299 Absurd Trivia

Bob Smith 0:00
Why did a Caribbean territory have igloos on its flag for 100 years.

Marcia Smith 0:06
Really? And what kids game used to be an Olympic sport?

Bob Smith 0:11
Oh, I think I know the answer to that one.

Marcia Smith 0:12
Oh, no!

Bob Smith 0:13
Answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of The Off Ramp, with Bob

Marcia Smith 0:18
and Marcia

Bob Smith 0:19
Smith.

Bob Smith 0:35
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. Okay, so it was a kids game, and it was an Olympic sport, and I think I know the answer to that. Marcia.

Marcia Smith 0:52
Okay, what is it, babe?

Bob Smith 0:53
Was it played with a rope?

Marcia Smith 0:54
Yes

Bob Smith 0:55
It was called tug of war.

Marcia Smith 0:57
Yes, you’re right Bob.

Bob Smith 1:00
The tug of war.

Marcia Smith 1:01
How did you know that?

Bob Smith 1:03
Well, that is a famous one. It’s one of those that dropped by the wayside, like trampolining dropped by the wayside and tug of war dropped by the wayside. And at one point they were shooting pigeons – live animals were being killed in the Olympics.

Marcia Smith 1:14
That was a messy.

Bob Smith 1:16
That fortunately dropped by the wayside as well.

Marcia Smith 1:18
Yeah. It went through five different editions of the Olympic Games, from Paris in 1900 to Antwerp in 1920.

Bob Smith 1:26
We’re talking about the tug of war now.

Marcia Smith 1:27
Yeah

Bob Smith 1:28
Okay

Marcia Smith 1:28
And only men were permitted to partake. And individual countries were allowed to enter multiple teams.

Bob Smith 1:35
Oh, really. So you could have more teams, but no women, please.

Marcia Smith 1:37
Yes.

Bob Smith 1:38
No co-ed tug of war, which are always fun at church picnics.

Marcia Smith 1:41
Yes contest lasted five minutes apiece, with teams attempting to drag their opponents six feet from the starting point.

Bob Smith 1:49
Whoa.

Marcia Smith 1:50
If neither team reached the threshold, whichever one came closer was the winner. The first tug of war gold medal went to a coalition of athletes from Sweden and Denmark.

Bob Smith 2:01
So, like they were Scandinavian?

Marcia Smith 2:03
Yeah, yeah. But Great Britain enjoyed the best tally overall, winning five medals in tug of war, including two golds, edging out the United States and its three pieces of hardware.

Bob Smith 2:15
Tug of war. Think I could maybe win an Olympic medal at tug of war, but that’s about theonly sport .

Marcia Smith 2:21
I don’t know, Bob. I’d re-think that.

Bob Smith 2:23
Okay, thanks a lot!

Marcia Smith 2:24
No offense.

Bob Smith 2:25
Yeah, well, I take offense. Okay, here’s a question for you. How did a Caribbean territory have igloos on its flag for nearly 100 years?

Marcia Smith 2:36
Well, were the early settlers, maybe some people from Alaska or something

Bob Smith 2:41
that would make sense. Something like that would

Marcia Smith 2:44
And they were early settlers, or got off course and wound up. No, — you tell me.

Bob Smith 2:49
It’s a bureaucratic mix up. The first flag of the Turks and Caicos – this was a British territory in the Caribbean – originally featured igloos. Yes, igloos – Eskimo or Inuit homes – on its tropical flag. How did this happen? Well, early sketches of what the flag was to be included piles of salt, which was a critical export, but far away in London, the flag makers mistook those white salt mounds.

Marcia Smith 3:18
Oh, really!

Bob Smith 3:18
For ice houses of the Arctic.

Marcia Smith 3:20
That’s funny.

Bob Smith 3:21
And they added little doors to the mounds, creating igloos, and the flag remained from 1869 to 1968 How did this happen?

