Orts: The People Puzzler

5/5/17

The People Puzzler

An article on PEOPLE's website about the crosswords I write for the magazine (in a rotation with two other constructors) can be found here: CLICK

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Orts Shorts: RERUNS

Robert Pattinson:

"There is a channel called TruTV, which is just reruns of Cops and World's Dumbest Criminals. I could watch that the entire day."

Audrey Meadows

... was the only member of The Honeymooners cast to get residuals when episodes were rerun.

Bud Abbott:

"It gets so boring at home. After all, how many reruns of Abbott and Costello movies can a guy watch on television?"

Mindy Cohn

... was offered the role of Natalie on The Facts of Life after Charlotte Rae and the show's producers met her while visiting her school for research.

Ross Mathews:

"My guilty pleasure is elastic-waisted pants. And reruns of shows I've already seen 400 times on TV."

Orts Shorts: SHOES

Bart Simpson's Believe It or Knot! Fun Shoe Facts:

1. Goulash is actually made from old galoshes! 2. Slapping a bear with a pair of flip-flops is rarely dangerous!

Meg Myers:

"I'd rather be in my house crying than be sitting with someone talking about shoes, y'know?"

Converse

... started out as a galoshes company in 1908. Nine years later, they introduced the Chuck Taylor All-Star sneaker, which went on to become the best-selling basketball shoe of all time.

Mindy Kaling:

“I really think guys only need two pairs of shoes. A nice pair of black shoes and a pair of Chuck Taylors.”

Marilyn Monroe:

"Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world."

Orts Shorts: CATS

Lillian Jackson Braun:

"Dogs have their day but cats have 365."

A group of cats

... is called a clowder, and a female cat is a queen or molly.

Dick Van Patten:

"I love cats."

The most popular pet in the U.S.?

Cats ... maybe. The ASPCA estimates that Americans own 74-96 million cats and 70-80 million dogs.

Albert Schweitzer

“There are two means of refuge from the misery of life — music and cats.”

Orts Shorts: FOOLS

In France

... April Fools' Day is called April Fish Day. A common schoolyard prank is to tape a picture of a fish on another student's back.

Arthur Schopenhauer:

"The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.”

Fools

... was a comic fable written by Neil Simon. The play was allegedly written to be a bomb, since his divorce settlement stipulated that his wife would receive the profits from it. Opening in 1981, it lasted 40 performances.

Ernest Hemingway:

"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools."

Iron pyrite

... doesn't have much practical use, aside from fooling people into thinking it's gold.

Orts Shorts: WORDS

Forty

... is the only number whose letters are in alphabetical order.

Ray Stevens:

"The human brain is a funny thing: it's very susceptible to tempo and melody. You put the right words to it, and it becomes very influential."

Two English words

... begin and end with "und": underfund and underground.

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"I am"

... is the shortest complete sentence in the English language. Shorter pro-sentences exist, such as "No," "Yes," or "Go."

Orts Shorts: DOCTORS

J.K. Rowling:

“Doctors?" said Ron, looking startled. "Those Muggle nutters that cut people up?”

National Doctors Day,

... on March 30, marks the anniversary of the first use of general anesthesia in 1842. On that day, Crawford Long used sulfuric ether to remove a tumor from a young man's neck.

Henny Youngman:

"I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places."

Since 2005

... 800 people have had surgical items left in them during an operation. Among the items are sponges, towels, needles and retractors, according to The Joint Commission, a healthcare safety watchdog.

Deborah Martin:

"Doctors and nurses are people who give you medicine until you die."

Orts Shorts: PENNIES

Harper Lee:

"Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives."

The modern-day U.S. penny

... is about three-quarters of the diameter of the first U.S. penny, minted in 1793 (.75 inch vs. 1.0625 inch).

Andy Samberg:

"If had a penny for every strange look I've gotten from strangers on the street, I'd have about 10 to 15 dollars, which is a lot when you're dealing with pennies."

The U.S. Mint

... produced more than 9 million pennies in 2016, three times as many as the second place finisher, the dime.

Stephen Wright:

"If it's a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny."

Orts Shorts: CALENDARS

Oscar Wilde:

"Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event."

