In this episode, Marcia and Bob discuss various trivia topics, including the largest office building (the Pentagon with 6.5 million square feet), the first woman nominated for U.S. President (Congresswoman Margaret Chase Smith in 1964), and the origin of the “Tommy gun” (named after its inventor John Taliaferro Thompson). They also explore the history of in-flight entertainment, noting the first in-flight movie shown in 1921, the introduction of video games in 1975, and the first multi-channel system in 1991. Additionally, they touch on the classification of nuts, the growth of body parts, and historical anecdotes like the origin of Chop Suey and the Inca practice of inlaying teeth with gold.
Outline
Largest Office Building and Jigsaw Puzzle Discussion
- Marcia Smith asks about the largest office building in the world, and Bob Smith teases the answer.
- Bob Smith introduces the topic of jigsaw puzzles, mentioning a hard puzzle called “Black Hell” or “White Hell” made by a Japanese puzzle maker, Beverly.
- Marcia Smith and Bob Smith discuss the difficulty of the puzzle, with Marcia claiming it takes two years to complete.
- Bob Smith mentions larger puzzles available on Amazon and Kodak, including a 40,000-piece Disney puzzle and a 51,000-piece Kodak puzzle.
Historical Trivia: Pentagon and First Female Presidential Nominee
- Bob Smith asks about the largest office building in the world, and Marcia Smith guesses Dubai or New York.
- Bob Smith reveals the answer is the Pentagon, which has a total floor area of 6.5 million square feet.
- Marcia Smith and Bob Smith discuss the historical significance of the Pentagon, including the extra restrooms for African Americans.
- Bob Smith asks about the first woman to be placed in nomination by a major political party for President, and Marcia Smith guesses the 1960s.
- Bob Smith reveals the answer is Congresswoman Margaret Chase Smith in 1964, who was the first woman to be nominated by the Republican Party.
Tommy Gun and Teddy Bear Origins
- Bob Smith asks why the submachine gun is known as the Tommy gun, and Marcia Smith guesses it was named after an old gangster.
- Bob Smith reveals the gun was named after its inventor, John Taliaferro Thompson.
- Marcia Smith asks about the origin of the Teddy bear, and Bob Smith explains it was named after President Theodore Roosevelt.
- Bob Smith shares the story of Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear, leading to the creation of the Teddy bear.
Cannibals and Gasoline Freezing
- Bob Smith asks how Portuguese explorers determined if natives were cannibals, and Marcia Smith guesses their breath.
- Bob Smith reveals the explorers brought along convicts to be cast ashore, and if they were eaten, it confirmed the natives were cannibals.
- Bob Smith discusses the unlikely scenario of gasoline freezing on Earth, explaining it would require temperatures of 180 to 240 degrees below zero.
- Marcia Smith and Bob Smith discuss the origin of the phrase “a baker’s dozen,” with Marcia explaining it comes from medieval times to avoid cheating customers.
Nut Classification and Body Parts That Grow
- Bob Smith asks about the classification of nuts, explaining that peanuts, almonds, and cashews are not nuts but legumes or seeds.
- Marcia Smith and Bob Smith discuss the botanical definition of a nut and the classification of hazelnuts and chestnuts as true nuts.
- Bob Smith asks about the two parts of the body that continue to grow during a person’s lifetime, and Marcia Smith guesses hair and fingernails.
- Bob Smith reveals the answer is the nose and ears, explaining that these parts continue to grow throughout a person’s life.
In-Flight Entertainment Evolution
- Bob Smith asks about the first in-flight movie shown, and Marcia Smith guesses 1957.
- Bob Smith reveals the first in-flight movie was shown in 1921, a silent film called “Howdy Chicago” by Arrow Marine Airways.
- Bob Smith discusses the evolution of in-flight entertainment, including the first commercial film shown in flight in 1925, “The Lost World.”
- Marcia Smith and Bob Smith discuss the introduction of live shows on planes in 1941 and the first use of a lightweight projection system in 1961.
Modern Airline Policies and Historical Trivia
- Bob Smith discusses United Airlines’ new measures to improve the flying experience, including boarding the plane back to front.
- Marcia Smith and Bob Smith discuss the historical significance of the White House, which was modeled after the palace of the Duke of Leinster in Ireland.
- Bob Smith asks about the invention of Chop Suey, and Marcia Smith explains it was invented by a Chinese dignitary in California in the late 1800s.
