Southpaws

Famous left-handed people:

  • Alexander the Great
  • Napoleon Bonaparte
  • Julius Caesar
  • Charlemagne
  • Benjamin Franklin
  • Michelangelo
  • Leonardo da Vinci
  • Mark Twain
  • Beethoven
  • Mozart
  • Charlie Chaplin
  • Cary Grant
  • Henry Ford
  • Helen Keller

“Mantle can hit just as good right-handed as he can left-handed,” said Yogi Berra. “He’s just naturally amphibious.”

Asteroids Named After Fictional Characters

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2e/433eros.jpg

Asteroids named after fictional characters:

  • 2309 Mr. Spock
  • 5048 Moriarty
  • 5049 Sherlock
  • 5050 Doctorwatson
  • 6042 Cheshirecat
  • 6735 Madhatter
  • 6736 Marchare
  • 7470 Jabberwock
  • 7980 Bandersnatch
  • 9007 James Bond
  • 18610 Arthurdent

Strangely, 2309 Mr. Spock caused an uproar when the asteroid’s discoverer, James Gibson, revealed that he’d actually named it after his cat (he called the cat Spock because it was “imperturbable, logical, intelligent, and had pointed ears”). The International Astronomical Union officially discouraged any more pet animal names, but people are still fine — asteroids have been named after Carlos Santana, Mister Rogers, all four Beatles and all six members of Monty Python.

Oldest Domains

The 10 oldest currently registered dot-com domains:

  1. symbolics.com (registered 3/15/85)
  2. bbn.com (4/24/85)
  3. think.com (5/24/85)
  4. mcc.com (7/11/85)
  5. dec.com (9/30/85 )
  6. northrop.com (11/7/85)
  7. xerox.com (1/9/86)
  8. sri.com (1/17/86)
  9. hp.com (3/3/86)
  10. bellcore.com (3/5/86)

Famous Teetotalers

Famous teetotalers:

  • John Ashcroft
  • Adolf Hitler
  • Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
  • Penn Jillette
  • Franz Kafka
  • Osama bin Laden
  • David Letterman
  • T.E. Lawrence
  • Bill O’Reilly
  • Vladimir Putin
  • Fred Rogers
  • George Bernard Shaw
  • Henry Thoreau
  • Donald Trump

Robert Benchley wrote, “Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it’s compounding a felony.”

Useful Knots

http://www.mspong.org/cyclopedia/

THE TWENTY MOST USEFUL KNOTS.

  1. Thumb or over-hand knot, tied at the end of a rope to prevent it from opening out, &c.
  2. Right or reef-knot, for securing all lashings where the ends of the rope meet together.
  3. Draw-knot, which offers great facility in undoing.
  4. Running-knot, used to bind or draw anything close.
  5. Sheepshank, serving to shorten a rope without cutting it or unfastening the ends.
  6. Clove-hitch, which binds with excessive force, and by which alone a weight can be hung to a smooth pole.
  7. Timber-hitch, very useful in hauling to move a weight.
  8. Single bowline-knot, difficult to undo, useful to throw over a post &c., to haul on, used for the draw-loop of a slip noose.
  9. Double bowline-knot, for slinging a cask.
  10. Running bowline-knot.
  11. Woolding or packing-stick hitch, used to tighten ropes.
  12. Men’s harness hitch, passing over the shoulder and under the opposite arm of men drawing a carriage, &c.
  13. Stopper hitch, for stoppering the fall of a tackle, &c.
  14. Inside clinch, for fastening a cable to the anchor ring, &c.
  15. Common or sheet bend, a very secure method of joining two ropes, or fastening a rope to a loop.
  16. Hawser bend, for joining two ropes, easily undone.
  17. Cat’s paw, the turn in the bight of a rope, for hooking a tackle to it.
  18. Dragrope or lever-hitch, used for fixing hand-spikes or capstanbars to the ropes attached to heavy carriages, &c., which have to be moved by men.
  19. Half-hitch, cast on the bight of a rope.
  20. Carrick bend. A wall-knot is a knot made at the end of a rope to prevent it from passing through a hole.

The Household Cyclopedia of General Information, 1881

Lifelong Virgins

Lifelong virgins:

  • Hans Christian Andersen, author
  • J.M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan
  • Lewis Carroll, author and logician
  • Emily Dickinson, poet
  • Immanuel Kant
  • Søren Kierkegaard
  • Nikola Tesla, inventor
  • Ed Gein, serial killer

Mark Twain kept his virginity until age 34; Goethe until 39. Voltaire wrote, “It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.”