Marcia Smith 3:32
Yeah

Bob Smith 3:33
Most islanders never saw the flag up close, because it was always flying above a building or on a flag pole. And the people who did see it, they were British officials, and they assumed it was correct.

Marcia Smith 3:43
Oh, God, really?

Bob Smith 3:45
Yeah. The badge was designed in London, approved in London, reproduced in London. The flags were made in London. And bureaucracies are very good about not questioning their own decisions.

Marcia Smith 3:55
All right, Bob, there is an animal that freezes solid to survive. What is it?

Bob Smith 4:02
An animal that freezes solid to survive in the Arctic, okay, a sea lamprey or something like that, some kind of

Marcia Smith 4:10
Nope, they’re down here too.

Bob Smith 4:12
They’re down here too?

Marcia Smith 4:13
Yeah

Bob Smith 4:13
Down here in Wisconsin.

Marcia Smith 4:15
Let’s see more. The Northeast.

Bob Smith 4:18
Only Canadians say that. Oh, it’s down there in Wisconsin,

Marcia Smith 4:22
I’ll tell you what they are, okay? Wood frogs.

Bob Smith 4:24
Wood frogs?

Marcia Smith 4:26
Yeah, they are the only frogs that live north of the Arctic Circle. These particular frogs are found all across the world, but only one species lives as far north as the Arctic Circle, the blessed wood frog. That’s me talking. These tiny creatures are as widespread as they are resilient. They’ve adapted to cold climates, including Alaska and the Northeast, by literally freezing during the winter with their hearts no longer beating and their lungs no longer breathing.

Bob Smith 4:55
Wow. They go into a state of suspension, then.

Marcia Smith 4:57
That’s right, suspended animation by. Producing a sugary sort of anti freeze that keeps their actual cells from freezing, which would be lethal. They thaw out when temperatures rise in spring, they are then ready to live their best frog lives and go out and breathe. Frogs on Earth have been around for 200 million years.

Bob Smith 5:19
Jeez.

Marcia Smith 5:20
Who figured that out? Well, I guess skeletons, right? The average wood frog is two to three inches, and the largest frog, the Goliath frog, is 12.5 inches.

Bob Smith 5:31
That’s a Goliath frog, correct? That’s a big frog.

Marcia Smith 5:33
How many months a year can a wood frog remain frozen? Bob, no heartbeat, nothing.

Bob Smith 5:38
Well, it’s a winter. I’ll say three months.

Marcia Smith 5:40
Eight months.

Bob Smith 5:41
Oh, my goodness. And then they come back to life.

Marcia Smith 5:43
Yeah, they go out and mate and

Bob Smith 5:45
Jeez

Marcia Smith 5:45
Do things.

Bob Smith 5:46
They go out and mate. Okay, Marcia, I have a question for you, what publication had a larger print run than the Bible?

Marcia Smith 5:54
Which publication a public – You mean, like a magazine?

Bob Smith 5:58
Well, I’ll call it a periodical. So it’s something that happens every once in a while,

Marcia Smith 6:02
Yeah, like a magazine.

Bob Smith 6:04
Like a catalog.

Marcia Smith 6:05
What is it?

Bob Smith 6:05
It was the IKEA catalog.

Marcia Smith 6:08
What?

Bob Smith 6:08
At its peak in 2016 more than 200 million IKEA catalogs were printed, and that was supposedly more copies than the number of the Bibles and the Korans printed that year.

Marcia Smith 6:19
No kidding

Bob Smith 6:20
200 million. Now the Bible remains far ahead of IKEA or anything else ever published in the total number of lifetime copies. Any idea how many total lifetime copies of the Bible have ever been printed?

Marcia Smith 6:33
It’s a lot.

Bob Smith 6:34
Yeah, 2.5 Billion with a B copies. Of course, the Bible’s been rolling off the printing presses since 1455 the IKEA catalog was discontinued just after 70 years in 2022

Marcia Smith 6:50
All right, Bob, where in the world? Three clues to figure out what city or place I’m talking about.

