GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: DID YOU KNOW …

General knowledge enhancers: Entertainment:

1. The first couple ever to be shown in bed together on
   prime-time television were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
2. Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33 (she would topple over)
3. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
4. In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.
5. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:
   Spades       -    King David
   Clubs          -    Alexander the Great
   Hearts        -    Charlemagne
   Diamonds -    Julius Caesar

General knowledge enhancers: Food & drink:

• Coca-Cola was originally green.
• Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
• Nearly all lipstick contains fish scales. Yeech...
• A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn't give her coffee.
• Bubble gum contains rubber.
• Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.
• Research indicates that mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas.

General knowledge enhancers: Numbers:

1. Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.
2. 111,111,111 x 111,111,111
   = 12,345,678,987,654,321
3. A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
4. All the numbers on a roulette table add up to 666.

General knowledge enhancers: Language:

• The Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
• Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
• First novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.
• "I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
• The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb. (Read about the origins of more English phrases here).

General knowledge enhancers: People:

1. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
2. The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
3. The youngest pope was 11 years old.
4. The most popular first name in the world is Muhammad.

General knowledge enhancers: Famous people:

• Thomas Edison was afraid of the dark.
• Einstein couldn't speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be retarded.
• Every time Beethoven sat down to write music, he poured iced water over his head. And he was rather deaf.
• Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.

General knowledge enhancers: History:

1. 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 as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
2. Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.

General knowledge enhancers: Vehicles:

The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.

The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

City with the most Rolls Royce's per capita: Hong Kong.

In Tokyo, a bicycle is faster than a car for most trips of less than 50 minutes.

Now you know everything :-)

• Want to learn more? Check out my Quite Interesting page. It's 100% free!

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SANTA: The story of St Nic, his red suit, his reindeer and little helpers

SO just who is that fat old jolly guy in the red suit that parades around shopping malls at Christmas time - entertaining kids and scaring adults with his “ho ho hos”? It’s usually someone’s dad – the one (in any community of close friends) with the biggest beer boep.

I caught on early that Santa was my dad and that the whole thing was a scam. The biggest tip-off was the request for brandy or schnapps to left by the tree at night rather than the more traditional milk and cookies. This was suspect, as the order was giving by my mother and my father enjoys his schnapps and brandy and never drinks milk.

Santa Claus: Poetic beginnings

Much of the present form of the Santa story is undoubtedly due to the works of Clement Clark Moore and the cartoons of 19th century American cartoonist Thomas Nast. In 1822, Dr. Moore from New York wrote a Christmas poem titled A visit from St. Nicholas (also know as The Night Before Christmas) to read out to his children on Christmas Eve. Here's a little extract:

Santa enjoying a bit of pipeweed

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, 'ere he drove out of sight,

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"

Santa Claus: The story behind the red and white suit

Images of Santa Claus were further popularised through Haddon Sundblom's depiction of him for The Coca-Cola Company's Christmas advertising in the 1930s. The popularity of the image spawned urban legends that Santa Claus was in fact invented by Coca-Cola; or that Santa wears red and white because they are the Coca-Cola colors.

In reality, Coca-Cola was not the first soft drink company to utilize the modern image of Santa Claus in its advertising. White Rock Beverages used Santa to sell mineral water in 1915, then in advertisements for its ginger ale in 1923.

Furthermore, the massive campaign by Coca-Cola simply popularised the depiction of Santa Claus as wearing red and white. This is in contrast to the variety of colours he wore prior to that campaign (a popular garment being a green cloak). The colours red and white were originally given by Nast.

A brief history of St Nicholas

Father Christmas, who also goes under the alias of St Nicholas and Kris Kringle, has a bit of a sketchy history – predominantly attributed to legend and folklore. There is also a darker historical account that attributes some of the qualities and roles of St Nic to the pagan deities of Artemis and Poseidon.

The most plausible story of Saint Nicholas as an actual human figure dates back to 4th century Myra – a southwest port of modern day Turkey. The legend goes that Nicholas was a bishop that took pity on a poverty-stricken family with three daughters, who faced the threat of being forced into prostitution because they had no wedding dowries.

To save the girls from this fate, St. Nic tosses two bags of gold through an open window of their house at night. He threw a third one down the family’s chimney (which apparently landed in a stocking that had being hung near the fireplace to dry).

This is considered as the basis of the belief of Saint Nicholas as a loving gift-giver. It is believed to be the beginning of the tradition of hanging stocking near the fireplace at Christmas.

Santa’s little helpers

You can imagine the amount of slave-labour required to make millions of toys each year for all the good little boys and girls. Santa traditionally makes efficient use of child-labour in the form of little elves – popularised by fictional texts such as “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien.

However, up until the Second World War, it was believed that Santa Claus was only helped by one servant. One relatively modern story is that Saint Nicholas liberated an Ethiopian slave boy called 'Piter' (from Saint Peter) from a Myra market, who was so gracious he decided to stay with Santa as a helper.

At the end of the war, when the Canadians liberated the Netherlands in 1945, they reinstated the celebrations of Sinterklaas for the children. Unaware of the traditions, the Canadians thought that if one Zwarte Piet was fun, several Zwarte Pieten would be even more fun. Ever since, Santa Claus is helped by a group of Zwarte Pieten (i.e. little black Ethiopian slave boys).

Yet with the influx of immigrants to the Netherlands starting in the late 1950s, this story is felt by some to be racist. Today, Zwarte Piet have become modern servants, who have black faces because they climb through chimneys, causing their skin to become blackened by soot.

Santa’s reindeer

The commonly cited names of Santa’s reindeer are also based on those used in Nast’s 1823 poem. It is arguably the basis of reindeer's popularity as Christmas symbols. However, Santa Claus did have a favourite – his red-nosed ‘draw-horse’ Rudolph – who quickly became popularised by the mass media.

According to legend, Rudolph was the son of Donder and was born with a glowing red nose. This made him a bit of a social outcast among the other reindeer. However, one Christmas Eve it was too foggy for Santa to swing a cat, or to make his flight around the world and deliver presents to the masses.

About to cancel Christmas, Santa Claus suddenly noticed Rudolph's nose and decided it could be used as a makeshift lamp to guide his sleigh. Since then, Rudolph is said to be a permanent member of Santa's staff, who leads them on their journey and gets extra special attention at Christmas!

• For more information on the history and origin and Santa Claus, his reindeer, his helpers, his legend etc., here is a fantastic online resource.

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