- Bob Smith shares the story of Glenn Cunningham, who held the record for the indoor mile run with no toes on his left foot.
Inca Teeth and Final Trivia Questions
- Bob Smith asks why the ancient Inca Indians were known for their brilliant smiles, and Marcia Smith guesses they inlaid their teeth with gold and semi-precious jewels.
- Bob Smith reveals the Inca practice of inlaying teeth with gold and jewels as the reason for their brilliant smiles.
- Marcia Smith and Bob Smith discuss the origin of the phrase “Is it safe?” and the story of Marathon Man, the Nazi dentist.
- Bob Smith wraps up the show, thanking Marcia Smith for joining him and inviting listeners to join them again next time.
Marcia Smith 0:00
What is the largest office building in the world? Who was the first woman to be placed in nomination by a major political party for President?
Bob Smith 0:10
Answers to those and other questions coming up today on the off ramp with Bob
Marcia Smith 0:14
and Macia Smith.
Bob Smith 0:15
Welcome to the Off Ramp, a place to slow down. Steer clear of crazy. Take a side road to sanity and get some perspective on life. Well, Marsha, I know you’ve been doing things like playing puzzles and things, and so I got a question. Ask you about puzzles here. Sure, how many pieces does the hardest jigsaw puzzle have?
Marcia Smith 0:51
You mean, anyone that says that kind of 1000 pieces?
Bob Smith 0:55
It’s yeah, that’s the standard for jigsaw, really, yeah, for most Jigsaw
Marcia Smith 0:58
Too much for me.
Bob Smith 0:59
But the trick question here is this particular puzzle is smaller than the standard puzzle, so the pieces are called micro pieces, and here’s why it’s the hardest puzzle. There is no design, just 1000 pieces in a solid color, white or black.
Marcia Smith 1:18
That’s stupid.
Bob Smith 1:19
No, it’s not stupid. It’s called Black hell, or, if you prefer white hell. And they’re made by a Japanese Puzzle Maker, Beverly. And each puzzle features a single color, and the company claims that those micro sized pieces are the world’s smallest only for little hands. How long does it take to put together
Marcia Smith 1:36
for the average person, or what? For who me?
Bob Smith 1:39
For somebody who claimed to have put it together’
Marcia Smith 1:41
For me? You’re talking two years. You’re talking two years for the average puzzle solver.
Bob Smith 1:45
Well, you’re funny. You said two years because one reviewer said it took him 17 months to complete just half of the puzzle.
Marcia Smith 1:52
Yeah.
Bob Smith 1:52
Okay, even though the back of the puzzle has different patterns imprinted to help users, he called it the devil reincarnated into an inanimate objects.
Marcia Smith 2:01
Wow. I’m sorry. I think it’s just stupid. Well, who would put together that?
Bob Smith 2:05
There are bigger puzzles though.
Marcia Smith 2:06
There are bigger puzzles!
Bob Smith 2:07
Amazon sells a jigsaw featuring Disney characters with 40,000 pieces, and there’s a massive puzzle from Kodak that has 51,000 pieces.
Marcia Smith 2:18
Wow.
Bob Smith 2:18
All right, well, let’s start with the two questions we teased. What is the largest office building in the world?
Marcia Smith 2:26
Hmm, office building? Is it in Dubai?
Bob Smith 2:30
No
Marcia Smith 2:31
Is it in New York?
Bob Smith 2:32
It’s in terms of its square feet, okay? In terms of square feet, that’s what we’re going by, not the height, not the width, not the square feet, the number of square feet,
Marcia Smith 2:43
Okay, well, is it in New York?
Bob Smith 2:45
No, it’s not.
Marcia Smith 2:45
Okay, and it’s not Dubai.
Bob Smith 2:47
No, it’s not Dubai. Is it? It’s in Washington
Marcia Smith 2:52
The Pentagon?
Bob Smith 2:53
Yes, the Pentagon has a total floor area of how many millions of square feet do you think it has.
Marcia Smith 3:00
Five.
Bob Smith 3:00
Six and a half million square feet, even so, no two offices in the building are more than 1800 feet, or six minutes walking time distant from each other. And so they built it,
Marcia Smith 3:13
Really, yeah, that’s why they built it. As they did
Bob Smith 3:15
Amazing now, why, when it was built, did the Pentagon have twice the amount of restrooms as it needed.