Bob Smith 6:56
Okay

Marcia Smith 6:56
Clue One: D-U-O-M-O, its Duomo is one of the largest cathedrals in the world.

Bob Smith 7:02
We’re wanting to know what the city is?

Marcia Smith 7:04
Yes.

Bob Smith 7:04
Milan?

Marcia Smith 7:05
(Sighs)

Bob Smith 7:07
Milan, Italy, Winter Olympics, 2026. Yes?

Marcia Smith 7:10
Yeah. Okay, okay. Next clue.

Bob Smith 7:12
All right.

Marcia Smith 7:13
This place is home to Yonge Street, Y-O-N-G-E, the largest Street in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records.

Bob Smith 7:20
Yong Street, yeah, that sounds like it’s in Asia somewhere.

Marcia Smith 7:23
I thought so too.

Bob Smith 7:24
That’s no?

Marcia Smith 7:24
Un-unh.

Bob Smith 7:25
Oh, because I was going to say China, yeah. Yong street, I don’t know. Okay.

Marcia Smith 7:31
Clue two, it’s home of the CN Tower.

Bob Smith 7:35
Oh, this must be in Toronto, yes. Okay. What is the CN Tower? Canadian National railroad. Oh, very good. Last one,

Marcia Smith 7:44
This is home to the second tallest building in the world, after the Burj Khalifa.

Bob Smith 7:51
Oh, okay, you want me to tell you the city?

Marcia Smith 7:52
Yeah.

Bob Smith 7:54
Second tallest building in the world, uh huh? Asia. I’m going to guess Hong Kong.

Marcia Smith 7:59
No.

Bob Smith 7:59
Singapore.

Marcia Smith 8:00
I got to give you another clue.

Bob Smith 8:01
Okay.

Marcia Smith 8:02
The city is divided by the Hong poo River.

Bob Smith 8:05
Oh, that’s helpful.

Marcia Smith 8:07
Okay, I got it. I got clue three,

Bob Smith 8:09
Okay.

Marcia Smith 8:10
The biggest city in China.

Bob Smith 8:12
Yeah, there we go again. It’s not Beijing.

Marcia Smith 8:15
No.

Bob Smith 8:16
What is it?

Marcia Smith 8:17
Shanghai.

Bob Smith 8:18
Okay. There we go. So the second largest building in the world is in Shanghai.

Marcia Smith 8:23
Yeah.

Bob Smith 8:23
Oh, geez. All right, I’ve got a where in the world, okay, where in the world was the guillotine used until 1977.

Marcia Smith 8:31
1977

Bob Smith 8:33
Yes!

Marcia Smith 8:33
Well, that can’t be Pittsburgh

Bob Smith 8:36
Modern times. Yeah, okay, the guillotine was in use in this country until 1977.

Marcia Smith 8:42
What country? Sri Lanka?

Bob Smith 8:44
No. Guess where the guillotine was used until 1977? In France, where it was born.

Marcia Smith 8:50
Really?

Bob Smith 8:51
Yes, executions by beheading using a guillotine went on from April 25 1792 to September 10, 1977 a total of 185 years.

Marcia Smith 9:05
For a classy country with great wine and cheese, it’s kind of yeah, this taste and –

Bob Smith 9:10
It kills the buzz.

Marcia Smith 9:11
Yeah. It sure does.

Bob Smith 9:12
Now, how many people do you think were executed by guillotine in those 185 years in just that one country?

Marcia Smith 9:19
2500.

Bob Smith 9:20
Now think about this. You can’t kill four people at once. You kill one person at a time with a guillotine.

Marcia Smith 9:25
Yeah.

Bob Smith 9:25
30,000 people were executed by guillotine in that period, 17,000 were killed in the three years of the French Revolution alone, they did this out in the streets. You know, they had crowds.

Marcia Smith 9:39
That was nuts

Bob Smith 9:40
But the guillotine was still in use in Paris in prison. It was behind prison walls until 1977

Marcia Smith 9:47
Okay, which is colder? Bob, the South Pole or the North Pole?

Bob Smith 9:51
Ah, good question. We always think the North Pole must be colder, but it’s the South Pole.

Marcia Smith 9:56
It’s much colder. How much more? It’s counterintuitive. I know the North Pole has an average summer temperature of a comparatively balmy 32 degrees.

Bob Smith 10:06
Did you know that’s amazing, isn’t it?

Marcia Smith 10:07
Yeah.

Bob Smith 10:08
Because you’d think it’d be much colder than that.

Marcia Smith 10:10
Yeah, that’s the average summer temperature.

Bob Smith 10:13
Yeah

Marcia Smith 10:14
At the South Pole it’s minus 18 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bob Smith 10:17
That’s the average temperature.

Marcia Smith 10:19
Yeah, in the summer

Bob Smith 10:20
Okay.

Marcia Smith 10:21
The difference is largely because much of the South Pole is 9000 feet, about a mile and a half above sea level, making Antarctica the world’s highest continent by a considerable margin, and resulting in much colder temperatures due to the thinner atmosphere.

Bob Smith 10:36
Very different.

Marcia Smith 10:37
Yeah. North Pole is smack dab in the middle of the Arctic Ocean and with its surface ice just a foot or so above sea level.

Bob Smith 10:45
So we always think of the North as colder than the South, and this explains why it was so difficult to go through that Southern straits there between Antarctica and the South American continent, still to this day, one of the most dangerous places to sail a ship, rocky seas, huge waves, and it’s ice cold. Okay? You have all those little what in the world is it I’ve got? Which is taller? These are mine. Which is taller list, okay? Which is taller? Seattle’s Space Needle or the Hoover Dam.

Marcia Smith 11:13
The Space Needle

Bob Smith 11:15
The Space Needle, you know, the Space Needle has a height of 605 feet, just shy of the Hoover Dam’s 726 feet. So the Hoover Dam is so large, hard to believe you could take all that concrete and make a four foot wide sidewalk around the Earth at the equator.

Marcia Smith 11:33
Around the Earth.

Bob Smith 11:34
Yeah, that’s how much concrete there is in the Hoover Dam. Just amazing. Okay, which is taller, the Oscar or the Emmy.

Marcia Smith 11:42
The Oscar

Bob Smith 11:44
You’d think so. The Emmy is slightly taller than the Oscar.

Marcia Smith 11:48
So far, I’m betting two for nothing.

Bob Smith 11:49
It’s kind of like, you know, some of those quizzes you give me Marsh. Okay, so the Emmy measures 15 inches. The Oscar measures 13.5 inches. Okay, which is taller, the average male giraffe, or the average double decker bus.

Marcia Smith 12:04
Giraffe

Bob Smith 12:05
The giraffe is taller, typical male giraffe, 18 feet tall. Double Decker Bus London, only 14 feet tall. Okay, which is taller? The Sistine Chapel from floor to ceiling, or the Great Sphinx? Which is taller?

Marcia Smith 12:19
Sistine Chapel

Bob Smith 12:20
You’re right. That’s amazing, the Great Sphinx, theoretically, 66 feet tall. You could squeeze it inside the Sistine Chapel without scraping Michelangelo’s ceiling. 69 feet off the floor is where the ceiling is, the top of the Sphinx, 66 feet tall. Okay, which is taller? Finally, Lincoln’s head in the Lincoln Memorial, or Lincoln’s head on Mount Rushmore?

Marcia Smith 12:43
It’s got to be Mount Rushmore.

Bob Smith 12:45
There we go. That was the easy one. I just wanted to give it to you.

Marcia Smith 12:49
Thanks.

Bob Smith 12:49
So Mount Rushmore, Lincoln’s head is 60 feet tall on the Lincoln Memorial. His head is three feet seven inches tall.

Marcia Smith 12:55
Big difference.

Bob Smith 12:56
Yes, that’s it. Okay, glad to play the which is taller. It’s fun. I like this.

Marcia Smith 13:00
Yes, time for a break.

Bob Smith 13:02
Yes, you’re listening to the Off Ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment.

Bob Smith 13:08
Okay, we’re back.

Marcia Smith 13:09
Wow. You’re excited.

Bob Smith 13:10
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

Bob Smith 13:20
All over the world.

Bob Smith 13:20
Yes, it is

Marcia Smith 13:23
Okay. Bob, yes, who gave the Northern Lights the Aurora Borealis its name? And what does it mean?

Bob Smith 13:30
Okay, so aurora borealis is the name of the Northern Lights, right? So that was given, wasn’t that a Latin term that was adopted hundreds of years ago? Aurora Borealis. Hello, hello. Was it? Did the Romans give it to?

Marcia Smith 13:46
No.

Bob Smith 13:46
Was it somebody in the Scandinavian region?

Marcia Smith 13:49
No, you’re living up higher, up north.

Bob Smith 13:51
No. Northern latitudes?

Marcia Smith 13:52
No.

Bob Smith 13:52
Okay.

Marcia Smith 13:52
So somebody, everybody knows.

Bob Smith 13:54
Okay, then it must be Mr. Rogers. I didn’t know that he gave that them. No. Or Pee Wee Herman.

Marcia Smith 13:59
What guy from the 1600s is known for looking up at the sky.

Bob Smith 14:02
Galileo.

Marcia Smith 14:03
That’s it.

Bob Smith 14:03
Oh, so he gave it the name.

Marcia Smith 14:05
Yeah. Humans have been watching the dazzling dance of the Northern Lights for 1000s of years. Archeologists believe some of the world’s prehistoric cave paintings, estimated to be 30,000 years old, featured these colorful waves.

Bob Smith 14:18
Oh, no kidding, that would explain some of those.

Marcia Smith 14:20
Yeah, that’s why they figure it goes way back. However, their official name aurora borealis didn’t come about until more recently, when Galileo coined the term in 1619, the name is a combination of two ancient deities. Aurora was a Roman goddess of dawn, and Borealis comes from the Boreas, the Greek god of North Wind and winter. So there you have it.

Bob Smith 14:45
Okay, that’s how it’s named. That makes sense. Marcia. We heard a lot of talk about trips to Mars. How does Mars’s atmosphere compare with the Earth’s what percentage of our atmosphere do they have?

Marcia Smith 14:58
I’ll say a whopping 7%.

Bob Smith 15:01
7% that’s all is that what you’d think? Do you want to reconsider that?

Marcia Smith 15:06
I guess? I bet. Oh, I guess not.

Bob Smith 15:08
Okay, all right, you’re really close. Its atmosphere is very thin, less than 1% of the Earth’s atmosphere. So that shows you how difficult it’s going to be there. You have to manufacture your own oxygen and everything else.

Marcia Smith 15:22
Were you trying to trick me. Bob?

Bob Smith 15:24
Yeah, a little bit. Okay, so Mars, who talks about going there a lot, one of the world’s richest men. Oh, Musk. Elon Musk, right now we know, by most accounts, he is the wealthiest person in the world at this moment. How does he compare to the richest men or women of the past?

Marcia Smith 15:43
Well, I have a feeling huge kings of your who would pillage and pilfer their way through Roman times and other the Mongolians, they were probably richer.

Bob Smith 15:55
We’re going back to the 19th century.

Marcia Smith 15:57
Okay, tell me.

Bob Smith 15:58
John D Rockefeller.

Marcia Smith 15:59
Really he was richer than Musk?

Bob Smith 16:01
Well, here’s how you figure it. Musk may be wealthy, but when you adjust for inflation, he’s not the richest person in modern history. And that goes to the man who founded Standard Oil the Guinness World Records reports that at his earnings peak in 1913 John D Rockefeller’s net worth was about $900,000,000. In 1913, the entire US economy, every factory, every farm, every paycheck, only added up to $39 billion he had 900 million. So you do the math, and that fortune was 2.3% of the entire US economy. One person. That’s not wealth, that’s please don’t sneeze. You might move the stock market. And fast forward to today, the US economy is roughly $28 trillion. So if you own the same slice of the country now, that 900 million bought John D Rockefeller in 1913, your modern equivalent would be $650 billion. That’s what he’d be worth today as a percentage of the economy, richest man of all time, John D Rockefeller.

Marcia Smith 17:03
All right, Bob time for AKA, also known as and today, the subject is, is types of makeup?

Bob Smith 17:12
Oh, this is not going to be easy.

Marcia Smith 17:14
You should know all these things, okay.

Bob Smith 17:16
All right, I should. Okay.

Marcia Smith 17:18
So, for instance, the category as makeup. If I said turn red with embarrassment, what would the makeup be?

Bob Smith 17:26
That would be lipstick, okay, Rouge.

Bob Smith 17:29
No.

Bob Smith 17:29
Turn red with embarrassment.

Bob Smith 17:30
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 17:30
What do you do when you’re embarrassed?

Bob Smith 17:32
You blush

Marcia Smith 17:33
That’s it.

Bob Smith 17:34
Oh, okay, I see I’m sorry,

Marcia Smith 17:35
Yeah, okay, that’s all right. Second. Optical shade.

Bob Smith 17:39
Optical shade. That is Shadow, eyeshadow,

Marcia Smith 17:45
Yeah, okay, very good. Fresh snow,

Bob Smith 17:48
Fresh snow? That’s not concealer, is it?

Marcia Smith 17:52
No. Think about it. When skiers or cross country or down hills, they get fresh snow, they call it a great fresh

Bob Smith 18:00
Dusting?

Marcia Smith 18:01
No, no. It’s, this is a makeup your mom and my mom used to wear.

Bob Smith 18:06
Okay?

Marcia Smith 18:07
Powder.

Bob Smith 18:08
Okay, sure, sure.

Marcia Smith 18:09
Okay, all right, yellow marker.

Bob Smith 18:11
Oh, dear. I don’t want to talk about that. We’ve talked about snow. What’s the yellowmarker on snow?

Marcia Smith 18:16
This is highlight.

Bob Smith 18:17
I’m sorry. Okay.

Marcia Smith 18:18
High – high lighter.

Bob Smith 18:20
Oh, that’s what this is.

Marcia Smith 18:21
Institution.

Bob Smith 18:22
Institution?

Marcia Smith 18:23
Yeah. What’s the type of makeup I’m talking about?

Bob Smith 18:27
Institution?

Marcia Smith 18:28
That’s the very foundation.

Bob Smith 18:31
Oh, never thought about institutions being a foundation.

Marcia Smith 18:34
Okay, only two more.

Bob Smith 18:35
Okay

Marcia Smith 18:35
you’re bleeding out here, baby. Awarder of third place,

Bob Smith 18:40
Awarder of third place, bronze,

Marcia Smith 18:43
Yes, bronzer. Quickly read over.

Bob Smith 18:46
Quickly read over.

Marcia Smith 18:48
If you’re reading something really fast, you’re only

Bob Smith 18:51
Skimming

Marcia Smith 18:52
Close

Bob Smith 18:53
Skipping

Marcia Smith 18:54
Glossing, gloss.

Bob Smith 18:56
Oh, I never thought about like lip gloss. Yeah.

Marcia Smith 18:58
Okay, well, all right, pretty bad, but I mean

Bob Smith 19:02
Pretty bad!

Unknown Speaker 19:03
Moving on. Next one. Bob

Bob Smith 19:05
Okay, I’ve got a couple of questions on archeology. Things that were dug up. We all know these things, but I always wonder if we remember the magnitude of them. Okay, so the grave of China’s first emperor that was lost until 1974 and when it was found, how many terracotta soldiers were

Marcia Smith 19:22
buried without, oh, this was, I was just reading about King

Bob Smith 19:26
Shi Huang, who died in 210 BC.

Marcia Smith 19:30
There were like 5000 of them down there

Bob Smith 19:32
8000 1000. Every one of them had a different face to know. I’ve looked at him, yeah. Here’s another one, though we all know about the Dead Sea Scrolls. That was those were found in fascinating the West Bank of the Dead Sea how many manuscripts were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls? I’ll say 125 there were 900 Oh, wow. 50 different manuscripts they found so. Wow. Some were only in portions. 950 different manuscripts all found in a series of 11 caves, and they’re all ancient biblical texts. They were written mostly in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

Marcia Smith 20:12
Okay, I want you to take a guess. I’ll give you three choices. How many trees do you think are on earth? Are there more than a million, more than a billion, more than a trillion trees?

Bob Smith 20:25
I would think it’s got to be in the trillions, when you think of the amount of acreage there is all over the world, especially places where there are forests or jungles that have never been touched by human hands. So I’ll see how trillions of trees.

Marcia Smith 20:37
That’s right, By most estimates, Earth is home to three to 4 trillion trees. That’s roughly 380 trees for every person on the planet. Among those trillions of trees are some 60,000 species. In fact, if you took one second to count each tree on Earth, you’d be in for 95,000 years of number crunching.

Bob Smith 20:59
That’s a lot of work. I don’t know if I want to do that, but check this out.

Marcia Smith 21:03
Since the dawn of human civilization, the population of the world’s trees has declined by 46%

Bob Smith 21:12
Oh, my goodness, really, they think we’ve lost half the trees in the

Marcia Smith 21:15
world. Yeah, somebody came up with 46%

Bob Smith 21:18
can’t afford to lose many more of those. That manufactures the oxygen we breathe, right? That’s correct, not just the trees, but that’s a big part of it, right? All right. One more archeological question. We saw documentaries on this. It was called Sutton, who in England, remember that it was an archeological burial site, and it was in a backyard of a family’s fields. They were big mounds, and they, I think there was the woman who owned the property, hired somebody just to start opening those up, and they found burials there. What was the type of archeological burial ground there? Did they uncovered? Yeah, was it a building? Was it a fortress? Was it some kind of structure? Were they crypts? It was a burial site, yeah, but what was the structure that they found 10 miles from the ocean? It’s not a cathedral, no. It was an Anglo Saxon ship. Oh, really, a massive, largely intact funeral ship that dates back to the seventh century and was filled with treasures, gold accessories, luxurious fabrics, ornate silverware, likely the final resting place of a long lost king. The burial mounds overlook the river deben estuary, and that was navigable in Anglo Saxon times, connected directly to the North Sea. It’s only seven to eight miles away. Okay, never know what you’re gonna find in your backyard when you live in a country like England, it can be anything there.

Marcia Smith 22:38
Gosh, okay, in what country, Bob, is there no eating or drinking allowed on any subway. You can’t bring your sandwich. Oh, really, you can’t even eat on the subway. Can’t have your little granola bar or anything.

Bob Smith 22:53
Okay, there’s only subways in so many places, and let’s see, they have them in South America, they have in Europe, they have them in North America, and don’t they have them in Africa too, like Nigeria or someplace like that. Is it there? No, okay. Is it in Asia? Yes, okay, so I would say it’s in Japan,

Marcia Smith 23:11
wrong, all right, where, with 33 cities in China having subway lines, the nation enacted country wide laws in 2020 to ensure proper etiquette on board. Specifically, no eating, drinking, lying down, standing on the seats or blasting music.

Bob Smith 23:29
You just can’t have fun on subways in China, yes, 33 subways in China.

Marcia Smith 23:34
Yes, wow. Uncivilized behavior of any kind is not allowed. The only exception to the eating is for babies and medical conditions of old people.

Bob Smith 23:44
It sounds actually very civil, doesn’t it? Yes, wouldn’t you like to have rules like that once in a while? Yeah, okay. Marcia geography question, okay. Four US states have panhandles,

Marcia Smith 23:56
so you got to have me name them, yeah. Who are they? Where are they? I’ll give you one. No, you’re gonna give me one. I know. Let me try. Okay, Oklahoma, yeah, Texas, yeah, okay, now give me one.

Bob Smith 24:10
Florida, oh, yeah, of course. And West Virginia, oh, I West Virginia is the only state that has two panhandles. The state’s Northern Panhandle stretches along western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle stretches all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. That’s amazing, isn’t it? Okay? I have one more question about a state, okay, all right, all right. Under what US state is the longest known cave system in the world. What state is it like?

Marcia Smith 24:42
Around Tennessee? It’s like around there, yeah, it’s, is it there? No Kentucky, yes, yes.

Bob Smith 24:49
It’s Mammoth Cave, the longest cave system in the world, 426 known, discovered miles so far, many more miles thought to exist. It goes on. On and on and on underground. And when I was a kid, one part of it was a part that you could ride a boat on, but it was only certain times of the year, otherwise it was flooded. Oh, yeah. And I think they may have discontinued that because it was kind of dangerous. Yeah, beautiful caves, huge rooms, Bob in 1867,

Marcia Smith 25:17
the year before you were born. Yes. Wouldn’t wait. This Secretary of State was scorned for buying what?

Bob Smith 25:23
Oh, that was William Seward. He bought a little place called Alaska. That’s right, words, folly, they called it.

Marcia Smith 25:32
He paid $7.2 million to Russia to buy Alaska, 586,412 square miles for the price tag that worked out to about two cents per acre.

Bob Smith 25:44
That’s amazing, isn’t it? Two Cents acre, even just for the beauty of the land itself, the forests alone, not worrying about the Yeah, the oil or anything beneath, what a bargain that was. But people thought it was crazy, yeah.

Marcia Smith 25:59
They called it the folly. At the time, Alaska had a population of 60 to 70,000 mostly indigenous people.

Bob Smith 26:05
And you know, the first railroads to go up to Alaska weren’t built into World War Two.

Marcia Smith 26:10
Yeah. I’ll finish up with a couple of love quotes.

Bob Smith 26:13
A couple of love quotes for Valentine’s.

Marcia Smith 26:16
All right? Roy Croft, I love you not for what you are, but for what I am when

Bob Smith 26:22
I’m with you. That’s a sweet one. Yeah, are these all sweet? Well, the last one

Marcia Smith 26:26
is funny, okay? Leo biscaya, someone we know, oh yeah. Love creates an us without destroying the me. Oh, that’s good, yes. And Tim Allen, a guy knows he’s in love when he loses interest in his car for a couple of days.

Bob Smith 26:47
That’s certainly Tim Allen, yeah, that sounds like him and shifting gears, yeah? Great. Funny show, really. All right. Well, there we go, a few words on love and a lot of other interesting trivia. Hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you’d like to participate in the show. You’re welcome to go to our website, the off ramp, dot show, go to the menu and click on Contact Us, and then you’ll find a place where you can leave us a message, you know, give me something I can confuse Marsha with challenge. Let’s go with challenge and then, or give her something she can say to me, okay, either way, and we look forward to hearing from you. That’s it for today. I’m Bob Smith. I’m Marcia Smith. Join us next time when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia here on the off ramp, say it again. The off ramp. You forgot the name of the show. Well, I had my model six years and you forgot the name of the show. Yeah, six years. Okay. The off ramp is produced in association with the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Visit us on the web at the offramp. Dot show you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai