You can at least partially blame Thomas Edison and Samuel Morse for that, according to this. The proliferation of telegraph lines and electric cables apparently dramatically drove up the demand for copper in the late 1800s. Where there’s lots of money to be made, someone will figure out a way to make it.
Today I learned about the mystery involving a certain wych elm in England. It’s an interesting unsolved mystery, and the addition of spooky graffiti adds to the charm.
TIL about the (literal) killer 85 foot tall Santa that terrorized Dallas in 1953.
Well, apart from the fact that the Santa had nothing to do with the death of a guy who was hanging from a crane without any safety equipment and had a cardiac rupture while up there.
The giant Santa is a fascinating bit of promotional excess and worth knowing about just for that, to be fair, but from the description I was expecting them to have had to call out Paul Anka or something.
Today I discovered there is a law that prohibits the construction tall buildings in Washington D.C. And then I thought to myself, “Wow, come to think of it, I’ve never seen a skyscraper in D.C.”
They didn’t want taller buildings that would dwarf the Washington Monument and the Capitol. They were also concerned about fighting high-rise fires at the time the law was enacted.
The sum from 1 to n of the factorials (i.e. 1! + 2! + 3! + … n!) is only a perfect square if n = 1 or n = 3.
The proof is left as an exercise for the reader. 
Hint: Perfect squares must end with 0, 1, 4, 5, 6 or 9.
I was told there would be no math.
The sum of k! for k = 1 to 0 is 0, which is a perfect square.
No, it is a perfect circle.
1n 1799, George Washington’s distillery at Mount Vernon produced over 11,000 gallons of whiskey, making it the largest distillery in America at that time.
The giant foot from the opening credits of Monty Python’s Flying Circus came from a painting in London’s National Gallery called Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time
I presume he diligently paid the full federal excise tax at the time.
Which was one of Michael Palin’s favourite artworks, he told us in a public discussion in that gallery about 6 or so years ago.
Portland Oregon has an ordinance restricting the height of buildings, but they have a catch. There are at least two skyscrapers that well-exceed the height restriction, but they get around it by borrowing airspace from the adjacent block. Hence, you can build a 40 story tower, but you have to have a spot next to it that has a very short structure. This prevents the downtown area from becoming canyons through behemoths.
The origin of the name Ampersand (for this symbol: &)
I heard this one on the excellent History Of English Podcast by one Kevin Stroud. Although he’s not a linguist by profession (he’s an attorney), the content of his podcast seems to be valid and well researched. Etymology Online bears this out, albeit with a slight difference or two.
Kevin Stroud’s explanation:
Long ago, when you recited the alphabet, you were expected to say ‘&’ (“ampersand”) at the end. We’re talking like 200 years ago, when the symbol was used more widely in writing generally. The name was originally “per se and”, meaning the symbol as just a symbol without its meaning. So you’d finish up by saying “…X, Y, Z, and per se ‘and’”**, and that last bit eventually got contracted to “Ampersand”. By the same token, people sometimes said “A per se” or “I per se” to emphasize that they were referring to the letter and not the indefinite article or first person singular nominative pronoun.
Etymology Online’s explanation:
Almost the same as above, except it states that “per se I” and “per se A” denoted the words rather than the letters.
ISTM that Keven Stroud’s explanation makes more sense, but who am I to judge? I’m not a professional linguist either. But I do recall once reading a nursery rhyme once about a pie and how all the letters of the alphabet wanted it, ate it, longed for it, or whatever, and ampersand was included at the end. X, Y, Z, and Ampersand/ All wished for a piece in hand.
In a way, the whole “and per se and” etymology sounds as fake as the “pluck you” folk etymology, but it makes a lot more sense to me.
As a matter of fact, he did.
Washington did, in fact, pay his excise taxes on the production of these vast amounts of whiskey: the Mount Vernon farm ledger for 1799 records that Washington paid $332.64 in annual taxes on his distillery.
And the image of God in Monty Python and the Holy Grail is of famously-beardy English cricketer W.G. Grace.
somewhat reminds me of Lima, Perú …
if you are the owner of the last floor, you are allowed to keep adding floors … (certain limits prob. apply)
a randomn drop in google maps
