Chicago means “land of smelly onions.”
That’s how the native Potawatomi described the swampy area next to Lake Michigan. French explorers picked up the name, and it stuck.
Chicago means “land of smelly onions.”
That’s how the native Potawatomi described the swampy area next to Lake Michigan. French explorers picked up the name, and it stuck.
“I will now give an imitation of three Hawaiians. This is one (whistles), this is another (plays ukulele), and this is the third (marks time with his foot). I could imitate four Hawaiians just as easily, but I will tell you the reason why I don’t do it. You see, I bought a horse for $50, and it turned out to be a running horse. I was offered $15,000 for him, and I took it. I built a house with the $15,000, and when it was finished a neighbor offered me $100,000 for it. He said my house stood right where he wanted to dig a well. So I took the $100,000 to accommodate him. I invested the $100,000 in peanuts, and that year there was a peanut famine, so I sold the peanuts for $350,000. Now, why should a man with $350,000 bother to imitate four Hawaiians?”
— Joe Cook, vaudeville performer
At the time of its construction, the Washington Monument was the tallest building in the world.
How to Cure Cancer. — Boil down the inner bark of red and white oak to the consistency of molasses; apply as a plaster, shifting it once a week; or, burn red-oak bark to ashes; sprinkle it on the sore till it is eaten out; then apply a plaster of tar; or, take garget berries and leaves of stramonium; simmer them together in equal parts of neatsfoot oil and the tops of hemlock; mix well together, and apply it to the parts affected; at the same time make a tea of winter-green (root and branch); put a handful into two quarts of water; add two ounces of sulphur and drink of this tea freely during the day.
— Barkham Burroughs’ Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889
Benjamin Franklin’s “13 virtues,” which he devised for “the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection”:
“It may be well my posterity should be informed that to this little artifice, with the blessing of God, their ancestor ow’d the constant felicity of his life, down to his 79th year, in which this is written.”
“At 4:00 a.m., the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows. A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars, and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief as she came up on the port bow.”
— Prince Albert Victor, duke of Clarence, aboard H.M.S. Inconstant, July 11, 1881.
Thirteen officers and men saw the object, whatever it was, as did the crews of the corvettes Tourmaline and Cleopatra.
Just how much food the brain worker needs is a question which has not yet been decided. In general it appears that a man or a woman whose occupation is what we call sedentary, who is without vigorous exercise and does but little hard muscular work, needs much less than the man at hard manual labor, and that the brain worker needs comparatively little of carbohydrates or fats.
Many physicians, physiologists and students of hygiene have become convinced that well-to-do people, whose work is mental rather than physical, eat too much; that the diet of people of this class as a whole is one-sided as well as excessive, and that the principal evil is the use of too much fat, starch and sugar.
— Public School Domestic Science by Mrs. J. Hoodless, 1898
Mount Rushmore is incomplete. Artist Gutzon Borglum had planned to sculpt the four presidents from head to waist, but he died before he could finish the job.
Mahatma Gandhi’s “seven modern sins”:
Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz served as an infantry squad leader during World War II.
Every year on June 6 he used the comic strip to memorialize his comrades who fell at Normandy.