Marcia Smith 3:24
Because African Americans had to have their own bathroom.
Bob Smith 3:27
That’s exactly right, because the laws of the District, yeah, they required separate restrooms for what they called colored people at the time. It’s amazing that they had to do that. So they had to put that in the planning when they built that building.
Marcia Smith 3:43
That’s probably the only place in the US that has enough bathrooms for women, right?
Bob Smith 3:45
That’s probably true. Yeah, that’s a good way to look at it. I think, yeah.
Marcia Smith 3:49
Well, all women look at it that way. More bathrooms, please!
Bob Smith 3:52
Let’s look at yours. What’s your question there?
Marcia Smith 3:54
Okay, who was the first woman Bob to be placed in nomination by either major political party for President of the United States, and tell me if you know the year too. Okay, this
Bob Smith 4:05
had to be in our time, right? Yes. Gosh, I’m trying to think of her name that was back in 19 who 7019, 80? Was it? I think 1976
Marcia Smith 4:18
No, when was it 60s, really. And she was the only woman who ever served in both the Senate and House of Representatives. Okay, who was it? She had a lot of gravitas back then. It was, you’ll remember this name, Congresswoman Margaret Chase Smith. Oh, I forgot about her. Yeah, me too. Of skohegan Maine, and she was the Republicans put her up. What year was that 6419
Bob Smith 4:48
64 so that was the first woman to be put into nomination for president by a major party, and the party was the Republican Party, not the
Marcia Smith 4:57
Democratic Party. Who won was that Johnson that year? Before Yes. Okay, here’s
Bob Smith 5:01
another one. Here’s another question. Okay, why is the sub machine gun known as the tommy gun? Remember that in all the movies? Yeah, yeah. The gangsters had the tommy guns back in the Warner Brothers films.
Marcia Smith 5:12
Was it an old gangster named Tom?
Bob Smith 5:16
It’s the inventor. His name was John Taliaferro Thompson. He invented it in 1920 and the mobs got that was a technology, a crime technology. All the mobsters got their holds on right away.
Marcia Smith 5:28
And Tom Thompson, right? John Thompson, oh, John, here’s one. I bet you know. Mr. Presidential History lover, okay. Oh, what does the teddy bear have in common with a President of the United States?
Bob Smith 5:44
Oh, is Teddy Roosevelt? Yes, because he treed a bear. So a bear was up a tree, and he caught it, and then he would not kill it, because he thought that was inhumane to shoot. That was a hunting incident, but he didn’t want to kill the bear. And so that was played up in all the papers. And then there was a toy store owner who built a little toy bear, and he named it Teddy for for Roosevelt.
Marcia Smith 6:07
Well, you have more information than I have in my answer. Oh, sorry, but mine says he was presented with an Australian koala bear, and he was a lover of animals, which we know from his biography. He made such a fuss over it that they started putting stuffed toys out of bears, and they called him teddy bears.
Bob Smith 6:28
He actually, sort of endorsed it. Actually, they the that toy owner who started it, kind of asked him if it was okay. And he said, Sure, fine. If you want to call it a
Marcia Smith 6:36
teddy bear, that’s okay. Yeah, good. His name wasn’t Walter or something.
Bob Smith 6:40
The Walter bear. Okay. Now the topic is, cannibals. Human beings. Eat human beings. Okay, how did Portuguese explorers journeying to South America find out if the natives in the jungles were cannibals? How did they determine whether the natives were cannibals?
Marcia Smith 6:59
Their breath, no little fingernails hanging out of their mouth.
Bob Smith 7:04
No, this is really sad. Okay, okay, they brought along convicts on their ships. Oh, no. So then they cast them ashore in unfamiliar areas, leaving them to the mercy of the Indians there.
Marcia Smith 7:16
Oh, my god, yeah. Oh, that’s
Bob Smith 7:19
how the Portuguese explorers knew if there were cannibals on shore.
Marcia Smith 7:22
Wow. Well, how did they know if they ate them or they just lived happily with a native girl?
Bob Smith 7:27
They must have just hung around to see what happened. Oh, I know it’s pretty bleak, isn’t it?
Marcia Smith 7:34
Yeah. What a way to get rid of prisoners. Yeah, now you’re now, you’re torturing them if you don’t give them a TV in the south those were really bad times.
