303 Puzzle Piece Trivia

Marcia Smith 0:00
What cereal Can you pick up with a magnet?

Bob Smith 0:03
Oh, dear. All right, and in 1667 the British and the Dutch traded two islands. How did that change history? Answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob

Marcia Smith 0:18
and Marcia Smith, you

Bob Smith 0:19
Matt, 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, Marcia, your question is about a cereal that you can pick up with magnets.

Marcia Smith 0:51
Actually, it’s more than one cereal.

Bob Smith 0:53
Can I hazard a guess here?

Marcia Smith 0:55
Well, yeah, that’s the point of the show. Bob,

Bob Smith 0:57
Okay, well, I believe they are frosted cereals, because, like, Frosted Flakes, somehow the there’s metal in that sugar, or something like that?

Marcia Smith 1:05
Metal in the sugar? No, no. Actually, it’s incredibly common Bob for cereal to be fortified with. What vitamins and minerals

Bob Smith 1:13
And iron?

Marcia Smith 1:14
Yes.

Bob Smith 1:15
Okay

Marcia Smith 1:15
Including iron. I mean, it’s just not going to suck up out of your plate. But just like any other iron, whether it’s in a skillet or a fence, the iron added to breakfast cereal is magnetic. Cereals with a lot of iron in them, like fortified corn flakes, which we eat a lot of, even react to magnets when they’re floating in liquid. So while the iron in some holes, cereal is enough to be magnetic on its own. For a more in depth science fair experiment, you could try crushing up cereal and seeing how much pure iron you can pull out some common cereal is magnetic, and the most common is corn flakes.

Bob Smith 1:51
Wow. Okay, all right. Marcia in 1667, the British and the Dutch traded two islands. How did that change history? Now I’ll just give you a little clue. It was the Treaty of Breda and the Dutch traded an island in what is now the United States for nutmeg, specifically the island of Pulu Roo Run in the Banda islands of Indonesia.

Marcia Smith 2:17
Okay.

Bob Smith 2:18
How did that change history?

Marcia Smith 2:20
Is that how Great Britain got part of itself?

Bob Smith 2:23
Part of the new world?

Marcia Smith 2:24
Oh, it got part of the new world.

Bob Smith 2:25
It was part of the New World it had already gained control over. But this was a treaty that basically said, Okay, you take that island. We’ll take this island.

Marcia Smith 2:33
Okay

Bob Smith 2:33
So the Dutch traded this island in what is now the United States for nutmeg. And basically, at the time, nutmeg was oil and gold and Bitcoin all rolled together, because nutmeg only grew in one part of the world, in the Banda, islands of Indonesia and the Dutch East India. Company controlled every nutmeg producing island except one, Roon, R-U-H-H, the only place on Earth where nutmeg grew that they didn’t control. So the Dutch were willing to give up this island that they had in what is now the United States, a minor fur outpost that Britain had seized from Holland in 1664, to make their monopoly airtight. So the two countries talked. Britain said, You take nutmeg Island. We’ll take the island with the minor fur outpost. And that tra??de gave the Dutch a nutmeg monopoly for 100 years. So do you think the bargain paid off?

Marcia Smith 3:19
Yes,

Bob Smith 3:19
For who?

Marcia Smith 3:26
Us.

Bob Smith 3:30
Yes, because the island with the minor fur outpost was Manhattan. It became one of the greatest cities in the world. But Roon never prospered. The Dutch killed or enslaved all the adult men there. They chopped on every nutmeg tree and moved the production to the other islands. They owned all these other islands. They just took all that production and put it to all the other islands.

Marcia Smith 3:52
Oh, my God.

Bob Smith 3:52
They slaughtered.

Marcia Smith 3:53
Wow

Bob Smith 3:54
To this day, the island of ruin that they made the big trade for has no cars or roads, only about 20 motorbikes. Most people get around by walking paved footpaths or steep stairways. And water comes from several wells. As for Manhattan, it went on to become one of the world’s greatest cities.

Marcia Smith 4:12
Isn’t that interesting,

Bob Smith 4:13
But 400 years ago, it didn’t look that way. Now, the Dutch eventually lost the nutmeg monopoly because the seedlings were smuggled all over the world.

Marcia Smith 4:22
You won the battle, you lost the war

Bob Smith 4:23
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 4:24
Oh my goodness. And nutmeg. What did we use it for? My winter drinks I put it in?

