289 Hair Raising Trivia

Bob Smith 0:00
What is a 1909 Lincoln penny doing on Mars?

Marcia Smith 0:04
Mars?

Bob Smith 0:05
Yes.

Marcia Smith 0:06
And what did Romans use to remove body hair?

Bob Smith 0:09
Ah, equally fascinating! Answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the Off Ramp, with Bob

Marcia Smith 0:16
And Marcia

Bob Smith 0:16
Smith.

Bob Smith 0:17
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. We are dedicated to lifelong learning, so it’s always important to learn what the Romans did to remove body hair.

Marcia Smith 0:49
You want to take a guess.

Bob Smith 0:51
No.

Marcia Smith 0:52
Come on.

Bob Smith 0:52
What did they do to remove – ?

Marcia Smith 0:54
They use something that we have here today for various things.

Bob Smith 0:57
Is it some kind of substance like you rub on something?

Marcia Smith 1:00
Yeah, that’s a good guess. But no.

Bob Smith 1:02
Okay, is it a tool?

Marcia Smith 1:03
Yeah

Bob Smith 1:04
So it’s like a tweezer or something.

Marcia Smith 1:06
Exactly like that.

Bob Smith 1:07
Well, what’s so unusual about that?

Marcia Smith 1:09
They removed hair from their entire body with tweezers.

Bob Smith 1:12
Oh, dear.

Marcia Smith 1:13
Every nook and cranny, and that would be painful.

Bob Smith 1:17
Why did they do that?

Marcia Smith 1:18
Well, in Roman society, both genders viewed body hair as an unfavorable trait.

Bob Smith 1:23
I see.

Marcia Smith 1:24
They believe maintaining a clean shaven body helped differentiate them from the uncouth barbarians down the road. We’re not those guys.

Bob Smith 1:35
Always the bad neighbors, isn’t it?

Marcia Smith 1:37
Barbarians. We’re not going to have hair on our bodies! The preferred method was tweezers from head to toe, which could be quite painful when used in certain places. The Roman Seneca once wrote a letter complaining about the loud shrieks coming from Roman Baths where people had their hair pulled out by the local slaves.

Bob Smith 1:59
Oh, my goodness. So you have your slaves pull your hair out with a tweezer.

Marcia Smith 2:03
Not everybody could afford to pay a slave to tweeze all their hairs, but the upper the upper crust did.

Bob Smith 2:09
Wow

Marcia Smith 2:09
Isn’t that –

Bob Smith 2:10
So they thought they wanted to be more highly evolved by losing the hair.

Marcia Smith 2:13
Yeah.

Bob Smith 2:14
But the barbarians had hair, and the barbarians eventually overwhelmed the Roman Empire. How about that?

Marcia Smith 2:21
Is that right?

Bob Smith 2:21
Of course. The Visgoths.

Marcia Smith 2:23
Ah, yes, yeah, the hairy Visgoths.

Bob Smith 2:26
Okay, Marcia, why is there a 1909 Lincoln penny on Mars?

Marcia Smith 2:32
Well, that makes no sense to me.

Bob Smith 2:34
And better yet, how is it at work on Mars?

Marcia Smith 2:37
At work?

Bob Smith 2:37
It’s at work.

Marcia Smith 2:38
It must be on the Mars Rover.

Bob Smith 2:40
Yes, it is.

Marcia Smith 2:40
Okay. Thank you.

Bob Smith 2:41
Abraham Lincoln is on Mars in a 1909 Penny mounted on the America Mars rover, the vehicle that roams the surface gathering samples. NASA attached the 1909 Lincoln penny to the Curiosity rover as a camera calibration target.

Marcia Smith 2:56
Oh, to look at the Lincoln profile and calibrate the camera!

Bob Smith 3:00
That’s right.

Marcia Smith 3:12
How cool!

