322 Airborne Trivia

Bob Smith 00:00
What surprising word is missing from the Wright brothers’ first patent for their flying machine? And what fashion faux pas caused the famous 1922 riot in New York City? 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 word is missing from the Wright brothers’ patent for their flying machine? What do you think could be missing that should be there?

Marcia Smith 00:54
Jeez, airplane? No.

Bob Smith 00:56
No aeroplane is there.

Marcia Smith 00:58
Flying?

Bob Smith 00:59
No, flying is mentioned.

Marcia Smith 01:02
I don’t know.

Bob Smith 01:03
The word is wing.

Marcia Smith 01:05
Wing.

Bob Smith 01:06
Yes, wing.

Marcia Smith 01:07
Well, how does that work?

Bob Smith 01:08
Wing and its plural wings never appear in the 200 plus pages of the Wright brothers’ patent for their flying machine. Not once does that word wing appear. Why?

Marcia Smith 01:19
Why?

Bob Smith 01:19
Okay, that’s because the word wing didn’t exist in engineering vocabulary back then. It was only in biological vocabulary for bats and insects and birds.

Marcia Smith 01:31
Okay.

Bob Smith 01:31
So how do you describe how a flying machine flies without using wings? The Wright brothers did it by using an engineering term: “aeroplane,” spelled A-E-R-O-p l a n e, 17 times.

Marcia Smith 01:44
That’s what they called the wings?

Bob Smith 01:45
Yeah, that’s what they called the wings. Aeroplane. That was the accepted technical term for flat lifting surfaces that could be angled, warped, or manipulated to control a glider.

Marcia Smith 01:56
So it was a flying machine propelled by aeroplanes.

Bob Smith 02:00
No, the flying machine is propelled by a motor, but it is guided and steered by manipulating the aeroplanes – the wings. And that’s how a plane works today. Those wings have the little flaps that move up and down. There’s a rudder, there’s a tail. It all works the same way as the Wright brothers prescribed it. So the very thing that lifted their machine into history never appeared in their paperwork. The Wright brothers used the word aeroplane 17 times because back then an aeroplane didn’t mean the flying machine; it meant the wings. It’s kind of strange, isn’t it?

Marcia Smith 02:34
It is. It is. Okay, Bob. What male fashion faux pas caused the famous 1922 riot in New York City.

Bob Smith 02:42
So this was a male fashion faux pas. I thought maybe it was a girl putting on some kind of outfit or something there.

Marcia Smith 02:48
wrong.

Bob Smith 02:49
Averybody went. Oh my God! I can’t believe she’s wearing that. So this was a male fashion faux pas in the 1920s.

Marcia Smith 02:55
Yeah, a 1922 riot.

Bob Smith 02:57
Well, what would that be?

Marcia Smith 02:58
It’s a riot Bob.

Bob Smith 02:59
Did a guy have a suit on, and everyone went crazy. I don’t know what would it be, Marsh.

Marcia Smith 03:04
It was some poor dude wore a straw hat after September 15.

Bob Smith 03:08
What?

Marcia Smith 03:09
It’s so stupid.

Bob Smith 03:10
What do you mean?

Marcia Smith 03:11
In the early 20th century, Bob, weather was celebrated and heralded by the wearing of the straw hat, which you could bring out on may 15.

Bob Smith 03:19
Oh, that was the okay time to bring out your straw hat. Yep. Now we’re not talking about a farmer’s straw hat. We’re talking about those dapper-looking straw hats.

Marcia Smith 03:27
You see them in pictures. Anyway, the straw hat you could bring out on may 15, felt hat day.

Bob Smith 03:34
What?

Marcia Smith 03:34
Meanwhile, came around on September 15.

Bob Smith 03:37
Oh, that’s when you get your felt hat out.

Marcia Smith 03:39
That’s right.

Bob Smith 03:39
Okay.

Marcia Smith 03:40
Alas, this flouting of the natural order was not without consequence. Unwritten rules are still rules, and a number of self-styled enforcers took to the streets to ensure that no one was committing this most grievous fashion faux pas.

Bob Smith 03:54
So these were other guys coming after these guys who were wearing their straw hats past the time.

Marcia Smith 03:59
Yeah, yeah, that’s it.

