Weekend Open Thread

Denied!!!

First at being second. It’s your own damn fault for not installing that Y3K software Hack Stone was offering with a “ Friends of Phildo Discount”.

… a dead cow was once used to spark a political protest? In 1960, a U.S. satellite was returning to Earth, and it broke into several pieces as it fell. One of those pieces hit a farm on the island nation of Cuba, killing a cow. Because tensions between Cuba and the United States were high at the time, and as a poke at the U. S., a live cow was paraded through the streets with a sign on it saying, “Eisenhower, you murdered one of my sisters!” President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) was said to have been amused by the protest. (Or a-moo-sed. Cuba had a real beef with the U.S. about that.)

… a river in Peru will cook any creature that falls into it? Its name is the Shanay-timpishka, which translates into the “Boiling River.” The temperature of the water is close to 200 degrees, and any creature that falls into it will be boiled alive. The headwaters of the river are marked with a boulder that looks like a giant snake’s head. Like any such river or other body of hot water, it is located near an active volcano or lava “hot spot” under the Earth’s crust. (That’s nothing. There’s a lake in Yellowstone National Park that will dissolve you if you fall in.)

…the cash register was invented in 1879? James J. Ritty (1836-1918) was the owner of a tavern in Dayton, Ohio, in the 1870s when he noticed some of his employees were taking the customers’ money and pocketing it, rather than depositing the cash where it should be. On a trip to Europe in 1878, Ritty became intrigued with the idea of a mechanism that counted how many times the ship’s propeller turned around, thinking such a machine could be developed to keep track of how much money came into the bar. To that end, he developed – after much trial and error – the “Ritty Dial,” which had keys to press depending on how much money was taken in. He patented it as “Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier” and began making them for other businesses. Overwhelmed with running the bar and selling cash registers, he decided to sell the cash register business – and the rest is history. (Ka-ching!)

… actor Bela Lugosi was buried in his most famous costume? Lugosi (born Bela Blasko, 1882-1956) was one of the biggest stars in the Golden Era of horror movies, the 1930s. His portrayal of Count Dracula in Dracula is deemed the standard against which other vampire portrayals are compared. When Lugosi died, he was buried in his Dracula costume, complete with cape. It is said that at his viewing, a woman brought her terrified son up to Lugosi’s open casket to prove to the child that “Dracula was dead and was not going to get him.” (I can understand the child’s concern; vampires are undead, of course.)

… a stretch of road plays music? If you are driving along a section of Route 66 in New Mexico at a steady 45 miles per hour, the road’s rumble strips play “America the Beautiful” as you go over them. (How patriotic!)