Bob Smith 3:00
To see if there’s dust or what’s going on. There’s a camera. It’s on curiosity’s robotic arm. The camera focuses on the penny to make sure the camera is properly calibrated for their geological work. Now, why did they choose that? Well, coins and geology have a long partnership, because for years, earth bound geologists have taken any artifact, they finally put a coin next to it, so you can see how large it is. That was the tradition.

Marcia Smith 3:25
That makes sense.

Bob Smith 3:26
But why not a brand new penny?

Marcia Smith 3:28
Oh, too shiny.

Bob Smith 3:29
No.

Marcia Smith 3:30
Too – I don’t know.

Bob Smith 3:32
1909 was the year for the Lincoln one cent. That was the year they started. That was the centennial of his birth.

Marcia Smith 3:38
It was made of a different material than it is today.

Bob Smith 3:40
Has nothing to do with what I’m telling you.

Marcia Smith 3:43
Has nothing to do –

Bob Smith 3:43
Nothing to do with what I’m trying to say! Trying to break through the Marcia to get the answer here.

Marcia Smith 3:48
I like that, break through the Marsha. All right.

Bob Smith 3:51
Okay, to mark the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, they came out with this coin in 1909 and in 2009 Century’s Curiosity mission was scheduled to launch. So Ken Edgett, a mission research scientist, thought, wouldn’t it be cool to use a 1909 penny on our 2009 launch to Mars, and it just would have symbolism for American history. So that is what is on the Mars Rover, along with charts of colors and lines and things that the camera focuses on to celebrate, yeah? But that’s one of them. Every day they still check that camera with Abraham Lincoln’s face.

Marcia Smith 4:28
Okay, Bob, what common denominator do prayers said by Hebrews, Christians, and Muslims all have in common – besides the word God.

Bob Smith 4:38
They’re talking to one God, as opposed to multiple gods.

Marcia Smith 4:41
Yeah, okay

Bob Smith 4:42
That was originally a major distinction.

Marcia Smith 4:44
Yeah.

Bob Smith 4:44
I don’t know, other than that.

Marcia Smith 4:45
There’s a word that they all use. You want to guess? Come on, you can – you know

Bob Smith 4:50
Allah, God, Yahweh, what – what is it?

Marcia Smith 4:53
Amen.

Bob Smith 4:53
Oh, okay,

Marcia Smith 4:55
The word originated – Amen – in Egypt around 2500 BC. And originally meant “the hidden one,” the name of their highest deity.

Bob Smith 5:05
Okay.

Marcia Smith 5:05
But Hebrew scholars adapted the word as meaning “so it is,” and they passed that word, and the meaning of it, to the Christians and Muslims. And everybody put it into their prayers.

Bob Smith 5:17
I’ll be darned. So that’s where it comes from.

Marcia Smith 5:19
Yeah, and they all say Amen, at the end of their prayers.

Bob Smith 5:22
But originally it meant the hidden one.

Marcia Smith 5:23
Yeah.

Bob Smith 5:24
Wow.

Marcia Smith 5:24
Yeah.

Bob Smith 5:25
That’s pretty cool.

Marcia Smith 5:26
Yeah.

Bob Smith 5:26
I like that. It makes you really understand the significance of it originally.

Bob Smith 5:31
Marcia, what famous Broadway musical was inspired by a real life tragedy.

Marcia Smith 5:36
Uh, Titanic.

Bob Smith 5:38
The Titanic? Is there a Broadway musical on the Titanic?

Marcia Smith 5:42
Indeed, there is.

Bob Smith 5:43
I’m sorry, I forgot about that tasteless idea.

Marcia Smith 5:46
Yeah.

Bob Smith 5:46
What famous Broadway musical was inspired by a real life tragedy – other than The Titanic? What famous Broadway musical?

Marcia Smith 5:56
There’s several, you know, The Unsinkable Molly Brown and, you know, and what’s his name, the Barb, all sorts of them.

Bob Smith 6:03
Okay, this is a MODERN Broadway, musical.

Marcia Smith 6:06
Modern!

Bob Smith 6:06
Since the 1980s. It was inspired by a tragedy.

Marcia Smith 6:09
I don’t know.

Bob Smith 6:10
It’s the Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom of the Opera was based on a real chandelier malfunction in 1896. You know what happened?

Marcia Smith 6:18
Nope.

Bob Smith 6:19
A massive chandelier broke loose in the Paris Opera House. While the seven ton chandelier didn’t fall, a counterweight broke through the ceiling.

Marcia Smith 6:30
Really.

Bob Smith 6:31
And fell into the audience.

Marcia Smith 6:33
Oh, my God, was anybody in there?

Bob Smith 6:35
Yes, there were people there. Here’s a description from the May 21 1896 edition of Le Figaro, a muffled noise like a cannon shot echoed through the hall. A dark mass pierced the ceiling and crashed into the orchestra seats. The spectators seized with terror, stood up, screamed and fled. A woman was killed instantly. Many in the audience thought a bomb had exploded, so they ran out to the streets.

Marcia Smith 6:59
Yeah.

Bob Smith 7:00
The counterweight killed a concierge, a woman named Madame Chaumette, who sadly, had never been to the opera before.

Marcia Smith 7:07
Oh, my God.

Bob Smith 7:08
It injured several others. And Gaston Leroux, a journalist and novelist, used this event as one of several inspirations for his 1910 novel, The Phantom of the Opera. He blended fact with fiction and the chandelier crash.

Marcia Smith 7:23
It’s a great opening for that, for that opera, it’s just – the chandelier is all crushed on the stage, and then it comes up and goes up top. It’s very cool.

Bob Smith 7:34
The chandelier crash is the centerpiece of Act One of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical Phantom of the Opera.

Marcia Smith 7:41
Okay? All right. Bob, according to a 2025 report from Pizza Hut – you get those annual reports, don’t you? How many slices of pizza does the average American consume every year?

Bob Smith 7:54
How many slices of pizza?

Marcia Smith 7:56
Yes

Bob Smith 7:57
Okay, everybody. All right.

Marcia Smith 7:59
This is Americans.

Bob Smith 8:01
I know I’m trying to think how many I eat? 1,2,3,4, jeez, I’m starting to think I shouldn’t eat that many pieces of pizza. Okay? Times I’d say 20 pizzas a year. So I’ll say 160 pieces of pizza.

Marcia Smith 8:15
Well, according to Pizza Hut, it’s 288 slices per year,

Bob Smith 8:20
Wow.

Marcia Smith 8:20
Which is very – much,

Bob Smith 8:24
Very much. I love that. It’s very – much, yes.

Marcia Smith 8:28
Yeah. Who are these people that Pizza Hut is surveying? Different surveys have different numbers, but that’s the latest 288. But one thing that all the surveys do agree on is the biggest event that people choose to eat pizza with every year. What is it?

Bob Smith 8:44
Uh Birthdays.

Marcia Smith 8:45
No.

Bob Smith 8:46
Halloween.

Marcia Smith 8:47
No

Bob Smith 8:48
I, I don’t know.

Marcia Smith 8:49
Super Bowl.

Bob Smith 8:50
Oh, of course. Okay.

Marcia Smith 8:52
Tens of millions of pizza are consumed annually on game day.

Bob Smith 8:56
So that’s the number one treat for Super Bowl is a pizza?

Marcia Smith 8:59
Yeah. At least for the main course, yeah, everybody has their nachos and their wings and everything else, but for the real, substantial dinner, it’s pizza.

Bob Smith 9:08
The dinner? It’s still a treat, I think.

Marcia Smith 9:12
It’s all treats. That’s what Super Bowl is all about.

Bob Smith 9:15
You mentioned the Titanic a while ago when you were saying, “well, obviously it’s the Titanic. The musical on Broadway” – Too soon? I think so.

Bob Smith 9:23
How big are today’s cruise ships compared to the Titanic? Any idea?