Bob Smith 7:48
Okay, although gasoline lines can freeze up due to water caused by condensation, why is it unlikely gasoline itself will ever freeze on this planet, on this planet in the near future,
Marcia Smith 8:00
in the new wow. Oh, well, it can’t ever get cold enough to do that. Isn’t there a temperature that it has to reach which is really low?
Bob Smith 8:08
Yeah, that’s the good thing. What usually happens when you have a gas line problem, it’s there’s water in the condensation. It freezes, but gasoline will solidify only under temperatures of 180 to 240 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, and that temperature has never been reached on this planet outside of a laboratory. Really say again, how gasoline will solidify if it’s 180 to 240 degrees below zero, and they’ve only made that temperature happen in a laboratory, okay? And we know none of us would survive that kind of weather.
Marcia Smith 8:43
Wow, interesting. Okay, well, you’re probably wondering, what is the origin of the phrase a baker’s dozen?
Bob Smith 8:51
Oh, yeah, baker’s dozen is 13 of something, right, correct? A baker made one more than 12 of something, and he thought, I’ll just throw it in and call it a baker’s dozen. It’s a little bonus for my customers.
Marcia Smith 9:02
Well, that’s too boring for this show. This show enlightening and exciting. Okay, so what’s the answer? It goes back to medieval times. A baker who cheated his customers in those days was confined in the dungeon as punishment. So if you’ve cheated your customers from their donuts. For this reason, bakers would customarily give an extra piece with each dozen to ensure against any possible shortage. Oh, really, yeah. So they always threw in an extra one so that the customer wouldn’t feel cheated. Because they didn’t want
Bob Smith 9:36
to go to the dungeon, didn’t want to go to court to say, I got you should?
Marcia Smith 9:39
I don’t think they even got court. You mess up my donut order. You’re going to the dungeon. Geez, these people didn’t fool around back in the day.
Bob Smith 9:49
These people were serious about their food, yeah, okay, speaking of food, I have a question for you. All right. This is a big, broad question. We can go into great detail or not. Okay, keep it safe. What do peanuts, almonds, cashews, walnuts, pine nuts, Brazil nuts, macadamia nuts, pistachios, pecans and coconuts all have in common.
Marcia Smith 10:10
Gee, they’re nuts. They’re all grown up above ground.
Bob Smith 10:17
Most of them aren’t nuts. Isn’t that amazing from a technical standpoint? So peanuts, for instance, not actually a nut. Instead, peanuts are considered legumes, along with soy beans and lentils and chickpeas and legumes come in self, opening pods nuts don’t almonds are not nuts. They are seeds within the fleshy peach, like fruits of the Asian Prunus dulcis tree.
Marcia Smith 10:41
What’s a cashew? Cashews?
Bob Smith 10:43
They’re droop seeds, which is what the almonds are. They’re pulled from soft fruit packages. Nuts are not okay. Cashew seeds are naturally protected by a toxin coated outer shell that’s roasted to neutralize the acid, just like peanuts, you know. But again, none of those are nuts. How about pine nuts? I love pine they’re seeds from pine trees, from Italian stone pine trees, Italian pine Brazil nuts. You’ll find Brazil nuts all over the Amazon rainforest.
Marcia Smith 11:15
But they’re not nuts. No, they’re seeds. They are seeds. They will then define a nut for me. Okay, I have
Bob Smith 11:21
the answer to that. Okay, botanists define a nut as a dry one seeded fruit encased in a hardened ovary wall called a pericarp. Genuine nuts are fused to their shells and won’t naturally break open. So hazel nuts fit the criteria chestnuts do, but none of those others I named are actually nuts.
Marcia Smith 11:43
Fascinating. Hazelnuts are true nuts,
Bob Smith 11:45
yeah, hazelnuts and chestnuts are true nuts, but you’re not eating either one of those are
Marcia Smith 11:49
I like hazel. Do you okay? Yeah, interesting. Okay, okay, Bob, let’s get back to serious stuff. What are the two parts of your body that continue to grow during your lifetime, that don’t stop
Bob Smith 12:03
growing. I’d say your hair
Marcia Smith 12:06
and your fingernails. It seems I don’t know if this classified,
Bob Smith 12:10
Oh, I see, okay, so it’s some physical part of your body that keeps growing, yeah,
Marcia Smith 12:14
I don’t know if fingernails, because I would think they’d keep growing and your hair when, yeah, you know, this is like your arms or
Bob Smith 12:22
other parts, okay, your arms don’t grow. Butts grow.
