The United States, Great Britain and Canada each also had their own definition of the inch. It was only in 1958 that the inch was standardized to 25.4 millimetres exactly. A problem still exists for the foot, where the International Foot is based on the 25.4 mm inch, but the Survey Foot – aka the U.S. Survey Foot – is based on the 25.40005 mm inch. One International Foot equals 0.999998 U.S. Survey Feet. Over 100 miles (160 km) they differ by 1.05 ft (32 cm).

In meters, the International Foot is 0.3048 meters and the Survey Foot is 0.30480060960125017024227597156924 meters.

Counting the inches

In Celtic society it was considered a disgrace to allow oneself to become fat. Each Celtic village kept a belt of standard length which, periodically, was tried on by all the men. If the belt didn’t fit, the man was fined. The length of the belt was known as a yard, which derives from the word for a rod or straight branch. By the 12th century there were so many different belt sizes that King Henry I (1069–1135) decided to standardize the yard as the distance from the thumb of his outstretched arm to his nose. Today the International Yard is standard equal to 3 feet (36 inches) or exactly equal to 0.9144 meters.

And in case you’re counting the inches, the average waist size for American men is 39 inches and 37 inches for American women, which is about 4 inches wider than people from most other nations. Compared to average height it is not exactly the perfect Waist-Hip-Ratio. But that was before the recession.

History of length measurements

National Institute of Standards and Technology

International Organization for Standardization

Christians comprise about 70% of the population; 40% of whom are Catholic and 30% Protestant. They attend approximately 2000 churches and 4000 informal places of worship such as community halls and homes, thus a total of some 6000 churches. New York City also boasts the world’s largest cathedral, the Episcopal Church of St John the Divine.

12% of New Yorker claim Jewish decent. There are more Jews in New York City than there are in the Jerusalem city limits. They have more than 1000 synagogues – 70% permanent and 30% temporary places – at their service.

There are almost a million Muslims in New York City. (Some sources claim 1.4 million; the New York City Community Affairs Bureau states the figure as 800 000.) There are more than 100 mosques in the city, plus an unknown number of small mosques that worshipers set up in their apartments or places that are not visible from the street.

Ground Zero mosque:

The area of devastation that the 9/11 terrorist attack left on the World Trade Center is referred to as Ground Zero, a military phrase for a point directly above or below the detonation of a nuclear bomb or, in short, “at the center of calamity.” The phrase does have older roots, though. But the area has a new meaning. It has become sacred ground for American Christians. Therefor, when the chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, proposed the building of a Muslim religious center near Ground Zero it created an outcry. Particularly when President Barack Obama voiced support for the mosque.

Supporters of the proposed center were quick to point out that it would not be built on Ground Zero but two blocks away, at 45-51 Park Place, general known as Park 51. They also point out that there are many Christian churches much closer to Ground Zero (as can be seen on the map), including the closest religious building, the St Paul’s Chapel just across the road.

It has, furthermore, been emphasized that the proposed construction is not a mosque (although it will include one) but a community center. But the wounds left by 9/11 have not healed. Those opposing the center fear that it might be considered a sign of victory for terrorism, a type of international symbol of heroism much like the raising of the flag on Iwa Jima was to the West. Simply too close for comfort, they say, too close to holy ground.

Site of proposed Muslim center marked in red. Note St Paul’s and St Peter’s closer.

Sources: All Churches, The ARDA, Gotham Gazette, InfoPlease, Jewish Virtual Library, NYC Gov, Wikipedia New York City

A kludge (pronounced kloodzh) is an awkward or clumsy (but at least temporarily effective) solution to a programming or hardware design or implementation problem. A Flying Ice Cube is what lives inside computers of scientists trying to simulate molecules. At the office, a Boss Key is the key you hit to quickly hide something when you see your boss or uninvited coworker approaching.

Although two of the most famous names in the computer world – the Internet world, more precisely – are now plainly familiar they did sound funny in their early days. Yahoo once was a word used to express delight [e.g. Yahoo! I've done it!] the dictionary defines yahoo as “not very intelligent or interested in culture,” and “one of a race of brutes resembling men but subject to the Houyhnhnms in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels 1726; rude, unsophisticated, uncouth.” David Filo and Jerry Young apparently liked the definition of a yahoo and, in April 1994, used it to rename the Internet service their founded four months earlier as “David’s and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web.” They added the exclamation mark after the name and explained it’s backronym to be “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”

Sean Anderson, on the other hand, had numbers instead of words in mind when he suggested another name for Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s BackRub search engine (written in 1996 in the java and python computer languages). In 1997, Sean suggested googolplex, after the mathematical unit that refers to extremely large numbers, but Larry decided on the shortened form: googol. According to David Koller of the Stanford University, Sean misspelled the word as “google.” The rest is history of extremely large numbers.

The term googol was first mentioned in 1938 by Edward Kasner and referred to in the book Mathematics and the Imagination that he co-published with James Newman in 1940. Googol was coined by Kasner’s 8-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, as a reply to what name he would give to a really large number. It sounded kinda funny until we started googling ourselves and other things.

Fictional languages:

Many of new computer words were created for or originated in the fictional languages in sci-fi movies and video games, some which sprung complete new languages such as Klingon (Star Trek), D’ni (Myst and Riven) and Simlish (The Sims). Perhaps distant beings will be googling themselves soon too.

More computer funnies:

DEFINITION: Computer – A device designed to speed and automate errors.
All computers wait at the same speed.
Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue.
Press any key to continue or any other key to quit.
Press any key… no, no, no, NOT THAT ONE!
KEYBOARD: An instrument used for entering errors into a system.
HARDWARE: The parts of a computer which can be kicked.
PCMCIA: People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms.
ISDN: It Still Does Nothing.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI!
To err is human; to really mess things up you need a computer.

Apart from just having to look their best all the time, flight attendant serve about a billion meals – 500 million of which are provided by Gate Gourmet and LSG SkyChefs – to the cramped passengers (coach seats are 19 inches wide, about the same as your standard office chair – the seat in a cheap car is 22 inches wide). No need to serve meals on short flights (almost 60% of flights are domestic travel), in case you’ve been wondering about the other billion passengers.

Airline passenger complaints

Airline food is not the No 1 complaint by airline passengers.  Neither is cabin noise, which is lower than normal conversation sound (65dB) and much less than the noise inside a car on a busy street (85dB). No, the main complaint by airline passengers is flight delay. 24% of flights do NOT arrive on time (“a flight is counted as on time if it operated less than 15 minutes later the scheduled time,” according to the Bureau of Transport Statistics). That, obviously, means almost a quarter of all passengers are sitting in their little seats for longer than they anticipated. It is, of course, a bit odd considering that only 8% of flights depart late, only 0.3% of flights are diverted, and only 0.04% of flights are delayed because of security issues. Even so, in general, we passengers are a kindly kind. On average, only 1 in 100 000 passengers complain about, well, anything, and passenger disturbances are few.

Flight attendants – and the Slater effect

But let’s think about the flights attendants. Those pretty girls and handsome lads without whom a flight from New York to Paris would resemble a trip to the Andes on three-wheel cart accompanied by your distant cousin’s hairless dog. Let’s agree, in a minuscule manner it does feel like they are your personal butlers. Perhaps that’s what the world’s first flight attendant in 1912, Heinrich Kubis, felt like. But times have changed. The first priority of a flight attendant – reminder – is not the whim of the passenger. Especially the  unruly passenger.

And that was the case of Steven Slater, flight attendant on a JetBlue flight on August 9, 2010. He chided a passenger for not staying in the seat as the plane taxied. The passenger reportedly reached for luggage, which hit Slater in the face, refused to apologize and cursed at the him. On landing at JFK airport, another passenger took Slater on about luggage, swearing at him. Slater, highly irritated, jumped on the airplane intercom system: “To the motherf*r who just told me to f* off, f* you. I’ve been in this business 20 years. And that’s it, I’m done.” He then grabbed two beers, activated the emergency inflatable slide, slid down the chute, ran to his car parked nearby and drove home. Later he was arrested and bailed. And sparked a media frenzy. The phrase “Take your job and shove it” is now also called the Slater effect, or, you can slater it.

19.5% of new August babies are born in India and 11.6% in China, respectively 6 and 4 times more than in the United States: approximately 2.2 million and 1.3 million vs 0.4 million. Which means two babies are born every second in India and China vs a new baby every 8 seconds in the US. World-wide, 5 beautiful new babies are born every second.

The global fertility rate is 2.61 while the United States has a fertility rate of 2.05 children born per woman. One in every 31 new cuddly earthlings born globally is born in the US, thus 3% of all new births.

Nearly 40% of the American newlings – 2 out of 5 American babies – are born to unwed mothers. One in ten are born to a teenage mother, according to the National Center for Health. The birth rate among US teenagers is twice as high as the average for all developed countries: 42 births per thousand teenage girls (ages 15-19) vs 21 per thousand.

About 51% of all babies born in the US are boys; 49% are girls. Of the estimated 135 million new babies born world wide every year, approximately 70 million are boys and 65 million are girls. Yes, about 5 million more baby boys! (On average, there are some 36 million more boys and girls – of all ages – in the world.) Boys continue to outnumber girls until about age 40, when the number evens out. By age 65, there are only 88 boys for every 100 women. By age 85, women outnumber men almost 2-to-1, proof that boys over 80 are doubly blessed :)

In the US, the average weight of a baby at birth is 7 pounds, 5 ounces. More babies are born on Tuesdays and Wednesdays than any other day, with Sundays delivering the fewest babies. And compared with other months, the stork flies least in February.

Sources:
BabyCenter, CIA World Fact Book, National Center for Health, Population Reference Bureau

Also see: World Population

On average, Lotito ate 2 lb (almost a kg) of glass and metal a day (as seen in the Mr Eat All video). His strange diets certainly was enough to get him into the Guinness Book of Records section of unusual skills. Only bananas and hard-boiled eggs made him feel sick, he said.

Michel’s unique diet included bicycles and an airplane!

Michel died in 2007, age 57, of natural causes.

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The rays that produce mirages are optical phenomenons but are real and can be photographed.

Photo: Mirage of iceberg. See more interesting atmospheric effects.

The word “electric” was first used in 1600 by William Gilbert, a doctor to Queen Elizabeth I. He carried out experiments and discovered that materials such as diamond, glass and wax behaved in a similar way to amber.

Count Alessandro Volta invented the first battery in the 18th century. He called it a “voltaic pile.” It consisted of a pile of zinc and silver or copper discs separated by pads moistened with an acid solution. The unit for measuring a unit of electricity, a volt, is named after Count Volta.

During the 1860s, George Leclanche developed a battery which did not use dangerous acids, known as the dry-cell battery. The batteries we use in flash lights, portable radios, etc. are based on Leclanche’s design.

Every year thousands of people are electrocuted but few die of it directly. Instead, more people die in the almost 10 000 fires that are caused by overloaded receptacles. Don’t overload your plugs and limit the use of extension cords by using them only for temporary operations.

Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French journalist suffering from “locked-in” syndrome, wrote the book “The Driving Bell and the Butterfly” by blinking his left eyelid – the only part of his body that could move.

Animals blink too, of course. Some bird species, usually flightless birds, have only a lower eyelid, whereas pigeons use upper and lower lids to blink. Fish and insects do not have eyelids – their eyes are protected by a hardened lens.

To care for your eyes, eat carrots. They really do make you see better. Vitamin A is known to prevent “night blindness,” and carrots are loaded with Vitamin A. Deficiency of Vitamin A actually is a significant world problem, comparable to that of protein deficiency and second only to caloric deficiency.

Carrots also contain fiber, potassium, vitamin C, and beta-carotene, which may reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. Carrots have zero fat content. One carrot provides more than 200% of recommended daily intake of Vitamin A.

Carrots were first cultivated in 500 BC in the Mediterranean regions. The first carrots were purple, white, and yellow. They were introduced in Europe in the 1600s. Orange carrots – the ones we know today – were first grown in Japan in the 17th century, and later made popular by the Dutch.

Mel Blanc, who played the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.