316 Almost Overlooked Trivia

Bob Smith 00:00
What obscure invention tucked away at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition only became a sensation because of the Emperor of Brazil?

Marcia Smith 00:10
And what animal has its own zip code?

Bob Smith 00:13
Ah, answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of The Off Ramp with Bob

Marcia Smith 00:19
and Marsha

Bob Smith 00:19
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. We are the podcast dedicated to lifelong learning with all sorts of information. And now we’re going to find about the animal that has its own zip code.

Marcia Smith 00:54
Yes, dear. In the United States, what animal has its own zip code?

Bob Smith 00:59
Now, why would an animal have its own zip code? Well, think

Marcia Smith 01:02
it through. Well,

Bob Smith 01:03
I’m trying to think it through. Is this a crawling animal? Does it move? Is is it mobile, or is it some kind of fungus or something like that? What what is it?

Marcia Smith 01:11
Why would that have a zip code? Well,

Bob Smith 01:13
because we know where it is. Does it have its

Marcia Smith 01:15
own zip code?

Bob Smith 01:16
Is it a moving creature?

Marcia Smith 01:18
Well, when you know the answer, okay, Bob, it’s Smokey the Bear.

Bob Smith 01:21
Oh dear, he’s not even real.

Marcia Smith 01:24
Well, actually, he is now. Smokey is the face of the country’s longest-running public service campaign, where he frequently shares his famous slogan: “Only you can

Bob Smith 01:36
prevent forest fires. That’s

Marcia Smith 01:38
right. See, you knew it. Of course, I knew it. Yes. In 1950, a five-pound black bear rescued from New Mexico wildfire was christened Smokey Bear as a living homage to the popular protective figure. Long story short, he got sent to the zoo in Washington D.C. and there he and his successor Smokey Two and all the ones that came after,

Bob Smith 02:00
all the Smokies,

Marcia Smith 02:03
they were the face of Smokey the Bear.

Bob Smith 02:05
Yes,

Marcia Smith 02:05
and at the peak of his popularity in the mid 20th century, Smokey received up to 13,000 letters, drawings, Christmas cards, and honey shipments each week. What? Yes, up to 13,000 each week to help sort these deliveries, the bears were given their own Washington D.C. zip code, and it is 20252

Bob Smith 02:29
I’ll keep that in mind.

Marcia Smith 02:30
Yes, in case you ever want to drop a jar of your honey. You know how many zip codes there are in the United States?

Bob Smith 02:37
No, how many?

Marcia Smith 02:37
41,554

Bob Smith 02:39
Good Lord! I thought 550-three

Marcia Smith 02:42
Yeah, you would think 40-1000 Well, see, there are some places that have such a high volume of mail onto itself, like high rises in New York City, that they have their own zip codes.

Bob Smith 02:52
Right, and certain buildings I know.

Marcia Smith 02:54
That’s right. Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, 30 Rock. Those are just a few landmarks that have their own zip codes.

Bob Smith 03:01
Well, okay. So Smokey Bear has his own zip code. Yeah, he’s

Marcia Smith 03:04
only in

Bob Smith 03:05
Washington D.C.

Marcia Smith 03:06
That’s right. I thought it was going to be Santa Claus, but of course he’s not an animal.

Bob Smith 03:10
I was thinking one of those huge fungus or something that covers a whole forest in Upper New York State. It’s prehistoric, and I thought, well, maybe that has its own. Maybe the

Marcia Smith 03:19
fungus. Oh, maybe there’s a

Bob Smith 03:20
fungus among us with the zip code.

Marcia Smith 03:22
Oh God, Bob! And this is this is pretty startling. 13,000 a week.

Bob Smith 03:26
Fascinating. Okay, Marcia, what obscure invention tucked away at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial only became a sensation because of the Emperor of Brazil?

Marcia Smith 03:40
A lot of things debuted there.

Bob Smith 03:41
The typewriter,

Marcia Smith 03:43
the typewriter,

Bob Smith 03:44
the banana.

Marcia Smith 03:44
Yeah, we talked about the banana, but this is Brazil. Some nut from Brazil.

Bob Smith 03:49
No, this was the emperor of Brazil. It was a very, very famous guy.

Marcia Smith 03:53
What’s his name?

