{"id":19219,"date":"2019-04-01T04:01:56","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T08:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=19219"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:42:51","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:42:51","slug":"things-i-burned-en-croute-to-cooking-up-other-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2019\/04\/things-i-burned-en-croute-to-cooking-up-other-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Things I Burned En Croute to Cooking Up Other Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sydney J. Harris was a mid-20th-century newspaper columnist whose daily syndicated feature “Strictly Personal” sparked my own desire to write.  Harris often devoted his column to the topic “Things I Learned En Route to Looking Up Other Things” and today I will do the same. — Editor <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a1  Charles Dickens (1812-1870) penned a partial draft of a novel titled Tale of Three Cities<\/em>, but he abandoned the effort after facing “the greatest difficulty” trying to incorporate the city of Cleveland, Ohio, into his epic saga about love, sacrifice and the French Revolution.<\/p>\n

\u25a1  A group of bats is called a battalion<\/em>; a group of starfish is called a constellation<\/em>; a group of slugs is called a shellacking<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u25a1  The first and so far only dog that has been canonized as a saint was St. Bernard in 1403.  Its attested miracles included heeling, speaking, and playing dead.<\/p>\n

\u25a1  Before it was mass-produced, toilet paper was harvested from the limbs of shade trees, typically on the morning of November 1.  But storage and handling of the natural product was an issue, and demand always exceeded supply, thus an industry was born.<\/p>\n

\u25a1  \"\"<\/a> The reason former Vice President Al Gore is rarely seen in public these days is not due to ill health, but because Gore is responsible for making 24 billion connections a second on a gigantic internet switchboard installed in the basement of his Tennessee mansion.  “I wish I’d never invented the damn thing,” Gore told Vanity Fair<\/em> in 2018.<\/p>\n

\u25a1  It takes 40 gallons of maple sap to produce one gallon of the maple flavor contained in 132 million bottles of Aunt Jemima pancake syrup.<\/p>\n

\u25a1  According to an obscure verse in Genesis, God created limes to keep lemons company.  But this made yellowberries jealous and they complained loudly to God.  So God punished the yellowberries for their jealousy by turning them blue.  To this day, blueberries are the only blue fruit or vegetable, friendless among the produce and still resentful of God.<\/p>\n

\u25a1  One of the first wooden tools was a six-toothed implement that archaeologists believe was used by early humans as a hair comb or a fork, and often both.<\/p>\n

\u25a1  Worcestershire sauce was created by an English merchant, Darius Butts, who originally named the sauce after himself.  But initial sales were so poor that, on the advice of friends, Butts reluctantly renamed his product.  “Let the ignorant bastards try to pronounce this,”<\/em> Butts bitterly noted in his 1838 ledger.<\/p>\n

\u25a1  After automobiles, the second-leading cause of death among opossums is sleep apnea.<\/p>\n

\u25a1  While watching the Fox News Business Channel, I learned that climate change is a hoax engineered to make us join communes and stop eating meat; that Marriott Corporation is converting over thirty of its properties to Courtyard Communes<\/em>; and that Burger King is introducing a new vegetable burger called The Global Whopper<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u25a1  Several of these items have an element of Truth in them.  Truth (Tr<\/span><\/strong>) is Element 119 and is among the rarest of all substances.  Happy April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sydney J. Harris was a mid-20th-century newspaper columnist whose daily syndicated feature “Strictly Personal” sparked my own desire to write.  Harris often devoted his column to the topic “Things I Learned En Route to Looking Up Other Things” and today … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19219"}],"version-history":[{"count":64,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19281,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19219\/revisions\/19281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}