I am no expert in classical music. In fact, I know very little. I received the same classical education we all got from Looney Tunes so many years ago, but I couldn't tell Brahms from Beethoven. This is an actual text I sent to a friend a few months ago: What's the famous classical piece that … Continue reading Forty-Eight
The Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn are exactly 47 degrees apart from one another. Well, not exactly. More like 46.87362. But who's counting? What are the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, anyway? And what do I mean by "degrees"? I'm glad you asked. They are latitude lines, lines that run parallel to the Equator. … Continue reading Forty-Seven
I've been waiting for this one for a while. I love this story. I first heard about this on the TV show Ripley's Believe It or Not! There have been several shows over the years with that name; the one I'm referring to is the one that was on ABC from 1982 to 1986, hosted by Jack … Continue reading Forty-Six
When I was a kid, we had a record player that had four settings: 16, 33, 45, and 78. These numbers, as anyone over a certain age will remember, determined the speed at which the disc would spin while it was read by the needle. The slowest setting, 16, made the disc rotate at 16-2/3 … Continue reading Forty-Five
When I hear the number forty-four, I think of President Obama. It's funny -- I never thought of Reagan as forty, or Clinton as forty-two. But Obama is forty-four, and Trump is forty-five. I'm not sure where it started, but my guess is that it happened when George W. Bush became president. Suddenly we had two presidents … Continue reading Forty-Four
The youngest person to become president of the United States was Teddy Roosevelt, who was a 42-year-old Vice-President when William McKinley was assassinated. But the youngest person elected President was John F. Kennedy, at age 43. That's so odd to me, because that's the age I am right now. Am I old enough to be "the leader … Continue reading Forty-Three
Well, here we are. We all knew it would come to this. Science fiction fans have no doubt what I'm going to talk about here. It's the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. That's right. It's 42. According to Douglas Adams' groundbreaking and world-shattering trilogy, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the most amazing and powerful … Continue reading Forty-Two