Bob Smith 03:54
Dom Pedro the Second. What was the invention that became a sensation because of him?

Marcia Smith 04:00
I I don’t know. Elevator,

Bob Smith 04:02
the telephone.

Marcia Smith 04:04
What? The

Bob Smith 04:04
telephone.

Marcia Smith 04:06
Oh my God!

Bob Smith 04:07
This was a huge exhibition. More than 10 million people came to the fair. Machinery hall was packed with the wonders of the age. There was a 40-foot-tall cordless steam engine there. The Remington typewriter. Singer sewing machines embroidered your name on a piece of cloth, if you wanted to, all these kinds of things in the machinery building, in the electrical building, all sorts of motors.

Marcia Smith 04:27
Where was Bell’s telephone?

Bob Smith 04:29
Well, Alexander Graham Bell was not in either one of those. He he was 29 years old. He saw himself more as a teacher. He was a teacher of the deaf, and he resisted taking this little invention that he’d got a patent for, and he dilly dallyed around. Didn’t want to go, and then friends and his father said, “You got to go. Take your invention there. Something will happen.

Marcia Smith 04:47
Every parent says that to the kid. You got to do this.

Bob Smith 04:49
He only got a booth at the last minute in May, thanks to a friend of his famous father. But hardly anybody came. It was almost impossible to find. It was upstairs in the Massachusetts educational. How did he

Marcia Smith 05:01
demonstrate

Bob Smith 05:01
it? Well, on the day before he planned to leave, he had his students’ big exam coming up. He was so frustrated he went downstairs where the judges were gathering at the central hall. It was late June, real hot day. Committee was exhausted. They decided they’re going to call it a day. And as they turned their backs on him to walk away, a voice said, “How do you do, mr. Bell? And it was the Brazilian Emperor Dom Pardo the Second of Brazil. He knew Dom

Marcia Smith 05:26
Pardo,

Bob Smith 05:27
Dom Pedro, Dom Pardo. He was like a rock star at the fair. He was a famous patron of science. And that day, he’d ask to accompany the judges on their rounds. He knew Bell’s father, and when Bell told him he came to the fair hoping to show this invention, but he’d have to leave the next morning. Dom Pedro said, “Ah, then we must have a look at it now. And they went upstairs, and everybody followed. The judges came up with them.

Marcia Smith 05:53
So what? What did they do? Simulate a phone call up there?

Bob Smith 05:56
Bell led them to a table where he explained the invention, and he put the receiver to Dom Pedro’s ear, and then he crossed the gallery to a room 100 feet away, leaned into a transmitter in that room, and he began to recite Hamlet’s soliloquy.

Marcia Smith 06:09
To be or not to be-that’s right-is the question. That’s

Bob Smith 06:12
right. Dom Pedro heard the words. He jumped out of his chair, shouted, “I hear! I hear! or “My God, it speaks! There are various eyewitness accounts. Oh, okay. But everybody agrees he raced off down to that room at the far end of that gallery. Then the stampede began. All the other judges, let me listen. They had to get their turns, and by the end of the day, that once overlooked exhibit had become the sensation of the fair. I never heard that story before.

Marcia Smith 06:35
No, me either.

Bob Smith 06:36
It’s kind of been lost to history over the years. So the

Marcia Smith 06:38
first public words were English: to be or not to be? Yes, Shakespeare. Okay, never heard that one. Okay, Bob, humans are the only mammal that blushes.

Bob Smith 06:49
Yes, that’s what they say.

Marcia Smith 06:51
Besides your cheeks, you have an internal organ that also turns red when you blush. Oh,

Bob Smith 06:56
let’s not talk about that

Marcia Smith 06:58
here.

Bob Smith 06:59
Let me see. What is it? Could that be an internal organ? Yeah. Oh, an internal organ? Yeah. Is it your heart?

Marcia Smith 07:06
No.

Bob Smith 07:07
What is it? Your liver? Your no.

Marcia Smith 07:09
It’s your stomach lining. Your

Bob Smith 07:10
stomach lining blushes when when you’re blushing outside. You’re blushing inside. Yep.

Marcia Smith 07:15
The same thing that’s happening to your face happens to your stomach lining. Wow. It’s a response caused by the sympathetic nervous system increasing blood flow throughout your body,

Bob Smith 07:25
huh?

Marcia Smith 07:26
Isn’t that the most weird thing?

Bob Smith 07:27
I never heard of that before. No, I never did either. So your your tummy blushes inside. Are

Marcia Smith 07:33
you tummy blushing me, Bob? I see

Bob Smith 07:36
your face being a little red. Are you tummy blushing too?

Marcia Smith 07:39
It’s a cute word. Never

Bob Smith 07:40
heard that one before. Okay, I got a funny one. What famous film actor’s Oscar was accidentally engraved with the wrong name-the name of a comic strip character?

Marcia Smith 07:51
Oh, really? Yes. On purpose?

Bob Smith 07:52
No, this was an accident.

Marcia Smith 07:54
Oh well. Okay, so you want to know the comic strip character or the actor? Well,

Bob Smith 07:59
I’ll tell you the name of the actor. You tell me what you think that the okay the actor was Spencer Tracy, but his Oscar

Marcia Smith 08:06
said Dick Tracy. That’s exactly right. Isn’t that funny? Yes, it is.

Bob Smith 08:11
For most of the Academy Awards history, the winners received a generic unengraved statue at the ceremony. Engraving used to happen later, and the winner brought the trophy back to the academy, and after Spencer Tracy won his 1937 Academy Award, the statuette was sent out to be engraved. When it came back, instead of saying to Spencer Tracy, it said to Dick Tracy. You know, they they aren’t engraved even at the ceremonies today. Did you know that?

Marcia Smith 08:37
No, I didn’t.

Bob Smith 08:38
They weren’t engraved back then for sure because of secrecy. You know, they wanted to make sure winners kept confidential. So today they are engraved, but they’re engraved that same night. Starting in 2010, they had an engraving bar at the Governor’s Ball. The winners bring their fresh statuette to the bar and a pre-made nameplate created for every nominee. So they create them for everybody, even the losers. Then they adhere them to the statue, and then the ones for the losers are recycled. But that’s how they do it.

Marcia Smith 09:07
What losers? The

Bob Smith 09:08
nominees who didn’t get the statue. Oh,

Marcia Smith 09:11
so even the nominees got a nameplate. They

Bob Smith 09:13
give them the names of all the nominees. They brave.

Marcia Smith 09:16
Well, that’s interesting. Isn’t that a

Bob Smith 09:17
smart idea?

Marcia Smith 09:18
Yeah, that’s a good way. So that way, nobody knows.

Bob Smith 09:21
You probably didn’t know this. I didn’t. In the 1930s and 40s, some categories like the supporting roles, they didn’t receive statues. They received plaques, not statuettes.

Marcia Smith 09:30
Huh. Well, you know, I’ve often thought when I watch that, how do they keep it all secret after they’ve done all the awards and their names are on it? Well, that’s how. That’s very interesting.

Speaker 1 09:40
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 09:40
Okay, Bob. What state has the most official languages in the United States? The

Bob Smith 09:45
most official languages. Yes. What state has the most? I’m thinking maybe the state with the most immigrants. California.

Marcia Smith 09:52
No, Alaska. Oh, really? It has 21 official languages. Oh,

Bob Smith 09:56
including indigenous languages. I see.

Marcia Smith 09:59
But few of the. Tongues were written down or recorded, and many have since become rarely spoken or lost. In fact, that’s why Alaska’s governor issued a state emergency in 2018 to promote indigenous language learning in public schools. So they have 21 official languages. That’s

Bob Smith 10:17
amazing.

Marcia Smith 10:18
Yes, it is.

Bob Smith 10:18
So a lot of them are into it. We used to call Eskimos or Native American Indians.

Marcia Smith 10:22
I can’t pronounce most of them.

Bob Smith 10:24
Okay. All

Marcia Smith 10:25
right, Bob.

Bob Smith 10:26
All right, back to the 1876 centennial activity. Okay. We learned about Alexander Graham Bell’s work almost being ignored, but what famous inventor’s work was ignored, even derided at the 1876 film? The light

Marcia Smith 10:39
bob and Edison.

Bob Smith 10:40
It’s not a mechanical thing. It’s a medical process or procedure.

Marcia Smith 10:44
Open heart surgery.

Bob Smith 10:45
No, I

Marcia Smith 10:46
don’t know.

Bob Smith 10:46
Joseph Lister, you’ve heard of Listerine. Yeah. You’ve heard of sanitary conditions. Yeah. Right. Well, British surgeon Joseph Lister had spent years lobbying for antiseptics for preventing infection by destroying germs. He finally got the Europeans to agree to it. Then he came to America, and here, not interested. American medicine wasn’t interested. He was dismissed by the professionals who attended his three-hour lecture, which detailed this thing, at the medical congress at the Philadelphia Exposition. Among those doctors sitting in the audience that day, Dr. Frank Hamilton, a New York surgeon who would eventually be accused of killing President James Garfield due to the unsanitary practices in his treatment of the president’s gunshot

Marcia Smith 11:29
wound. Oh really? Yeah,

Bob Smith 11:30
under his supervision, doctors repeatedly probed the wound with unsterilized fingers and instruments, and they introduced a massive infection.

Marcia Smith 11:38
Oh my gosh! And I don’t, I didn’t know that. Oh yeah,

Bob Smith 11:41
yeah. His life was unfortunately lost, and he was a brilliant man. But modern medical historians agree Garfield would probably have survived if he had been treated with antiseptic methods known at the time but not accepted by American doctors.

Marcia Smith 11:55
Wow. Well, you know when it did become accepted?

Bob Smith 11:57
Well, later than 1876.

Marcia Smith 12:00
I guess so. Wow. The later

Bob Smith 12:01
part of the 19th century, it took a long time. A lot of people died because of unsanitary conditions.

Marcia Smith 12:06
Okay, Bob. How much does the General Sherman tree in Sequoia National Park grow each year?

Bob Smith 12:12
How much does it grow each year? Uh

Marcia Smith 12:13
huh.

Bob Smith 12:14
Are we talking height or width?

Marcia Smith 12:16
We’re talking all together. Oh

Bob Smith 12:17
dear.

Marcia Smith 12:18
In terms of feet, how much does the tree grow each year?

Bob Smith 12:22
Okay, I’m talking height here.

Marcia Smith 12:23
Okay,

Bob Smith 12:24
this thing is 1000s of years old, isn’t it?

Marcia Smith 12:26
It is 2,200 to 2,700 years old. God

Bob Smith 12:31
Almighty, that’s amazing. That’s like 700 BC.

Marcia Smith 12:34
Yeah, I know. Holy cow! What was going on back then?

Bob Smith 12:38
Well, the Assyrian Empire or something like that, I suppose. Oh, it

Marcia Smith 12:41
was the Bronze Age.

Bob Smith 12:42
Let’s say it’s five feet a year. Well, it’s probably not five feet. Let’s say it’s a foot a year.

Marcia Smith 12:46
Actually, the total is 60 feet a year.

Bob Smith 12:49
60 feet. Well,

Marcia Smith 12:50
here’s the thing: the tree and 270-five feet tall. It grows enough new wood annually to equal the size of an entire 60-foot-tall tree. We’re talking all together.

Bob Smith 13:03
Good Lord!

Marcia Smith 13:04
It grows by expanding outward, adding thick layers of new wood around its massive truck. Equals 60 feet of new wood. Isn’t that hard to believe? So

Bob Smith 13:14
it’s like another 60-foot tree every year. Yeah, that’s incredible. It’s

Marcia Smith 13:19
nuts. I thought you know what the oldest tree is in the United States. I think the Methuselah, right?

Bob Smith 13:25
Oh, that’s the one that they never tell you where it is. That’s

Marcia Smith 13:28
right. All you know, it’s in Eastern California, and that one is 4850 years old.

Bob Smith 13:35
Gee whiz! A

Marcia Smith 13:36
Great Basin bristle pine cone, and they keep the location secret because

Bob Smith 13:41
they don’t want anybody to vandalize. That’s

Marcia Smith 13:42
exactly stupid

Bob Smith 13:43
stuff.

Marcia Smith 13:44
That’s right. Stupid people do stupid things.

Bob Smith 13:46
All right, we’ll keep that in mind as we take a break and hopefully come back smarter. You’re listening to the Off Ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment.

Bob Smith 13:57
Stupid people do stupid things!

Marcia Smith 13:59
And we’re back.