Bob Smith 04:01
Really?!

Marcia Smith 04:01
Gangs of young hoodlums ran riot in various parts of the city, smashing straw hats and trampling them in the street.

Bob Smith 04:09
So these were fashion fascists.

Marcia Smith 04:11
Yes,

Bob Smith 04:11
I can’t believe it.

Marcia Smith 04:12
Very good, very good. In some cases, mobs of hundreds of boys and young men terrorized whole blocks. As many as 1,000 made their way throughout the city, some armed with nail tip sticks.

Bob Smith 04:24
Oh dear!

Marcia Smith 04:24
It was a deal, Bob. It was a deal.

Bob Smith 04:26
I can’t believe that. That’s really ridiculous.

Marcia Smith 04:29
Yeah, and this is New York City.

Bob Smith 04:30
God. All right. A little more on the first airplane. When did the aviation language finally get to the airplane being the entire craft?

Marcia Smith 04:40
Gosh, I don’t know. 10 years later.

Bob Smith 04:43
No, it’s a little longer than that. So the airplane was invented by the Wright brothers.

Marcia Smith 04:47
Correct.

Bob Smith 04:48
Or the flying machine was invented with the aeroplanes, which were their wings in 1903. And 1916 was the moment when aeroplane changed to A-I-R plane, meaning, the flying machine.

Marcia Smith 05:00
Who changed it?

Bob Smith 05:01
The NACA. That was the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics.

Marcia Smith 05:06
There we go.

Bob Smith 05:06
And they came into being in 1916, and for the next, I don’t know, about 10 or 20 years, they slowly but surely, through their technical reports and research bulletins, shaped aviation language, and that included a massive expansion of things like wind tunnel research, wing section development, drag reduction studies, but they also policed what the wording was. So that’s where it came to be. And guess what? In 1958, NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Okay. What do you think they became?

Marcia Smith 05:34
NASA.

Bob Smith 05:35
That’s right. They became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. And so you went from the Wright brothers right into the space age with the same kind of organization.

Marcia Smith 05:44
Oh, cool!

Bob Smith 05:44
Isn’t that amazing?

Marcia Smith 05:45
Yeah.

Bob Smith 05:46
So NASA inherited NACA’s research centers, their personnel, their wind tunnels, and all their aerodynamic expertise, and took us to the moon. Just fantastic.

Marcia Smith 05:56
Okay. All right, Bob. In the 1940s, flying over Seattle, you could see a charming little neighborhood near the Duwamish River. What was so special about it?

Bob Smith 06:07
Let’s see. What was so special about Seattle back then? I I don’t know. Chihuly glass? I don’t know. What what about this charming community?

Marcia Smith 06:16
This entire community, this neighborhood in Seattle, was a stage set. It concealed one of the most important aircraft factories in the United States.

Bob Smith 06:26
Wow!

Marcia Smith 06:26
It was over a factory. It had tree-lined streets winding past modest houses, tidy lawns, parked cars, and backyard fences. But no one lived there.

Bob Smith 06:35
So this was a big painting on the ground.

Marcia Smith 06:38
Well, it was all sorts of bits and pieces. It was after Pearl Harbor and fears of another aerial assault around Seattle because Boeing, you know, was a valuable target. So thousands of workers there were building B 17 flying fortresses.

Bob Smith 06:52
Right, but how did they camouflage this whole area?

Marcia Smith 06:55
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers covered its roof with an elaborate camouflage village, sometimes called Boeing Wonderland, the ground was fashioned from burlap canvas and chicken wire, while lawns and trees were made from chicken feathers and spun glass. I’ll be darned! What this must look like from the sky, I don’t know.

Bob Smith 07:14
Amazing! The

Marcia Smith 07:14
neighborhood had at least two whimsically appropriate road names: Synthetic Street and Burlap Avenue.

Bob Smith 07:21
So that’s just like the Allies did in World War II in Europe, in in Great Britain. They did the same thing,

Marcia Smith 07:26
Covering something that was a good target.

Bob Smith 07:29
We had elaborate deception. This just shows the ingenuity of of the Allies.

Marcia Smith 07:33
While Pretend Town was going on above, below, 300 bombers were built in this facility each month.

