308 Bigwig Trivia

Bob Smith 0:00
Bob, what royal medical issue triggered a 170 year fad among European aristocrats?

Marcia Smith 0:07
What crustacean packs the punch of a 22 caliber bullet,

Bob Smith 0:11
And did America’s Founding Fathers wear wigs? Answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith, 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. Well, Marcia, what royal medical issue triggered a 170 year fad among European aristocrats,

Marcia Smith 0:56
Something to do with wigs?

Bob Smith 0:57
Yes, wig wearing among the aristocrats can be traced to Louis the 13th from 1601 to 1643, he liked to wear his hair long. As young man, he permanently lost some of his hair, and so he turned to wigs to supplement his scalp. Some historians think it might have been due to syphilis or its treatment, which was mercury at the time.

Marcia Smith 1:18
Yeah, that’ll do. Yeah.

Bob Smith 1:19
Nobody knows for sure, but his royal court follows suit, as did his son, Louis the 14th. That royal endorsement transformed wigs from a medical or theatrical accessory into a symbol of aristocratic status. All of a sudden, everybody started wearing wigs. It triggered a wig fad among the upper crust that lasted nearly two centuries. All across Europe, wig sales exploded. Wig making, becoming a major luxury industry. All of this because somebody had a hair loss problem.

Marcia Smith 1:46
Yeah,

Bob Smith 1:46
it’s just amazing, isn’t it?

Marcia Smith 1:48
People are sheep Bob. I mean, really, even today, for sure.

Bob Smith 1:52
And Marie Antoinette’s elaborate hairstyles in the 1770s represented the zenith of wig excess.

Marcia Smith 1:58
Oh yes, she did go quite high.

Bob Smith 1:59
Very tall,

Marcia Smith 2:00
yeah.

Bob Smith 2:00
So 170 years. It was a 170 year fad until about the late 1700s.

Marcia Smith 2:07
Don’t they still wear wigs in England?

Bob Smith 2:09
Just in the courts, yeah.

Marcia Smith 2:11
Whydo you think that is?

Bob Smith 2:12
Don’t know.

Marcia Smith 2:12
because it never is becoming. Do you think so?

Bob Smith 2:16
No, no, not at all.

Marcia Smith 2:17
Okay, Bob, there’s a crustacean that packs the punch of a 22 caliber bullet. Any idea

Bob Smith 2:25
Is that some kind of a crab or something like that?

Marcia Smith 2:28
No, this is a mantis shrimp.

Bob Smith 2:31
A shrimp?

Marcia Smith 2:32
Yes,

Bob Smith 2:32
A shrimp can make the sound of a bullet?

Marcia Smith 2:34
No, it has the strength of a bullet.

Bob Smith 2:36
Wow. It’s hard to believe.

Marcia Smith 2:38
It’s four inches long, but pound for pound. The mantis shrimp possesses the most powerful punch in nature. Their strikes accelerate at speeds comparable to a 22 caliber bullet with each blow landing about 1500 Newtons of force. This allows them to use their hammer like clubs to smash through hard shelled prey such as crabs and clams.

Bob Smith 3:01
Geez, these little shrimp, you think of them being just a tiny, little harmless thing.

Marcia Smith 3:06
They even have been known to smash through aquarium glass.

Bob Smith 3:09
Oh, my goodness, really?

Marcia Smith 3:10
Uh huh,

Bob Smith 3:11
Wow.

Marcia Smith 3:12
This punching power comes from elastic energy storage. The shrimp stores its energy in its muscles while it cocks its club into position and then it releases the compressed energy into a ferocious hammer blow.

Bob Smith 3:25
That must be just scary as hell for the other animals.

Marcia Smith 3:28
Yeah.

Bob Smith 3:28
And it’s all happening underwater.

Marcia Smith 3:30
Yeah, the punch is so fast and creates so much pressure that the shrimp actually vaporizes the water in front of it.

Bob Smith 3:38
My God!

Marcia Smith 3:39
Creating small cavitation bubbles that emit light and produce temperatures of around 7200 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bob Smith 3:47
Holy cow.

Marcia Smith 3:48
Which is only 2000 degrees less than the sun.

Bob Smith 3:51
My God, so it heats up the water too,

Marcia Smith 3:53
Yes, by 7200 degrees.

