Did You Know???

[Cali]

I get these in our work newsletters and I'm always finding out new things so I thought I'd start posting them for you all too!  :flower:

Did You Know ...?
A compendium of Daylight Saving Time trivia you couldn't live without.
• Saving daylight was first mentioned in 1784 by Benjamin Franklin as American delegate in Paris in a humorous essay, "An Economical Project," urging Parisians to save money by getting up earlier to use morning sunlight, thereby burning fewer candles in the evening.
Franklin did not mention Daylight Saving Time — he did not propose that clock time be changed. His letter was in the spirit of his earlier proverb "Early to bed and early to rise / Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
• Daylight Saving Time (DST) was first proposed in 1907 by London builder William Willett, but he was unable to get the British government to adopt it, despite considerable lobbying.
• DST was first put into practice by a national government in Germany during World War I, between April 30, 1916 and October 1, 1916. Shortly afterward, the United Kingdom followed suit, first adopting it between May 21 and October 1, 1916.
• On June 17, 1917, Newfoundland became the first North American jurisdiction to adopt DST with the passing of the Daylight Saving Act of 1917.
• Detroit kept local time until 1900, when the City Council decreed that clocks should be put back 28 minutes to Central Standard Time. Half the city obeyed, while half refused. After considerable debate, the decision was rescinded and the city reverted to sun time. A derisive offer to erect a sundial in front of the city hall was referred to the Committee on Sewers. Then, in 1905, Central Standard Time was adopted by city vote.
• On March 19, 1918, the U.S. Congress formally established several time zones, which had been in use by railroads and most cities since 1883; at the same time it established DST from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. The law, however, proved so unpopular, mostly because it obliged people to rise and go to bed earlier than had become
customary since the advent of electricity, that it was repealedafter 1919, when Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson's veto of the repeal.
• During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt instituted year-round Daylight Saving Time, called "War Time," from February 2, 1942 to September 30, 1945.
• A man, born just after 12:00 a.m. DST, circumvented the Vietnam War draft by using a daylight saving time loophole. When drafted, he argued that standard time, not DST, was the official time for recording births in his state of Delaware in the year of his birth. Thus, under official standard time, he was actually born on the previous day—and that day had a much higher draft lottery number, allowing him to avoid the draft.
• To keep to their published timetables, trains cannot leave a station before the scheduled time. So, when the clocks fall back one hour in October, all Amtrak trains in the U.S. that are running on time stop at 2:00 a.m. and wait one hour before resuming. Overnight passengers are often surprised to find their train at a dead stop and their travel time an hour
longer than expected. At the spring Daylight Saving Time change, trains instantaneously become an hour behind schedule at 2:00 a.m., but they just keep going and do their best to make up the time.
• Approximately 70 countries utilize Daylight Saving Time in at least a portion of the country. Japan, India, and China are the only major industrialized countries that do not observe some form of daylight saving.

Did You Know ...?
A compendium of banana trivia you couldn't live without.
• Three medium size bananas weigh approximately 1 pound.
• A cluster of bananas is called a hand and consists of 10 to 20 bananas, which are known as fingers.
• As bananas ripen, the starch in the fruit turns to sugar. Therefore, the riper the banana the sweeter it will taste.
• Banana plants are the largest plants on earth without a woody stem.
They are actually giant herbs of the same family as lilies, orchids and
palms.
• Bananas are a good source of vitamin C, potassium and dietary
fiber.
• Bananas are America's No. 1 fruit. They have no fat, cholesterol,
or sodium.
• Bananas are great for athletic and fitness activity because they
replenish necessary carbohydrates, glycogen and body fluids burned during exercise.
• Bananas are not grown commercially in the continental United States. They are grown in Latin and South America from countries like Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras, Panama and Guatemala.
• Bananas are one of the few fruits that ripen best off the plant. If left on the plant, the fruit splits open and the pulp has a "cottony" texture and flavor. Even in tropical growing areas, bananas for domestic consumption are cut green and stored in moist shady places to ripen slowly.
• Bananas are perennial crops that are grown and harvested year-round. The banana plant does not grow from a seed but rather from a rhizome or bulb. Each fleshy bulb will sprout new shoots year after year.

[Bree]

Well, knowing IS half the battle, and all... but I'm not sure what war they're fighting with daylight savings time and bananas...

:D

[Cali]

lol, :D  It was just two newsletters I saw while clearing out my work inbox.  I'm hoping next weeks is on leprechauns!

[Patrick]

How very interesting.  Thanks Cali!

[Bree]

OoooooOOoooh!

Somehow I feel better knowing that it wasn't one newsletter on time and bananas. :D

[Eimi]

So, when IS daylight savings time?  (Like your travia sheet said, Japan doesn't have it and I have to set the "home" time on my watch...)

[Bree]

We just switched it today! Last night. This morning. SOMETHING.

[Patrick]

It was today Bree even if most of us set it the night before...

[Eimi]

Oh wow!  Good to know!  My other computer used to warn me that it was changing the time.  This one seems to just do it without telling me :(

[Vix]

That certainly sounds better than the newsletter we get tellling us how much money is spent yearly in rolls of paper towels for the bathroom dispensers.

[Eimi]

That certainly sounds better than the newsletter we get tellling us how much money is spent yearly in rolls of paper towels for the bathroom dispensers.

You know, I wouldn't be surprised if I get that too...  Every day I have pieces of paper on my desk full of useless information.  I get charts and graphs and all kinds of stuff.  In fact, I just now pulled a random one from my pile just to see what was on it...

Let's see...  Sexuality.  Its defining all the different classifications of sexuality.  This one is far more interesting than the one about how to clip your nails properly.

[Patrick]

What I want to know is why you get all these things on your desk?  Do your coworkers hand them out?  Or is it like internet spam?  Sign up for one thing get five hundred other things of useless crap for FREE! *Bleh*

[Vix]

In my case, the spam (whether email or paper) comes from every committee and department in the agency for which I work. Each group tries to convince the other of their importance by sending out factoids of what they are doing. It gets pretty boring after a while. On Friday I received a 4.5mb newsletter from the company warehouse. Considering that we each have a 5mb limit, those were deleted pretty quickly.

[Patrick]

I have to say though.  The people in the warehouse must be PRETTY desperate to give out that much information about their dealings.

[Eimi]

I really don't know why I get all this stuff.  Maybe only 5% is actually relevant to me, and its really sad because its not by e-mail, its paper.  How many trees have they wasted just to tell me what books are in the library, or  health tips.  I'm sure some of it is more relevant to the other teachers who have a lot more responsibility over the students than I do.  But STILL.  I wish they would just SAY some of this, or post it on a board somewhere rather than waste the paper.  

That's one thing in this country that makes me sad - the amount of wasted paper and wood, and all the plastic packaging that comes with every little thing you buy.  And very few towns have recycling programs.  We just have burnable and non-burnable.