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March 22, 2014
Barry Manilow wrote the State Farm advertising Jingle “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There.”
He’s also worked on jingles for Band-Aid, KFC, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and McDonalds.
- A contronym is a word that can be its own opposite, for example, “left” can mean to “depart” and “remain.”
- Cats are the only known animal, including humans, that prefer to be given things freely, rather than needing to do some task to get them. Google “contrafreeloading” for more on this one.
- The largest island on a lake which is itself on an island in a lake is Treasure Island in Lake Mindemoya, which is on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron.
- Oranges are a berry, as are bananas. Strawberries however are not technically berries, they are aggregate fruits.
- How do we know vampires don’t exist? If each vampire ate just 1 meal a day, starting with just 1 vampire and each victim then turning into a vampire, it would take about 1 month for the entire human population to become vampires.
- The world’s best-selling sci-fi novel to date, Dune, was rejected 20 times before being accepted… by a car manual publisher (Chiltons).
- “School” comes from the Ancient Greek “skhole”, which meant “leisure or spare time”.
- Washington D.C. boasts about 277 lawyers for every 10,000 residents. This is nearly 14 times more lawyers per 10,000 than any other state in the United States (New York being the runner up). The lowest lawyer rate per capita is North Dakota with around 4 lawyers per 10,000 people.
- Lyme disease has nothing to do with limes or limestone, but rather is a bacterial infection. It is named after a city, Lyme, Connecticut, where it was first recognized as a distinct medical disease.
- The “Like” button in Facebook originally was going to say “Awesome”, rather than “Like” according to Facebook Engineer Andrew Bosworth. Zuckerberg eventually vetoed the “Awesome” button in favor of the shorter “Like”.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at March 22, 2014 11:29 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
I am probably the only person who thought Dune was a crappy book. Tried reading it several times. Yawn
Still think most of the books notoriety was store bought.
Thought Larry Niven's Ringworld would have made a far better movie
Posted by: Kelvin at March 23, 2014 6:30 AM
That explains why those jingles for KFC, Dr. Pepper and others suck out loud.
Posted by: Vermont Woodchuck at March 23, 2014 8:26 AM