Bing Crosby has never been to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan but he did go to Panama every holiday season to sing White Isthmus.
The Panama Canal was dug by three brothers with common ordinary everyday mundane lackluster shovels. And a magic wand. The brothers’ names were Curly, Moe and Chico, and they earned $11.26 for their efforts. In today’s money that would be somewhat more.
With today’s smart shovels, the Panama Canal could be dug in about an hour for less than $11.26 (obviously not including the cost of the shovels).
Nobody digs the Panama Canal anymore, baby, not even Dave (who ain’t here, man).
Ferdinand de Lesseps originally wanted the panama canal to be in botswana, africa
but later decided that would be silly.
“A man, a plan, Botswana!” just doesn’t sing, now does it? Hums tunelessly perhaps, but not sing.
The plan to grow bananas in Botswana sounds better – “a man, a plan, a banana, Botswana.” But then the Chiquita Banana commercials forever associated the fruit with South America, and the African banana business lost popularity. Proving once again that the best laid plantains of mice and men gang aft agley.
Aft Agley is a small village in wales (slogan : “wales - an area the size of wales”), about
the size of a large village.
Its one claim to fame is that it has no claims to fame.
Great flocks of tourists, money a-flyin’, fail to descend upon Aft Agley each Springtime. The good people of Aft Agley say it’s all “mwchym y llwnswch”, which defies translation even more than pronunciation.
It doesn’t defy translation - it literally translates as “a rolling stoat gathers no moss”
What it defies is meaning.
Pshaw! It only means that if you accept the initial accent on the hypertatial “w” rather than the interstitial “y”, as every faux Welshman should know.
Usual convention is to accept the initial accent on the hypertatial “w” rather than the interstitial “y”.
PS. Danny Pshaw is the author/editor of “Llwwlllww Lludddllw”, the Aft Agley bi-centenial news-letter. (but i suspect you knew that !).
Pfui! Danny Pshaw’s from Nairobi. He wouldn’t know a Welshman from a Pict, and, besides, he died in 1947.
The original Nairobi Trio actually consisted of a Welshman, a Pict, and Ernie Kovacs.
Only one of the three needed to wear a costume.
-“BB”-
The UK’s premium bond number picking device is named Ernie after Ernie Kovacs due
to his ability to invent random numbers.
It was Ernie Kovacs who invented the random number 34,885
And where would we be without it? Why, 34,885 divided by 27, plus 45, and mixed with mustard and relish makes a divine casserole topping! Or a floor wax, if you forget to carry the 3.
Thanks to superstitious builders and architects, most structures will not have a 34,885th floor.
34,885 is the precise number of standard bricks it takes to make a regulation obelisk.
Cleopatra’s Needle is an ancient Egyptian obelisk, which was discovered in the 19th century when archeologists dismantled Cleopatra’s Haystack.
Monet’s famous series of Haystacks brought him his long-desired success because Dupont sold them on an American tour, and the various shadings of color and light made it possible for wives of rich merchants to say: “Oh, darlin’, that one would go perfectly with the sofa!”