A Coca-Cola employee was once fired for marrying a Pepsi employee.
A Coca-Cola employee was once fired for marrying a Pepsi employee.
People with mental illnesses tend to dream less.
Identity Crisis, Texas Style
The Dallas Cowboys play in Arlington, Texas, at AT&T Stadium. That stadium is also home to college football's Cotton Bowl game, which is no longer held at the Dallas Stadium that's actually named the Cotton Bowl.
The Texas Roadhouse restaurant chain was started in Indiana by a man who initially wanted to run a “Colorado-themed“ restaurant.
The saddle shape of a Pringles chip is mathematically known as a hyperbolic paraboloid.
In the 1950s, author/illustrator Maurice Sendak started working on a children's book about horses, but quickly discovered that he couldn't draw a horse to save his life. So he decided to draw monsters instead. The book, published in 1963 as Where the Wild Things Are, has since sold 20 million copies (probably more than if he'd stuck to horses).
Martin Van Buren was the first (and only) American president who was not a native English speaker. Also the first president born a U.S. citizen (his predecessors were all born before the American Revolution), Van Buren was born in the Dutch-speaking community of Kinderhook, New York. His parents could speak English when they needed to, but spoke only Dutch at home. Young Martin didn't get much exposure to English until he went to school.
John Adams was the first sitting president to not attend his successor's inauguration. Twenty-eight years later, his son, President John Quincy Adams, continued the family tradition and skipped out on Andrew Jackson's inauguration after Jackson defeated him in the election of 1828.
TALK TURKEY
Meaning: Dispense with the small talk and get down to business
Origin: The phrase first appeared in the American colonial days when the Pilgrim Fathers always seemed to want turkeys when they traded with the Indians. So familiar did their requests become that the Indians would greet them with the words, “You come to talk turkey?“
TO HANDLE WITH KID GLOVES:
Origin: Leather from the hide of young goats-- called kids -- was considered the finest in the glove industry. Kid-leather gloves were only worn when there was no danger of undertaking a manual task. Therefore, anyone or anything that is given the “kid-glove“ treatment is handled with extreme tact and gentleness.“
In Victorian England, the word “leg“ was considered too sexy and, thus, too vulgar. At the time, the preferred term, if one absolutely had to refer to a lower extremity, was “limb.“
Ayapaneco-- an indigenous language from Ayapa, Mexico-- might soon go extinct because the last two people on Earth who can speak it are not speaking to each other. It's not known what caused the feud between the two elderly men, but those who know them say they've “never really enjoyed each other's company.“
A San Francisco salon called Tata Massage offers a unique beauty treatment: face slapping. The owner, a Thai woman who goes by the name Tata, claims that slapping people in the face is a great way to remove wrinkles and open pores. She charges $350 for a ten-minute slap session. Also available: “massage boxing.“
In Japan, the term for “drunk tank“ is “tiger box.“
Thousand Island dressing was named for the 1,864 islands in Canada's St. Lawrence River.
“Stendahl syndrome“ is the state of being mentally overwhelmed by the beauty of art.
Lincoln's body has been “buried, disturbed, and reburied“ 17 times.
In Thailand, they text “555,“ not “LOL.“ (In Thai, the number 5 is pronounced “ha.“)
In 2005, a man in Baltimore, Maryland purchased a car radio from Best Buy and tried to pay the $114 installation fee with 57 $2 bills. The store manager was suspicious of the bills and called the police, who detained him for three hours (in handcuffs) while they brought in the Secret Service to determine whether the bills were genuine. (They were).
Because of a persistent myth that $2 bills are no longer in production, some people hoard them. According to the U.S. Treasury, there are about 500 million $2 bills in circulation.
A 51-year-old Czech truck driver fell asleep while driving through Poland in 2011, and smashed through the kitchen wall of a house where a family of four had just sat down for breakfast. The mother said that the driver hopped out of the truck and asked for a cup of coffee. “At that point,“ she went on, “some bricks fell out of the wall onto his head and knocked him out cold.“ The driver was treated and released at a local hospital. 😅
In April 2011, a new bookstore opened up in New York's Greenwhich Village, operated by Andrew Kessler. Although you could buy as many copies as you wanted, the store sold only 1 book: A Martian Summer by Andrew Kessler. Kessler, told the NY Times,“People ask, 'how can you possibly pay your bills.'“ He later admitted that he didn't have any bills-- the landlord let him use the place for free until a paying tenant took over, which was 1 month later.
Our word “bank“ comes from a quaint custom in Italy. Beginning in the 16th century, Italian money changers conducted their business outdoors, on benches. Many Italian cities set up benches for banking business, and it so happens that the Italian word for bench is banco. As banking activity spread through Europe, the word reached England, where it became bank.
U.S. president with the most American high schools named after him: John F. Kennedy (98). Nine former presidents have just one school named in their honor--John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Chester Alan Arthur, Franklin Pierce, Zachary Taylor, and Andrew Johnson. One president has exactly zero schools named after him: Richard Nixon.