DID YOU KNOW …? Why do we call television “TV”?

Happy few days after Labor Day!

You do realize that you had this past Monday off (most of you, anyway) because of the Labor Day holiday, the last unofficial weekend of summer. Autumn doesn’t officially get here until later in the month, but with Labor Day weekend, summer is officially over.

Back to the grind, boys and girls.

But there’s something right here to help you get through it … trivia.  The minutiae of life, as it were, to give you pause to say, “I didn’t know that!” Until you read it here, and then you know.

Enjoy this week’s lesson!

Did you know …

… only one movie has ever produced four women in the same cast nominated for Best Acting Academy Awards™? The 1950 production All About Eve had its four leading ladies nominated: Anne Baxter (1923-1985) and Bette Davis (1908-1989), each nominated for Lead Actress; and Thelma Ritter (1902-1969) and Celeste Holm (1917-2012), each receiving a nomination for Supporting Actress. While that made a first, none of them won. (That figures.)

… what the oldest professional sports league in the United States is? Major League Baseball, established in 1869, is the oldest league. (Batter up!)

… a city in Switzerland offers a bizarre way to celebrate a child’s birthday? In the city of Lucerne, Switzerland, parents can hire an evil clown to follow their child in the week leading up to his or her birthday. The clown, played by actor Dominic Deville (born 1975), wears orange hair, a demonic-looking face, floppy shoes, and has the goal of making the child terrified up to the last moment – when he smashes a birthday cake into the poor kid’s face. Of course, parents can call Deville off if the child is becoming traumatized, but Deville says the service is “all in fun.” (I think I saw this in a series of movies not long ago.)

… the luckiest man on Earth may well be living in Australia? In 1999, Australian truck driver Bill Morgan (born 1962) was involved in a traffic accident in which he was seriously injured, and while he was recovering he suffered an extreme allergic reaction to medication which stopped his heart. Morgan was clinically dead for 14 minutes until he could be revived. He was in a coma for twelve days but emerged with no brain damage. Not long after recovering, Morgan bought a Lottery ticket which won him a brand new car worth around $24,000. The Melbourne television station did a story on the win, and asked him to recreate scratching off a newly-bought Lottery ticket for the camera. Morgan did … and won $250,000. (There’s lucky, and there’s this guy.)

… why we call television “TV”? You can thank a used car salesman for that. Earl “Mad Man” Muntz (1914-1987) was a businessman and engineer who began as a used car salesman and, during his long and storied career, actually created television sets that people could afford in the early 1950s. Back then, television sets were huge, with a lot of vacuum tubes and other electronics that would be outdated today … and they were very, very expensive. Muntz actually took an expensive television, systematically disconnected tubes and parts, made sure it still worked, and when he had a bare-bones set, began making them under his name. Oh, and the “TV” part? While the term was used among engineers for years, it wasn’t widely used by the public until Muntz came along. Muntz would hire skywriters to put his products into public view. When it came time to sell his sets, his pilots said that by the time they were writing “television” the “buy Muntz” part was dissipating. So Muntz told the pilots to abbreviate it to “TV.” (For a “mad man” he was pretty sharp.)

… a famous scientist invented the pet door? British mathematician and scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) made a hole in one of the doors to his home to allow a cat and her kittens to come and go as they pleased, without disturbing him to open the door. The idea of covering the hole in the door with a flexible flap for the pet to push open – and to keep the elements out of the house – came along many years later. (Fido and Felix say thank you.)

… sharks can respond to music cues? Research published in the Animal Cognition journal in 2018 showed that sharks can recognize the sounds of some kinds of music. Jazz music caused five of the eight sharks tested to swim to a corner of their tank to receive a food reward. If you’re wondering, Great White sharks are most impressed by heavy metal music. (Somehow, I am not surprised.)

… the human body produces electrical energy? People make so much energy, in fact, that it is equivalent to the power used to light at 100-watt light bulb. To that end, a Canadian high school student, Ann Makosinski (born 1993), invented a flashlight that uses body heat to light the LED bulb in 2013. Makosinski came up with the idea after learning that a friend who lived in the Philippines was failing school because her family couldn’t afford electricity, so she was unable to study at night. (See, that is what I call a friend.)

… the Ferris Wheel was not invented until 1893? Now a staple of amusement parks and fairs everywhere, the first one was built for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. It was designed by George W. Ferris (1859-1896) and was made up of 36 passenger cars, each of which could carry 60 people. When the Columbian Exposition closed in 1894, the first Ferris Wheel was dismantled and moved to the Lincoln Park neighborhood. It operated there from 1895 to 1903, then taken to St. Louis to be used at the 1904 Worlds’ Fair. It was finally destroyed in 1906. (A good idea goes a long, long way, you know.)

Now … you know!