AWESOME FACTS ABOUT EVERYTHING CXVI

1. The Lowell Observatory is in Flagstaff, Arizona.

2. Cattle Egrets, much smaller than the Great Egrets, have a symbiotic relationship with cows. The egrets remove flies and ticks from the cattle, and the cattle, as they move, flush out insects from the vegetation - providing food for the egrets.

3. The Peter Paul Candy Company was founded in 1919 by six Armenian immigrants, led by Peter Paul Halajian. With a factory in  Naugatuck, Connecticut, Halajian created and introduced the Mounds Bar in 1921. It became a hit with the U.S. military, which bought 5 million bars a month by 1944 for use in rations. The very popular Dreams Bar had to be suspended during the war due to sugar shortages, but it was reborn in 1948 as Almond Joy.

4. "Kiss Me Kate" won the first Tony Award for best musical in 1949. The show is based on Shakespeare's play, "The Taming of the Shrew".  

5. As the single exception to NFL rules, which require private ownership of teams, The Green Bay Packers are the only professional sports team owned by public shareholders.

6. Residents of the Isle of Man are called Manx.

7. The thistle is the national flower of Scotland.

8. Professional clowns must choose a unique facial makeup design - and they have an unusual way of "protecting" it from copycats. In a kind of informal copyright based on mutual respect, clowns have their distinctive face makeup painted on eggs. Eggs like these are kept in only a handful of locations around the world. One is the Clowns' Gallery, a museum based at Trinity Church in London's East End, that is popularly known as the Clowns' Church. This egg-based system of registering clowns' makeup designs operates outside the courts and is not enforced by lawyers. As such, it is of interest to legal scholars in the area of protecting intellectual property in such areas as tattoo designs, stand-up comedy routines, and graffiti.

9. "Liam" is a diminutive of "William".

10. Elvis Presley's smash 1956 hit, "Hound Dog" was originally recorded by Big Mama Thornton in 1952.