Friday, January 6, 2017

... is Shortbread Day, followed by Tempura Day on Saturday.

Rodney Dangerfield:

"My wife's jealousy is getting ridiculous. The other day she looked at my calendar and wanted to know who May was."

In Britain

… Wednesday, September 2, 1752, was followed by Thursday, September 14, 1752. That’s the day they switched to the Gregorian calendar.

Marilyn Monroe:

"I've been on a calendar, but I've never been on time."

Orts Shorts: BOXING

Matthew D. Heines:

"Boxing Day ... is named after the first activity that takes place between husband and wife after the Christmas receipts are added up.”

There's no consensus

... on how the boxer dog breed got its name. One theory suggests it's the way they use their paws, another that the breed's head resembles a boxing glove.

Joyce Carol Oates:

"Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost."

A wall painting

... on the Greek isle of Akrotiri (circa 1650 B.C.) depicts two boxers using glove-like wrappings.

Mike Tyson:

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face."

Orts Shorts: DICE

Stephen Hawking:

"Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen."

Dice

... have been used for at least 5,000 years. A set of 49 game pieces, as well as dice, were found in an ancient Turkish burial mound near Siirt, dating to 3,000 B.C. The pieces were painted in various colors and shaped to resemble pigs, dogs, and pyramids.

Samuel Foote:

"Death and the dice level all distinctions."

Astragalomancy

... is the art of foretelling the future by using dice.

Proverb:

"The best throw of the dice is to throw them away."

Orts Shorts: PARADES

Eleanor Roosevelt:

"Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president."

Marchers

... in Pasadena's Rose Parade get a pretty good workout. The route is five and a half miles long.

Dr. Cuthbert Soup:

“[The main road was] now teeming with people carrying torches, pitchforks, and rakes, and one very confused man who apparently had mistaken the mob for a parade and was marching around with a Swedish flag.”

The first

... Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, in 1924, included live tigers and elephants from the Central Park Zoo.

John Naisbitt:

"Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it."

Orts Shorts: BIKES

No cyclist, ever:

"I have too many bikes."

During World War I

... many of the United Kingdom's mounted troops turned in their horses for bicycles, becoming part of the Army Cyclist Corps.

George W. Bush:

“When you ride hard on a mountain bike, sometimes you fall, otherwise you’re not riding hard.”

The Wright Brothers

... funded their airplane projects with money made from selling and repairing bicycles at their shop in Dayton, Ohio.

Susan B. Anthony:

"She who succeeds in gaining the mastery of the bicycle will gain the mastery of life."

Orts Shorts: THANKSGIVING

Wild turkeys

... can run 20 mph.

Big Bird's

... suit is made using dyed feathers from the rear end of a turkey.

Kevin James:

"Thanksgiving, man. Not a good day to be my pants."

The menu

... for the first Thanksgiving was venison, duck, geese, oysters, lobster, eel, fish, and probably pumpkin and cranberries.

Jim Davis:

"Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie."

Orts Shorts: PORCUPINES

Hamlet's ghost

... uses the word "porpentine" to mean a porcupine in Hamlet: "like quills upon the fretful porpentine." In 1960, P.G. Wodehouse brought it up in Jeeves in the Offing: "Odd that he should have said porpentine when he meant porcupine. Slip of the tongue, no doubt, as so often happens with ghosts."

Gail Carriger:

“If you don’t mind my asking, what on earth are you doing strolling the streets of London with a zombie porcupine?” [from Heartless, a steampunk paranormal romance novel]

Josh Billings:

"A witty writer is like a porcupine; his quill makes no distinction between friend and foe."

Porcupines

... are the third largest rodents in the world, behind capybaras (the champs) and beavers.

Nikita Khrushchev:

"If you start throwing hedgehogs under me, I shall throw a couple of porcupines under you."

Orts Shorts: GOLF

Vice President Dan Quayle:

"In golf, you keep your head down and follow through. In the vice presidency, you keep your head up and follow through. It's a big difference."

Golf

.. is the only sport to be played on a celestial body other than Earth. On February 6, 1971, Alan Shepard hit two golf balls on the surface of the Moon.