Marcia Smith 9:27
Twice as big?

Bob Smith 9:29
Well, let’s compare it to the Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas.

Marcia Smith 9:33
Okay, let’s.

Bob Smith 9:34
Okay. The Titanic had nine decks. That ship has 20 decks. Titanic was 882 feet long. Royal Caribbean’s icon of the Seas is 1/3 longer, and it’s twice as wide. It also weighs five times more than the Titanic did. So they’re huge, and that’s not the only thing. Here are some other comparisons. The Titanic had one heated pool. The Icon of the Seas has

Marcia Smith 9:58
It did?

Bob Smith 9:58
Yes, a heated pool.

Marcia Smith 9:59
Wow.

Bob Smith 10:00
The Icon of the Seas has seven pools and a full water park. Titanic had 2,453 people, including the crew. Icon of the Seas. How many people?

Marcia Smith 10:11
Oh, I’ll bet it’s like a population of our little town here. I’ll say almost 10,000 people.

Bob Smith 10:18
7,600 That’s enough on a ship – all sharing the same water and everything.

Marcia Smith 10:24
Yeah.

Bob Smith 10:24
And while Titanic was an ocean liner built for transatlantic travel, these cruise ships today are floating resorts designed for leisure. The Titanic had a squash court and Turkish bath.

Marcia Smith 10:35
No kidding.

Bob Smith 10:36
But the Icon has a full water park, diving shows and themed neighborhoods. And the cost to build is amazing. It cost 7.5 million to build the Titanic in 1912 a lot of money.

Marcia Smith 10:46
Yeah.

Bob Smith 10:47
it’s equivalent to $245 million today. But that’s just 1/8 the cost of building the Icon of the Seas, which is $2 billion dollars.

Marcia Smith 10:55
2 billion?

Bob Smith 10:56
2 billion to build that ship in 2024.

Marcia Smith 10:59
Gotta sell a lot of buffets for that to make that money back. Okay, Bob, what is the biggest spineless creature – that’s not in Congress – in the world? That’s my line now.

Bob Smith 11:14
Okay, the biggest spineless creature?

Marcia Smith 11:17
Invertebrate, yeah, what’s the biggest invertebrate?

Bob Smith 11:20
Okay, I’m trying to think here. Now, whales have spines, don’t they? Right? Yeah. Is it a jellyfish, or is it, wait a minute, spineless creature? Is it a hmm, is it a an octopus?

Marcia Smith 11:33
Ah, close.

Bob Smith 11:34
Okay.

Marcia Smith 11:34
It is the giant and the colossal squid.

Bob Smith 11:37
Wow.

Marcia Smith 11:37
The largest invertebrate in the world, the colossal squid can weigh over 1000 pounds, and it has eyes that exceed over one foot in diameter. Have you ever seen one?

Bob Smith 11:39
Yes, they’re so creepy.

Marcia Smith 11:42
Where did you see it?

Bob Smith 11:48
I’ve seen it an encyclopedia or in a documentary and things like that.

Marcia Smith 11:59
Really

Bob Smith 11:59
Nothing in my life, have I seen one. Have you?

Marcia Smith 11:59
No.

Bob Smith 11:59
Okay.

Marcia Smith 12:00
Okay, all right. Well, there you have it. That’s the biggest invertebrate in the world. So

Bob Smith 12:05
We’re into a nautical theme here.

Marcia Smith 12:06
Yeah

Bob Smith 12:08
You remember last night, we had two friends over, and they told us that a Viking ship they’re taking to Greece has a Snow Room. Remember that in the conversation?

Marcia Smith 12:17
Yeah

Bob Smith 12:17
I dug into it, and it’s true. Well, you think they’d lie to well, you know, it’s interesting. Some Viking ocean cruises feature a snow grotto as part of the lived Nordic Spa. It’s a glass enclosed room with man made snow that never melts, kept at freezing temperatures, and guests alternate between the hot steam rooms and the icy chamber, mimicking the Nordic bathing habits.

Marcia Smith 12:40
Yeah. What did they do in there?

Bob Smith 12:42
Well, it’s just believed to boost your circulation.

Marcia Smith 12:45
Oh, they just go sit in there.

Bob Smith 12:46
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 12:46
They go like in the sauna, then they jump in the snow like good Norwegians.

Bob Smith 12:51
Right.

Marcia Smith 12:51
Okay.

Bob Smith 12:52
But that Viking snow grotto is, pardon the pun, just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to amenities on other cruise ships. I found some other fascinating ones: surf simulators, you can ride waves on the decks. It’s like water. It’s like you got a pool there with waves. Sky diving simulator experiencing free fall in a wind tunnel. Robotic bartenders at the Bionic Bar.

Marcia Smith 13:15
That’s cute.

Bob Smith 13:15
They’ll mix your cocktails. And a Central Park, a real outdoor park with 20,000 live plants.

Marcia Smith 13:21
No kidding

Bob Smith 13:21
Yes, on a ship.

Marcia Smith 13:22
Which ship?

Bob Smith 13:23
The Icon of the Seas.

Marcia Smith 13:24
Oh, okay.

Bob Smith 13:25
And then there’s other ones. The Norwegian Cruise Line has go kart race tracks. Do you need this at sea? Why would you do that?

Marcia Smith 13:33
Come on.

Bob Smith 13:33
Okay.

Marcia Smith 13:34
There are people who love that.

Bob Smith 13:35
All right. And laser tag, escape rooms, and VR games. And you can sip vodka in a bar made entirely of ice on the Norwegian Cruise Line.

Marcia Smith 13:35
Oh, that would be interesting.

Bob Smith 13:40
Carnival has IMAX theaters on board. And then they have a Dr Seuss Water Works, whimsical Water Park, themed after the author. E expedition cruises. They have submarines with underwater explorations. They have helicopter excursions that fly over glaciers.

Marcia Smith 14:00
Whatis this a commercial for the ships that we don’t ever want to get on.

Bob Smith 14:05
That we don’t ever want to get on. And here’s one I don’t ever want to get on – polar ice, breaking. Travel deep into the Arctic or Antarctic regions.

Marcia Smith 14:16
Okay, Bob, why does Australia feature an emu and a kangaroo on their official coat of arms.

Bob Smith 14:24
That’s because those animals are there.

Marcia Smith 14:25
Well, yeah.

Bob Smith 14:26
That’s that’s the reason.

Marcia Smith 14:27
No.

Bob Smith 14:27
Next question.

Marcia Smith 14:28
There’s another meaningful reason why they’re on their coat of arms.

Bob Smith 14:31
Emus and kangaroos, because they took part in a in a battle at one point and helped. Uh, there was some kind of a conflict, and the emus took the sides of colonists, something like that.

Marcia Smith 14:43
Yeah. Oh, absolutely not. The animals symbolize constant forward progress, because neither animal can effectively walk or hop backwards because of their anatomy.

Bob Smith 14:54
Oh, that’s right, we knew that. We knew that the kangaroo couldn’t go backwards.

Marcia Smith 14:59
And neither can the EMU, so they put them so as a as a symbol of, we don’t go backwards, we only go forwards. I thought that was pretty interesting.

Bob Smith 15:08
Which might be a positive thing, it may be a negative thing. Sometimes you need to back up.

Marcia Smith 15:12
Well, they can’t.

Bob Smith 15:13
Okay.

Marcia Smith 15:14
You saw Dr, Strange Love

Bob Smith 15:16
Yes.

Marcia Smith 15:16
Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, okay? Actress Tracy Reed, wore a bikini throughout the entire movie, but she had another singular distinction in the in the movie. What was it?

Bob Smith 15:30
You know, it’s been so long since I saw that. I don’t know. I don’t remember her in the film. Hard, hard to believe a woman in a bikini, but I didn’t remember it. So tell me the answer.