Marcia Smith 12:27
Well, that’s if that’s an absolute fact, oh,
Bob Smith 12:30
stomachs and butts. I’d say that’s the answer stomach, butts
Marcia Smith 12:33
and feet get but no, the actual answer is, and you knew one of these, I’m pretty sure your nose continues to grow. You see that on older people, their nose keeps getting bigger. And the other thing is, ears, they don’t they don’t stop growing.
Bob Smith 12:48
How interesting. Okay, you know you’re right. And why did you say, you know this, Bob, noses continue to grow. Why did you say that? Is that? Because you think my nose is getting bigger all the time. It is a little larger.
Marcia Smith 13:00
It starts it looks a little bit like your father’s, but he had a fine nose, fine looking man and a fine looking nose. And here’s a little factoid connected with that about the human nose, it cleans and humidifies approximately 600 cubic feet of air each day. Wow.
Bob Smith 13:19
Now I never thought of that. Yeah, so that’s what, what your nose is doing for you is wherever you’re going, it is swooping up everything and cleaning and humidifying it, whatever it takes into your body. Whoo, everything like a big human vacuum cleaner. Okay, yes, okay, we’ll take a break and we’ll be right back. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. Okay, we’re back with the off ramp. Okay, Marcia, as we’re getting cabin fever and so forth, we naturally turn to memories of when we traveled. Maybe when you took an airplane trip. What did you do? Did you watch something on the airplane? Prayed? Well, yes, Marcia always prays on the plane. But you watch, you like watching content on a plane. I do, yes. Okay. Well, when was the first in flight movie shown? The very first in flight movie?
Marcia Smith 14:09
Well, I have a feeling it’s much sooner than I think. Okay, so I’ll just say 1957 Oh, it’s sooner than that. Oh, okay, all right, then 1942 no sooner than that. What the heck? What did Amelia Earhart have one going over? Oh, sooner than that, really?
Bob Smith 14:29
All right, tell me. Okay. It was in 1921 and the film was howdy Chicago. It was a travel log shown by Arrow marine airways. Have you ever heard of aero marine airways? No, it used amphibious planes to fly tourists over the windy city of Chicago. Oh, and howdy Chicago was. Oh, that’s neat, projected onto a screen during one of those flights starting in 1921 and since it was 1921 it was a silent film, I’ll be darn now, when was the first commercial film? Film shown in flight. That’s probably what you were thinking, a regular film. Yeah?
Marcia Smith 15:05
Well, that’s what I was, yeah. Amelia probably had Netflix or something, but I don’t know that answer to this one.
Bob Smith 15:12
It was also a silent film. So that would have been
Marcia Smith 15:15
really, yeah, 1938
Bob Smith 15:18
No, 25
Marcia Smith 15:20
oh yeah, because that we were well into talkies and 30s.
Bob Smith 15:23
Yeah, from 29 on, it was talkies, yeah, April 1925. The Lost World was shown by Imperial airways on a flight between London and Paris. Now, the lost world, by the way, was the Jurassic Park of its day.
Marcia Smith 15:37
Yeah, that’s why they named one of their films The Lost
Bob Smith 15:40
Yeah, it’s an Arthur Conan Doyle story about explorers finding dinosaurs and prehistoric birds living in the Amazon jungle and Sherlock Holmes. He wasn’t in that story. All right. Did you know that in flight entertainment once included live shows? You think, you think some, some of your friends are annoying on a plane. Can you imagine this? In 1941 airlines were hiring actors to sing and entertain on planes.
Marcia Smith 16:07
No kidding. Oh, those are days you could smoke and drink like crazy and just you had room to put your feet out.
Bob Smith 16:14
Had to be very rich to be on a plane back then. So, yeah, wow. But then the war came and all that ended. Now, when did in flight movies really take off? One of your first guesses, 5861 Okay, 61 that’s when a lightweight projection system was approved by the FAA. And the first film to use the system was a Lana Turner film by love possessed.
Marcia Smith 16:36
I should, we should dig that up on shown
Bob Smith 16:39
on a TWA transcontinental flight. It was Ephraim Zimbalist, Jr, who starred in the FBI when we were growing up on TV, and Lana Turner, okay, now I’ve got a few more. As like you said, the Wikipedia rat hole you go down when you go to these things. When were video games first played in flight? People play video games all the time now on planes with their phones and everything.
