Which side did you pick? Let us know your thought in the comment section.

Image via Wikipedia

In the 1400′s a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have ‘the rule of thumb’

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Many years ago in Scotland , a new game was invented. It was ruled ‘Gentlemen Only…Ladies Forbidden’.. ..and thus, the word GOLF entered into the English language.

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The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV was Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

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Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the U.S. Treasury.

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Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.

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Coca-Cola was originally green.

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It is impossible to lick your elbow.

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The State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska.

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The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% (now get this…)

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The percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%

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The cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $ 16,400.

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The average number of people airborne over the U.S. in any given hour: 61,000.

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Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair..

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The first novel ever written on a typewriter, Tom Sawyer.

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The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.

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Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:

Spades – King David

Hearts – Charlemagne

Clubs -Alexander, the Great

Diamonds – Julius Caesar

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111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987, 654,321

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If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died because of wounds received in battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes

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Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn’t added until 5 years later.

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Q. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of what?

A. Their birthplace

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Q. Most boat owners name their boats. What is the most popular boat name requested?

A. Obsession

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Q. If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you would find the letter ‘A’?

A. One thousand

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Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers have in common?

A. All were invented by women.

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Q What is the only food that doesn’t spoil?

A. Honey

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Q. Which day are there more collect calls than any other day of the year?

A. Father’s Day

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In Shakespeare’s  time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes, the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase…’Goodnight , sleep tight’

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It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride’s father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon.

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In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts… So in old England , when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them ‘Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down.’ It’s where we get the phrase ‘mind your P’s and Q’s‘

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Many years ago in England , pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. ‘Wet your whistle’ is the phrase inspired by this practice.

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At least 75% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow!

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Don’t skip this just because it looks weird. Believe it or not, you can read it.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the first and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it wouthit a porbelm. This is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

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YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2011 WHEN…

1. You accidentally enter your PIN on the microwave.

2. You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years..

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don’t have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t even have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12 You’re reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to Tweet this page.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn’t a #9 on this list.

Related articles

• Very Interesting Stuff! compiled by rldubour (ourpoetrycorner.wordpress.com)
• Letters Don’t Matter As Much As You Think (robertlindsay.wordpress.com)
• Beach trivia (beachchairscientist.wordpress.com)
• Trivia Teaser-391 (joetroiano.wordpress.com)
• Useless Trivia (mkronline.wordpress.com)

We are not promoting drinking, but this old image is a classic.

They just don’t make ‘em like they used to.  Advertisements.  Remember them from newspapers and magazines?  Years ago they made us buy; now they just make us laugh.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been adding a few “new” advertisements every week that either made us laugh so hard we couldn’t resist or actually wish we still saw these as we thumbed through our favorite publications.  Let us know what you think.

1.)  Chase & Sanborn coffee.  Hope your wife is “store-testing”.

 

2.)  Van Heusen.  Who doesn’t enjoy wearing a shirt and tie…in bed…for breakfast?

3.) The Chef doesn’t cook.  Great.  Now you have 2 things that don’t.

4.) Camel.  This guy can speed skate after smoking?  I can’t breathe after getting my mail…from my car window…parked in front of my mailbox.

5.) Del Monte.  I claim false advertising.  She STILL needs me to help her.
 

6.)  Iver Johnson Revolvers.  Let your 4-year old daughter sleep with one TONIGHT!

7.) Friedr Bayer & Co.  Heroin.  No medicine cabinet is complete without it.

8.) Thorazine.  As if Grandpa didn’t drool on himself enough already…

9.) Kellogg’s. Your wife not cooking, cleaning and dusting?  You must not be giving her enough vitamins.

10.) Lard.  They’re happy because this photo was taken 3 decades before we figured out that lard leads to heart attacks.

11.) 7UP.  Babies are SUPPOSED to drink from a bottle, right?

12.) Marlboro.  Depending on how bad of a kid you have, I bet you could find a way to become “over-smoked”.

13.) Tape Worms.  Don’t diet…eat a tape worm.  It’s easy and harmless.  (Yeah, ok.)

14.) Blatz beer.  Go ahead, mom.  Have a beer.  We can pay for the kid’s therapy later on.

15.) Golden Peacock Bleach Cream.  Because a lady should never appear muddy.  (?)

16.) Sugar.  Down some today so you can Watsui with Mary.

17.) Chesterfield’s.  Merry Christmas from Ronald Reagan.

]]> http://www.mancertified.com/ads-you-will-never-see-again-part-i/feed/ 0 http://www.mancertified.com/did-you-knowhot-stove-edition/ http://www.mancertified.com/did-you-knowhot-stove-edition/#comments Fri, 12 Nov 2010 16:25:06 +0000 Man-Certified http://www.mancertified.com/?p=1432 …

I know Baseball is over and the San Francisco Giants are the 2010 World Champions, but it amazes me that people throw around sayings and baseball jargon without knowing the meaning or origins of the word their using. Doesn’t matter if it’s my daughters softball team or the guys at the office, they just don’t know. Its time they learn. Most sayings date from the early days of the game and have been around for decades.

 

“While participating in the local Hot Stove League it occurred to me that the Can of Corn I saw on the shelf next to the Good Cheese was only a Tape Measure away from the Meat.

That aside, the topic was the recent addition of the Southpaw to the Show. In his first start he continually backed the batters away with a little Chin Music then would follow with a Spitter, however the third batter he tried this on caught the sweet spot of the bat and hit a Pea to the Hot Corner where it was immediately thrown around the Horn for a 5-4-3 Twin Killing.

 

Next batter fouled one off near the No Pepper sign then promptly hit a Frozen Rope into the right field Alley that looked like an inside the park Four Bagger, but as fate would have it the runner tripped around third, got
into a Pickle, and was thrown out at the Dish.”

 

Hot Stove League- Circa 1910, Gathering of friends, usually at the General or Hardware store around the Pot bellied stove discussing the past and upcoming Major League Baseball season.

Can of Corn- Early Twentieth century, easily catch-able fly ball, compared to a stock boy knocking a can of corn off the top shelf  at a general store and catching the can in his apron.

Good Cheese- Exceptionally good fast ball.

Tape Measure- An exceptionally long home run needing a tape measure to determine its length.

Meat- An easily hittable pitch, looking like a chunk of meat.

Southpaw- A left handed pitcher, so named because fields were laid out facing East to avoid the sun in the batters eyes (Afternoon games) when the pitcher was on the mound his pitching arm was on the South side.

Show- The Major Leagues.

Chin Music- High inside fastball usually in the area of the chin.

Spitter- Pitch doctored with the pitchers saliva to create an unnatural movement of the ball. Made illegal early to mid twentieth century.

Sweet spot- Perfect spot on the bat to get optimum distance.

Pea- A ball hit so hard and fast it looked like a pea in flight.

Hot Corner- Third base, because the balls are hot coming of the batters bat.

Around the Horn- Third to second to first.

Twin Killing- Double Play.

No pepper Sign- A game played among players where one player bats balls to others usually within fifteen feet of each other to improve reflexes and dexterity. Balls would sometimes go into stands and cause injury.

Frozen Rope- A hard line drive with some distance.

Alley- The area between outfielders.

Four Bagger- Home Run.

Pickle- Rundown between bases.

The Dish- Home Plate. 

(Image courtesy of Wikipedia.)

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It’s that time of year again when all things evil are beginning to loom overhead; nah it’s really just close to Halloween so here is a list of “Doomsday Prophecies” that you may not be aware of and since these predictions are open to many different interpretations who knows?

Although pretty good ad stirring up people for a good witch hunt, the Puritan preacher, Cotton Mather, was not very good at predicting when the world was going to come to an end. The first date that he gave his congregation was 1697 and when that year went by he decided the end would be in 1736, but once he realized this might be a little too far into the future to make him look good he decided it should be 1716. Once again when 1716 left without so much as an apocalypse he revised it to 1717, etc. His predictions only ceased when he died in 1728.

Leave it to New York City to come up with this one: in 2004 a group called the “Grandmothers Counsel”  selected thirteen grandmas from around the world, supposed elders that were held in high esteem amongst their communities; claiming that the meeting itself had been prophesied over a hundred years ago. Well, the terrifying message that was a result of this meeting was that “the end is near”, wow.

