If visiting Pittsburgh visit the sandwich shop, Primanti Brothers. It is apparently a local tradition and gem (their sandwiches are good!) and some of their sandwich shops have Pittsburgh sports scenes painted on their walls.
Ginger Beaumont, of the Pittsburgh Pirates, was the first man to come to bat in a World Series. He flied out to center field against Cy Young, in Boston. The Pittsburghs would score four runs against Young in that first inning, but go on to lose the World Series.
A single bat can eat a 1,000 insects in one night.
In 1900, the great baseball hitter Honus Wagner became the first player to have his autograph burned into a Louisville Slugger baseball bat.
Wilhelm Richard Wagner 1813 – 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas. Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).
Until his final years, Wagner’s life was characterised by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors. His controversial writings on music, drama and politics have attracted extensive comment in recent decades, especially where they express antisemitic sentiments. The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the 20th century; their influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, the visual arts and theatre.
The Nurburg Ring is a Grand-Prix test track in Germany, where any person can pay a fee and drive the track in their own car. Several people are killed each year doing this, wiping out millions of dollars worrh of expensive high-performance cars.
The first railroad tracks were made of wood.
The 1960 Elvis Presley film G.I. Blues featured the song “Wooden Heart”, loosely translated from the German (Swabian dialect) folk song “Muss i denn”.
Treat me nice
Treat me good
Treat me like you really should
Cause I’m not made of wood
And I don’t have a wooden heart …
The Detroit water system is over 300 years old, and still contains some pipes made of wood.
Contrary to popular belief, the bagpipes did not originate in Scotland. While the exact origins of the bagpipes are disputed, the oldest reference to the now-famed instrument is from Asia Minor. The reference was carved on a stone slab dated back to 1000 BC. Bagpipes were eventually found in various countries all over the world, including India, Spain, France and even ancient Egypt. Historians are unsure as to whether the Scottish bagpipes were imported from Rome or if they were brought to the country from Ireland.
In Stevenson’s novel Kidnapped, Alan Breck Stewart is challenged to a piping duel by a son of Rob Roy MacGregor. Although Alan always displays a very high opinion of himself throughout the book, he admits that MacGregor plays the bagpipes better than him.
The Rob Roy is a cocktail created in 1894 by a bartender at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan, New York City. The drink was named in honor of the premiere of Rob Roy, an operetta by composer Reginald De Koven and lyricist Harry B. Smith loosely based upon Scottish folk hero Robert Roy MacGregor. A Rob Roy is similar to a Manhattan but is made exclusively with Scotch whisky, while the Manhattan is traditionally made with rye and today commonly made with bourbon or Canadian whisky.
Bourbon Virus is so named because the first (and only) patient to die from it, in 2014, is believed to have contracted the disease by a tick bite in Bourbon County, Kansas. The only other Bourbon County in the USA is in the only other state that begins with the letter K.
Humans need about 0.001mg of vitamin K for ever kilogram of body weight.
Vitamin K is required for blood coagulation. In all mammals, coagulation involves both a cellular (platelet) and a protein (coagulation factor) component. The system in humans has been the most extensively researched and is the best understood.
“Vitamin” was originally spelled “vitamine,” since the first ones discovered had amine in them. When further vitamins were discovered, they did not have the amine, so the “e” was dropped.
I used to work in the advanced composites polymer chemistry field. I wasn’t a chemist, but a lab tech. One of the chemists had a car with personalized license plates NHH CAR. NHH, or NH2, is for amine. His license plate was meant to read amine car, or a mean car.
Licence plates have been around for longer than there have been automobiles. France was the first country to introduce the licence plate with the passage of the Paris Police Ordinance on August 14, 1893, followed by Germany in 1896.
In the U.S., where each state issues plates, New York State has required plates since 1903 (black numerals on a white background) after first requiring in 1901 that only the owner’s initials be clearly visible on the back of the vehicle. At first, plates were not government issued in most jurisdictions and motorists were obliged to make their own. In 1903, Massachusetts was the first state to issue plates.
The license plates of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories do not have the 6 by 12 inch rectangular format that is standard elsewhere in North America, but are shaped like a polar bear. At least the bolt holes line up.
From 1912 to 1918 Illinois issued front license plates that had holes in them to let the air pass through to the radiator.