Bob Smith 07:39
Wow, 300 a month, and those were big, big planes.

Marcia Smith 07:43
Yeah, this building was torn down in 2010, not that long ago.

Bob Smith 07:47
Hmm. All right. Well, speaking of wings and planes,

Marcia Smith 07:50
Yes, dear.

Bob Smith 07:50
Where can you find the world’s largest butterfly with wings?

Marcia Smith 07:54
Aha!

Bob Smith 07:55
And I’ll give you choices here. Oh,

Marcia Smith 07:57
thank you.

Bob Smith 07:57
The Bronx Zoo, Vietnam Jungles, Papua New Guinea or Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum.

Marcia Smith 08:04
New Guinea.

Bob Smith 08:05
I just wanted to go to that Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum all my life as a kid.

Marcia Smith 08:08
Did you really?

Bob Smith 08:08
Oh yeah, there was one down in Jacksonville. I think they had one in Florida, and I wanted to stop there. And dad just wouldn’t do it.

Marcia Smith 08:14
He wouldn’t. My folks wouldn’t either. I would wanted to go. Still do, but

Bob Smith 08:18
I think they were tourist traps. That’s the reason. Anyway, but you’re right. It turns out the world’s largest butterfly is in Papua New Guinea, the Queen Alexandra Birdwing, also known as the birdwing butterfly. Who is this named for? You ask.

Marcia Smith 08:32
Who?

Bob Smith 08:33
The wife of King Edward the Seventh of England. The wingspan of the females makes them about 50 percent larger than the more colorful males, so the colorful males may be getting the attention. But a huge female butterfly comes down and covers them. These female butterflies are 11 inches wider than an average butterfly. My God!

Marcia Smith 08:56
That’s amazing.

Bob Smith 08:57
So an average butterfly is probably two inches or something. So this is 11 inches wider. That’s huge.

Marcia Smith 09:02
That is, I’d love to see one.

Bob Smith 09:04
So there’s the wings. That’s the wing story of the butterfly.

Marcia Smith 09:07
Thank you, Robert. Statistically, Bob, what are your chances of getting a double yolked egg?

Bob Smith 09:13
Hmm. Never thought of that. So that’s an anomaly. That’s a big difference.

Marcia Smith 09:17
Have you ever had one?

Bob Smith 09:18
Don’t think so. I’ve only you know cracked those eggs, and only one yolk shows up.

Marcia Smith 09:21
Really, I’ve had it many times.

Bob Smith 09:23
Really, and so are they bigger eggs than regular eggs?

Marcia Smith 09:26
Sometimes, but not necessarily. And you open up and go, “Oh, there’s two yolks there. Is that going to screw up my recipe?

Bob Smith 09:31
So, how do you want me to describe the odds of this?

Marcia Smith 09:33
I’m sorry, one in how many?

Bob Smith 09:35
One in 1000.

Marcia Smith 09:38
You said one in a 10 before.

Bob Smith 09:40
Okay, one in 100.

Marcia Smith 09:43
No,

Bob Smith 09:43
okay,

Marcia Smith 09:44
it’s one in every 1000 eggs.

Bob Smith 09:46
Oh my goodness! So I was right.

Marcia Smith 09:48
All right, moving on.

Bob Smith 09:50
And no acknowledgement!

Marcia Smith 09:52
Aww. So there’s a chance you’ll come across one of these at some point, but. But for the superstitious, an egg with two yolks is widely considered a sign of impending good luck. Double yolks are sometimes regarded as a sign of an upcoming marriage, or that a woman would soon become pregnant with twins. I never knew any of that, and all the times I got a double yolk,

Bob Smith 10:16
You never thought, “Wow, wonder what’s going to happen to me?

Marcia Smith 10:18
I just thought, is this going to screw up the brownies? That’s what I think.

Bob Smith 10:23
Marcia, what famous inventor once set a land speed record? Now, this guy was known for a bit of transportation.

Marcia Smith 10:31
Oh, oh, Henry Ford.

Bob Smith 10:34
That’s who it was.

Marcia Smith 10:35
Okay.

Bob Smith 10:35
Before the Model T became popular in 1904, Henry Ford garnered publicity for his fledgling motor company by setting a land speed record. Now listen to this. This is in Michigan. You lived in Michigan. I lived in Michigan. The winters can be brutal. He drove for a mile across a frozen lake at an average of 91.37 miles per hour, and the car didn’t have a windshield, and he didn’t wear any goggles, and it was snowing. There were pieces of ice were hitting him in the head. This is amazing.

Marcia Smith 11:05
Oh God! And he he could have fallen through, Bob.

Bob Smith 11:08
Oh yeah. He drove a mile in 39.4 seconds. That’s how fast he was going, clocking an average speed of 91.37. And again, no goggles or face protection. He was seen as a daredevil at the time, but he wanted to get people to invest in his company, so people went, “Wow, this guy seems to be serious about cars. You know, because the cars before that time were reserved for the wealthy. You know, so this is guy turning it into a hot rod. Yeah, made it more popular. And

Marcia Smith 11:33
Oh, every he brought it to the common people.

Bob Smith 11:35
Yes, he did.

Marcia Smith 11:36
Price tag.

Bob Smith 11:36
But he had to get attention for it. So that was one way.

Marcia Smith 11:39
He had a good sense of self promotion there. I like that. Yeah. Okay, Bob. Did you ever wonder how we got the nicknames for various common names like Dick for Richard or Bill for William?

Bob Smith 11:51
I never thought of that. You’re right. That is kind of strange, isn’t it?

Marcia Smith 11:53
I always thought about that. Why did they call him Dick? Where did that come from? Or what is it? Some Polly for

Bob Smith 12:00
Mary and Margaret, yes, those are interesting.

Marcia Smith 12:03
All sorts of weird. Well, anyway, guess what? It goes back to the Middle Ages.

Bob Smith 12:06
Like everything.

Marcia Smith 12:07
What the heck? It was a popular practice to shorten names and swap certain letters, resulting in a playful rhyming nickname. Makes no sense.

Bob Smith 12:18
Well, these people had no television, Marcia. They had no computers. They didn’t have the internet. They needed to entertain themselves.

Marcia Smith 12:24
Oh, that’s good. You’re very, very good at figuring this out. The name Richard was among the most popular names in medieval England.

Bob Smith 12:31
Well, they had Richard the Lion-hearted and King Richard the Third, and all of these Richards.

Marcia Smith 12:35
Yeah. In fact, it was so common that scribes came up with several shorthand versions, including Rich and Rick, then they started rhyming things with it for fun while writing. In the early 13th century, the trend for rhyming them to shorter versions produced nicknames such as Hitch, Hick, and of course Dick. Oh my darn! Guess what stuck? Dick.

Bob Smith 12:59
Yes. They said that King’s a dick.

Marcia Smith 13:01
Yes, that’s right. And Bill – William, it follows the same logic. William was shortened to Will, and in time they rhymed it eventually with

Bob Smith 13:10
Bill.

Marcia Smith 13:10
That’s it.

Bob Smith 13:12
Huh? Okay, let’s take a break. We’ll be back with more of the off ramp in just a moment with Bob

Marcia Smith 13:16
and Marcia

Bob Smith 13:17
Smith. You’re listening to The Off Ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. We do this each week for the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Then we put it on podcast platforms, and it’s heard all over the world. Yeah, 31 countries in the last month, Marcia. That’s not bad.

Marcia Smith 13:19
Really?

Bob Smith 13:20
Yeah,

Marcia Smith 13:21
I’d like to look at that later.

Bob Smith 13:35
Okay, Marcia, I’ve got another inventor. He also set a speed record. Who’s the inventor who experimented with hydrofoil boats? Boats that would fly over the water.

Marcia Smith 13:45
Yeah. Who’s the inventor? Yeah. It was a boy because you’ve slipped.

Bob Smith 13:49
It’s a boy. Yes. He was about 28 when his first invention became very popular.

Marcia Smith 13:53
Is this somebody I know.

Bob Smith 13:54
We talked about him a couple shows back.

Marcia Smith 13:56
We did

Bob Smith 13:57
At the Philadelphia Exposition.

Marcia Smith 13:58
Oh, Alexander Graham Bell.

Bob Smith 14:00
That’s right, and he too was a daredevil. Believe it or not, a speedster.

Marcia Smith 14:05
There’s some common thread there, isn’t there?

Bob Smith 14:06
Yeah. In the early 20th century, Bell, already famous for the telephone, became obsessed with hydrofoil boats to fly above water on wing-like structures. Alongside engineer Casey Baldwin, Bell developed a series of experimental craft called hydrodomes. Hydrodomes, and in 1919, their hydrofoil hydrodome set a world marine speed record. It flew across the water at 70.86 miles per hour.

Marcia Smith 14:34
That’s pretty dang fast.

Bob Smith 14:35
That’s amazing – in Nova Scotia – powered by airplane engines. And it lifted clear off the water on its foils and reduced drag and allowed astonishing speed. Now, Bell didn’t pilot it himself, but he was deeply involved in the design and he described the sensation of hydrofoil travel that he experienced as smooth as flying through the air.

Marcia Smith 14:54
You don’t see pontoon boats going that fast, right? Okay, Bob. In the good old days. Sleeping was a communal activity. Beds were valuable, sometimes one of the most expensive items a household owned, and they were rarely reserved for just one person.

Bob Smith 15:11
Oh, really?

Marcia Smith 15:12
Entire families might pile into a single bed. What does that show, Willy Wonka? Remember, he and his grandparents, two sets of grandparents, were all in bed together.

Bob Smith 15:22
No, I don’t remember that.

Marcia Smith 15:23
That was funny. Anyway, even visitors joined the family in the same bed.

Bob Smith 15:27
Jeez.

Marcia Smith 15:28
In inns or when traveling, sharing a bed with a stranger was common practice. So here’s my question.

Bob Smith 15:33
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 15:33
What two famous constitutional signers shared a bed together in 1776?

Bob Smith 15:40
Oh my goodness! So they were bunking in the same place in Philadelphia. They probably had come there from some other place. Okay, I’m going to say John Adams and who is the guy with the big signature? Oh, John Hancock.

Marcia Smith 15:54
Ah,

Bob Smith 15:54
I’ll say John Hancock and John Adams slept in the same bed together.

Marcia Smith 15:57
Two Johns in a bed.

Bob Smith 15:58
Yes. No?

Marcia Smith 16:00
No. You’re half right.

Bob Smith 16:01
Oh, I’m half right.

Marcia Smith 16:02
Yes. Oh, it was John Adams and Ben Franklin.

Bob Smith 16:05
Oh my goodness! They shared

Marcia Smith 16:06
They shared a bed at a crowded inn, and they argued over whether to keep a window open. Sound familiar? Adams feared catching cold, while Franklin insisted fresh air was good. Same argument I have for one’s health. Anyway.

Bob Smith 16:19
Yes, but you don’t do the same thing as Ben Franklin did. He would stand in front of an open window naked because he thought his skin would breathe better. You never did that in our neighborhoodb- that I know of.

Marcia Smith 16:30
That you know of. When Adams finally fell asleep mid sentence, this story goes Ben got his way. Okay.

Bob Smith 16:38
Mid sentence and mid argument apparently too.

Marcia Smith 16:40
That’s what it was. Mid lecture, it said.

Bob Smith 16:42
Oh, that’s funny. All right, I’ve got a good question for you. A famous cellist named Pablo Casals. Remember him when we were kids? He was very famous. Yes, you’d see him on TV and so forth. And he once gave advice to a young cellist who was seven years old. The young cellist is Yo-Yo Ma.

Marcia Smith 16:58
Yo-Yo Ma.

Bob Smith 16:59
We see him today in all kinds of concerts. So, what was the advice the great Pablo Casals gave the seven-year-old cellist?

Marcia Smith 17:07
Ah, keep on practicing.

Bob Smith 17:09
No, he said, go play some baseball.

Marcia Smith 17:12
Oh, I love it.

Bob Smith 17:12
Go play some baseball. Yo-Yo Ma says, I think the implication was live a full life. And although Yo-Yo Ma came to America at age seven, and as a child performed for President John F. Kennedy at a concert hosted by Leonard Bernstein. He did go on to lead a normal life. Do you know what his college degree was?

Marcia Smith 17:31
What

Bob Smith 17:32
Wasn’t music.

Marcia Smith 17:33
Home economics.

Bob Smith 17:34
No, he went on to study anthropology.

Marcia Smith 17:38
Oh, did he?

Bob Smith 17:38
That’s what he earned his bachelor’s degree for anthropology from Harvard, he did go to Juilliard when he was 15, but then he went to college. He decided he wanted to learn some other things. And if you’re doing the math, Yo-Yo Ma was seven when he played for John F. Kennedy. He turned 70 in 2026.

Marcia Smith 17:54
He looks. He doesn’t change much. He looks pretty much the same, doesn’t he?

Bob Smith 17:58
There’s another person who performed with Yo-Yo Ma at the time. Any idea who that was?

Marcia Smith 18:01
Ishtak Perlman?

Bob Smith 18:02
No, it wasn’t Ishtak Perlman.

Marcia Smith 18:04
Who?

Bob Smith 18:05
It was his 12-year-old sister, Yo Chen Ma. She played piano. She became a highly successful doctor and developmental pediatrician, treating children with developmental disorders. But she’s known as the music doctor because she does integrate music into her treatment.

Marcia Smith 18:21
Oh really?

Bob Smith 18:21
Yeah, so Yo-Yo Ma’s sister-that was like a sister-brother act. A 12 and a seven-year-old playing for President Kennedy in 1962.

Marcia Smith 18:28
We should put an act on together. Oh wait, this is the act, isn’t it? Okay, Bob, new game. I’m calling it. Who am I? I will give you three clues, and you tell me if you can name this famous person. That’s the one thing they all have in common.

Bob Smith 18:43
Okay

Marcia Smith 18:44
Is that everybody knows who they are,

Bob Smith 18:46
Except me. Okay, got it. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 18:48
He was award – I’m telling you, it’s a he. That helps too.

Bob Smith 18:51
Yes, it does.

Marcia Smith 18:52
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953.

Bob Smith 18:57
Nobel Prize Literature 1953. That was

Marcia Smith 19:00
You should have this at the top of your head!

Bob Smith 19:02
Ernest Hemingway. No, who was that? It was one of the other American authors, as I recall, wasn’t it? Gosh, I can’t remember who.

Marcia Smith 19:12
Clue two. He was the first official honorary citizen of the United States in 1963.

Bob Smith 19:20
Hmm, and he’s an author, right?

Marcia Smith 19:23
Well, he was awarded. It’s one of the things he does.

Bob Smith 19:25
Nobel Prize for literature, you said.

Marcia Smith 19:27
Yes.

Bob Smith 19:28
Okay. Was it, was it Churchill?

Marcia Smith 19:30
Yes. Okay. Yes. Do you know what the third clue was? What he was a member of the Bricklayers Union.

Bob Smith 19:37
Yes, I knew that. That would be it. Because he he loved bricks. He loved construction projects.

Marcia Smith 19:42
Every day, he tried to put down 2000 words in writing and 200 bricks. It was he thought of that as – a – you know. It was just a nice physical labor that gave him a delightful contrast quote to his intellectual work.

Bob Smith 19:59
Okay.

Marcia Smith 19:59
And he won the Nobel Prize for writing about his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, and he was the first who gave him the first honorary citizen of the United States. That was John F. Kennedy.

Bob Smith 20:11
Wow

Marcia Smith 20:12
,

Marcia Smith 20:12
Making the former British Prime Minister the first person to have that distinction.

Bob Smith 20:17
And of course, his mother was American, so he’s coming back from this place to England, you know. Also, he died in 1965. I remember when he died. You know, JFK died in ’63, but I remember the cover of Life magazine at my friend Jim Scoville’s house, and it was it was Winston Churchill. He had died, and that was the cover. Okay, Marcia, I’ve got some original colony questions here.

Marcia Smith 20:40
Oh yay!

Bob Smith 20:41
Okay, what colony started as a social experiment?

Marcia Smith 20:45
Ah, I thought it

Bob Smith 20:46
was a penal colony. I thought of it that way, but it was a social experiment.

Marcia Smith 20:50
Really, a colony here? A colony? Is it a state or? It’s a

Bob Smith 20:54
state now.

Marcia Smith 20:55
Or Delaware.

Bob Smith 20:56
No, Georgia, a colony for a cause. It was founded by James Oglethorpe. I guess he was a prison reformer, and as a social experiment, he designed it to provide a fresh start for England’s worthy poor. So, to that end, the colony outlawed slavery and large landholdings, and brought all kinds of poor people from England. Settlers soon pushed back, though, and by 1751, many of the original restrictions were lifted, and they did have slavery after that. But despite its challenges, Georgia’s idealistic beginnings make it a unique addition to the 13 colonies.

Marcia Smith 21:30
Ah, okay, Bob. Only one letter doesn’t appear in a U.S. state name. Which letter is it?

Bob Smith 21:37
The letter is see. It’s not X because that’s in Texas, I was going to say X. I’ll bet the it’s not W because that’s West Virginia. There’s a whole bunch or Washington. Yeah, is it Z?

Marcia Smith 21:50
Arizona.

Bob Smith 21:51
Oh my goodness, that’s not it. All right, what is the letter

Marcia Smith 21:54
Q? It’s generally said Q is the rarest letter in the English alphabet, and it appears only 0.196% in all of the main entries of the concise Oxford Dictionary.

Bob Smith 22:08
Wow!

Marcia Smith 22:08
Among the 50 states, Bob J and Z are also underutilized, appearing just one apiece in New Jersey and Arizona. So J is only used once, and Z is only used once. Well, I’m

Bob Smith 22:20
surprised at J. I didn’t think about that. Z, I can see being difficult. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 22:24
but yeah, Q is the rarest letter in the alphabet and least used for everything.

Bob Smith 22:30
Let’s get rid of it.

Marcia Smith 22:31
Yeah, guess who wanted to get rid of it?

Bob Smith 22:33
Who was that? Good

Marcia Smith 22:34
old Ben Franklin. Of

Bob Smith 22:35
course, he

Marcia Smith 22:36
was very busy back in the day, wasn’t he?

Bob Smith 22:38
Busy telling people what to do. Open the window. Get rid of Q. You know, there’s other things, right? He had a

Marcia Smith 22:44
whole bunch of letters he didn’t like. Ben, Ben, Ben. Yeah. Go

Bob Smith 22:47
fly a kite. Yeah, I

Marcia Smith 22:48
loved it when he went to France and got full of debauchery. All right. All right.

Bob Smith 22:52
I have a question. Two airplane crashes in 1954, one after the other, grounded a famous author. Who was it? Who survived two successive plane crashes one day after the other?

Marcia Smith 23:05
That is really yes. Boy, that’d make you take trains forever. Yeah. What author? 19. What did you say? 50.

Bob Smith 23:12
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 23:13
Who was famous then? I don’t know. Ernest

Bob Smith 23:15
Hemingway. Oh

Marcia Smith 23:16
really? In

Bob Smith 23:17
1954, Ernest Hemingway, then in his 50s, hired a pilot to take him and his fourth wife, Mary Welsh, on a sightseeing tour of Uganda aboard a small Cessna. It was meant to be a Christmas present for Mary to see the Murchison Falls, which is one of the most inaccessible spots in Uganda, which is dominated by crocodiles, elephants, buffaloes, lions, another big game. And guess what?

Marcia Smith 23:39
What?

Bob Smith 23:39
Their plane clipped a telegraph wire and plunged into the crocodile-infested shores of the Nile. In the morning, in the morning, a tourist boat spotted the three survivors and ferried them out to a nearby town where they boarded a second plane called to transport them safely out of Uganda. And just after takeoff, that plane crashed too, and it caught fire.

Marcia Smith 24:01
Did he ever go up again? I would never go up again. The

Bob Smith 24:03
pilot kicked out a window and pulled Mary Welsh through, but Ernest Hemingway, who was too large to fit through the window frame,

Marcia Smith 24:10
really

Bob Smith 24:10
forced the door open with his head. And he joked about the crash soon after when he met with reporters. He arrived in Entebbe with his head bandaged, carrying bananas and a bottle of gin, telling reporters, “My luck, she is running very good. But apparently,

Marcia Smith 24:27
that’s that’s the glass is half full. Well, I would have said just the opposite. What

Bob Smith 24:32
really happened? Writing to his attorney, he said he couldn’t write letters much on account of his right arm, which was burned to the bone third degree

Marcia Smith 24:39
from

Bob Smith 24:39
the from the fire, and it would cramp up on him, and his fingers were burned. His left hand, third degree, so he couldn’t type, and he was weak from internal bleeding. So he was always vibrato. Everything’s going fine, you know. But no, he was really in bad shape, and his right kidney had been ruptured, and his liver and spleen also injured. Jeez, that’s amazing. Ernest Hemingway, can you imagine one plane crash after another, one day after another? That

Marcia Smith 25:04
would be 24 hour news cycle. I’d be

Bob Smith 25:07
taking a slow boat back to America after that. I can’t

Marcia Smith 25:10
believe it. Okay, it’s time for AKA, also known as. Okay, I’ll give you a category, and this category is zoo animals, Bob. Oh dear, zoo animals. Okay, and I’ll give you a clue, and you have to tell me the animal. Okay, so if I said striped horse, the zoo animal would be the

Bob Smith 25:27
zebra.

Marcia Smith 25:28
That is correct, sir. Okay. How about playground bars?

Bob Smith 25:32
Playground bars, monkeys. Very

Marcia Smith 25:34
good. Empty cupboard.

Bob Smith 25:36
Empty cupboard. Empty cupboard. Cabinet. It’s a cabinet animal.

Marcia Smith 25:40
This this is a bit arbitrary. Empty

Bob Smith 25:43
cupboard.

Marcia Smith 25:43
Yeah, it’s part of a nursery rhyme. The answer is bear. Oh dear, that is. How could I

Bob Smith 25:49
get to that? The cupboard

Marcia Smith 25:51
was bare. I

Bob Smith 25:51
see.

Marcia Smith 25:53
Gotcha. Uncle wife’s swallower.

Bob Smith 25:55
What’s that?

Marcia Smith 25:56
Uncle wife’s swallower.

Bob Smith 25:59
Uncle wife’s. So

Marcia Smith 26:00
who’s your uncle’s wife? My

Bob Smith 26:02
aunt’s.

Marcia Smith 26:02
That’s correct. And what’s a

Bob Smith 26:04
fire ant? An ant fire

Marcia Smith 26:06
swallower.

Bob Smith 26:07
Okay.

Marcia Smith 26:09
She’s an ant eater.

Bob Smith 26:12
Oh dear God. Okay, gotcha. All right.

Marcia Smith 26:14
What zoo animal am I? Sin of laziness.

Bob Smith 26:18
Sin of laziness. What animal

Marcia Smith 26:20
am I talking about? A

Bob Smith 26:21
sloth.

Marcia Smith 26:22
That’s correct. Tarzan’s chimp.

Bob Smith 26:26
That’s cheetah.

Marcia Smith 26:27
Correct. And planter’s pig.

Bob Smith 26:30
Planter’s pig.

Marcia Smith 26:31
Yeah.

Bob Smith 26:32
Peanut something.

Marcia Smith 26:33
Planter with a T A R at the end. Planters on your foot. You might have a planter’s wart.

Bob Smith 26:40
Okay.

Marcia Smith 26:41
And a pig,

Bob Smith 26:41
a warthog.

Marcia Smith 26:42
That’s it. Okay, gotcha. Holy cow! All right,

Bob Smith 26:46
that’s that was interesting. Okay, okay.

Marcia Smith 26:49
All right, I’m going to finish up with three Indian proverbs from our friends in India.

Bob Smith 26:55
Proverbs.

Marcia Smith 26:56
Yeah, my three quotes for today or proverbs go to our friend Dibashish Ghosh in India.

Bob Smith 27:03
He’s one of our listeners. Okay,

Marcia Smith 27:04
certainly is. Be so busy improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.

Bob Smith 27:10
That’s always a good thing to do. I

Marcia Smith 27:13
love it. Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism. The way you play it is free will.

Bob Smith 27:21
Okay, all right, nice. That’s good.

Marcia Smith 27:23
And Mahatma Gandhi, he said, “Here’s the famous quote: ‘Be the change that you wish to see in the world.’

Bob Smith 27:30
And that is a famous quote. All right. Well, we hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s show, and we hope you’ll join us again next time when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. I’m Bob Smith.

Marcia Smith 27:41
I’m Marcia Smith.

Bob Smith 27:42
You’ve been listening to 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