Cool.
David L.
Ben Franklin: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt, they have more need of masters.”
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Charles
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 6:02 AM
To: 'The Sandbox Discussion List'
Subject: [Sndbox] Interesting TriviaInteresting Trivia
Q. The year was 1827. The place, England. One day, after mixing chemicals in his laboratory, John Walker scraped a mixing stick on a stone floor to clean it. What happened?
A. It burst into flames. Serendipity! Nature gave us fire. John Walker gave us matches.
Q. In 1945, while Percy Spencer was working around a magnetron in Raytheon's laboratories, a chocolate bar melted in his pocket, although he felt no heat. He was puzzled. Are you?
A. Spencer's candy had been zapped by radio waves. In 1947, Raytheon patented its "Radarange," the first microwave.
Q. One day in 1878, during a leisurely lunch, a worker let a batch of liquefied soap spin too long in a mixing vat. He didn't mention it to anyone and hoped no one would notice. Big mistake? No. The customers liked the product better than ever. Why?
A. It floated. The extra mixing filled the soap with more air. Soon, Ivory made a slogan out of the mistake: "So pure it floats." How pure? That's part of the slogan, too: "99.44% pure."
Q. Phoenician sailors were on a beach preparing a fire to cook a meal. They put their pot on lumps of natron (an alkali used for embalming) from their cargo. Their food cooked, and they changed history while it did. How?
A. The sand, heat, and alkali from the natron combined to create a strange hot liquid that flowed from the fire. And that, wrote the Roman historian Pliny the Elder, was the origin of glass.
Q. In 1853, George Crum, a Native American chef in Saratoga Springs, New York, had an unhappy diner. His potatoes were not crisp enough. Crum made them crispier, but the customer still grumbled. Crum grumbled to himself, "I'll make them crisp!" What did he do?
A. He sliced the potatoes paper-thin and cooked them brown in boiling fat. The result: potato chips. Now potato chips are America's most popular snack food. About 10% of all potatoes grown in the United States are used to make them.
Q. While hiking one day in his native Switzerland, engineer and botanist George de Mestral stopped to pull some cockleburs from his socks. He was struck by the tenacity of the burrs. Back in his laboratory, he took a closer look through his microscope to see how the burrs were constructed. What happened?
A. He had a bright idea: Velcro! Mestral patented his famous hook-and-loop fastener in 1955. The word "Velcro" itself comes from the French VELour (velvet) and CROchet (hook).
Q. In 1905, eleven-year-old Frank Epperson left his beverage made of soda powder and water on his back porch overnight. What happened?
A. His drink froze around the stick he had used to stir it. Popsicle! Serendipity! Well, at first he called it an Epsicle.
That's it for this week. If you have any examples of serendipity, please send them on. We'll have another column!Charles Mims
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