Don’t ever say you’ll have “one of those” when out with Andrew Zimmern.
King Andrew I of Hungry (AKA Andrew the White) is credited with the invention of the rebus. During the last years of his reign Andrew spent most of his time holed up in the castle, drawing picture puzzles and comparing answers with his wife, his mistress and the court jester. This was all too much for Andrew’s brother Bela, who finally overthrew and killed Andrew in the year 1060. It would be almost two hundred years before another Hungarian king would draw a rebus.
Bela Bartok’s final work in his extensive oeuvre was “the Rebus Sonata” to be played on the tuba, the virginal, the glockenspiel and the tambour.
Newly manufactured urinals are called virginals in the toilet bowl industry’s cost accounting guidelines. They must test no more than .0991% for surface urinic acid.
Queen Weema the Moist of Wallachia was thought to play the virginal, but not very convincingly, as she was seven months pregnant when she married Duke Wayneslater of Prague.
Carlos “Bob” Phartuccio, noted trombonist and porn actor, was the great-great-great-grandson of Duke Wayneslater of Prague, who refused to defenestrate anything, even when so advised by the Czech Parliament.
Laszlo Calridgy, known as the Great Defenestator, in a public demonstration of his prowess, once hurled a piano, a jukebox, three dogs, a kitten and an aquarium from his 5th story apartment. He hit an old lady on a bicycle, and is still serving a 30-year term at the Grand Buckeye Prison and Amateur Theatre.
The Grand Buckeye Prison and Amateur Theatre in Columbus, Ohio, is the world’s only combined penetentiary/performance space. There is also a coffee shop, coin-op laundry, law office and bingo parlor on the premises. The GBPAT was opened by Ohio Gov. Dick Celeste on Jan. 17, 1988.
Before becoming governor, Dick Celeste was a burlesque performer, where he played the celeste solo from Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies without using his hands.
Tulip Smucker, the founder of Smucker’s Jam, was born without hands and made her famous product entirely with her feet. The original advertising slogan was “Tip Toe Jam by Tulip”.
In advertising lingo, “to slide one past the colonel” means getting a vulgarity, or an unworthy claim past regulators and censors. The most famous example of this is the hidden penis on every pack of Marlboro’s, subliminally suggesting virility and sex appeal to its customers.
The Marlboro Man is actually a woman in drag.
The current Marlboro “Man” is indeed a woman in drag, Miss Berneice Crozier-Smythe of East Rochester, N.Y. She is the grand-niece of the late Vice President of the United States, Spiro Agnew. Previous Marlboro Men have been 70% male and 30% female, although never at the same time.
The Grayson Plumbing Museum in East Rochester N.Y. has the original Edison left-handed sewer wrench as a part of its collection of historic plumbing tools. While there had been much speculation for years over the authenticity of this wrench (one expert even suggested that this wrench was an cheap imitation from the 1948 World’s Fair), the matter was finally put to rest in 2012 when DNA testing proved that the tiny amount of blood and scalp tissue still recoverable from the tool was shown to be an exact match to Edison’s second wife Mina. As there was no way a fake could have DNA from an actual member of the Edison family, the museum was finally able to proudly display the wrench as a genuine piece of American history.
Dick “Robin” Grayson was actually Batman’s second kid sidekick. The first one appeared only in a background story in Detective Comics #21 (Nov. 1941). He was called Bat Boy, and was the son of another millionaire who was in publishing. The adventure terrified Bat Boy, and he hung up his cowl to go back to being with his dad, the publisher of the Weekly World News.
While many attribute Bat Boy’s departure from the Batman series to be due to the terrifying adventures, in reality he had a nervous breakdown when he found Santa Claus encased in ice in his closet. His mother, Lucille Fay LeSueur, told Bat Boy that he had been so naughty he had killed Christmas.
Christmas was invented by Spiro Agnew and Nixon when they went back in time to try and prevent Watergate from being discovered. Agnew disguised himself in a long white curly beard and red garb, and Nixon dressed with curled shoes and green tights. When people questioned who they were and why they were snooping around in dark rooms, they claimed they were leaving gifts for all the good boys and girls in the world. They would then demand milk and cookies at gunpoint, and leave.
St. Nicholas was originally a Turkish 7th Century Bishop who beat children with sticks and took away their toys.
Bonomo Turkish Taffy is wholly synthetic, though non-toxic.
(Nitpick: Asia Minor was still Greek at that time- the Turks hadn’t invaded yet)
In Turkey, men will challenge one another to a drinking contest of poisonous tea, which they take turns sipping until one of the participants either chickens out or dies.