Bob Smith 3:56
That is an amazing story you just brought up. That’s fascinating.

Marcia Smith 3:59
That’s my teaser.

Bob Smith 4:00
That’s a hot little shrimp.

Marcia Smith 4:01
The mantis shrimp, I’m not putting that on my shrimp plate. I’ll tell you.

Bob Smith 4:07
What is that expression, “Dynamite comes in small packages.”

Marcia Smith 4:09
That is crazy.

Bob Smith 4:10
There is one there. Wow, that’s interesting. So the name of that, again, is?

Marcia Smith 4:15
The mantis shrimp.

Bob Smith 4:16
The mantis shrimp with the force of a 22 caliber bullet

Marcia Smith 4:20
And heats 2000 degrees less than the sun.

Bob Smith 4:23
Oh, my God. All right. Marcia, I have a an interesting question for you.

Marcia Smith 4:28
Yes.

Bob Smith 4:28
This actor appeared in 23 films. Three were playing in theaters at the same time.

Marcia Smith 4:34
Good, great.

Marcia Smith 4:35
Can

Bob Smith 4:35
you tell me who that might be? Now, I’ll give you a hint. This year was 1939, I

Marcia Smith 4:39
was gonna ask you, I’ll say Clark Gable,

Bob Smith 4:42
that makes sense.

Marcia Smith 4:43
All right, three movies, No, not him. Okay. Clark Gable,

Bob Smith 4:47
okay, let’s try that again. No, I don’t think so much.

Marcia Smith 4:53
Gary Cooper,

Bob Smith 4:54
no, it’s, it’s not a human being, interestingly enough,

Marcia Smith 4:57
Lassie,

Bob Smith 4:58
no, it’s not Lassie.

Marcia Smith 5:00
A horse?

Bob Smith 5:01
No, it is a female Cairn Terrier dog named

Marcia Smith 5:04
Clark Gable.

Bob Smith 5:06
Clark Gable, yes, no, Terry, but you know her as toto in the film The Wizard of Oz.

Marcia Smith 5:12
That dog was in three movies.

Bob Smith 5:14
That dog was in a lot of movies. Actually, she was owned and trained by Carl Spitz and Gabriella Quinn, and they had her starring in 23 total film appearances, three of which were playing in theaters at the same time in the fall of 1939 the women bad little angel and the Wizard of

Marcia Smith 5:32
Oz,

Bob Smith 5:33
she only received one film credit by name, and that was as toto in The Wizard of Oz. You see it in the film credits.

Marcia Smith 5:39
That’s a real trivia, isn’t

Bob Smith 5:40
it? The movie star whose movies were playing in three theaters at the same time in the 1930s

Marcia Smith 5:46
Okay, I want you to guess this off the top of your head,

Bob Smith 5:48
yeah.

Marcia Smith 5:48
How long is the average person you being the average person? How long is your circulatory system?

Bob Smith 5:55
How long is it?

Marcia Smith 5:56
Yeah? Oh,

Bob Smith 5:56
you mean if it stretched it out, if you took it apart,

Marcia Smith 5:59
yeah? End to end.

Bob Smith 6:00
Well, let’s not try that.

Marcia Smith 6:03
Not today. Let’s not do that. I gotta finish the show first,

Bob Smith 6:05
okay, but maybe some other time it’s got to be miles. It may be hundreds of miles, because all of these little capillaries and on the veins and arteries,

Marcia Smith 6:16
that’s very good.

Marcia Smith 6:17
So

Bob Smith 6:17
I’ll say maybe 225.60

Marcia Smith 6:21
your smiles. You’re so not even close 60,000 miles.

Marcia Smith 6:25
Oh,

Bob Smith 6:25
my goodness, this is in one human being.

Marcia Smith 6:27
Yes, yes.

Bob Smith 6:28
60,000 miles,

Marcia Smith 6:30
our circulatory system, as Bob said, supplies oxygen and nutrients to our whole body, and consists of arteries, veins and blood vessels that are all part of that system and laid end to end. Could circle the Earth more than twice, 60,000 miles. That’s just

Bob Smith 6:46
one person, yeah, one person’s

Marcia Smith 6:47
circulatory system, all inside of our little bodies. Here.

Bob Smith 6:51
I always think about those things. When somebody’s randomly killed someone, you think you just destroyed a magnificent thing, a human being, yeah? Just amazing. Look at that. What. What an elaborate work. Yeah, that is, yeah, amazing.

Marcia Smith 7:05
We’ll discuss later.

Bob Smith 7:06
Yes, thank you. Well, we’re not going to take mine apart. I’ll tell you that. All right, not going to volunteer for that one.

Marcia Smith 7:12
All righty,

Bob Smith 7:12
all right. Here’s the question of the day, did America’s Founding Fathers wear wigs? Companion question to my other question.

Marcia Smith 7:20
I got that part. I got that connection. Gee, I seems to me they did. Yes. We see pictures of George a

Bob Smith 7:27
room full of men and big white wigs. Yeah. Guess what? By the time of the American Revolution, by that time, by the mid to late 1700s the wig craze was already dying out, and most of the founders weren’t wearing wigs at all, but they were wearing their own hair styled and powdered to look like wigs. So that was the bad after that. It’s like, well, we’re not going to wear wigs, but we’ll make it look like we’re wearing wigs. I mean, how stupid is this,

Marcia Smith 7:55
come to think of it, they weren’t so exaggerated, were they? They were more tasteful.

Bob Smith 7:59
So I do have specifically George Washington, no wig, just powder. People think he wore a wig. He never did.

Marcia Smith 8:05
I’ll be dark.

Bob Smith 8:06
Every portrait that looks like a wig was actually his own hair brushed back, tied in a queue, and heavily powdered. And we know this from Charles Wilson Peele, who did portraits of him, and also the Mount Vernon hair dresser books, they list powder and Poma Tom, but no wigs. So that’s from the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. John Adams did wear wigs in his youth, but by the time of the revolution the 1770s he had abandoned them. Thomas Jefferson always natural hair. No wig purchases ever. He disliked wigs. He actually had memoranda books where he recorded every purchase he made for decades, and they list hair powder, but never a wig. Benjamin Franklin was an anti wig founder. He rarely wore wigs, and he often mocked aristocratic fashion. When he was in London and Paris, he was wearing fur caps. Yes,

Marcia Smith 8:57
that was funny. The

Bob Smith 8:58
European observers thought that was a philosophical statement about American simplicity. He’s not wearing a wig. He’s wearing a fur cap.

Marcia Smith 9:05
That guy’s wearing a raccoon on his head, if that wasn’t sophisticated.

Bob Smith 9:09
Alexander Hamilton, powdered hair, not a wig. Long hair, tight back, powdered. And portraits by John Trumbull and Charles Wilson Peale confirm that. So the wigs went out of fashion. They were gone from everyday life by 1800 surviving only in the British courts.

Marcia Smith 9:28
Okay, all right, moving on,

Bob Smith 9:30
okay. From

Marcia Smith 9:31
wigs, from

Bob Smith 9:32
wigs, we move forward.

Marcia Smith 9:33
We go to skeletal remains.

Bob Smith 9:35
Oh, well, there we are all kinds of bodily things. So we’ve gone from circulatory systems to wigs to skeletal remains and Toto too.

Marcia Smith 9:45
Okay, back to

Bob Smith 9:47
your question. I’m sorry, what is your question?

Marcia Smith 9:50
I’m leading up to it. This is one that requires a little back story to give you a fighting chance at the answer. We know from skeletal remains that life expectancy back. In the good old days, prehistoric life coming out of the cave, you only live till about 20 to 30. Okay, by ancient times, which went all the way up to the fifth century, civilizations such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, China and India, their life span increased to just about 35 years of age. So how long before life expectancy rose to the age of 40. What century are we talking about here?

Bob Smith 10:26
I think that was actually in the late 19th or early 20th century.

Marcia Smith 10:31
Oh my gosh, yes.

Bob Smith 10:33
Okay.

Marcia Smith 10:33
It was the 19th century. The 1800s marked a turning point for mankind because of advancements in public health that includes sewage systems, clean water supplies and waste removal, which sharply reduce deaths from cholera, typhoid and other water borne diseases. So

Bob Smith 10:50
sanitary conditions

Marcia Smith 10:52
and scientific understanding of medicine began to take hold. The germ theory

Bob Smith 10:57
right,

Marcia Smith 10:58
and that set the stage for modern medicine today, life expectancy in the US is roughly 79 years of age.

Bob Smith 11:05
Oh, really,

Marcia Smith 11:06
yeah,

Bob Smith 11:06
that’s the average.

Marcia Smith 11:07
Yeah, if you’re born today, you can expect to live. Oh, that’s for

Bob Smith 11:11
people younger than us.

Marcia Smith 11:12
That’s what. Yeah, life span is when you’re Yeah, we don’t, we don’t. If

Marcia Smith 11:17
you’re

Bob Smith 11:17
born now, you’re gonna live 79

Marcia Smith 11:19
years highest life spans are in Japan, Switzerland, Singapore, and they exceed 8384 years of age. And the lowest lifespan is in sub Saharan African countries, where life span is in the 60s. Still, it’s still

Bob Smith 11:33
good

Marcia Smith 11:34
in the 60s compared to, you know, the 1800s All

Bob Smith 11:37
right, very good statistics. Very interesting.

Marcia Smith 11:39
I’m here to help and educate.

Bob Smith 11:41
Okay, speaking of education, here’s one. What famous comic strip, girlfriend was created before her far more famous comic boyfriend? Was

Marcia Smith 11:50
it Lucy?

Bob Smith 11:51
No

Marcia Smith 11:51
peanuts? Was it Nancy?

Bob Smith 11:53
No,

Marcia Smith 11:54
give me one more chance here. Sure.

Bob Smith 11:56
This goes back, I’d say, to the 20s.

Marcia Smith 11:59
Betty Boop.

Bob Smith 12:00
Is that era? Yes.

Marcia Smith 12:01
Oh, that’s the only one I know

Marcia Smith 12:02
who

Bob Smith 12:02
is another character from that era, very slim gal, and she was the girlfriend of a guy who was always fighting,

Marcia Smith 12:10
I don’t know,

Bob Smith 12:11
Popeye’s girlfriend.

Marcia Smith 12:12
Oh, Olive oil.

Bob Smith 12:13
Olive oil. Olive Oil was actually created before Popeye,

Marcia Smith 12:16
no kidding,

Bob Smith 12:17
a full 10 years before Popeye came on the scene. Britannica.com, says she was introduced in a comic strip called thimble theater. Say that twice. Thimble theater in 1919 she was the girlfriend of another character with a food based name, ham gravy. That was, that’s who her boyfriend was. She was

Marcia Smith 12:37
the date here

Bob Smith 12:38
ham gravy and olive oil. Popeye was introduced in 1929 and his immense popularity quickly pushed all the other characters aside except olive oil.

Marcia Smith 12:47
I’ll be down.

Bob Smith 12:48
So she went with him,

Marcia Smith 12:49
well as she should, big, strong guy eating spinach all the time, who could resist

Bob Smith 12:55
much stronger than ham gravy.

Marcia Smith 12:57
Okay, it’s time for AKA, also known as a card game where we pose a category and you have to get the word association. Today’s category, Bob is Elton John songs.

Bob Smith 13:10
Elton John songs,

Marcia Smith 13:12
okay, my little radio man, you should do good with this,

Bob Smith 13:16
hopefully.

Marcia Smith 13:16
So if I said missile guy, what is the song?

Bob Smith 13:20
Well, that’s Rocket Man, of course,

Marcia Smith 13:22
of course. How about miniature Walser?

Bob Smith 13:26
What

Marcia Smith 13:27
miniature Walser? What’s Waltzer? How you spell that waltz? You know, like you do

Bob Smith 13:31
a Waltzer? Oh, Tiny Dancer,

Marcia Smith 13:33
yes.

Bob Smith 13:33
Okay, got you

Marcia Smith 13:34
alligator stone.

Bob Smith 13:36
That is something rock, crocodile rock.

Marcia Smith 13:40
That’s

Marcia Smith 13:41
it.

Marcia Smith 13:42
Mr. Day Lewis,

Bob Smith 13:44
Daniel,

Marcia Smith 13:45
yeah, that’s a lovely song.

Bob Smith 13:47
Yeah?

Marcia Smith 13:48
Melancholy music.

Bob Smith 13:51
Sad something.

Marcia Smith 13:52
That’s it?

Bob Smith 13:53
Sad Eyes. What is the other word?

Marcia Smith 13:55
Songs? Sad

Bob Smith 13:56
songs,

Marcia Smith 13:56
yes,

Bob Smith 13:57
oh, I’m sorry. I can’t remember that

Marcia Smith 13:58
one. I don’t remember that one either. Okay, okay. I’m

Bob Smith 14:00
sure if we heard it, we go, oh yeah, yeah, we heard that one to death,

Marcia Smith 14:03
yeah, I haven’t sat yet.

Bob Smith 14:06
I’m still standing. And the last

Marcia Smith 14:12
one

Bob Smith 14:12
I haven’t sat yet

Marcia Smith 14:16
doesn’t seem the same thing. Yeah. And the last one I received CPR this evening.

Bob Smith 14:23
I received CPR this evening. I don’t know what, when is that?

Marcia Smith 14:27
Someone saved my life?

Bob Smith 14:29
Oh, someone saved my life tonight. Yeah, that’s a pretty song,

Marcia Smith 14:31
yeah. Okay, that’s it. You got most of them except for two.

Bob Smith 14:35
Okay, thank you. You’re welcome. All right. What breed of dog was the famous TV star Lassie? And I didn’t know there were so many types of these. Was she a Rough Collie, a smooth Collie, a bearded Collie or a border collie?

Marcia Smith 14:48
Border Collie? No, she was too big for a border collie. So I’ll say, what’s the other options?

Bob Smith 14:54
Rough Collie, smooth Collie, bearded Collie or border collie?

Marcia Smith 14:58
Geez. I’ll say smooth. Collie,

Bob Smith 15:01
Rough Collie. They’re long haired and elegant. Smooth Collies are the same dog, but they have a short coat. The bearded Collies are Shaggy and long fringed. Their eyes are often covered by fur. And Border Collies, they’re like Rough Collies, but they’re smarter, more athletic and built for work. Lassie was a Rough Collie. Those dogs are known for their beautiful, long coats and their high energy levels, which may explain why it was chosen as a dog for action shows. You know, action pictures,

Marcia Smith 15:26
beautiful dog.

Bob Smith 15:27
Yeah, just couldn’t

Marcia Smith 15:31
communicate. Well,

Bob Smith 15:33
yes, they did read all the things Lassie was saying. Those were famous routines when we were growing up. You just hear this murmuring and then this, oh, is that what you’re saying? The person is caught in the cave. They’re underwater in their garage.

Marcia Smith 15:44
I

Marcia Smith 15:45
think it’s time for

Bob Smith 15:47
a break. Yeah, okay. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith, we’ll be back with more in just a moment.

Marcia Smith 15:55
Thank you, Lassie,

Bob Smith 15:59
we’re back. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith dog stories and all today. We do this each week for the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and then after that, we put it on podcast platforms where it’s heard

Marcia Smith 16:13
all over the world.

Bob Smith 16:14
Ah, speaking with all over the world. Marcia, what famous movie star was named after a yarn doll used by soldiers for good luck in World War One.

Marcia Smith 16:24
Would that be raggedy? Ann,

Bob Smith 16:26
no, a hint. This actually was also a famous animal, famous movie star, named after a yarn doll used by soldiers for good luck in World War One.

Marcia Smith 16:35
You got me.

Bob Smith 16:36
This is interesting. Rin Tin, tin, the German Shepherd. Rin Tin. Tin was born in 1918 in Riley, France. It was a male German Shepherd rescued from a world war one battlefield by a US soldier named Lee Duncan. Actually, he took two puppies, and one was called Rin Tin Tin, or Rin Tatin, a French yarn doll that World War One soldiers carried as good luck charms, always paired with a companion doll called Nanette. And these little dolls became a French craze in 1918 and people sent them to soldiers on the battlefield. They tucked them into their pockets to protect them from danger. So this American soldier got two puppies, and he named them after these famous dolls, which we’ve never heard of

Marcia Smith 17:15
here,

Marcia Smith 17:15
right? No,

Bob Smith 17:16
brought them back to the United States, and Rin Tin. Tin became one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood. The original Rin Tin, tin was in all kinds of movies in the 20s and the 30s, so famous it was even cast as radio series. Can you imagine a radio series about a dog, same

Marcia Smith 17:32
kind

Bob Smith 17:37
of thing? And when Rin Tin Tin, the original, died in 1932 there was national mourning. Newspapers across the nation carried obituaries. Magazine articles were written about his life and a special movie tone. News feature was shown to movie audiences. He even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Marcia Smith 17:55
that I knew

Bob Smith 17:56
the original, but he produced 48 offspring. So the Rin Tin, tin we saw in the TV show when we were growing up was Rin Tin Tin three and four.

Marcia Smith 18:04
Now they’re on the 12th.

Bob Smith 18:05
Now they’re on the 12th. Rin Tin Tin the 12th, the 12th in line from the original silent film star makes personal appearances across the country to promote responsible pet ownership, and received the 2011 American Humane Association Legacy Award at the first annual hero dog awards in Beverly Hills, I don’t know. Thought that was interesting that the dog’s name came from these dolls, yarn dolls

Marcia Smith 18:30
that

Bob Smith 18:30
soldiers had in World War One.

Marcia Smith 18:32
Interesting.

Bob Smith 18:33
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 18:34
Why do we say every cloud has a silver lining? Where does it come from?

Bob Smith 18:39
Well, that’s a good question. Did this relate to something that happened in real life?

Marcia Smith 18:43
It goes back to 1634,

Bob Smith 18:45
wow,

Marcia Smith 18:46
in a John Milton poem, you know who John Milton is? Yes, we have to read him.

Bob Smith 18:51
Yes.

Marcia Smith 18:51
The poem is called comas, C, O, M, U, S. It tells the story of a young woman lost and alone in the wood after being separated from her brothers. As night falls, her terror is lifted and her prayers are answered when a dark cloud turns its brighter side to her to guide her.

Bob Smith 19:08
Okay,

Marcia Smith 19:09
the line in the poem was, was I deceived, or did a stable cloud turn forth her silver lining on the night?

Bob Smith 19:16
Hmm.

Marcia Smith 19:17
So from that phrase in Milton’s poem, the phrase, every cloud has a silver lining hit the popular charts in the 19th century,

Bob Smith 19:25
or the 19th century. Well, I thought you said that went back to the 16

Marcia Smith 19:29
days. That’s where it came from.

Bob Smith 19:30
Oh, but the expression that we know of the 19

Marcia Smith 19:33
dudes read that and deduce that’s all those years. Yeah,

Bob Smith 19:37
that’s interesting. Speaking of old, what is the oldest? What is the oldest, continuously operating university in the world,

Marcia Smith 19:47
in the world, okay,

Bob Smith 19:49
want me to give you some hints.

Marcia Smith 19:51
Can I guess first

Bob Smith 19:52
sure

Marcia Smith 19:52
Oxford

Bob Smith 19:53
wrong.

Marcia Smith 19:54
Should have

Marcia Smith 19:55
known.

Marcia Smith 19:56
Okay, give me some choice. The

Bob Smith 19:57
clues are either France, Russia, Syria. Or Morocco. It’s been in business since 859

Marcia Smith 20:04
859

Bob Smith 20:05
Yeah,

Marcia Smith 20:05
I’ll say Syria,

Bob Smith 20:07
wrong.

Marcia Smith 20:07
Morocco,

Bob Smith 20:08
yes, it’s al caraweean, and it was founded in Fez Morocco in 859 It began as a mosque with an associated school known as a madrasa, and over the centuries, the madrasa became a full fledged University, still in business

Marcia Smith 20:24
today,

Bob Smith 20:25
the University of Al, a l, dash, K, A, R, A, O, U, I N, E, Al carawein. It’s in Morocco, founded in 859,

Marcia Smith 20:35
okay, what did we see in Salzburg? We went somewhere, and they had a,

Bob Smith 20:41
oh, that

Marcia Smith 20:42
was a

Marcia Smith 20:42
restaurant. Oh, the restaurant?

Bob Smith 20:43
Yes,

Marcia Smith 20:44
it had been a restaurant since

Bob Smith 20:46
800 something,

Marcia Smith 20:47
800 and we ate there. Didn’t we did?

Bob Smith 20:49
Yeah, yeah. And that also was associated with the school monks, yeah, the monks, it was their kitchen that originally.

Marcia Smith 20:54
So it’s the religious people in these two stories that started the beginnings of these things,

Bob Smith 20:59
right? So the world’s oldest, continuously operating University. It’s in Morocco, founded in 859,

Marcia Smith 21:05
okay,

Bob Smith 21:06
now we can’t leave that without bringing up what you brought up?

Marcia Smith 21:09
Yes, we can.

Bob Smith 21:09
What is the oldest university in the English speaking world?

Marcia Smith 21:13
Oxford.

Bob Smith 21:14
Do you want the choices or not? Yeah, the choices. University of London, University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, or University of Oxford,

Marcia Smith 21:24
Oxford?

Bob Smith 21:25
Yes, she said timidly, yes. And teaching started there, 1096, it’s not only the oldest university in the English speaking world. It was the first, and it’s still consistently ranked among the world’s top universities.

Marcia Smith 21:39
Yes, it is.

Bob Smith 21:40
Many murders take place there. Apparently, before British television,

Marcia Smith 21:44
you

Marcia Smith 21:44
watch Brit Fox, you know that every other minute there’s a murder.

Bob Smith 21:49
Lots of lots of jealousies among professors at Oxford.

Marcia Smith 21:52
Apparently,

Marcia Smith 21:52
here’s a quick one. What’s the difference between a regular mile and a country mile?

Bob Smith 21:58
I would say a country miles longer than a regular mile,

Marcia Smith 22:00
you would, huh,

Bob Smith 22:01
a country mile has a lot of hills. You’re actually going farther to get that distance. The distance line of sight is 10 miles, but it’s, you know, 12 or 15. It’s a country mile.

Marcia Smith 22:11
You’re close, but it’s curves, not hills. Oh, okay, yeah,

Bob Smith 22:14
similar though,

Marcia Smith 22:15
yeah. A country mile means a winding road on the countryside, and can be considerably greater than, as the crow flies, in a regular, straight line mile. So if it’s not a country mile, it’s a straight line mile, and that’s much faster.

Bob Smith 22:30
It’s a line of sight. There’s a birds fly.

Marcia Smith 22:32
The crow flies.

Bob Smith 22:33
Crows fly. I’m sorry, I got the wrong bird there. It’s not just any bird, okay,

Marcia Smith 22:38
okay, it’s time for where in the world a card game where I give you three clues.

Bob Smith 22:46
Okay,

Marcia Smith 22:46
okay, ready? Clue one. This city was known as Edo, E, D O, until 1860 8e,

Bob Smith 22:54
D O. God, I see this in my mind, and I don’t know what it is. Can you tell me? Can I ask No, no questions. No, I can’t ask you what continent it’s on. Nope, all right.

Marcia Smith 23:05
Clue two, home of Hanami, the cherry blossom festival.

Bob Smith 23:10
Hanami the cherry blossom festival. I think I know the answer now. I think it’s in Japan, and I will say Tokyo. Original name was Ido, correct. Oh, that’s great.

Marcia Smith 23:23
Clue three, you think it would have got this Godzilla regularly attacked this city

Bob Smith 23:27
to that clue, I would have said, Oxford. Okay, no, no, okay, Tokyo,

Marcia Smith 23:33
all right, where in the world? The world’s first heart transplant was performed in this city

Bob Smith 23:39
that was in South Africa, wasn’t it?

Marcia Smith 23:42
Yeah. What’s the

Bob Smith 23:42
city, Johannesburg, South Africa?

Marcia Smith 23:45
No. Clue two,

Marcia Smith 23:46
oh.

Marcia Smith 23:46
Table Mountain overlooks this city.

Bob Smith 23:49
Table Mountain, oh, gosh, I don’t know the name.

Marcia Smith 23:53
Clue three, it’s where you’d find Robin Island, on which Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years.

Bob Smith 24:00
Okay. What was the city?

Marcia Smith 24:01
Cape Town.

Bob Smith 24:02
Cape Town, South Africa.

Marcia Smith 24:03
I always remembered that Cape Town was where the first heart transplant was. For some reason

Bob Smith 24:08
I remember that too.

Marcia Smith 24:09
Do you remember the doctor’s name?

Bob Smith 24:10
Dr Christian Bernard.

Marcia Smith 24:12
See, isn’t that weird?

Bob Smith 24:13
Well, he was famous. He was world famous for a while.

Marcia Smith 24:16
Okay? Bob last where in the world. Clue one,

Bob Smith 24:19
okay,

Marcia Smith 24:19
this place has more canals and bridges than Venice,

Bob Smith 24:23
more than Venice. Wow. Where would that be? I don’t know.

Marcia Smith 24:30
Clue two, it has the world’s biggest collection of works by Vincent van Gogh.

Bob Smith 24:36
Oh, this was Amsterdam.

Marcia Smith 24:37
Yeah, you were there,

Bob Smith 24:38
right, right? And there are a lot of canals. I didn’t know there were more than there are in Venice,

Marcia Smith 24:42
and you would have got it on clue three, home of de Wallen or the red light district.

Bob Smith 24:48
Why would I have gotten that? Marcia

Marcia Smith 24:50
don’t

Bob Smith 24:51
make people think something about me. No, no. Oh,

Marcia Smith 24:54
you. I remember you telling me about it.

Bob Smith 24:56
Yes, it was interesting.

Marcia Smith 24:57
Did you go?

Bob Smith 24:58
No, I didn’t. Oh,

Marcia Smith 24:58
okay, I didn’t think so. Remember you telling me

Bob Smith 25:01
no, because I heard there were pickpockets all over the place, women in the windows. You stand there and they will be picking your pockets.

Marcia Smith 25:07
Yeah.

Bob Smith 25:07
So,

Marcia Smith 25:08
all right,

Bob Smith 25:08
all right. Speaking of women, who is the university with the most students named after, and I’ll give you clues here. Okay, it’s named after a woman, either Marie Curie, Indira, Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, or the Empress Dowager, sir, she,

Marcia Smith 25:24
I’ll say

Bob Smith 25:26
again, it’s the university with the most students in the world.

Marcia Smith 25:30
Did you say Indira Gandhi?

Bob Smith 25:31
Yes,

Marcia Smith 25:32
I’ll say her. It

Bob Smith 25:32
is. It’s India’s Indira Gandhi National Open University in South Delhi. More than 4 million students are enrolled there. That makes it the largest university in the world with a student body of that size. As you can imagine, many students opt for remote learning.

Marcia Smith 25:50
What is it?

Bob Smith 25:51
4 million students? Yeah. So that’s the university with the most students in the world. It’s named after Indira Gandhi, the Indira Gandhi National Open University enrollment, 4 million students. I can’t believe

Marcia Smith 26:05
that. Okay, speaking of countries, what country claims Rubens Van Dyke and brugel as citizens?

Bob Smith 26:13
Oh, I thought you meant as sandwiches. Let me see.

Marcia Smith 26:18
Well, aren’t you just a clever boy?

Bob Smith 26:20
Peter Paul Rubens, I would say that’s probably in the Netherlands, or it’s in Denmark.

Marcia Smith 26:27
No,

Bob Smith 26:28
okay, what is

Marcia Smith 26:29
it also home to Herculean perot

Bob Smith 26:32
France?

Marcia Smith 26:35
No, oh,

Bob Smith 26:35
Great Britain.

Marcia Smith 26:36
No,

Bob Smith 26:36
what

Marcia Smith 26:37
Belgium? That’s right, of course, right. The infamous retired Belgian police officer, was always saying, Are you from France? No, miss you. That’s right, Belgium,

Bob Smith 26:46
I am from vision.

Marcia Smith 26:47
Here’s a couple of quotes on leadership.

Bob Smith 26:49
Okay?

Marcia Smith 26:50
John Maxwell, a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way. Well,

Bob Smith 26:55
that’s good.

Marcia Smith 26:56
Yeah, that’s John Maxwell. And here’s one by get this. Boris Yeltsin,

Bob Smith 27:00
well, he was a leader.

Marcia Smith 27:03
He certainly was. You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can’t sit on it for long. Whoa,

Bob Smith 27:10
I love that. That is a Russian saying,

Marcia Smith 27:12
yeah, yeah. And that was a reformer Russian, yes,

Bob Smith 27:15
a Soviet, exactly.

Marcia Smith 27:16
Yeah. I mean, he was trying to reform things so

Bob Smith 27:19
interesting. Say that again,

Marcia Smith 27:21
you can build a throne with bayonets, but you can’t sit on it for long.

Bob Smith 27:26
Just the whole thought of that.

Marcia Smith 27:28
Yeah,

Bob Smith 27:28
wow. All righty. I’m Bob Smith. I’m Marcia Smith. Join us again next time when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia on the off ramp. 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