Bob Smith 4:30
Today, a nutmeg pod appears on the national flag of Grenada, the former British colony that was second only to Indonesia in global nutmeg production. So the British, they got the plants, and they got the island too.

Marcia Smith 4:43
Wow

Bob Smith 4:44
The Island of Manhattan. So that was basically the English saying, We’ll take Manhattan. You take the nutmeg.

Marcia Smith 4:50
(Sings) We’ll take Manhattan.

Bob Smith 4:51
And that was the Treaty of Breda in 1667, okay, there was recently an article on this in the New York Times, and they actually had pictures from the island and the people living there. And everything. It looks like a very beautiful place, but, boy, that was the big trade that changed the world between these two great exploring countries back in 1667.

Marcia Smith 5:11
Okay, Bubba. Bob, how did the term broads become synonymous with women?

Bob Smith 5:17
That’s a good question. I always wondered if it had to do with, like, well, the broad chest, or something like that, that was the term.

Marcia Smith 5:23
Thank you very much.

Bob Smith 5:24
Okay, but that’s apparently not the answer.

Marcia Smith 5:27
No, it isn’t.

Bob Smith 5:28
And I don’t really care to speculate anymore.

Marcia Smith 5:30
That would be the smart thing.

Bob Smith 5:31
Okay, so tell me how it came about.

Marcia Smith 5:34
We have to go back to the 18th century.

Bob Smith 5:36
Okay.

Marcia Smith 5:36
Poker cards were called broads. Oh, really?

Marcia Smith 5:39
Yeah, because they were wider than regular cards used for, I don’t know, bridge and things.

Bob Smith 5:43
So if somebody said, Hey, let’s play some broads,

Marcia Smith 5:46
They meant, let’s play poker.

Bob Smith 5:48
Okay? Gotcha.

Marcia Smith 5:48
Because they were bigger. Around 1912, because they resembled poker cards being broader, tickets of admission, meal tickets and transit tickets were called broads. They they started becoming called broads.

Bob Smith 6:01
Okay, so meal tickets. Where did people get meal tickets?

Marcia Smith 6:03
Well, people at work would purchase meal tickets so they could pay for their lunch or their dinner or boarding houses, and they would buy meal tickets in advance.

Bob Smith 6:13
And these were all broader cards too. So okay, we got that.

Marcia Smith 6:16
But then we move up to 1914, and who enters the picture? Pimps.

Bob Smith 6:22
Oh, okay.

Marcia Smith 6:23
And who were their meal tickets, Bob?

Bob Smith 6:26
Uh prostitutes.

Marcia Smith 6:27
That’s exactly,

Bob Smith 6:28
Oh, they called them meal tickets.

Marcia Smith 6:30
They were their meal tickets, so they became their broads.

Bob Smith 6:33
Oh, my goodness.

Marcia Smith 6:34
And that’s how the word entered the language.

Bob Smith 6:36
That’s where it came from! I had no idea.

Marcia Smith 6:39
And the term entered the underworld and was eventually picked up by entertainers.

Bob Smith 6:43
Frank Sinatra, jeez, wow. That’s awful. And to think that that evolved to talk about any women as broads.

Marcia Smith 6:51
That’s right.

Bob Smith 6:52
That’s horrible. Did that ever bother you that term broads?

Marcia Smith 6:55
It didn’t at the time, but yeah, it was. It’s a very derogatory term,

Bob Smith 6:59
Even more derogatory now that I know the origin, yeah,

Marcia Smith 7:02
Me too. I, actually back in us what it would be – the 60s – it didn’t offend me,

Bob Smith 7:08
But it does now!

Marcia Smith 7:09
it does, yes

Bob Smith 7:10
Well, now that i know where it came from, I’m really upset about it too.

Marcia Smith 7:13
It’s like a lot of things – not really of nice terms.

Bob Smith 7:16
Well, I don’t want to hear any more about that. Okay, food question, here is a state trait. Tell me what state this food was developed in?

Marcia Smith 7:26
Okay

Bob Smith 7:26
Garbage plate, that is a dish originally served in which US state? Garbage plate. Ever heard of this?

Marcia Smith 7:33
No

Bob Smith 7:34
It’s in either Alabama, Texas, New York or California.

Marcia Smith 7:38
Texas.

Bob Smith 7:39
I too would think Texas. It sounds like something kind of brash, right?

Marcia Smith 7:42
Yeah

Bob Smith 7:42
Big in Texas. We’ve got garbage here. No, it’s not.

Marcia Smith 7:45
Okay.

Bob Smith 7:45
Not Texas.

Marcia Smith 7:46
No

Bob Smith 7:46
Okay is it New York, California or Alabama?

Marcia Smith 7:49
I’ll say Alabama.

Bob Smith 7:50
Okay, wrong again,

Marcia Smith 7:51
New York.

Bob Smith 7:52
Yes, it is. It originates in Rochester, New York. It consists of a messy combination of either cheeseburger, hamburger sausages, steak, chicken, grilled cheese sandwich, fried fish or eggs. You could choose two ingredients from that list, Marcia, and then that you serve it on top of fries, beans and macaroni.

Marcia Smith 8:09
Oh, my gosh.

Bob Smith 8:11
Sounds like a, yes, a recipe for a heart attack, right? It was invented at Nick Tahoe hots fast food restaurant in Rochester, and they even trademarked the name in 1992 – The Garbage Plate

Marcia Smith 8:23
With a fine glass of wine, good Lord.

Bob Smith 8:27
Okay, I don’t know if I want to try that. Okay,

Marcia Smith 8:30
Qll right, time for Where in the World.

Bob Smith 8:32
Bob, okay, Where in the World – that’s a card game.

Marcia Smith 8:35
It is.

Bob Smith 8:35
We have several card games you like.

Marcia Smith 8:37
Yes, I do. It’s mini games club. Where in the world this came in my Christmas stocking of a whole 10 of these little mini cards.

Bob Smith 8:45
Okay.

Marcia Smith 8:45
Where in the world you have to guess the city within three clues.

Bob Smith 8:49
Okay, gotcha

Marcia Smith 8:49
All right. This city was previously called Fang Llong.

Bob Smith 8:55
Fang long!?

Marcia Smith 8:57
Oh, there’s so much to be said.

Bob Smith 8:58
Let’s not say anything about that.

Marcia Smith 9:00
Okay, which means ascending dragon.

Bob Smith 9:02
Ascending dragon.

Marcia Smith 9:02
Also not a good visual.

Bob Smith 9:04
Okay, is this? Could this be in Korea or China?

Marcia Smith 9:10
Yes.

Bob Smith 9:10
Okay, let’s see.

Marcia Smith 9:12
Wait, clue two.

Bob Smith 9:13
Okay

Marcia Smith 9:14
The noodle soup dish pho originated here.

Bob Smith 9:18
The noodle soup dish?

Marcia Smith 9:19
Yeah, pho, P-H-O.

Bob Smith 9:21
Oh, oh, okay, so let’s say Vietnam. Let’s say Hanoi.

Marcia Smith 9:25
Let’s say that that’s correct.

Bob Smith 9:27
Oh, no kidding.

Marcia Smith 9:27
And it’s the capital of Vietnam. That’s clue three.

Bob Smith 9:30
And what was the first clue, again?

Marcia Smith 9:32
The city was previously called Thang Long

Bob Smith 9:34
That meant ascending dragon.

Marcia Smith 9:36
Yes

Bob Smith 9:37
Wow. And that’s Hanoi.

Marcia Smith 9:38
Okay, alrighty, ready? Where in the world? Number two, I bet you get this on. Number one, the first ferris wheel made its debut in this city.

Bob Smith 9:48
St Louis, Missouri.

Marcia Smith 9:49
No.

Bob Smith 9:50
Oh, you’re right, okay. St Louis, that’s right.

Marcia Smith 9:53
Clue number two.

Bob Smith 9:53
That’s right, but I know where it was.

Marcia Smith 9:55
I know, but you have to listen to clue number two.

Bob Smith 9:57
Oh, geez!

Marcia Smith 9:58
The 1920s gangster Al Capone ruled the streets here.

Bob Smith 10:04
Chicago. That’s right, the Ferris wheel debuted in Chicago, and then it was again at the World’s Fair in 1904 in St Louis. I forgot about that.

Marcia Smith 10:11
Okay, okay,

Bob Smith 10:12
All right.

Marcia Smith 10:13
All right. Last one, last where in the world?

Bob Smith 10:15
Okay.

Marcia Smith 10:16
Clue number one, Bob originally a site where tourists could view atomic bomb testing really

Bob Smith 10:24
Come to Los Alamos? No, I don’t think they did that there.

Marcia Smith 10:27
No, they didn’t test. They built their Clue Number Two Bob. Its top hotels include the Bellagio, Mandalay Bay and Caesar’s Palace.

Bob Smith 10:35
Obviously, that’s Las Vegas.

Marcia Smith 10:37
Obviously

Bob Smith 10:37
I didn’t know people went there to watch atomic tests. I didn’t know that. Either. I knew it was close enough or dangerously close. Let’s put it that way. And we did have a friend, Mitchell Smith, who served in the military there, and that was regarding, you know, he was out there because of the test, really, in the 50s.

Marcia Smith 10:52
Yeah, I didn’t know that. All right, wow. Okay, what do you got, Bob?

Bob Smith 10:55
All right. Marcia, I’ve got a question for you. What fashion trend was launched by a throwaway tableware promotion, you probably don’t remember this. What? What a fashion trend that was launched in 1966 by a throwaway tableware promotion,

Marcia Smith 11:12
platform shoes. No

Bob Smith 11:15
paper like dresses, printed paper dresses. Yeah, in 1966 Scott paper, of the toilet paper production fame, launched the throwaway table wear line. And to promote it, they created two disposable dresses made out of a printed paper, like cellulose material. They priced it at just $1.25 by the end of the year, Scott paper had sold more than 500,000 dresses in 1966 I remember that other companies began manufacturing similar garments, so they were paper dresses. And here’s a fashion factoid. You could say that Wallace Crothers had a greater influence on women’s fashion than anyone else in history, including all the great designers. What was Wallace Crothers responsible for?

Marcia Smith 11:58
I have no idea. I’ll give you a clue. Okay, he was

Bob Smith 12:01
a chemist at DuPont in 1935 any idea?

Marcia Smith 12:09
Did he invent? Kill all? He invented nylon. Oh, okay,

Bob Smith 12:13
the first truly synthetic fiber. It’s still used in stockings and clothing to this day. That’s why he’s probably got more influence on fashion than almost anyone else. Yeah, probably never thought about it. No, all right, Marcia, why did a Hall of Fame baseball player autograph jars of Vaseline? Oh, Lord,

Marcia Smith 12:33
that doesn’t sound good. A picture. Did he grease his glove with Vaseline?

Bob Smith 12:38
He sometimes allegedly used substances to the ball to make it more erratic in the air. Yeah, yeah. He was notorious for doing it. His name was Gaylord Perry. A lot of baseball fans will remember him, and he was frequently asked by fans to sign jars of Vaseline, because that was his preferred ball doctoring agent. When he was a

Marcia Smith 12:58
player, did do slow it down or speed it up. It

Bob Smith 13:01
reduced friction on the ball, which also made the ball erratic, so the ball could flutter or dive or slip, make it can confuse the bat. Made it harder for the batters to predict where the ball was coming. Gotcha. Yeah, so he joked, I reckon I tried everything in the old apple but salt and pepper and chocolate sauce. He called his autobiography, me and the spitter, really? Yeah, and he was never ejected during his career. Why? Well, they never caught him. They don’t, oh, never able to

Marcia Smith 13:29
prove can’t the catcher just take the ball over to of course, the catcher is your guy.

Bob Smith 13:33
Yeah, the catcher is on the team that’s controlling the ball. They don’t want to say, oh, there’s something wrong with oh, sorry, Gaylord, should we go to a break? I think we should. It’s time for a break. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment.

Speaker 1 13:48
We’re back. Hello,

Bob Smith 13:51
Bob and Marcia Smith here for the off ramp. We do this each week for the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and then it goes out on podcast platforms and is heard Marcia

Speaker 2 14:01
all over the world. That’s right, you have one job, just one job.

Marcia Smith 14:07
All right, it’s time for also known as AKA, all right. It’s a card game. And I give Bob a category, and he has to guess the word I’m looking for. And today’s category, Bob is, yes, types of muffins.

Bob Smith 14:21
Oh, geez, types of muffins, oh, my goodness, in your

Marcia Smith 14:24
wheelhouse, yes. Okay, I can only think of a couple, but yeah, you’d be surprised. All right? And there are different kinds of muffins, okay? Our language Bob, English muffins, that’s right, okay, I got that one. You’re good fats, dominoes,

Bob Smith 14:38
Hill, blueberry muffins, that’s right, okay,

Marcia Smith 14:43
popped movie snack. Popped movie snack.

Bob Smith 14:47
I serve this all the time, corn muffins, that’s right, popped corn and muffins. Okay, gotcha, okay, a

Marcia Smith 14:52
defective car. What kind of muffin Am I looking for? A lemon muffin that’s very good. You’ve been eating. Eating lemon bars,

Bob Smith 15:01
lemon cars. That’s the problem. You’ve had both.

Marcia Smith 15:05
All right, what kind of muffin am I talking about when I say a breeding horse,

Bob Smith 15:11
a breeding horse, a stud muffin.

Marcia Smith 15:16
You’re doing very well. All right, here’s a favorite of yours, Scarlet velour.

Bob Smith 15:21
Scarlet velour. Red. Yeah, red, red, red, red. I’m sorry, what is it? Red Velvet? Oh, rats, velvet. There we go. I couldn’t think of what it was.

Marcia Smith 15:33
Isn’t that funny? When it’s something that you really like, it doesn’t even pop into

Bob Smith 15:36
your Well, I’m thinking of red muffins, and I’m going, I don’t remember any red muffins.

Marcia Smith 15:40
So, all right, last one, all right. Curved fruit enthusiast said, what a banana muffin? Yes, Banana Nut muffins,

Bob Smith 15:50
nuts, I see because they’re curved fruit enthusiasts. So banana nut is somebody would like bananas. That’s very good. That’s right, wow. Okay, thank you for the AKA, no

Marcia Smith 16:00
one said this would be easy. No,

Bob Smith 16:02
they didn’t, and it wasn’t, but it wasn’t too hard. No, you did very well. Okay, all right, Marcia, I have a question for you. What us? State’s name comes from a native word for large lake. Is it Nevada, Arizona, Michigan or Colorado? The state’s name comes from a native word for large lake. Well, Michigan, you’re right. There’s a lot of lakes around it, right? Michigan gets its name from an Ojibwe or Chippewa native word meaning large lake. The 26th state is known as the Great Lakes State because its shores touch how many of the five great lakes,

Marcia Smith 16:40
3444, 3444, geez.

Bob Smith 16:43
It consists of two land masses, one which they stole from the state of Wisconsin. Oh, I’m sorry, just a little history there the Upper Peninsula and the mitten shaped Lower Peninsula. Large Lake is the name Michigan for Ojibwe.

Marcia Smith 16:57
Think about that. It has four Great Lakes touching. Touch it, right? That’s pretty amazing. And Great Lakes are so much bigger than people who have never seen them, oh, they think, Oh, it’s a lake, yeah, it’s about two or three months that comes here and say, That’s Lake Michigan, and they can’t believe it’s an ocean. Oh, it’s the same one in Chicago, the same one up north.

Bob Smith 17:16
It’s a it’s a little sea, an inland sea, absolutely,

Marcia Smith 17:19
okay, Bob, which President had the greatest number of children?

Bob Smith 17:24
The president with the greatest number of children was that Zachary Taylor. No one of those guys remember. I think it was Zachary Taylor. Still have grandchildren, still alive today. Because that was amazing. A lady had children. I think that guy just died. One of them, yes, yeah. I think there’s still one alive. Okay, who had the most children? What President had the most children? Well, it wasn’t Teddy Roosevelt. Wasn’t Franklin Roosevelt,

Marcia Smith 17:49
it was John Tyler. He had 15 children.

Bob Smith 17:53
That’s who I was thinking of. Not Zachary Taylor, but John Tyler, 15

Marcia Smith 17:57
children, and thankfully, they were divided by two wives, and I can only guess what killed the first one.

Bob Smith 18:05
Good Lord, can you believe that 15 kids? Wow, okay, I think some of them came after he left the White House. Could be Yeah. Marcia, fried coke. This is a strange dessert, a fried coke. Strange dessert invented by which US state, Arizona, Texas, Colorado or Montana. Where can you find fried coke? Well, gee whiz. Where did it debut? Marcia. You talking about Coca Cola? Yes, deep fried Coca Cola, flavored batter topped with whipped cream, Coke syrup, cinnamon sugar and a single cherry.

Marcia Smith 18:37
It’s got to be some state fair. That’s right. I’ll say

Bob Smith 18:41
Montana, Colorado, Texas or Arizona, Arizona, everything’s bigger in Texas, that’s where it fall. Marsha 2006 a computer analyst named Abel Gonzalez Jr, created this bizarre dessert, again, fried Coke, deep fried coca cola flavored batter topped with whipped cream, Coke syrup, cinnamon sugar and a single cherry. He also is the creator of weird dishes such as deep fried beer and deep fried butter. Just so you know, fried Coke, it’s a little heavy on the calories. 830 calories per cup, per cup, per cup became very popular in Texas, and then soon spread to other states. Yeah, and it’s sold worldwide, usually at carnivals. These days, it even has been featured on Travel Channel’s TV show, bizarre foods, fried coke. All right, let’s try that.

Marcia Smith 19:30
Sometime. You go ahead, have that with your pop tart. Hey, shut up, okay. Bob, who was the first president to be born west of the Mississippi River. Richard Nixon, no.

Bob Smith 19:43
Oh, no, not. Oh, okay. I’m sorry. It’s either I think it’s Harry Truman, isn’t it, because he was born in Missouri. No. Harry Truman, first president. Okay, let’s try again.

Marcia Smith 19:55
You say it was such self assurance? Have to say it was self assurance. It’s such a guy thing.

Bob Smith 20:00
No, it isn’t, all right, first president born west of the Mississippi River, right? Yeah, so we’re probably talking somebody from Kansas. Oh, would it be Herbert Hoover?

Marcia Smith 20:10
That’s it. He was the 31st president. Took 31 presidents before we had someone born west of the Mississippi and he’s from Iowa, not from Kansas, yeah, he was born in West Branch, Iowa in 1874 but it’s hard to believe, Bob, it took 30 presidents to break the mold, and he was the first of only eight presidents to this day to be born west of the Mississippi. Wow. Think about that.

Bob Smith 20:37
That’s interesting. And Eisenhower, I think Eisenhower and Truman were the next two that were born west of the Mississippi. So the other ones were like, Lyndon Johnson, yeah, eight of them total. Obama was one of those. He’s born in Hawaii, yeah. So it is interesting, as big as the country is, yeah. And as it quickly spread across the continent, you know, the United States, across the 48 states that to this date, only eight of the 40 some odd presidents, what 4740 have been presidents from across that part of the country.

Marcia Smith 21:10
Most are east, east coast.

Bob Smith 21:14
Yeah. Even Ronald Reagan, who people associate with California, was born in Illinois. Trump was New York City. Yeah, exactly. And then you got Jimmy Carter and you got Gerald Ford. They’re all born east of the Mississippi. All right. Question for you, yes, sir. Another culinary question for you, Marcia, the Cuban sandwich. Yes, I like those. It may have originated in Cuba, but in what state did it first come to be Florida? Florida, Tennessee or North Carolina. Marcia, Florida, Florida, Tennessee or North Carolina Marcia, you’re right. It’s Florida. Yeah. The Cubans immigrating to Florida brought it with them. The Tampa Tribune makes reference to the Cuban sandwich as early as 1906 in the United States, Cuban sandwiches in Florida. Which makes sense, right?

Marcia Smith 22:00
Okay, Bob, what’s the difference between lethal and deadly?

Bob Smith 22:04
Lethal and deadly? Yeah, is this like a legalistic or a scientific distinction?

Marcia Smith 22:11
I don’t know. Okay,

Bob Smith 22:13
okay, lethal, something can be lethal, but it hasn’t happened yet. Deadly is something that’s already happened and has had consequences, is that, is that

Marcia Smith 22:23
the answer that’s pretty close, okay, lethal has the potential to kill. Okay? Like the snake’s venom is lethal if left untreated, uh huh, but deadly, it’s a deadly storm, meaning it already claims. So it’s like I said, something that’s already happened. It’s deadly, claiming several lives. So it’s deadly storm.

Bob Smith 22:41
So you don’t say something, don’t touch that. It’s deadly. You say, Don’t touch that. It’s lethal. Yeah, lethal has a possibility. If something’s deadly, you’ve already committed a crime, you’ve

Marcia Smith 22:52
already killed someone, apparently, or it has taken you down.

Bob Smith 22:55
It has taken someone’s life. I love those kind of linguistic distinctions. Yeah, interesting. Okay, how long have we been using the word crib to describe a dwelling like, oh, I took her back to my crib. Like Hip, hip. 1950s history?

Marcia Smith 23:11
Would it be 1700s farther back than that? 16, farther back than that? 15. Oh, my goodness.

Bob Smith 23:19
It goes back to Henry the fourth. Part two, by William Shakespeare. Part Two. William Shakespeare used crib to mean a dwelling place in Henry the fourth in the 1590s amazing. It goes back 90s, 1590s All right now, who beat the United States to the moon? Russia?

Marcia Smith 23:40
Well, how? No, they didn’t go the moon. Who beat us to the moon? But it was Russia. Oh, but it was unmanned.

Bob Smith 23:46
That’s right. They were the first country to successfully land any spacecraft on the moon. Luna nine and an unmanned probe. It landed on the moon in 1966 three years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on the lunar surface. It is interesting that no Russians ever landed on the moon. Did they? No, really, that was, that was the goal to get, yeah, go to the moon and back safely. And Russia never really

Marcia Smith 24:09
did that. All right, Bob, here’s something for you to ponder. How much does the average cumulus cloud weigh?

Bob Smith 24:16
How much does a cloud weigh? Yeah, the cumulus cloud, these are the big, puffy clouds we see in the sky. How much does the average one weigh? Gee, I thought they were weightless, yeah, but they’re probably full of water and moisture, right? So let’s say I’m gonna go with, hmm, I’m gonna go with 10 tons.

Marcia Smith 24:35
That’s good, okay, 1.1 million

Bob Smith 24:38
pounds. Oh, my God,

Marcia Smith 24:40
that’s for the fluffy white clouds known scientifically as cumulus clouds. Although these collections of water vapor seem to float effortlessly, clouds are really, really heavy. Holy cow and the United States Geological Survey based on their size of point 62 miles long and tall, holds about. 1.1 million pounds of water. Holy cow, it’s 1.1 million pounds. But while we have the equivalent of 100 elephants floating above our head, you gotta think, hello, I was

Bob Smith 25:13
thinking of water instead,

Marcia Smith 25:15
the drier, denser air beneath the cloud is even heavier, which is why those clouds can harmlessly float on by.

Bob Smith 25:23
I had no idea. So the air below the cloud is thicker and denser, and that’s why the clouds float on top of it. Yeah, yeah. Geez. That explains a lot of stuff, doesn’t it? Yeah. And then causes a lot of questions come in your mind. What is that I’m looking at up there in the sky? It’s not just a blue sky.

Marcia Smith 25:38
It’s 100 elephants waiting to drop on my head.

Bob Smith 25:42
That just blows your mind, doesn’t it? Yes, it does. Let’s not tell our three year old grandson that might scare him. I think Teddy might find that frightening. There’s elephants up there. Yes, there are. Son, the metaphor, Bob, move on. Okay, all right, I got one more about outer space. Why don’t straws work in outer

Marcia Smith 25:58
space, there’s no oxygen, there’s you can’t suck. Well, it’s not that, because there’s no air in the straw.

Bob Smith 26:05
There’s no atmospheric pressure. That’s the problem. Okay, sucking on a straw lowers the air pressure inside the straw, and when that happens, the atmospheric pressure pushes from outside the straw, causing the fluid to move into your mouth. And straws don’t work at all in outer space because there is no atmospheric pressure. Good to know. I hadn’t thought of that. All righty, now it’s time for our closing quotes. Marcia, yep, what do you got

Marcia Smith 26:31
thoughts on springtime? All right, some quotes. Charles Dickens, I didn’t know he would talk about spring. He was always, you know, talking about workhouses and orphans, please, sir, please. Okay. Charles Dickens said, Spring is the time of the year when it’s summer in the sun and winter in the shade. That’s Oh, okay, that’s very accurate, isn’t it? It is very accurate. Doug Larson, spring is when you feel like whistling, even with a shoe full of slush. That’s the Midwest spring.

Bob Smith 27:02
That’s too good. You know it’s getting better. I know it’s gonna get better.

Marcia Smith 27:05
And Margaret Atwood in spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. All right, that’s sweet.

Bob Smith 27:13
I like that. Well, it’s like the first time you smell

Marcia Smith 27:15
rain, yeah? But it is, I love that smell. Oh yeah, it’s rain.

Bob Smith 27:19
It’s summers here. Okay, nice quotes on spring. We hope you enjoyed those, and we hope you’ll spring back the next time we return, clever Bob with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. It’s a hard job, Marcia, but somebody’s gotta do it. I’m Bob Smith. I’m Marcia Smith. Join us again next time when we return with the

Marcia Smith 27:37
off ramp, you did very well on the types of muffins.

Bob Smith 27:46
The off ramp is produced in association with the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg Wisconsin. Visit us on the web at the offramp. Dot show.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai