Found on Wikipedia: Pizza Farms

From Wikipedia:

A pizza farm is an educational visitor attraction consisting of a small farm on a circular region of land partitioned into plots shaped like pizza wedges. The farm's segments produce ingredients that can be used in pizza, such as wheat for the crust, tomatoes or herbs, pork for pepperoni, dairy cows for cheese, and even trees for pizza oven firewood. Certain farms may even have access to coal or natural gas deposits that can be used as alternative pizza oven heating fuels. Many of the newer pizza farms are experimenting with alternative energy, such as installing wind turbines in the fields, to be more green. According to a 2005 article in USA Today, there are several such farms in the United States.

Read more...

Found on Wikipedia: Geronimo!

No, not Geronimo the Apache, not Geronimo Stilton, the mouse reporter, not Cesar Geronimo, outfielder for the Big Red Machine in the 70's, and not Sarah Geronimo, the cute young Filipina actress. Geronimo as in, "Geronimo!" Ever wonder why people say that when jumping off things?

According to Wikipedia, "Geronimo!" is believed to date from 1940, when an Army private was testing out a new invention called the parachute. Private Aubrey Eberhardt was scheduled to take a "mass jump" with the rest of his platoon, and, as you might expect, they were a little nervous about it.

To calm their nerves, the Army boys took in a movie--a western, in fact, which people now figure had to have been the 1939 film Geronimo with Andy Devine and Lone Ranger star Chief Thundercloud in the title role.

On the way back to barracks, Eberhardt said he expected the jump would be no different from usual. The others taunted him, saying that he would be too scared to remember his name. Eberhardt retorted, "All right, dammit! I tell you jokers what I'm gonna do! To prove to you that I'm not scared out of my wits when I jump, I'm gonna yell Geronimo loud as hell when I go out that door tomorrow!" Eberhardt kept his promise and the cry was gradually adopted by the other members of his platoon.

The expression stuck, and by 1941 the 501st Parachute Infantry Battalion had added the word "Geronimo" to its insignia.

By then the coverage of the paratroopers exploits during the war had made the cry "Geronimo" known to the wider public, and its use spread outside the military and air force.

Read more...

Found on Wikipedia: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Continuing my promised "Found on Wikipedia" series, today's find is the article about The Right Honorable Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873), Queen Victoria's Secretary of State for the Colonies and, more famously, the author namesake of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, San Jose State University's annual competition which "challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels." Bulwer-Lytton is responsible for the famous opener, "It was a dark and stormy night" in his novel Paul Clifford:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

"It was a dark and stormy night" was of course Snoopy's favorite opening line while sitting at his typewriter, and was co-opted by Madeleine L'Engle for the first line of A Wrinkle in Time. But, according to Wikipedia, Bulwer-Lytton was responsible for even more venerable chestnuts...

He coined the phrases "the great unwashed", "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword", and the famous opening line "It was a dark and stormy night".

But wait, there's more! Check out these other interesting facts about Bulwer-Lytton--again, all from the Wikipedia article:

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873), was an English politician, poet, playwright, and prolific novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling novels which earned him a considerable fortune.

Bulwer-Lytton reached the height of his popularity with the publication of Godolphin (1833). This was followed by The Pilgrims of the Rhine (1834), The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes (1835), and Harold, the Last of the Saxons (1848). The Last Days of Pompeii was inspired by Karl Briullov's painting, The Last Day of Pompeii, which Bulwer-Lytton saw in Milan.

He also wrote the horror story The Haunted and the Haunters or The House and the Brain (1859).

Bulwer-Lytton penned many other works, including The Coming Race or Vril: The Power of the Coming Race (1871), which drew heavily on his interest in the occult and contributed to the birth of the science fiction genre. Its story of a subterranean race waiting to reclaim the surface of the Earth is an early science fiction theme. The book popularised the Hollow Earth theory and may have inspired Nazi mysticism. His term "vril" lent its name to Bovril meat extract.

Absolutely awesome. Have fun with that one...

Read more...

Found on Wikipedia: The South-Pointing Chariot

Okay. I do a lot of poking around on Wikipedia, and like many people, I easily (and often) fall down the rabbit hole of hyperlinks, clicking from one fascinating subject to another. A few weeks back I thought it would be fun to start an entire blog of wildly-interesting facts found on Wikipedia, and today's find finally spurred me to action. But rather than start a new blog, I realized, why not post my discoveries on the perfectly good blog I already have?

So today begins "Found on Wikipedia," a feature that will probably be more regular than I would like, as the time I spend surfing Wikipedia always--always--takes away from time I should be writing. Still, stuff this good has to be shared.

The South-Pointing Chariot

The South Pointing Chariot is widely regarded as one of the most complex geared mechanisms of the ancient Chinese civilization, and was continually used throughout the medieval period as well. According to legends it was supposedly invented sometime around 2600 BC in China by the mythical Yellow Emperor, yet the first valid historical version was created by Ma Jun (c. 200–265 AD) of Cao Wei during the Three Kingdoms. The chariot is a two-wheeled vehicle upon which is a pointing figure connected to the wheels by means of differential gearing. Through careful selection of wheel size, track and gear ratios, the figure atop the chariot will always point in the same direction, hence acting as a non-magnetic compass vehicle. Throughout history, many Chinese historical texts have mentioned the South Pointing Chariot, while some described in full detail the inner components and workings of the device.

Read more about The South-Pointing Chariot here...and good luck getting anything done today.

Read more...