t freeze mid flight, it doesn’t damage sensitive parts, and it doesn’t explode due to static electricity in dry conditions. So it’s NATO participants. NATO. Participants, yeah, NATO, and we’re a part of NATO. So NATO militaries use it almost everywhere. It’s not just used for jet planes and helicopters. It’s also in tanks and trucks, and, like I said, Humvees, even generators, heaters and stoves. There’s only one place it’s not used, and that’s at sea, that’s still where primarily diesel fuel is used in ships in war zones, even the planes on aircraft carriers have to have a special kind of fuel that’s different, because all of that fuel is stored within the aircraft carrier, huge tanks of this stuff for both the planes and the ship. It’s got to be safety first, because you got 1000s of people on these ships, you don’t want them to blow up by accident. No, you don’t anyway, I thought that was interesting.

Marcia Smith 13:42
Bob, what did the ocean say to the sand?

Bob Smith 13:46
Well, what? This is a joke. It’s a riddle. This is a riddle. Uh huh, we’re doing a riddle now, and we did some really serious history here.

Marcia Smith 13:54
Now we’re doing, yeah, I see. What did the ocean say to the sand? It said, dry up, friend. No, it said nothing. It just waved. Oh, dear God. What word starts with an E and ends with an E, but only holds one letter, Eve, e, v, e, but there’s three letters total. You

Bob Smith 14:13
said it holds one letter. They use one letter in between the E’s, yeah, no, no, okay, what’s the answer an envelope, see one letter. Oh, dear. No, no, let me, let me interject. Something serious. Okay. No,

Marcia Smith 14:25
no, I got, I have you have dominated. Why was Arthur Conan Doyle awarded a knighthood? Bob, the

Bob Smith 14:33
author who came up with Sherlock Holmes, that’s correct, sir, Arthur Conan Doyle, that’s correct, I would assume because it reflected well on a British law enforcement or something like that, is that the answer?

Marcia Smith 14:44
That’s what I thought, too. He was awarded knighthood for his defense of the British concentration camps during the Boer Wars. Oh, my goodness, not because of Sherlock Holmes stories.

Bob Smith 14:55
He defended the concentration camps during the Boer Wars. That sounds like a. In on his reputation, doesn’t it? I gave him a knighthood for it. Well, we should look into that. Okay, Marcia, why did bread once cost $1 a slice in America? And when really was it? Bread once cost $1 a slice? When do you think that was?

Marcia Smith 15:16
Well, I had it be during a war. It did. Civil War, it did. No, it was during the bread famine. Oh,

Bob Smith 15:25
the bread famine, the great bread famine. Oh, yeah, we all know about that. We learned about that in Nebraska. What is the answer? Marsh, I don’t know. It was the gold rush in California. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Back in 1849 and 1850 called gouging, low supply and high demand, along with sudden increases in wealth sent food prices skyrocketing in the California gold fields and a slice of bread routinely cost $1 back then, and in today’s money, that would be more than $30 for a slice of bread.

Marcia Smith 15:57
You better find your nuggets for the day or you won’t get peanut butter sandwiches. Jeez, Lord. Okay. Quickie bacteria Bob goes from one to what in a petri dish in a 24 hour time

Bob Smith 16:11
from one to how many? Yeah, so it’s probably doubling at a certain rate. Yeah, okay, it’s subdividing or something, one to 1000

Marcia Smith 16:19
in 24 hour time span? Okay,

Bob Smith 16:21
one, 220, 4000 getting close. 1000 an hour. A billion. Oh, my goodness,

Marcia Smith 16:28
24 hours. Who counted this? What? Yeah, good question. I think I’ll get up and count the bacteria this morning. And wow, yeah, a billion in 24 hours. Okay, that was quick.

Bob Smith 16:40
I’ve got a quick one here. Another food question, what common food is related to poison ivy? This is something you like. You snack on these.

Marcia Smith 16:49
I snack on them, yeah? Cheese Balls.

Bob Smith 16:53
You don’t snack on these all the time, but once in a while you snack on these. It’s a form of nuts. Yeah? Cashews. Cashews, they grow on trees that are related to poison ivy, and raw cashews contain uracial the same substance that makes poison ivy

Marcia Smith 17:10
irritable. I should have known that, but now they’re good too. Cashews,

Bob Smith 17:15
anything sold in stores have actually been roasted, and the purpose of that is to neutralize the poison, the exposure. I thought that was interesting.

Marcia Smith 17:23
It is okay. Here’s another presidential question for my presidential wizard, what? What President Bob could simultaneously write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other? I

Bob Smith 17:36
know the answer to this, and he was only president for a short period of time before he was assassinated, he was what was his name, and he was actually killed by a man who lived near us. As his assassin was a person who lived for a time near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, actually about four miles away from our

Marcia Smith 17:57
house. Talk about getting in the weeds. Bob, I am getting in the

Bob Smith 18:00
weeds because I’m trying to I’m trying to, I’m trying, my retrieval system is trying to pull his name out. President, John, no, James. James Garfield, that’s it. Yeah. Think of what a president who had a mind like that? Yeah, what may he have done good for the country? How long

Marcia Smith 18:15
was he president? Um, I think months. 20th president. He could write with both hands at the same time and in different languages. You know, who else was like that? Who? Da Vinci? Leonardo da Vinci could write backwards, yes, and forwards and upside down. He could do everything. He

Bob Smith 18:31
wrote. A lot of his notes. You have to look in a mirror to read them. Yeah, intentionally, yeah. He

Marcia Smith 18:35
didn’t want everybody reading his notes. But this guy, too, some people just have proclivities beyond our understanding.

Bob Smith 18:41
Well, Marcia the human body question two modern medicine tools were tested on animals first, and people didn’t know if they would work on people. They were convinced they wouldn’t, but they were eventually adopted. One was the pacemaker. What was

Marcia Smith 18:56
the other? Okay? Was it?

Bob Smith 19:00
Pacemakers were done that way to keep a dog alive.

Marcia Smith 19:03
Yeah, pacemakers. And how about a this is a technique, a technique,

Bob Smith 19:07
three letter technique, CPR. That’s it. Modern CPR techniques. They began in 1958 as an impromptu way of keeping a dog alive, really a dog who’d suffered a heart attack. And the idea was to use CPR to keep the dog alive long enough to be defibrillated. Lot of folks were skeptical CPR would work on a person, and it was not attempted on a human being until a year later in 1959 but the dog got the benefit of it first. No word on how the dog felt at the end of it. I don’t know. Did he appreciate it?

Marcia Smith 19:41
Okay, okay, all right, Bob, what us? Town had its own language. For many, many, many years, the

Bob Smith 19:47
town had its own language. Indeed. Well, I thought you were going to ask me about Truth or Consequences. New Mexico, the town that changed its name for a TV show,

Marcia Smith 19:56
really, yeah. I mean, I’ve heard of it, but I didn’t know they changed it. Intentionally,

Bob Smith 20:00
yes, they changed their name. What for? Well, they changed it for Truth or Consequences the TV show back in the fifth but I mean, what for to be famous, apparently. Oh, okay, so your question again, is a town had its own language? Yeah, was this like an Indian village

Marcia Smith 20:15
at one point? No, no, no, no, I that makes sense. I’m talking above and beyond the local language. Yeah. This is a place called Boonville, California. No, tell me about it. Yes, deep in the forests of Northern California’s Mendocino County, the small community of Boonville in the Anderson Valley holds an unusual linguistic status for an American town. It has its own specialized jargon. How did it get it? It settled in the late 19th century, and it didn’t have a working railroad for its first 50 years. Okay? And so it’s residents kind of resided in isolation, and their own language kind of evolved. And it came out of a mixture of Irish, Scottish, Gaelic Spanish, and pomon, which is a local native tribe, really? Yeah. And so along with abbreviations and eponyms, it grew to include over 1000 distinct word and phrases. No, I can’t I mean, like they would say dual C for candy, Z for coffee. Wow. Anyway, bunt link speakers were once widespread in the valley, and the jargon was even taught in schools Bob. But today, fewer than 100 people still speak the language. When was this again? Late 19th century. What’s the language again? What’s it called? Boontling, after the Boonville boon boontling,

Bob Smith 21:35
boot Ling. Bootling sounds German or something. Yeah, they speak boontling for

Marcia Smith 21:41
deer. The word was biche. I mean, then they all were related to some person in town. Tell me some of the other names. Why you say was coffee called Z? Why? Because the initials of Zechariah Clifton, who had a reputation for making super strong coffee on local hunting expeditions. So they called Coffee

Bob Smith 21:59
Z. Well, this is really localization, taking it to a new level.

Marcia Smith 22:03
That’s what happens when the railroad doesn’t come through. Bob, oh, my goodness, but they taught this in the school.

Bob Smith 22:09
You know, it’s interesting, because I remember the first time I went to Switzerland, and Albert Fisher was a friend of mine who took me on this tour of the Alps. And he explained to me that back in the day before modern transportation, all these valleys were very isolated, and people from one valley couldn’t speak the language of another in ancient times, I believe it, and it’s that kind of thing. If you’re isolated over a period of time, you develop things that nobody else understands, kind of like our family. Well, anyway, okay, here’s a question, okay, where did the expression TO COURT disaster come from? And I’m going to tell you the root of that. Of that goes back to the 1600s to court disaster. You’ve heard that expression, right?

Marcia Smith 22:50
Yeah, that’s what they said to you when you started dating me.

Bob Smith 22:53
That was part of it. No, no, I’ve got a couple examples implementing a new computer system without testing it at first. Could court disaster. The Chinese government warned Taiwan that seeking independence for itself would be courting disaster. So it’s all over the world. It’s used but where does it come from?

Marcia Smith 23:11
From the Old English courts, from

Bob Smith 23:14
the old French word court, C, O, R T, meaning the residence of the king. Okay. And according to grammarist.com It goes to the French royal courts in the 15 to the 1700s and the behavior of the sycophants who ingratiated themselves with the king to receive favors. Yeah. So the expression TO COURT disaster means to keep company with seek out something that could lead to the worst possible outcomes, the popularity of the expression exploded at the turn of the 20th century. But it’s not court, c o u r t. It’s C O R T. Was the original spelling, still it related to the French courts.

Marcia Smith 23:51
Okay, Bob, what country had its own unique time zone for 36 years?

Bob Smith 23:59
Had its own unique time zone for 36 I know that China has, I think, only one time zone, and they’re about 10 time zones wide. Yes, Russia has about eight or nine time zones. Maybe they had one time zone for 36

Marcia Smith 24:12
years. Now, this is a very unique time. Okay, what is there to everybody else? It’s Ireland, really, yeah. And why it was called Dublin time.

Bob Smith 24:22
That means everything’s twice as fast. Yeah, but it was

Marcia Smith 24:25
an actual time zone for 36 years. Ireland’s time zone known as Dublin mean time. Check, this was 25 minutes and 21 seconds behind England.

Bob Smith 24:36
This is like bar time today. It’s like 15 minutes before

Marcia Smith 24:39
we’re gonna close the bar. Dublin time followed Greenwich Mean Time based on their location of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, okay, and Dublin, meantime, was set according to the longitude of the dunsin observatory just outside the capital of Dublin.

Bob Smith 24:55
Dublin. Time is funny. I love just the term the Dublin time

Marcia Smith 24:59
in 1960 16 the Emerald Isle made the switch to Greenwich Mean Time, as the clocks in Ireland were set back 35 minutes instead of one full hour to accommodate the 25 minute difference, and they synchronized the two time zones. Jeez. Well, what a mess. Yeah, it was a mess, and that’s part of the reason they kept their own time, because it was a mess for them. But then finally, it was a mess for everybody.

Bob Smith 25:22
Well, it was a mess all over the world, because when the railroads found that out this town is 35 minutes different in time than the last one, that was very common. So until they decided that they had to turn into a more modern society with communications, we could actually talk to each other immediately at the same time and different time zones. Let’s just standardize this stuff. Uh huh. And a lot of people resist it. No, our time is this we go by where the sun is over the town square. You know, that’s how they were measuring time.

Marcia Smith 25:50
Before I get to my quotes, Bob, what was the last letter added to the alphabet?

Bob Smith 25:55
It was it’s not Z, no, it’s another one. It’s J, is it? Yeah? J, yes. J

Marcia Smith 26:02
was added in 1524, and what was the reason? Because it marked the first time i and j were distinguished from each other, and so they were seen as the same letter, yeah. And they made J separate, because, as with much else in European history, it ultimately relates to the word Jesus, no kidding, and distinguishing the soft J sound. So

Bob Smith 26:23
I’ll be darned. So two reasons, it related to Christ, and it was a soft J sound. Just sound, yeah, I didn’t do it. We gotta have a letter for this, just sound we’re using here. So what do we do? Guys, what do you think? They’re all sitting around a table trying to figure it out, and somebody says, well, Jesus’s name starts with A J, wait a minute, there is no J, no j, so if we don’t, what are you talking about? Oh, how did they come up with that? If there was no J, how could they cite that as a reason? I know I don’t get the AI looking into that. I have

Marcia Smith 26:55
a quote here, an inspirational quote. We need one. Albert Einstein, okay, he said, the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

Bob Smith 27:08
That’s a good way and

Marcia Smith 27:09
from an unknown source. Okay, before we work on artificial intelligence, why don’t we do something about natural stupidity?

Bob Smith 27:19
I think it’s exemplified many places, hopefully not on this show, though. Yeah. Well, we hope you’ve been inspired by our genius or our attempts at it anyway, and we invite you back when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia the next time. I’m Bob Smith,

Marcia Smith 27:35
I’m Marcia Smith, thanks for listening to the off ramp. You.

Bob Smith 27:43
Announcer, the off ramp is produced in association with the Cedarburg Public Library. Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Visit us on the web at the offramp. Dot show at.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai