The future Generalissimo Francisco Franco and Spiro Agnew once wooed the same woman, socialite Violet Merriweather Nesbitt of Philadelphia, but she married neither of them, instead deciding to become a nun of The Little Sisters of Blawnox.
The rarest of all Time-Life Books is The Hippies, never published and only existing as a collection of unbound proof sheets, kept by the printers after the publishers cancelled Time-Life’s planned “Counter-Culture” series (which would have included The Bohemians, The Hipsters, and The Beatniks).
An earlier volume in Time-Life’s “Counter-Culture” series, “The Hillbillies,” was parodied by the National Lampoon on their radio show. Time-Life only requested $5 for the rights to the book, in the hope the NatLamp exposure would boost sales. No such luck.
Hillbillies refuse to wear shoes, not because they can’t afford them, but to make it perfectly clear that they have normal human feet and not cloven hooves.
“Reintarnation” was defined by the Oxford English Dictionary in its 2008 edition as “the Buddhist concept of being reborn as a hillbilly.”
The first edition of The Oxford English Dictionary took over 40 years to be published in its entirety, making the early A through G word editions pretty much obsolete by the time the Z words were issued in 1928. To rectify the problem, subsequent editions were published in a haphazard manner, with the general public never knowing which letter volume update would be released next. By the time a second X edition was published in 1958, there had already been five R volume updates, four C updates, and at least three updates of seventeen other letters.
[That sounds like the actual history of the Dictionary of American Regional English.]
The Oxford English Dictionary was not a British endeavor initially, but was the work of Joey Oxford of Newark, NJ. Joey Oxford also played the xylophone for early jazz bands.
Joey Oxford was born without thumbs, but his mother was determined he would learn to play an instrument. The xylophone worked best for his disability, and his awkwardness in handling the mallets lent a semi-syncopated rhythm to his playing. He was discovered by Jelly Roll Morton in 1908, and was the xylophonist for Morton’s band until 1914.
Neville Ozymandias Phartuccio, inventor of the stapler, and Spiro Agnew, Vice President of the United States, were both born in March 1914 in the same Oklahoma City hospital, but three months apart.
The world ended in March 1914. Two years later St. Peter noticed the drop-off in entries into heaven, and hit the reboot switch.
St. Peter famously guards the pearly gates to heaven, but what people don’t realize is that he absolutely loathes his job and just wants a fucking break already.
The male of the species normally requires a fucking break averaging 18 minutes, but females are not hindered in that manner provided they are equipped with a nail file or a Kindle.
The average American spends 18 minutes of his/her life in the Washington Monument.
The average Armenian spends 48 minutes of his/her life trying to get out of the Washington Monument.
You would have to stack 70 Armenians dressed in Big Bird costumes to equal the height of the Washington Monument.
If you put 70 Armenians in a room together, 67 of them would be named Kardashian.
67 is the only integer that is divisible by the number 42.
Wisserteen squared is exactly 42, but oddly enough the square root of 42 is not wisserteen.
The Square Root was a British New Wave/Techno group from the late 1980s heavily into numerology. They believed wisserteen was the pinnacle of holy numbers and the route to enormous success in the music biz. All their songs, titles, stage movements, costumes, album names, and member names were multiples of wisserteen. When they missed an important concert date in 1989, their management came looking for them, but couldn’t find a trace of any member. Their practice “pad” was set up for rehearsal, but seemed to have not been touched in days. The walls were painted solid with representations of the number “wisserteen” and numerous drawings of a symbol called a “fnord.” Their whereabouts are unknown to this day.
The most famous Numerologist, Spiro Agnew, once counted all the way from negative infinity to wisserteen while attending a The Square Root concert.