What about the first roller coaster?

What was the name of the first roller coaster and who built it?

According to the fantastically informative history section of UltimateRollercoaster.com, today’s roller coaster has its roots in the Russian Ice Slides of the mid-1600s. Popular mostly around St. Petersburg, these wooden constructions resembled giant skateboard half-pipe ramps coated in ice. Happy-go-lucky Russians would shoot down the ramp on a sled, zip up the other side, and then gradually slide down to the middle. Catherine the Great was apparently a huge fan. Enough said.

When did wheels enter the picture? Roller-coaster historian (??) Robert Cartmell cites a ride in the Gardens of Orienbaum in St. Petersburg (1784) that featured “carriages which undulated over hills within grooved tracks.” Unfortunately, no engineer is credited with the project, and there is some dispute with the French on this matter.

The first roller coaster built in the U.S.A. was called the Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway. Built by LaMarcus Thompson in 1884, it opened in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York.

Visit UltimateRollercoaster.com to learn more about early roller coasters and enjoy some wonderful illustrations. You’ll also find an engraving of the world’s first looping roller coaster!

Why is snooze always set at 9 minutes?

Why is the snooze function on alarm clocks always set to nine-minute intervals?

Before researching the answer, I would have thought it’s because nine
minutes is the approximate length of time it takes to fall back asleep
before being roused by the piercing beep of the infernal alarm clock.

But as it turns out, it’s really all a matter of mechanics. Back in
1956 when the snooze button was first introduced, alarm clocks had
standardized gears. The snooze gear had to mesh with the teeth of the
other gears. Due to the configuration of the gears, a nice, round
10-minute snooze cycle was out of the question, so the engineers had
to choose between nine minutes or 10-plus minutes. As we all know,
punctuality is a virtue, so the engineers went with nine minutes.

Various attempts have been made to change the nine-minute snooze cycle
— manufacturers have tried five, seven, and ten minutes, but a
nine-minute snooze has become the unofficial standard.

Longest village name

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is a
village on the island of Anglesey in Wales. Situated on the Menai
Strait close to Menai Bridge and Bangor, it is best known for having
the longest officially recognised place name in the United Kingdom,
and one of the longest in the world. It is signposted on surrounding
roads as Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, and generally known as Llanfairpwll or
Llanfair locally. The name is also seen shortened to Llanfair PG,
which is sufficient to distinguish it from the many other Welsh
villages with Llanfair in their names.

It is a popular tourist destination, with many people stopping at the
railway station to be photographed next to the station sign, visiting
the nearby visitors’ centre, or having ‘passports’ stamped at a local
shop. Another tourist attraction is the nearby Marquess of Anglesey’s
Column, which at a height of 27 m offers views over Anglesey and the
Menai Strait. Designed by Thomas Harrison, the monument celebrates the
heroism of Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey at the Battle of
Waterloo. In recent times the village has grown and is now somewhat
like a northern suburb of Bangor, on the other side of the Menai
Strait.

Name
A sign showing the name is visible in the background.The village’s
long name was contrived in the 1860s for the prestige of having the
longest name of a railway station in Great Britain, and could not be
considered an authentic word in the Welsh language. A translation into
English would yield “St Mary’s church in the hollow of the white hazel
near a rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio near the red
cave”.

The village was originally known as Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, and there
was a nearby hamlet called Llantysilio Gogogoch. The names were linked
by an in-between feature, the chwyrn drobwll, or rapid whirlpool.

There have been several attempts to steal the village’s record. The
Carmarthenshire village of Llanfynydd unofficially adopted the name
Llanhyfryddawelllehynafolybarcudprindanfygythiadtrienusyrhafnauole in
2004 in protest at plans to erect a wind farm nearby (the name means
“a quiet beautiful village, an historic place with rare kite under
threat from wretched blades” in English). A station on the Fairbourne
Railway was named
Gorsafawddacha’idraigodanheddogleddollônpenrhynareurdraethceredigion
(translated as “the Mawddach station and its dragon teeth at the
Northern Penrhyn Road on the golden beach of Cardigan Bay”) for
promotional purposes. No such attempts have gained widespread
recognition amongst official bodies and transport authorities.

Do the Fartman!

Le Pétomane was the stage name of the French entertainer Joseph Pujol (June 1, 1857 – 1945).

He was famous in Victorian times for his remarkable control of the abdominal muscles, which enabled him to break wind at will. He derived his stage name from the French word péter, “to fart.”

Joseph Pujol was born in Marseille. He was one of five children of François (a stonemason and sculptor) and Rose Pujol. Soon after he left school he had a strange experience while swimming in the sea. He would put his head under the water and hold his breath whereupon he felt an icy cold penetrating his rear. He ran ashore in fright and was amazed to see water pouring from his anus. A doctor assured him that
there was nothing to worry about.

When he joined the army he told his fellow soldiers about this and repeated it for their amusement. He then found that he could do the same with air. Although a baker by profession, Pujol decided to try his talent on the stage, and debuted in Marseille in 1887. Successful, he proceeded to Paris, where he took the act to the Moulin Rouge.

Some of the highlights of his stage act involved playing a flute through a rubber tube in his anus and farting sound effects of cannon fire and thunderstorms. The climax of his act involved him farting his impression of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

With the outbreak of World War I, Pujol retired from the stage and returned to his bakery in Marseille. Later he opened a biscuit factory in Toulon. He died in 1945, aged 88 and was buried in the cemetery of La Valette in the Var département, where his grave can still be seen today.

A present-day comedian employing the same effect is Mr. Methane.

A short humorous film about his life, entitled Le Petomane starred Leonard Rossiter.

A character in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, a film notorious for its flatulence jokes, has the name Lepetomane

Why is Jerry Lewis so popular in France?

During the 1950s, French critics began writing favorable reviews of Lewis’ work, but his star really rose in 1965. That year, the French voted “The Nutty Professor” film of the year, Lewis paid a visit to France where he was mobbed by adoring fans, and the country held a three-week festival in his honor.

As for why he initially gained popularity with the French, we can only speculate. U.S. critic Gerard Mast wrote that Lewis’ brash, overzealous act was a spot-on take of American excess, and therefore appealed to the Gallic sense of humor. In her book “Why the French love Jerry Lewis,” Rae Beth Gordon says Lewis’ physical humor was much like a French comedy style that began in the 1880s and flourished in stage and film. And Lewis biographer Shawn Levy postulates that while the French love high art, they’re also suckers for low-brow humor.

Whatever the reasons, it’s safe to assume what people find entertaining changes by era, location, and generation. While Jack Benny was a riot in his time, he doesn’t have quite the same audience today, and “Seinfeld” was a hit in the States but tanked in Germany. But after all, the french still love Benny Hill too:)

Why are ketchup bottles tall and thin, while mustard bottles are short and fat?

I start by noting that he crucial difference between ketchup and mustard bottles isn’t so much the shape of the container as the size of the mouth. After years of scientific study, condiment researchers discovered that whereas most people delicately daub mustard on with a knife, ketchup they pretty much slobber over everything straight out of the bottle. That’s because mustard is a pungent substance that will burn holes in the roof of your mouth if used to excess, thereby giving us the thrill of living on the edge of danger that is so lacking in contemporary life. Ketchup, in contrast, is bland. The bottle mouths are designed to accommodate the differences in usage.

Interestingly, the H.J. Heinz company did put a wide-mouthed ketchup bottle on the market in 1966, for people who wanted to use ketchup by the spoonful in recipes. This daring innovation promptly bombed monstrously (although it is still sold in a few places), apparently because Heinz had overlooked the fact that for the most part there aren’t any recipes that call for ketchup, except as a glaze–most people use tomato sauce instead. In contrast, quite a few recipes for sauces and dressings and whatnot require mustard. At any rate, French’s does make a mustard bottle with a narrow mouth for use in restaurants, where you want to discourage people from poking their grubby cutlery into the condiments.

What was the second video played on MTV?

Everyone knows the first video ever played on MTV. What was the second?

Let’s take a trip through time, back to the days when MTV actually
played music videos all day and night. It seems like so long ago —
the year 1981 — when the groundbreaking channel first launched. At
midnight on August 1, 1981, cable upstart MTV made its first broadcast
with “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the British band, The Buggles.
But what came next? I put on our skinny ties and Ray-Ban sunglasses
and paid a visit to Yahoo!’s 1980s Pop Culture category to find your
answer.
Deep within the Eighties Club, I read about MTV’s rocky start. After
the Buggles, the channel aired five spots introducing MTV’s veejays
(the spots were played in the wrong order). Then the next music video
was broadcast — the tune was “You Better Run” by Pat Benatar. Some
fumbling and dead air followed these first two videos, as engineers
and veejays scrambled to play videos in the right order. Eventually,
the MTV team got their act together and became one of the decade’s
biggest influences on popular music.

An artist biography on Hip Online confirmed Pat Benatar’s status as
the second artist to air a video on MTV. “You Better Run” was
Benatar’s first video. The song was featured on her second album,
Crimes of Passion, released in 1980. This album also featured her
first top ten hit, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.” Many of Benatar’s
later videos enjoyed heavy rotation on MTV, particularly 1983’s “Love
Is a Battlefield” directed by Bob Giraidi.

Both MTV and Pat Benatar are still rockin’ on into the 21st century,
although I suspect Benatar plays more music than the channel.

Why do dogs love to stick their heads out of car windows?

Everyone has witnessed the rapturous joy dogs experience while sticking their heads out of car windows. Amazingly, I couldn’t find any scholarly research to explain the behavior. Here are three theories I came up with…

1. The sensation of a brisk wind against your face carrying with it scents and fast-moving sights is appealing to many humans. So imagine speeding against the wind with the ability to sniff up to a million times better and to perceive movement at a much quicker pace. For a dog, sticking its head out a moving car must be an all-around sense-sensation the magnitude of which we olfactory-challenged humans can only imagine!

2. Everyone wants a better view. Dogs are no different.

3. Dogs sense what every teen instinctively knows: it’s inherently cooler to travel on wheels than by foot.

While dogs may love the easy rider sensation, some pup-lovers believe the practice isn’t safe. They recommend doggie seat belts or crates be used. This may sound extreme, but some dogs have actually mastered the use of automatic windows. In fact, lawmakers in Pennsylvania may pass a law requiring dogs to be constrained while traveling in cars. Freedom-loving dogs had better watch out — the K-9 unit may soon be on their tails.

Nurek Dam

The Nurek Dam is the largest earthfill dam in the world, located on the Vakhsh River in the central Asian nation of Tajikistan. At 300 meters (984 feet), it is the tallest dam in the world as of 2005. (The Rogun Dam, under construction along the Vakhsh also in Tajikistan, is expected to exceed the Nurek when completed, at a planned height of 335 meters – 1,099 feet.) Construction of the dam began in 1961 and was completed in 1980, when Tajikistan was still a republic within the Soviet Union.

Electricity generation
A total of nine hydroelectric turbines are installed in the Nurek Dam. Originally having a generating capacity of 300 megawatts each, they have since been redesigned and retrofitted such that they now combine to produce 3,000 megawatts of electric power which was adequate to meet 98% of the nation’s electricity needs.

Did you know?
In 1994, The Nurek Dam generated enough hydroelectric power to supply three-quarters of that country’s generation capacity?

Different numbers…

Why are the numbers arranged differently on phones and calculators?

No one’s quite certain why the numbers on phones read from top to
bottom when keyboard and calculator numbers read from the bottom up.
But there’s no denying which set of buttons came first — numeric
keypads are based on old adding machines. Generations of accountants
have used them with blurring efficiency.
So why mess with tradition? Why not keep the same format for
telephones? Fortunately, the brains at HowStuffWorks have formulated a
few theories that might explain this bizarre discrepancy.

One theory contends that prototype touchtone keypads in the ’50s were
originally identical to calculator keypads, but operators were so
adept at using them they jammed the phone lines. The number layout was
redesigned to actually slow down fast fingers.

Another theory states the phone keypad came from a 1960 Bell Labs
survey in which more people liked the “1” on top (after all, we’re not
all accountants). Or maybe the phone layout was roughly based on the
old rotary system.