AWESOME FACTS ABOUT EVERYTHING LVII

1. The RMS Carpathia was the passenger steamship that rescued the survivors of the Titanic.

2. Martin Van Buren (1782-1862) was the first U.S. president born in the United States and not a British subject. He was the eighth president, serving from 1837-1841. 

3. The international distress signal for ships, SOS, was not originally devised to mean Save Our Ship. In was used because of the distinct Morse code of the letters S, O, and S (. . . _ _ _ . . .). The original signal for ships that needed assistance was CQD, coined in 1904 by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company. The letters had to do with radio frequencies, but they retroactively became known to mean "Come Quick Danger. 

4. In Al Capp's popular comic strip "Li'l Abner," Abner Yokum managed to evade Daisy Mae Scragg's marital designs for 18 years.When Capp finally gave into reader pressure and allowed the couple to tie the knot in 1952, it was a major media event, even making the cover of Life Magazine.

5. Jake Garn served as senator from Utah from 1974 to 1993. In 1985 he became the first sitting member of Congress to fly into space when he flew aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery as a payload specialist.

6. The Sea of Azov is located off the coasts of Ukraine and Russia. With a maximum depth of only about 46 feet, it is the world's shallowest sea.

7. Nauru is a tiny island country in Micronesia (southwestern Pacific Ocean), northeast of Australia, 25 miles south of the equator. It is one of the smallest countries in the world - 8.2 square miles. Its population in 2021was 13,600 - the least populous country after Vatican City. It is the only country in the world without a capital city. Obesity is a major health issue for the people of Nauru - with the highest rates of obese inhabitants in the world. The World Health Organization estimated that 94.5% of Nauruans were identified as overweight/obese, with an obesity rate of 71.7%. The average weight of Nauruans is 220 pounds. Nauru has the highest rate of adult diabetes in the world. Approximately 90% of the land of Nauru is covered with phosphate deposits, with the majority strip-mined and non-arable. This has led to Naruan reliance on processed food, high in both sugar and fat, imported from large Oceanic countries such as Australia and New Zealand. Also, due to the cultural association of obesity with wealth, many Naruans began to view a sedentary lifestyle as preferable to one of hard work and exercise. 

8. The Apocrypha are 14 books included as an appendix to the Old Testament in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles, but excluded from Jewish and Protestant Bibles.

9. Hattie McDaniel won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Mammy in 1939's Gone With the Wind, making her the first African-American to win an Oscar.

10. Incorporated in 1931, Airstream is the oldest manufacturer of RV's in the United States.