Marcia Smith 17:02
1989 1975
Bob Smith 17:05
that’s when Braniff airlines offered games of Pong.
Marcia Smith 17:09
Oh, really in the air. Oh, Braniff is always ahead of its time. Yeah, for them.
Bob Smith 17:13
Okay, when were the first back of seat screens in planes? Back of seat screens on a plane? Do you remember when you saw that the first time? No and how big the screen was? It was 1988 Northwest Airlines. They were three inch seat back video screens. Today in coach, you could get 10 inch screens, but it was three inch screens back then the first multi channel in flight entertainment system when you actually could check multiple things. Yeah. When do you think that was?
Marcia Smith 17:42
I know, after they got rid of the ashtrays, they had room for that.
Bob Smith 17:45
That’s true. 1991 1991 it was a it was a multi channel system, Virgin Atlantic installed for all classes of service. So it was the first time passengers had a choice of what they would watch on an airplane. And then satellite TV came in 2000 from 2000 on, you could watch newscasts on, on, on planes. And finally, Marsha, when was the first email sent in flight? People can do that all the time.
Marcia Smith 18:14
Now tell me, Bob, 2001
Bob Smith 18:17
it was sent from the skies during an Air Canada press tour. And then, since 2018 the airlines have started adopting a policy, bring your own screen. Bring your iPod, bring your phone. You can use our Wi Fi, which you’ll pay for, but bring your own screen. And you know why? Because all those back of the screen, yeah, those things cost $10,000 each to install real planes. So let’s say a Boeing 747, 366 seats times $10,000 that’s crazy. That’s a $3.6 million investment in video per plane. So most of them are encouraging you to bring your own screen. That’s where they’re headed, because it’s costing. It’s going to cost too much money. This is a lot of hardware. Anyway. All that stuff is about movies in flight. Most of that was from motion pictures, A Brief History of in flight movies from projected to pocket sized by The Wall Street Journal. Okay, this is an interesting thing. United Airlines has announced a series of measures that will eliminate many of the annoyances of flying cattle
Bob Smith 19:20
class, or cattle class. That’s us, Bob, that’s us.
Bob Smith 19:23
This is in the Wall Street Journal. One will be boarding the plane back to front. In other words, if you sit in the back of the plane, you’ll get the idea. I mean, why haven’t they done this before? Funny, this is, this is, I’ve never heard this written this way in the Wall Street Journal. It’s written in the sarcastic voice I would use saying this will protect well heeled travelers up front from being breathed on by the hoi polloi as they lug their children in roller bags down the aisle, all of us, common people, yeah, we can go out first and sit and wait. For those
Marcia Smith 20:00
Well, it does make sense. I mean, that that would be a great, permanent change, wouldn’t it? Yeah, and if, if we were always flying first class, it would be worth waiting for. It would be worth waiting for. I wouldn’t mind waiting for the those people and their their therapy parrots.
Bob Smith 20:18
One more, one more thing. It will spare the people in first class from those envious stairs from group nine. As they walk
Marcia Smith 20:25
past envious stairs, it’s more like, just get out of my way. I’m trying to get to my seat.
Bob Smith 20:31
I don’t care where you sit in the plane. If the people behind you can get on first it makes sense. Yeah.
Marcia Smith 20:37
Anyway, I can ask a question. No, we’re done.
Bob Smith 20:40
That’s been the show for today. It’s been great, glad to have you, Marsh. Yeah, go ahead. I’m just kidding.
Marcia Smith 20:44
Good. All right, you’ll probably know half of this question, okay, but maybe not the other half, okay, who was the first person to occupy the White House? And what was the White House modeled after John Adams, correct? He’s the first President to live there? Yeah, he was the second president.
Bob Smith 21:02
I meant the first president in the White House, correct? And then, if you watch that John Adams show, you see they were, it was very cold and damp and awful burning lumber in there and everything. What was it modeled after? Well, there was a competition to design it, but I don’t remember. I don’t it was modeled after one specific Castle, or,
Marcia Smith 21:22
well, the Executive Mansion, now known as the White House, was modeled after the palace of the Duke of Leinster in Ireland. So it was some Duke’s place in Ireland that they liked and said, Let’s do that. Let’s do a knock off of and even though it burned to the ground in 1812 they later restored it to look just the same.
Bob Smith 21:42
Technically, it didn’t burn to the ground. It was set on fire. The insides all burned, but the walls were still there.