Bob Smith 14:01
I’m Bob Smith, and this is Marsha Smith, and we are the Off Ramp, and we do this each week for the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and then we put it on podcast platforms where it is heard

Marcia Smith 14:12
All over the world.

Bob Smith 14:14
All right, Marcia, one more thing on the Philadelphia Exposition.

Marcia Smith 14:17
Uh huh.

Bob Smith 14:18
What future inventor’s father attended that 1876 centennial celebration. Now he saw new technology there that his son would one day refine.

Marcia Smith 14:29
Was it Edison’s father?

Speaker 2 14:31
No.

Marcia Smith 14:31
No. Was it? I don’t. 19. You

Bob Smith 14:34
might not think of this guy as an inventor. He’s an industrialist.

Marcia Smith 14:37
Ford.

Bob Smith 14:38
Henry Ford. His father, William Ford traveled all the way from Dearborn, Michigan, to Philadelphia to Machinery Hall. That building was said to have pulsed and throbbed so strongly the wooden plank floors vibrated when you’re standing in the building. Anyway, the senior Ford, William Ford, came to see an internal combustion engine, which is technology that his 12-year-old son Henry would one day. Fine, and apparently there were a lot of rural Americans who attended that fair to see how mechanization could help agriculture. Yeah, and Henry Ford’s dad was a farmer. He came home

Marcia Smith 15:08
and talked around about it at the kitchen table.

Bob Smith 15:11
Yeah, apparently that had a huge impact on the Ford family. David Brinkley, he’s a historian, said that when William Ford returned from that exhibition, he brought home the gospel of the Machine, and Henry Ford supposedly never forgot his dad talking about steam power, mass production, mechanization, and that big Corliss engine. And then, of course, he went on to refine internal combustion engine technology and make it available to all of

Marcia Smith 15:36
us. Okay, I’m going to do a couple short ones here in a row. In 1930, Bob, roughly 80 million movie tickets were sold per week. Wow!

Bob Smith 15:46
That’s amazing.

Marcia Smith 15:47
How many today?

Bob Smith 15:48
I bet that’s down to like 2 million people.

Marcia Smith 15:50
Oh no! Oh,

Bob Smith 15:52
less than that?

Marcia Smith 15:53
No. 15 million.

Bob Smith 15:55
15 million.

Marcia Smith 15:56
Yep. Yep. So that’s

Bob Smith 15:56
still a lot of people.

Marcia Smith 15:58
It is, but we have a lot more people in the United States than we did in 1930, but now we have a

Bob Smith 16:03
lot of other technologies to see things, see movies and moving images than just and going inside a room and sitting down in the dark, which seems kind of archaic. But it’s a wonderful mystical experience. It really gives you a different feeling, doesn’t it? Yeah, we

Marcia Smith 16:15
just went to a couple and enjoyed it in the big the big theater experience. Okay, Bob. How many U.S. flags are planted on the moon?

Bob Smith 16:24
How many U.S. flags are planted on the moon?

Marcia Smith 16:26
You know, I

Bob Smith 16:27
just think of the one. How many times did we land up there? It was Apollo 11 to Apollo 17, wasn’t it? And then one or two in there didn’t go all the way. So I’ll say five other places. Five places. Pretty

Marcia Smith 16:37
darn good. Six.

Bob Smith 16:38
Six.

Marcia Smith 16:39
From 1969 to 1972, six were planted, but only five are still up erect, because the first one planted by Apollo 11 was erected too close to the lunar module. It fell over when they blasted off. Oh, okay. So they learned to get it farther away from so that

Bob Smith 16:58
it would still stand. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 16:59
yeah. Okay.

Bob Smith 17:00
Speaking of space, this question: What term refers to the physical space between galaxies? Is it intergalactic space? Is it black holes? Is it interplanetary space? Is it plasma? Which one of those refers to the space, the physical space between galaxies?

Marcia Smith 17:19
I’ll say the last one,

Bob Smith 17:21
plasma.

Marcia Smith 17:22
No.

Bob Smith 17:24
What?

Marcia Smith 17:24
I don’t. There were so many of my lost tracks. Okay, it was

Bob Smith 17:26
actually the first one. Intergalactic space, which

Marcia Smith 17:29
makes sense. Yeah, that does make sense. Okay.

Bob Smith 17:31
Okay, a little lunar history.

Marcia Smith 17:33
Which

Bob Smith 17:34
of these is situated on the moon? The Bay of Biscay, the Sargasso Sea, the Sea of Tranquility, or the Scotia Sea.

Marcia Smith 17:42
Oh, which one isn’t?

Bob Smith 17:44
Which one is on the moon?

Marcia Smith 17:46
Oh, the Sea of Tranquility.

Bob Smith 17:48
Yes. How did you remember that? That’s where the astronauts landed, 1969. I was

Marcia Smith 17:53
there.

Bob Smith 17:53
You were there. Well, most of us feel we were there when we saw that on TV, but I think that’s how almost everybody would remember that the Sea of Tranquility, but these others are actually seas: the Bay of Biscay, the Sargasso Sea, and the Scotia Sea. Anyway, that’s where Apollo 11 landed.

Marcia Smith 18:08
That’s right. Because he said,

Bob Smith 18:10
“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed. That’s why you remember it.

Marcia Smith 18:14
Is that it?

Bob Smith 18:15
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 18:15
Thank you for telling me why.

Bob Smith 18:17
Okay, I’ve got some Gen Z abbreviations you should know. We did. That’s what the article told me.

Marcia Smith 18:22
Gen Z. What years were they born?

Bob Smith 18:24
Between 1997 and 2012. And since most of those people spent their youth communicating on the internet, they use a lot more acronyms than most of us do. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 18:33
yeah, yeah, for sure.

Bob Smith 18:34
So here’s some abbreviations that’ll help you start to decipher some of the shorthand. Okay. O M

Marcia Smith 18:40
G.

Bob Smith 18:41
No. O M W O M G means oh my God

Marcia Smith 18:44
yeah

Bob Smith 18:45
what does O M W mean

Marcia Smith 18:47
oh my world oh my

Bob Smith 18:50
on my way

Marcia Smith 18:51
on my way sure that makes sense

Bob Smith 18:53
all right N G L N as in Nancy G as in gory and L as in lovely so N G L if somebody tells you something, and you go NGL, and you’re skeptical.

Marcia Smith 19:03
And I’m skeptical. Ah, not glad, Lee’s. I don’t know.

Bob Smith 19:08
Not gonna lie.

Marcia Smith 19:09
Oh, really? Yeah. Okay.

Bob Smith 19:12
HMU. This is when you’re requesting somebody get in contact with you at another time or send you information. You may tell them HMU.

Marcia Smith 19:21
Ah. Hit me

Bob Smith 19:22
up.

Marcia Smith 19:23
Oh, hit me up. Okay, I was going to say hate my uncle, but that would be wrong.

Bob Smith 19:27
I don’t know. Okay, and here’s 1w. Y M.

Marcia Smith 19:34
W Y.

Bob Smith 19:36
W Y M.

Marcia Smith 19:38
Why you? These are very

Bob Smith 19:39
intuitive, Marsha. Why can’t you get? Why are you mad? Well, you’re close to it. What do you mean?

Marcia Smith 19:44
Oh, okay.

Bob Smith 19:44
What do you mean? You could do it with a question mark or not. So it’s a quick way to ask somebody to elaborate on what they’re telling you. But I’ve got two more here. STG. That sounds bad. This is not a disease. I’m

Marcia Smith 19:55
going to the doctor for my STG. Well, this is when

Bob Smith 19:58
you tell something to somebody. You want to make sure. That they understand you’re telling the truth. You say swear.

Marcia Smith 20:04
Swear to God.

Bob Smith 20:04
Yes, S T G is swear to God. Okay, and then one final 1s M H.

Marcia Smith 20:10
So

Bob Smith 20:11
you can also do S M D H, shaking my head, or shaking my damned head. Yeah.

Marcia Smith 20:18
Okay. Yeah, that’s funny. Here’s a real word, Bob.

Bob Smith 20:21
Oh,

Marcia Smith 20:22
if I say you are my socko do lager.

Bob Smith 20:24
Wait a minute. You say I’m your what?

Marcia Smith 20:26
Sakodulager.

Bob Smith 20:28
Sakodu lager, not sockenschlafer. Remember that one? That was like somebody who wears socks to bed and then there was a ridicule. It was very

Marcia Smith 20:35
funny. You remembered that one. Yes, because

Bob Smith 20:37
I’m a sockenschlaffer. Yes, you are. I wear socks to bed.

Marcia Smith 20:39
But this, you’re also a Saknullager, and this

Bob Smith 20:43
is. I hesitate to know what this is. Well, this

Marcia Smith 20:46
is you know this is English.

Bob Smith 20:48
I’ll

Marcia Smith 20:49
spell it for you. Okay. S O C K D O L A G R.

Bob Smith 20:55
Sakodula. It sounds like some kind of beer.

Marcia Smith 20:58
It does, doesn’t it? Lager. No, it means an exceptional person or thing.

Bob Smith 21:02
Oh, thank you.

Marcia Smith 21:03
You’re welcome.

Bob Smith 21:04
So I’m a Sakodulager Sakenschlaffer.

Marcia Smith 21:06
Yeah.

Bob Smith 21:08
Just want to make sure I got. I got to write that down. Sackenschlaffer, Sakkadulager. Boy, that’s confusing.

Marcia Smith 21:13
Yes.

Bob Smith 21:13
All right. I have a couple questions on the Olympics.

Marcia Smith 21:16
Okay.

Bob Smith 21:17
What is the only U.S. state to host both the summer and Winter Olympics.

Marcia Smith 21:22
Idaho.

Bob Smith 21:22
No.

Marcia Smith 21:23
New York.

Bob Smith 21:23
No.

Marcia Smith 21:24
California.

Bob Smith 21:26
That’s it. It hosted the Summer Olympics in 1932, and in 1984 it hosted the Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley, which is a ski resort near Lake Tahoe, California, the only state to host both seasons of the Olympics.

Marcia Smith 21:41
Well, it’s a good state to do it in.

Bob Smith 21:43
One state turned down the Olympics,

Marcia Smith 21:45
and that would be.

Bob Smith 21:46
I’ll give you a clue. They were going to host the Winter Olympics.

Marcia Smith 21:49
The Winter Olympics.

Bob Smith 21:51
Yes. Where are the Rocky Mountains?

Marcia Smith 21:53
It was.

Bob Smith 21:54
It’s the

Marcia Smith 21:54
Colorado.

Bob Smith 21:55
Yes, Colorado was awarded hosting duties for the 1976 Winter Olympics, but many Denverites objected, citing the astronomical costs involved. So they had an anti-Olympics movement and managed to defund the games and force the International Olympic Committee to overturn the decision.

Marcia Smith 22:13
Have they ever been there?

Bob Smith 22:14
No. And the IOC turned to Innsbruck, Austria, because they still had infrastructure from the 1964 Winter Games and allowed them to change everything on short notice.

Marcia Smith 22:25
Huh? I didn’t

Bob Smith 22:26
know that at all.

Marcia Smith 22:27
Okay, Bob, A.K.A. Time for also known as. Okay.

Marcia Smith 22:31
Okay. The category today is onions.

Bob Smith 22:35
Oh boy.

Marcia Smith 22:35
Types of onions.

Bob Smith 22:37
Types of onions. You should

Marcia Smith 22:38
know most of these.

Bob Smith 22:39
Okay.

Marcia Smith 22:39
So the color of stop,

Bob Smith 22:42
red onions.

Marcia Smith 22:43
Correct. Oyster gem.

Bob Smith 22:46
Oyster gem pearl onions.

Marcia Smith 22:48
Mysterious triangle.

Bob Smith 22:51
The mysterious. What

Marcia Smith 22:52
kind of onion? What? A

Bob Smith 22:54
mysterious triangle.

Marcia Smith 22:56
Yes, a place where is a mysterious. Oh,

Bob Smith 22:58
let’s see. Thing. Oh, Bermuda onions. Yes. I didn’t know there was such a thing.

Marcia Smith 23:02
A Bermuda onion?

Bob Smith 23:03
No, never heard of

Marcia Smith 23:04
it. You don’t shop much, right? Okay, ready.

Bob Smith 23:06
I shop. I don’t buy Bermuda onions. Okay. A lot of people don’t buy a lot of things. Okay, Marsh. That doesn’t mean they don’t shop much. Yes,

Marcia Smith 23:13
dear. I know. There’s

Bob Smith 23:14
a lot of things you don’t buy, and I don’t say you don’t shop much, Marcia, because I know you do. I see Amazon.com all the time. Ding ding! Amazon, Amazon. Go ahead. Now we’re angry. Unripe. Okay,

Marcia Smith 23:27
Bob. What kind of onion? Unripe bananas.

Bob Smith 23:32
Unripe green onions. Correct. Yes. Another clue for that would have been Booker T and the MG song, green onions.

Marcia Smith 23:40
Martini.

Bob Smith 23:42
Martini on. onions. There’s a martini onion.

Marcia Smith 23:45
Cocktail onions. Those are the little ones you put in your drinks.

Bob Smith 23:48
Okay.

Marcia Smith 23:49
What kind of onion is a drip onion? A

Bob Smith 23:52
drip onion.

Marcia Smith 23:52
Yes. My faucet has a. It’s

Bob Smith 23:55
got a leek.

Marcia Smith 23:56
That’s it. Oh, leeks. I see. Okay. Okay. And this one, you’re going to have to think.

Bob Smith 23:59
Okay.

Marcia Smith 24:00
All right. North Carolina capital, in a Bostonian accent.

Bob Smith 24:05
North Carolina capital. Let’s see. Columbia is the capital of South Carolina, so North Carolina is Charlotte. Yeah. Okay.

Marcia Smith 24:12
And if you said it with a Boston accent, that’s the onion we’re talking about.

Bob Smith 24:17
Charlotte.

Marcia Smith 24:18
Yeah. Charlotte. Okay,

Bob Smith 24:21
and thank you very much, Marcia.

Marcia Smith 24:24
I knew you’d go into JFK. Good to

Bob Smith 24:26
perform the the services here today. And do you have any kind of quotes from presidents for us today?

Marcia Smith 24:32
Oh, are we are we there? Oh,

Bob Smith 24:33
I think we are. Yes, with vigor. Tell me.

Marcia Smith 24:36
With vigor. Okay, Ronald Reagan. There is no more essential ingredient than a free, strong, and independent press to our continued success in what the founding fathers called our noble experiment in self-government. That’s lovely. And JFK, without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed, and no republic. Can survive

Bob Smith 25:01
well. We hope you’ve survived this show today. Indeed. Okay, and looks like you have some more.

Marcia Smith 25:07
Here’s a couple of quotes on marriage. Ben Franklin: “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterward.

Bob Smith 25:15
A wise man. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 25:17
absolutely. Okay, go

Bob Smith 25:19
ahead.

Marcia Smith 25:20
Winston Churchill, my fave, my most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

Bob Smith 25:28
Well, I can agree with that.

Marcia Smith 25:30
Oh God, I do. Yes, it’s it’s true.

Bob Smith 25:33
That’s the best thing. You know, if you have a good marriage, that’s the best thing in life. That was the best decision you ever made.

Marcia Smith 25:38
Here’s a final thing: a napkin quote. Oh, this will

Bob Smith 25:40
be interesting. The

Marcia Smith 25:41
most important four words for a successful marriage. I’ll do the dishes. Oh, okay. Or

Bob Smith 25:49
I’ll load the dishwasher. I’m sorry, that’s five words. Okay,

Speaker 3 25:52
or is it four? We’ll count it out later. I’ll load the dishwasher. All

Bob Smith 25:56
right. We hope you’ve enjoyed our little party of trivia today, and we invite you, if you would like to, to contribute. You can go to our website, theofframp show. Go to contact us, and fill in the field with maybe a trivia question and answer, and who you’d like it to be directed to.

Marcia Smith 26:13
Me, me, me. Oh, I’m sorry. That’s to Bob. To

Bob Smith 26:16
Bob, so he can quiz Marsha with it. That would be the preferred choice. I’m just letting you know this, but anything you want to do, anything you’d like to contribute, we loved it, and we love hearing from people. We hear from folks all over the world, so it’s a lot of fun from our little show here in Wisconsin.

Marcia Smith 26:33
And you’re running out of things to say. Say good night, Bob.

Bob Smith 26:36
Okay, good night. I think it’s time to go, isn’t

Marcia Smith 26:38
it? Yep.

Bob Smith 26:38
All right. Thanks for joining us, and join us next time when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia here on the Off Ramp. The Off Ramp is produced in association with the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Visit us on the web at theofframp.show.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai