By Kieran Lin Rich – KRich13@bellsouth.net
I learned something new this week….April and May are the top months for tornado touch-downs in the state of Tennessee. I tend to believe the statistic to be correct. In the last week, we’ve had two tornado warnings (With grave forecasts of another today.) and enough lightning to make the cats all fuzzy.
Tornadoes scare me. They always have. If I were to get all psychological on you, I could pretty much boil it down to anything that I can’t control scares me…tornadoes, fires, death of someone I love, floods, terrorist attacks…well, you get the idea.
So in the midst of an afternoon tornado warning last week, I hunkered down in the master bathroom with two cats. The third cat was invited to the party but chose not to attend — making her R.S.V.P regrets clear by hiding behind Jeff’s desk and hissing at me when I tried to bring her downstairs.
I’d done what I could do to prepare for the bad weather. All that was left was just waiting for whatever was going to happen…to happen. As I thought about Jeff being 15 miles away at work — in an area that was reportedly getting the brunt of the storms — my brain immediately kicked into “Worst Case Scenario” mode and in a matter a few short minutes, I managed to scare myself silly.
After I realized I was catching fear from myself, I tried to re-focus my brain. I thought about my grocery list, the chores that were still undone, and what further steps needed to be taken to get supper on the table. And yet, my mind’s eye constantly saw funnel clouds dancing on the horizon…lots and lots of funnel clouds.
That was when I began to talk to myself. “What do I know?” I asked myself out loud. And then a strange thing happened. Like a printer belching out a monthly report, my brain began rattling off the choice tid-bits of information that it has stored over the years. And I do use the term “choice” very loosely.
Here is a sampling of the useless information that resides in my head:
- The microwave oven was invented as an accidental by-product of World War II radar research using magnetrons — vacuum tubes that produce microwave radiation.
- Orange M&Ms were introduced 1976.
- Atlanta’s Fabulous Fox Theater got air-conditioning before the White House did.
- Barbara Millicent Roberts A.K.A “Barbie” is from the town of Willows, Wisconsin.
- President Eisenhower named of the official Presidental retreat after his grandson, turning ”Shangri-La” into “Camp David”.
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The NFL franchise the Tennessee Titans began life in 1960 as the Houston Oilers.
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Legos got their name from combining the first two letters of Danish words “leg” and “godt” — Translation? “Play well.”
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Waffle House serves more than 3.2 million pounds of grits each year. ( Author’s note: However, the big question remains…WHY does ANYONE voluntarily eat grits?)
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The largest body of fresh water in the world is Lake Superior.
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Disney’s “It’s a Small World” ride actually debuted at the 1964-1965 World’s Fair in New York. It was a benefit for UNICEF.
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Calvin Coolidge was sworn into office by his dad — a notary public.
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Coca-Cola was invented in 1886 by Atlanta, Georgia pharmacist John Pemberton. Between 1888 and 1891, a guy named Asa Candler secured rights to the business for a little over $2,000.
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Tennessee became the 16th state on June 1, 1796.
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President Lincoln owned only one home during his lifetime. It was in Springfield, Illinois.
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Lou Gehring hit a grand-slam homer at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. This may not seem like a big deal but the year was 1920 and Lou was still in high school.
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Charlie Brown’s beagle Snoopy had four brothers: Marbles, Spike, Olaf, and Andy. He also had one sister named Belle.
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In Paraguay, dueling is completely legal as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
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The first Piggly-Wiggly grocery store opened in Memphis, Tennessee in 1916.
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Amy Carter, youngest child of President Jimmy Carter, had a Siamese cat named Misty Malarky Ying Yang.
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The first Wienermobile debuted in 1936 at the cost of $5000.00.
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In the game of Clue, the victim’s name is Mr. Boddy.
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The series M*A*S*H was comprised of 251 episodes.
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In 1955, Sears & Roebuck printed an ad in a Colorado Springs newspaper giving children a phone number to call to track Santa’s flight on Christmas Eve. However, the phone number that was printed was one digit off — giving kids the number to NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command.) Thankfully, the Colonel who answered the phone caught on quickly and not wanting to disappoint the kids, he played along. NORAD has been tracking Santa’s journey on Christmas Eve ever since.
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Maine is the only U.S state with a name of one syllable.
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“Idlewild” was the original name for John F. Kennedy International airport.
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The publisher of “Cat in the Hat” made a bet with Dr. Seuss. The publisher didn’t think Seuss could write a coherant story with a vocabulary of only 50 words. The result of the bet? The book “Green Eggs & Ham.”
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The Titanic was build in Belfast, Northern Ireland at the Harland and Wolff shipyards.
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The ends of shoelaces are called “aglets”.
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Colorado won the bid to host the 1976 Winter Olympics. They made history when they turned down the offer becoming the first and only state to refuse to host the Games.
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Thomas Edison had 1093 U.S. patents.
- The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade was in 1924.
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Tennessee is ranks behind only Virginia in the number of Civil War battles fought within its borders.
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Gatorade was invented at the University of Florida. Go Gators!
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Marie Curie was the first female to win a Nobel Prize.
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Winnie the Pooh is a boy bear.
You may be wondering at this point why I store all of this garbage. Quite frankly, I’m wondering the same thing. I do not know why my brain functions the way it does. I do know that if you spin peanut M&Ms, they stand upright; and, yet I cannot remember to buy bananas at the grocery store. Go figure! Outside of being able to absolutely rock at “Trivial Pursuit”, I see little advantage to having a brain crammed with factoids.
But as I hid from the tornadoes, my rambling mental list finally slowed down to a trickle, my mind quieted, and I closed my eyes. As if he were standing there with me in the bathroom, I heard Jeff’s voice as clear as day…”Do you know that I love you?” Only in my mind, I didn’t picture Jeff at all. Instead I saw the face I saw was that of Jesus.
He loves me — enough to die for me that I might have eternal life. In the midst of my crisis of fear last week, I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I didn’t I think of that in my list of stuff that I know. My brain was so full of useless facts that it crowded out the one thought that really matters…
Jesus loves me…this I know.