Marcia Smith 21:49
Oh, thank you, Bob, that’s why I married. Yeah, yeah. Excellent, excellent.
Bob Smith 21:53
Okay, give me another one. I want you to go. Okay, all right, maybe we should start recording. No, no, we’re recruiting.
Marcia Smith 22:02
We’ve done that before. Yes, we have who invented Chop Suey and where?
Bob Smith 22:08
Okay, now that Chop Suey, you would think, I think most people think, Well, it’s obviously from China or somewhere. No, it was invented in, was it San Francisco? I think it was California somewhere, and it was a restaurant owner, but I don’t know anything about it.
Marcia Smith 22:22
Yeah, we don’t know the guy’s actual name, but it was invented by a Chinese dignitary who was visiting America in the late 1800s his American friends asked him to prepare a genuine Chinese meal, but he didn’t have any of the ingredients, except there was some soy sauce. And so he decided to improvise, and gathered a bunch of stuff and combined then and flavored it with lots of it’s called soya sauce. Actually, back in the day, his American friends were impressed, mainly because they were unfamiliar with soya sauce and the flavor enhancement, it brings out.
Bob Smith 23:02
I love that they were impressed by the sauce, not necessarily
Marcia Smith 23:06
all the stuff he threw in there, but when someone asked him the name of this great Chinese dish that he just thought of on the spot, he saw some chopsticks lying on the table, and he just put it together and said it’s called chop soya.
Bob Smith 23:21
And, oh, chop soya from the soya sauce.
Marcia Smith 23:24
Yeah. And they, they, because of his thick Chinese accent, they understood him to say Chop Suey,
Bob Smith 23:32
oh, and that’s where it came from. And some misunderstanding.
Marcia Smith 23:35
And so it is. So he just put chopsticks and chop soya together and made this thing up. So everybody thought it was a Chinese specialty. You see that all the time. Somebody looks up at a sign says, yeah, it’s chop suey.
Bob Smith 23:49
That’s right, that’s right. That was like that guy who invented Twinkies, the hostess Twinkie. He was getting off a plane and he saw a sign on a building called twinkle toe shoes. Oh, that’s cute. So we decided, well, call these little things Twinkies, yeah, all right. Anything else you got there? Marsh, you want to know that’s it for me. Okay, I’ve got one odd put my left foot forward here. Track star, Glenn Cunningham. He held the record for the indoor mile run for years. What was unusual about Glenn? He had no feet, no his left foot had no toes. That’s true.
Marcia Smith 24:22
I was close. I get a close. One,
Bob Smith 24:24
his left foot had no toes, all right. And one more historical, can’t
Marcia Smith 24:29
help yourself, can you? Bob,
Bob Smith 24:30
it’s a trivia show. Mark, it is a trivia show. Wrap it up. This is it. You’ll find it interesting. Why were the ancient Inca Indians of Central and South America known for their brilliant smiles.
Marcia Smith 24:47
No idea,
Bob Smith 24:49
because they inlaid their teeth with gold and semi precious jewels. Wow, yes. And when an Inca maiden smiled, it was a bright smile, indeed, rubies. The. That’s one of the things the Spanish saw when they were down there, these Incan peoples like, my god, what they got in their teeth? There are they rap stars. What the hell.
Marcia Smith 25:09
And you just, what did they do? Then send in the dentist, and then
Bob Smith 25:13
people goes, I think they sent in the canquistadores
Marcia Smith 25:16
that would do it. Where
Bob Smith 25:18
did you show us? Where you got these precious job.
Marcia Smith 25:21
Oh, I’m having shades of is it safe?
Bob Smith 25:24
Is it safe? Yes, what was that? Marathon? Man, Marathon Man the dentist, supposedly the Nazi dentist.
Marcia Smith 25:30
Yeah, got me all freaked out. Now, okay,
Bob Smith 25:34
that’s enough of that. Well, that’s it for today. Marsh, thanks for joining us here.
Marcia Smith 25:37
Sure it was great, good fun. We’ll talk to you later, Bob,
Bob Smith 25:41
we hope you join us again next time for Q and A trivia on, on the cough ramp, no on the off ramp, yes, off in coughing ramp, on the off ramp with Marsha
Marcia Smith 25:57
and Bob Smith, the
Bob Smith 26:02
off ramp is produced in association with the Cedarburg Public Library. Cedarburg, Wisconsin.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