Marcia Smith 15:40
She was the only female in the whole cast.

Bob Smith 15:42
Oh, my God, really?

Marcia Smith 15:43
Yeah, she appeared as general turgid sons secretary and was known as Miss foreign affairs from the cover of Playboy magazine.

Bob Smith 15:53
That’s another sarcastic thing. Isn’t that funny!

Marcia Smith 15:55
God, she just walked around in a bikini,

Bob Smith 15:58
Miss foreign affairs. All right, I think it’s time for a break.

Marcia Smith 16:02
I think it is too

Bob Smith 16:03
You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith, we’ll be back in just a moment.

Bob Smith 16:09
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 we encourage you to go to your local library and enjoy all the knowledge that you can find there.

Marcia Smith 16:24
Okay.

Bob Smith 16:25
Marcia, what is the first known synthesized color, and when was it developed?

Marcia Smith 16:32
The first known synth You mean the name the color,

Bob Smith 16:35
first known synthesized color? Well, just tell me what the color was and what civilization came

Marcia Smith 16:39
up with it? Gee, that’s nothing to ask. It’s

Bob Smith 16:43
an ancient times. It’s an ancient civilization.

Speaker 2 16:45
They read, and you’re wrong, and

Speaker 3 16:48
blue, that’s right,

Marcia Smith 16:49
okay, it was the civilization. It was the ancient Aztecs. No, it was the ancient Egyptians. Yes,

Speaker 4 16:56
it was, yes. That’s why they called it Egyptian blue. Ah, and where did they get the

Bob Smith 17:01
blue Bob? It goes back to 2200

Speaker 5 17:04
BC. Why was it synthesized? What’s that mean? They

Bob Smith 17:07
ground limestone and sand together with a mineral, azurite, and then they heated the combination up to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit to produce glass. And then they added a final ingredient, a natural substance, egg whites, uh huh. Egg whites, combined with everything else, created a long lasting paint known as Egyptian blue, the first synthetically produced color pigment in history. The color was heavily used until the start of the Common Era, when the new methods of color production evolved, huh? Well,

Marcia Smith 17:36
that’s that’s interesting. One of my favorite all time colors is cobalt blue. It’s, yes, oil paint that is very good.

Bob Smith 17:44
What’s the oldest color used in art? It’s a natural color, the oldest natural color. And they take these from those cave paintings in Spain. Yeah,

Speaker 6 17:52
yeah. And 60,000 years BC,

Marcia Smith 17:55
is it black? No, it has to be a strong color to last all this. So it’s like blue or

Bob Smith 18:01
red. It is red, red, red. Yeah, the walls are depicting images of animals and dots and geometric shapes and hand stencils all done with the red pigment. In the cave in montrovioso

Marcia Smith 18:15
in Spain, I always thought they used flower pigments, stuff.

Bob Smith 18:19
No, they used red ochre pigment made with iron laced soil producing the color red. Oh, yeah, that’s right. So they think it’s the oldest color used in art history.

Speaker 4 18:29
I think so too. Then why did you say blue? Because I didn’t know. That’s what I thought.

Marcia Smith 18:34
Bob, what do these seven surnames have in common York? Bruce Howard Russell, Campbell Spencer and Nguyen, N, G, u, y, e, n,

Bob Smith 18:47
okay, now, un that’s a, that’s an Asian name, right? I think it’s in Korea. Believe, I think so. I’m not sure. Anyway, what are they all mean? What are they know? What do they have in common? What do they have in common?

Marcia Smith 18:59
York, Bruce Howard, Russell, Campbell, Spencer, Nguyen, I don’t know. They all may have royal, or at least noble lineage, according to history facts.com they don’t have any listings that say you might be a redneck, but they do have these names, which, if you trace it back, chances are good you come from royalty.

