The editor has been on the mainland last week for the wedding of his daughter. In his absence, the following scraps of information were found lying about on his office floor and they have been thrown together here (as is his own practice, we're told) in order to assemble this week's Soundings.
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There is a blue moon in December.
The first of the full moons is on Dec. 2.
The second full moon (the blue one) is on Dec. 31.
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Tomorrow is the 55th anniversary of the first recorded instance of a meteorite hitting a human being.
On Nov. 30, 1954, a meteorite measuring 7 inches across and weighing 9.5 pounds crashed through the roof of a house in Sylacauga, Alabama, bounced off a radio and struck 34-year-old Ann Elizabeth Hodges.
She was asleep at the time and never fully recovered from the incident that put a grapefruit-sized bruise on her left hip and left permanent emotional scars. She died in 1972 of kidney failure at the age of 52.
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The largest oil field in Iraq, named Roumaalia and located in the south of the country, has been purchased by a Chinese company, CNPC, in a consortium with British Petroleum and the Iraqi government.
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China is now second in the world in petroleum consumption after the United States. It imports half its consumption of almost two billion barrels a day.
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Tableseed.com has analyzed nearly 2,000 Associated Press (AP) "strange news" stories released in the past year.
After segmenting all of the news stories by location, the state of Florida is the runaway winner of the Strangest State award. A sampling of the 169 strange stories that came out of Florida this year were:
"Man calls 911 after eatery runs out of lemonade" -- Boynton Beach
"Florida Lotto winner seeks to open a nude dude ranch" -- Brooksville
"Dead shark left in Miami street after failed sale" -- Miami
"Man wearing sleeping bag as cape attempts robbery" -- Gainesville
"Man allegedly flings jellyfish at teens at beach" -- Madeira Beach
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The state of Florida is bigger than England.
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Florida is not the southernmost state in the United States.
Hawaii is further south.
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There are 13,983,816 ways to combine six of those bouncing Florida lottery balls.
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"A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construc-tion" by ChristopherAlexander, Schlomo Angel and others, published by Oxford University Press in 1977, remains the most wondrous architecture book of its time. It recommends that a stairway in the home have a window seat halfway up, for the rest and the view. It also advises publicans to position ladies' and men's toilets on opposite sides of the building so that the paths of the opposite sex are constantly crossing.
The book proposes that those who build and plan must work with and not against the grain of human nature. The ideas flow: "Define all farms as parks, where the public has the right to be; make all regional parks into working farms."
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We have it on good authority that a barnacle has the largest penis of any other creature in the animal kingdom in relation to its size.
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Conspirators are those who breathe (Latin, spirare) their plot together (con).
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Ted Kennedy was the only one of the Kennedy brothers to die of natural causes.
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Lipstick is made out of fish scales. This might be the first factoid in the history of the Internet to have some grounding in reality. Pearl essence is the silvery material found in fish scales and it is used in some lipsticks, nail polishes and even ceramic glazes to make them shimmery.
It is obtained primarily from herring and is one of many byproducts of large-scale commercial fish processing. Kiss me once and kiss me twice and kiss me once again ...
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The word for lighthouse in Spanish and Italian is "faro," in French "phare," derived from the wonder of the world, the Pharos of Alexandria, a 400- to 600-foot-tall lighthouse on Pharos island in the Mediterranean whose fire could be seen for 35 miles.
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Pnigophobia is the fear of choking on fish bones.
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Canadian actor Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while hosting "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."
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On Feb. 15, 1933, President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt was giving an impromptu speech from the back of an open car in the Bayfront Park area of Miami when Giuseppe Zangara, armed with a .32-caliber pistol purchased at a local pawn shop, made an attempt on his life.
However, Giuseppe was only 5 feet tall and had to stand on a folding metal chair to peer over the hat of Lillian Cross, wife of a Miami doctor, to get a clear shot.
After the first shot, he was grabbed by Cross and others but managed to fire off four more shots. He missed the president-elect, but five other people were hit including Chicago mayor Anton Cermak.
On the way to the hospital, Cermak is supposed to have told FDR: "I'm glad it was me and not you, Mr. President." The words are inscribed on a plaque in Bayfront Park.
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A "necropsy" is an autopsy on animals.
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Egyptians of the 10th dynasty believed a cat's eye retained the light of Ra, the Sun god.
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The ancient Chinese used marijuana only as a remedy for dysentery.
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Your statistical chance of being murdered is one in 20,000.
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An apple is more efficient at waking you up in the morning than caffeine.
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In her entire lifetime, Queen Isabella of Spain bathed exactly twice.
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The country with the highest number of family members per household is Iraq, with 7.7.
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Trivia was the Roman goddess of sorcery, hounds and the crossroads.
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Our favorite fact: Aethenoth is the name of Lady Godiva's horse.
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Quote for the Week:
"From time to time, as we all know, a sect appears in our midst announcing that the world will very soon come to an end. Generally, by some slight confusion or miscalculation, it is the sect that comes to an end."
-- G.K. Chesterton
(1874 - 1936)