There was a 10 year old girl from Portugal named Lucia Santos who in 1917 claimed along with two of her cousins that she was being visited by the Virgin Mary and during these visits they were told several secrets. About a decade later Lucia who is now a nun said that one of the secrets had been so bad it had to be kept from the public; well once it came out in 2000 it did seem to be foretelling the end, but it was so very vague it could be interpreted to mean anything from the end of the world to the end of the VCR.

Just in case you were a little worried that no one was predicting 2010 to be “the end” don’t forget about Ronald Weinland (claiming to be made a prophet by God in 1997) who has written a few books and in one of them he scribes a reference to a time in 2010 as the last great day when billions will die. Are you ready?

After World War II ended the Naval Operations Chief, Admiral Chester Nimitz decided that there was a need for a nudge to the public in order to keep them interested in all aspects of Naval aviation so he arranged for a “flight demonstration team”.  Approximately one year later in June 1946, flying the F6F Hellcat the team performed for the first time at NAS (Naval Air Station) Jacksonville, Florida under the leadership of  Lieutenant Commander Roy Voris. Within two months they began flying their renowned diamond formation in the new F8F Bearcat.

Towards the end of the 40′s they began flying their first jets, the Grumman F9-2 Panther and with the advent of the Korean War there was an increased demand within Naval aviation so the team was dispatched to their new home in 1950 which was the USS Princeton aircraft carrier where they were the center of the Satan’s Kitten fighter squadron VF-191.

A year later they began flying the faster and new Panther, the F9F-5 and relocated to the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas. They stayed in Corpus Christi where they became permanent “snow birds” and moved to the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida in 1955 where they soon began flying the Grumman F9-8 Cougar, a swept-wing aircraft. During the next 20 years they transitioned twice more to the F11-1 Tiger in 1957 and the Phantom II, a McDonnell Douglas F-4J aircraft in 1969.

At the end of 1974 the team was reorganized into the Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron which allowed them to establish a commanding officer, where the first of which was Commander Tony Less, a flight leader as well as other support officers. This helped to emphasize its mission as well as having support in their recruiting efforts.

It was in 1986 during their 40th year anniversary celebrations that they presented their current aircraft, the McDonnell Douglas FA-18 Hornet; it is the first fighter/attack aircraft that now serves in our nation’s first line of defense.

The Blue Angels have performed for over 260 million fans and spectators; pretty impressive isn’t it?

(Photo by Jason Hunken, 10/8/05.)

Did you know that Marie Antoinette did not really say “Let them eat cake”? There are two other sources as to where this actually originated: one is from a woman known as Marie-Therese of Spain who is said to have uttered the phrase and the other is from an author in the 18^th century who was writing about a princess that suggested the poor people should eat brioche (similar to a sweet roll) if they did not have bread.

Photo by: Sandra Kühr

Did you know that the Great Wall of China is not the only visible man-made thing that can be seen from space? Although historian Richard Haliburton made the bold statement that it could be seen from the moon this is not true, but the myth that it is the only one that can be seen from close orbiting is still incorrect. Pictures and descriptions from astronauts have indicated that highways and airports can be seen also.

Did you know that Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb? In 1809 Humphry Davy invented an arc lamp and later Warren De la Rue actually invented the first sealed light bulb and later still in 1840 William Grove managed to light a whole room of lamps. It wasn’t until 3 patents and 8 scientists later that Edison expanded on the invention and created a cheaper and longer lasting version.

Did you know that despite popular belief humans do use more than 10% of their brains? It is true that fairly simple tasks do require a small specific amount of brain area but complicated tasks require far more as has been proven by magnetic imaging. One belief as to why this myth continues is that psychics promote the myth in order to make everyone believe that they use more brain power than everyone else.

Did you know that while you can debate whether men are actually more driven sexually than women the thought that men think about sex every 7 seconds is purely a myth? This thought has been attributed to Alfred Kinsey and his famous sex studies but even he wasn’t that specific; he simply stated that during one of his studies he found that about 97% of the men had sexual thoughts anywhere from a few times every day to several times during a month and most of those (about 54%) did fall into the daily category.