Woodrow Wilson:

"Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill-adapted for the purpose."

The world's first ever

... golf tournament for women took place in 1811 at Scotland's Musselburgh Golf Club. The winner was awarded a fishing basket.

Gerald Ford:

“I know I am getting better at golf because I am hitting fewer spectators.”

Orts Shorts: Turtles

Ninja Turtle Michelangelo:

[watching a "Tortoise and the Hare" cartoon] “You’re letting him blow right by ya! … Ninja-kick the damn rabbit! Do something!”

The main difference

... between tortoises and turtles is that tortoises live on land while turtles live mostly in the water.

Doris Lilly:

"Men who wear turtlenecks look like turtles."

Turtles

... have existed for more than 200 million years.

Pistachio Disguisey:

"Am I not turtley enough for the turtle club? Turtle, turtle, turtle." [Master of Disguise]

Orts Shorts: CROSSWORDS

Amber Heard:

"My favorite thing is to do crossword puzzles. I do the New York Times one every morning. Then I go to the barn to see my horse."

The very first crossword

... was in the shape of a diamond. It was created by Arthur Wynne and appeared in the New York World in 1913.

The New York Times:

“The craze over crossword puzzles” is a “sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words.” [editorial page, Nov. 17, 1924]

A cryptic crossword

... in the last edition of England's News of the World included hidden digs at the newspaper's editor, Rebekah Brooks. Among the clues were "criminal enterprise" and "woman stares wildly at calamity" and answers such as "disaster" and "stench."

Stephen Sondheim:

"The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution."

Orts Shorts: BLACK

Wednesday Addams:

"I'll stop wearing black when they make a darker color."

In the past 10 years

… Black Friday shopping is responsible for more deaths in the U.S. (7) than sharks are (5).

Anne Morrow Lindbergh:

"Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after."

Not everything

... gets sucked into a black hole. Radiation can escape, sometimes leading to the black hole's demise.

Maureen O'Hara:

"In the beginning it was all black and white."

Orts Shorts: LIZARDS

Douglas Adams:

"Democracy is all about not electing the wrong man-eating lizard."

There are

... approximately 160 species of chameleons worldwide, but 59 of those exist only on the island of Madagascar.

Shakespeare:

"Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting / Lizard's leg and owlet's wing / For a charm of powerful trouble / Like a hell-broth boil and bubble." [Macbeth]

In 1990

... the Indonesian government gave President George H.W. Bush a 9-foot-long, 250-pound Komodo dragon. He regifted it to the Cincinnati Zoo.

William Shatner:

"The lizard sticks its tongue out because that's the way it's listening and looking and tasting its environment. It's its means of appreciating what's in front of it." [Is this about lizards or on how to use "its/it's" in a sentence?]

Orts Shorts: ARROWS

Since 1972

... South Korea leads all other nations in taking home gold medals in Olympic archery. They've won 22 golds in both the individual and team events, 15 for the women and seven for the men.

Archery

... is the national sport of Bhutan.

Milan Elliott:

"Archery does not get difficult or hard to understand until the arrow misses."

toxophilite:

(n.) An archer; one devoted to archery (from Greek toxon bow + philos loving)

Curly Howard:

"I shoot an arrow into the air, where it lands I do not care: I get my arrows wholesale!"

Orts Shorts: SHOES

Victor Hugo:

"I encountered in the street, a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was worn, his elbows were in holes; water trickled through his shoes, and the stars through his soul."

Shoes

... cover up one of the densest collections of nerve endings and sweat glands in the human body. Each foot contains about 100,000 nerve endings and 125,000 sweat glands.

Flavor Flav:

"I'll tell you one thing you can't do: you can't put your shoes on, then your socks on."

The average woman

... in the U.S. owns 19 pairs of shoes.

Patti LaBelle:

[on her 60th birthday] "I don't want no diamonds, I don't want no shoes, I don't want no party. I want some crabs."

Orts Shorts: HORSES

Big Bill Broonzy:

"I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing 'em."

The Experiment

... was the name of a 19th-century wooden ship powered in an unusual way. Eight horses walked on an onboard treadmill, turning a giant water screw that propelled the vessel forward. It had one unsuccessful voyage.

Stan Laurel:

"You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be led."

Chariot racing

... was the most prestigious event in the ancient Olympics. Although only men could drive the chariots, the chariot team owners were declared the victors, allowing the Greek princess Cynisca to win in 396 and 392 BC.

Rita Mae Brown:

"If the world was truly a rational place, men would ride sidesaddle."

Orts Shorts: WIND

Spiders

... can travel hundreds of miles in the air by casting out a strand of silk that captures the wind.

Winston Churchill:

"Kites rise highest against the wind — not with it."

In 2015

... Iowa generated more than 30% of its electricity from wind energy.

Shakespeare:

"They are as gentle as zephyrs blowing below the violet, not wagging his sweet head." — Cymbeline

Sea breezes

… occur because the water takes longer to warm than the land, creating a difference in air pressure.

Orts Shorts: DUCKS

Richard Wiseman:

"If you're going to tell a joke involving an animal, make it a duck." [based on a year-long experiment in 2002 to determine the world's funniest joke]

Ducks

… have no nerves or blood vessels in their feet, but they do in their beaks.

Douglas Coupland:

"When Donald Duck traded his wings for arms, was he trading up or trading down?"

Thanks to

... an intricate feather structure and a waxy coating on the individual feathers, a duck's downy underlayer will remain completely dry when the bird dives underwater.

Manoj Arora:

“Be like a duck, paddling and working very hard inside the water, but what everyone sees is a smiling and calm face.”

Orts Shorts: POLITICS

Grover Cleveland

… made Labor Day an official federal holiday in 1894, six days after the end of the deadly Pullman Strike.

Winston Churchill:

"A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen."

Politics

(n.) poly "many" + tics "uncontrolled jerks"

Iceland

... might be the world's oldest democracy. Its parliament, the Althingi, was established in the year 930.

Groucho Marx:

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies."

Orts Shorts: OLYMPICS

Usain Bolt:

"If you're the Olympic champion then they have to wait four more years to get you again."

The Five Olympic Rings

... signify the continents Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania, although no specific color represents a specific continent.

Richard Nixon:

"Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion."

Oscar Swahn

... of Sweden won a silver medal in the double-shot running deer team event at the 1920 Antwerp Games (two shots each round at a deer-shaped target). He was 72 3/4 years old, making him the oldest-ever Olympic competitor.

Daniel Esposito:

[coach and father of 2016 Olympic pentathlon gold medalist Chloe Esposito] "You have five events — horses, guns, swords — what more could a kid want?"

Orts Shorts: DOGS

A Dog's

... sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times better than a human's. But you have better eyesight.

Golda Meir:

"The dog that trots about finds a bone."

George Washington

... had around 50 dogs over his lifetime, most of them foxhounds but also spaniels, terriers, Dalmatians, a Newfoundland, and others. Some of their names: Madame Moose, Drunkard, Taster, Tipsy, Tipler, Vulcan, Truelove, and Sweet Lips.

Charles M. Schulz:

"Happiness is a warm puppy."

Balto

... the sled dog famed for delivering diphtheria serum to Nome in the winter of 1925, lived out his final years in a Cleveland zoo.

Orts Shorts: VIDEO GAMES

Donkey Kong's

... movements were inspired by a trip to the zoo. But it was a horse, not a gorilla, that the game's developers felt had the right pace.

Duke Nukem:

"It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum ... and I'm all out of gum."

58%

... of Americans play video games, 55% of which are male and 45% female.

Pac-Man:

"Waka waka waka waka waka waka ..."

Mario

... the Italian plumber of video game fame, was named after the landlord of Nintendo's first warehouse, Mario Segale.

It'll Be Back

Orts Shorts is taking July off and will return on August 1.

Orts Shorts: FROGS

Panamanian golden frogs

... are an important cultural symbol in Panama. They appear on traditional cloth "molas," in the form of figurines for tourists, and even on lottery tickets.

Kermit the Frog

"Always be yourself. Never take yourself too seriously. And beware of advice from experts, pigs and members of Parliament."

The bodies

... of some frogs will partially freeze while in hibernation (high levels of glucose protect the vital organs). Their hearts and breathing will stop until warmer weather thaws them out.

Mark Twain

"If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first."

Frogs

... don't drink water through their mouths; they absorb it directly through their skin.

Orts Shorts: RUBBER

The word "rubber"

... comes from the substance's use in cleaning or rubbing off, such as pencil marks.

Douglas Adams

“One is never alone with a rubber duck.”

About two thirds

… of rubber products are synthetic. However, most rubber bands are made of natural rubber because of its superior elasticity.

More than

... 250 million rubber tires are discarded every year.

Until 1876

... the Amazon rain forest in Brazil was the only place where rubber trees grew. That year, an Englishman named Henry Wickham shipped 70,000 seeds back to England.

Orts Shorts: VOLCANOS

The explosions

... from Krakatau's 1883 eruption could be heard 3,000 miles away. The fine dust that was spewed out blocked enough sunlight to lower worldwide temperatures by several degrees.

Eighty percent

... of volcanoes take place underwater.

Sylvia Warner

"I see the mind of a five year old as a volcano with two vents : destructiveness and creativeness."

Wired magazine's

... volcano blogger, Erik Klemetti, once ranked some of Hollywood's volcano-themed movies, and 1977's Volcano ended up atop the smoldering heap.

Jupiter's moon

... Io is home to hundreds of volcanos, making it the most volcanically active body in the Solar System.

Orts Shorts: SALT

In ancient Rome

... salt was so valuable that soldiers would sometimes be paid with it. That's where the word salary comes from.

Dutch proverb

“A kiss without a beard is like an egg without salt."

A coffee mug

... can be filled with the amount of salt in the average human body.

In 1156

... Henry the Lion built a bridge across the Isar River in northern Germany and charged salt traders a toll to cross it. The proceeds helped build his new city, Munich.

Isak Dinesen

"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea."

Orts Shorts: SLEEP

Mindy Kaling

"There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.”

A giraffe

... in the wild will sleep deeply for only about 30 minutes a night. The balance of its rest comes throughout the day in five-minute naps.

Fran Lebowitz

"Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep."

In the 17th century

... it was common practice for people to sleep in two segments, which was separated by an hour or two to read, pray or interact with others.

According to

... an ancient Egyptian scroll known as the Ramesside Dream Book, seeing yourself writing on paper was a bad sign, while having dirt in your mouth was a good sign.

Orts Shorts: GOLD

Up through 1912

... Olympic gold medals were solid gold. Today they must contain 92.5% silver (same as a silver medal) with at least six grams of gold plating.

Gold bars

... are never 100% pure; they would be too malleable to keep their shape. A bit of copper, silver, or platinum is added to offset that.

The Aztec word

… for gold is teocuitlatl, which translates to "excrement of the gods."

The total amount

... of gold ever mined could fit inside 60 tractor trailers.

Fort Knox

... was completed in 1936. How'd they get the gold bars there? The U.S. Postal Service delivered them by train from the Philadelphia Mint and New York Assay Office.

Orts Shorts: ISLANDS

The Bronx

... is the only part of New York City that isn't an island or part of an island. All told, the city consists of between 36 and 42 islands, depending on the tide.

Lake Titicaca

... is home to man-made islands of floating reeds. Homes, fields, and even a school rest on the large reed "mats," which are about 12 feet thick.

Hart Island

... which is part of the Bronx, NY, has been home to a Civil War prison camp, an isolation ward for yellow fever victims, a missile base, a hospital for insane women, and a workhouse for "vicious boys." It also houses the largest government-owned cemetery in the world, with 850,000 poor and unidentified people buried in it.

Nan Madol

... is a cluster of 90 or so man-made islets just off the coast of the Pacific island Pohnpei. Ancient buildings sit on some of the islets, made of basalt logs and boulders that weigh up to 50 tons each.

Greenland

Although Greenland is the world's largest island, its population is less than 60,000 people.

Orts Shorts: SOUTH POLE

The land

... at the South Pole is about 100 meters above sea level, but the ice atop it adds another 1.67 miles of elevation.

Seven nations

… claim territory in Antarctica: Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom. Although having by far the most researchers on the continent, the U.S. has made no claims.

The highest temperature

... ever recorded at the South Pole was 9.9 degrees Fahrenheit on December 25, 2011.

A volleyball net

... has been set up not far from the geographic South Pole. A Christmas tree and barber pole are nearby. [photo: Doug Cowen]

Some of the ice

... at the South Pole has been there for eight million years.

Orts Shorts: THOMAS NAST

Boss Tweed

Responding to Nast's scathing cartoons of him: "Stop them damned pictures. I don't care so much what the papers say about me. My constituents don't know how to read, but they can't help seeing them damned pictures!"

Nast's Santa

You can't spell Santa without Nast.

Nast's donkey

Nast's elephant

The cartoonist

... Thomas Nast created the Republican elephant, the Democrat donkey, and the version of Santa Claus that we know today.

Orts Shorts: WALRUS

Walrus whiskers

... are attached to muscles and are supplied with blood and nerves, making them sensitive enough to be able to identify favorite foods in the dark depths of the ocean.

Odobenus rosmarus

... is the scientific name for a walrus, which is Latin for "tooth-walking sea horse."

If

... Walmart and Toys "R" Us merged, they'd be Walrus.

Walruses

... can stay awake for up to three and a half days at sea and sleep on land for 19 hours straight.

Lewis Carroll

“o Oysters, come and walk with us!” The Walrus did beseech. “A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, along the briny beach." —The Walrus and the Carpenter

Orts Shorts: ALASKA

Of Alaska's

… 365 million acres of land, only about 160,000 have been affected by human development.

Inuit saying

"Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right."

In 1799

… Tsar Paul I created the Russian-American Company, which operated out of Alaska. It expanded southward with settlements along the Canadian coast and further down to a colony just north of San Francisco. Never able to turn a profit, the Russians pulled out of North America in 1867.

Sam Abell

"For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia."

Alaska

… is home to both the northernmost and westernmost points in the United States. But since part of the Aleutian Islands cross over the 180th parallel, Alaska is also home to the U.S.'s easternmost point.

Orts Shorts: COMPUTERS

In 1986

… Apple launched a line of shirts and sweatshirts, as well as belts, vests, shorts, caps, an Apple sailboard, and even a toy truck for the kids.

Lisa Porter

"My computer could be more encouraging. You know, instead of 'invalid password,' why not something like, 'Ooooh, you're so close!'?"

BackRub

... was Google's original name, a reference to its search for backlink data.

Milton Glaser

"Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking."

"Unfriend"

... existed as a word long before Facebook. A Church of England clergyman, Thomas Fuller, used it in 1659: "I Hope, Sir, that we are not mutually Un-friended by this Difference which hath happened betwixt us."

Orts Shorts: PRESIDENTS

Jimmy Carter

''My esteem in this country has gone up substantially. It is very nice now when people wave at me, they use all their fingers.''

Lincoln Logs

... named after Abe Lincoln and his childhood log cabin home, were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son, John.

Andrew Jackson

"Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in."

John Tyler

... who was born 226 years ago, still has two living grandsons. He had a son at age 63 (in 1853), who in turn had sons at age 71 and 75 (1924 and 1928).

Richard Nixon

... giving advice to a political associate: "You don't know how to lie. If you can't lie, you'll never go anywhere."

Orts Shorts: SUPERHEROES

Magneto

"There are no heroes or villains. There's just what I want, and how I'll get it."

Plastic Man

In Batman: The Brave and the Bold TV series: "Are you seeing what I am seeing? Because I see gorillas riding pterodactyls with harpoon guns stealing a boat."

Comet the Super-Horse

… appeared in Superboy and Supergirl comics in the '60s. In human form, going by the name Bill Starr, he briefly dated Supergirl and Lois Lane.

The Library of Congress

… owns the largest publicly available collection of comic books in the U.S., more than 120,000 individual issues. The largest private collection, according to Guinness World Records, is a horde of 95,000 comics that has overtaken Bob Bretall's house in Mission Viejo, California.

Stephen Hawking

"If I had to choose a superhero to be, I would pick Superman. He's everything that I'm not."

Orts Shorts: FLORIDA

Blaize Clement

“August in Florida is God's way of reminding us who's in charge.”

The Florida State Beekeepers Association

… named Peter Fonda beekeeper of the year in 1996 in honor of his role in the film Ulee's Gold.

Florida

… is the only U.S. state with a Washington, D.C. embassy. Called Florida House, it's located one block from the Capitol.

Carl Hiaasen

"The Florida in my novels is not as seedy as the real Florida. It's hard to stay ahead of the curve. Every time I write a scene that I think is the sickest thing I have ever dreamed up, it is surpassed by something that happens in real life."

If you stood a football field

... upright on a Florida beach (including both end zones), it would stand 15 feet taller than the state's highest point, Britton Hill.

Orts Shorts: SPACE

Unable to buy life insurance

… the Apollo 11 astronauts autographed hundreds of envelopes, which their families could sell if they didn't make it back.

Ellen DeGeneres

"The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren't any space aliens. We can't be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we're not all there is. If so, we're in big trouble."

Six of the Mercury astronauts

... drove Corvettes, thanks to the nearly free lease terms a local dealer arranged with Chevrolet. John Glenn, who had a family, opted for a Chevy station wagon instead.

Commander Bill McArthur

Returning from the International Space Station in 2006, the first thing he wanted was to see his family. The second? "The very next thing I'd like to do is smell a cup of coffee."

By 2010

... more than 500 people had gone into space.

Orts Shorts: BIRDS

Three early attempts

... for designing the Great Seal of the U.S. featured a rooster, a dove, and a flaming phoenix. Congress approved the final design, an eagle holding an olive branch and 13 arrows, in 1782.

David Letterman

"Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees."

The kookaburra

... is found only in Australia, and yet its distinctive call was an integral part of the African jungle noises heard in old Tarzan movies.

J. M. Barrie

From Peter Pan: "Do you know," Peter asked, "why swallows build in the eaves of the houses? It is to listen to the stories."

Cassowaries

... are considered by zookeepers to be among the most dangerous animals to handle. When the five-foot-tall Aussie birds feel threatened, they will aggressively lash out with their long daggerlike claws.

Orts Shorts: SCIENCE

Alfred North Whitehead

"The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts."

Thomas Henry Huxley

"The great tragedy of science: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."

Scientist

… was a word coined by William Whewell in 1834, gradually replacing the term natural philosopher.

Two tortoises

… were among the passengers aboard the Soviet Union's Zond 5 in 1968, the first spacecraft to circle the moon.

Niels Bohr

"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real."

Orts Shorts: FOOTBALL

From 1961 to 1971

… the Dallas Cowboys cheerleading squad was a mix of men and women known as the CowBelles & Beaux.

Joe Theismann

“Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”

Larry Foote

… commenting on Shannon Eastin, the NFL's first female referee: "Women are more honest and fair than men, and they know how to catch a man cheating."

The Wall Street Journal

… conducted a study of NFL games in 2010 and determined that the actual amount of time the ball is in play is about 11 minutes per game.

Ben Bass

"Football coach Les Miles should be named Fewer Miles."

Orts Shorts: CHICKENS

In 1902

… miners in eastern Alaska wanted to name their small town Ptarmigan, for the birds in the area. But they couldn't agree on the spelling, so they named it Chicken, Alaska, instead.

Grandma Moses

"If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens."

In Ancient Rome

… chickens were symbols of courage.

Worldwide

... there are about three times as many chickens as there are humans (20 billion vs. 7 billion). And they produce about 1 trillion eggs a year.

Japanese proverb

"It is better to be the head of a chicken than the rear end of an ox."

Orts Shorts: COFFEE

Abe Lincoln

"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee."

Agatha Christie's

... first playscript, in 1930, was titled Black Coffee. Global disaster looms as Hercule Poirot must discover who stole an atom bomb formula and poisoned the physicist who created it.

Alfred E. Neuman

"A supermarket is where you spend half an hour looking for instant coffee."

Virginia Christine

... who played Mrs. Olson in Folgers Coffee ads, was honored in 1971 when her hometown of Stanton, Ohio, converted its water tower into a giant coffeepot.

Paul Erdös

"A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."

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