Bob Smith 19:20
So our friend Craig Campbell, might have royalty or maybe Noble or something. Who knows Rick York, who was in college with me? Wow, possibly they

Speaker 7 19:28
got, you got to go back a bit, but that those

Bob Smith 19:30
are all, Bruce is considered some kind of a royal term. At some point it was a big name back in the day. What are the names again? Please.

Speaker 8 19:38
York, Bruce Howard, Russell, Campbell,

Bob Smith 19:41
Spencer and new one. I could see Spencer being one of those names, yeah, you think of Lady Di, yeah. Lady Di, that was the Spencer family, yeah. What was the middle one there? Howard. Howard. Never think of Howard as being one of those names, yeah. So those were

Marcia Smith 19:55
all no loyalty, yeah? No or noble lineage, yes. Okay.

Bob Smith 19:59
Marcia. What modern concept of Emergency Medicine was pioneered in the US Civil War. Now, this is a term you hear when you go to operating rooms. What is the term? It starts with a T, tourniquet, no. Code Red, no. It starts with a T, Marcia, tumble bum. No, not. Tumble bum. Triage, triage, yes, Oh, that’s right, it comes from the French word Trier, meaning to sort. And James Letterman helped pioneer that concept. There was such a horrible disaster after the first battle, I think of Manassas, it took a week to get people off the battlefield. Oh, God. So he was given the job figure this out. So he adopted a system that sorted and treated casualties based on the greatest need, and that consisted of three stations, a field dressing station on or near the battlefield where the medical personnel applied dressings and tourniquet, and then a field hospital beyond the Cannon Range in a house or building nearby where emergency surgery could be performed. And then large hospitals located far from the fight for long term treatment. And he also organized the first ambulance corps serving as a battlefield evacuation system. And that was the key. Was it successful? Absolutely. Starting with the Battle of Antietam, 23,000 casualties were removed from the battlefield within 24 hours, 23,000 3000 so he saved 1000s of lives. And by the Battle of Gettysburg, the mortality rate, mortality, meaning the wounded soldiers taken off the battlefield, only 2% of those people died, wow, whereas before they would be left there maybe for weeks and other soldiers might try to help them out. Horrible. Well, God bless them. So that’s what happened here, okay, dr, James Letterman, all

Marcia Smith 21:42
right, Bob, where does the phrase Speak of the devil originate? You know, when you’re talking about someone and they suddenly show up Speaking

Bob Smith 21:50
of the devil. Here he comes. Here’s Bob. No, they don’t say that about me.

Speaker 9 21:55
Speak of the Bob. Here’s the devil. Probably to say

Bob Smith 21:58
that about me. Okay, that must I bet that goes back to Shakespeare or something like that, or at least back to that time Speak of the devil. I don’t know. That’s a good question. What’s the origin of that phrase? Well,

Marcia Smith 22:09
the it’s really goes back like 500 years. The phrase is a shortened version of Speak of the devil, and he will appear 500 years ago. People had a serious problem, worrying about the real devil showing up if you mentioned his name, and they avoided using his name at all costs.

Bob Smith 22:28
So this was a suspicion, Yeah, what’d you call those things? Yeah, superstition. Yeah. Okay,

Marcia Smith 22:34
eventually the mood lightened up. And today it just means, means anybody you’re talking about showing up. But back in the day, they were convinced if you said the devil’s name, he might just show up at your, you know, Tea Party.

Bob Smith 22:46
Or if you say the devil’s name and your brother in law shows up, then you go, I got a problem in my family.

Speaker 10 22:51
Oh, dear. Okay, so that’s a very old phrase,

Bob Smith 22:55
all right, Marcia, this is a good one. What was America’s first suburb? And were there suburbs in ancient times, what was America’s first suburb? Now, many people say Levittown built on Long Island between 1947 and 1951 but it wasn’t actually the first suburb. It was in the Midwest. The first suburb. Yeah, it was a streetcar suburb. They call them streetcars would take you farther than see before people had cars. Okay? In Ohio, what would

Marcia Smith 23:25
it be? So I’m supposed to know some suburbs in Ohio.

Bob Smith 23:28
First known suburb, the first Bob, okay? It’s called Shaker Heights. Oh, I’ve heard of that. Well, that’s where Paul Newman was from. Okay? Now, Shaker Heights, outside Cleveland, was a planned community. It offered wealthy and middle class residents and escape from overcrowded, polluted cities. Similar suburbs included Llewellyn Park, New Jersey, developed in the 1850s that was considered the first planned community. I should mention that the first modern suburbs were actually in England, oh yeah, Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities, that was back in the 1840s and that also was due to the railroads. Okay? Now, were there suburbs in ancient times? Do you think there may have been, oh, yeah, Rome, yes. Actually, the term suburbium referred to settlements just outside the city of Rome. So that’s where the word comes from, okay? And that housed both elites who wanted to have villas and lower class citizens pushed out by urban density. But the first suburbs are found in guess where? Go back to the Fertile Crescent Mesopotamia, yes, Babylon 539, BC, they found a clay tablet from that era describing a home quote so close to Babylon that we enjoy all the advantages of the city and yet we can stay away from all the noise and dust. Why does that sound pretty familiar? Isn’t that funny? That is from 539 BC, and that is a description of a suburb. I thought that was fascinating,

Marcia Smith 24:49
all right. Bob time for AKA, also known as All right. Favorite card game of mine in today’s category is types of wheels. Types of wheels, yes. So like if I said Bueller, what kind of wheel Am I talking? Oh, Ferris a Ferris wheel, that’s right. So these can be any kind of wheels, so keep that in mind. Okay, ATM, password,

Bob Smith 25:16
ATM, password, uh huh, an ATM. Password, bank, bank wheel, banking wheel, no, you put in your what? Your number, your password, your PIN, personal identification number. I see pin wheel, pin wheel, okay. Supermarket basket, a shopping basket, shopping cart, a cartwheel. That’s it. Okay. Got very good.

Marcia Smith 25:38
25.4 fluid ounces of booze. What?

Bob Smith 25:42
What is that container called a fifth Okay, a fifth wheel.

Marcia Smith 25:47
That’s right, that’s right, okay, the infamous Ms. From, what remember? From, at that last name, she tried to kill a president. Do you remember her name? Squeaky from, yeah. And so the

Bob Smith 26:01
squeaky wheel, that’s it. Oh my goodness. Okay, these are arcane,

Marcia Smith 26:05
but you’re getting them, most of them with help, yes. Okay, here’s a car question, station, vehicle, wagon. Wheel, that’s it, okay? And last said during photos. Said during photos, yeah, you want to get someone to smile.

Bob Smith 26:21
Shoot, wheel cheese. Wheel cheese. Wheel cheese.

Speaker 10 26:25
Okay, cheese on the cheese. Cheese. Wheel Okay.

Bob Smith 26:29
All right. So you got a thought for the day for us? Yes,

Marcia Smith 26:32
it’s that time of the year for lots of lawn care. Bob, here’s a couple quotes on lawn care. I fought the lawn and the lawn. One who did that? It’s anonymous. Oh gosh, a weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill, except for learning how to grow in rows, you know?

Bob Smith 26:52
And it’s funny, we kill weeds, right? But they are the hardiest of plants. Yeah, they are the strongest of plants. We don’t celebrate them.

Marcia Smith 26:59
No, we don’t celebrate. That’s just interesting. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

Bob Smith 27:09
That’s right, because we treat them as vegetables. Yeah, that’s funny. All right. Well, that’s it for today. We hope you’ve enjoyed the show, and we invite you to submit any questions or thoughts you might have by going to our website, the off ramp, dot show and scrolling all the way down to contact us. Thank you for joining us today. 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.

Bob Smith 27:41
The off ramp is produced in association with the Cedarburg Public Library. Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai