AWESOME FACTS ABOUT EVERYTHING CXXXVIII

1. In FDR's 1941 speech condemning the bombing of Pearl Harbor, his original draft read,  "a day that will live in world history". He changed it to the now iconic, "a day that will live in infamy."

2. The U.S. Forest Service owns 38% of Idaho's land - the  highest proportion of federally-owned land in any state.

3. The state flag of Hawaii has a Union Jack on it - honoring the historical ties between the Kingdom of Hawaii and the British Royal Navy.

4. The best-selling, most popular Halloween candy is Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

5. The new-car smell we all love came from the early treatments of plastic, leather, and vinyl used in auto manufacturing. With changes in the mechanical processes, the new-car smell is now often piped into the car as a marketing tool.

6. In Italian, "ravioli" means little turnips.

7. "Mark" was a riverboat term meaning fathom - a depth of six feet.  "Mark twain" meant a depth of twelve feet - safe for riverboats of the day.

8. Satori is the term for sudden enlightenment in Zen Buddhism. Our word "sartorial" reflects that spirit - in the  highest standards of elegance and craftsmanship in clothes.

9. Ned Ludd and his eponymous group the Luddites were members of a late 19th-century group of textile workers (weavers) who opposed the use of  automated machinery due to concerns related to worker pay and output quality. They often destroyed the machines in organized raids. Today the term "Luddite" applies to people who resist today's modern "machinery" - chiefly computers and other high-tech innovations.

10. Sir Edmund Hillary of Mt. Everest fame is from New Zealand.

 

11. The character of Superman was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster in 1938 and debuted in the comic book Action Comics #1 published by DC Comics. On April 4, 2024, a 1938 copy of that comic book sold at auction for six million dollars.