Sunday, April 30, 2017

11 Dimensions of Everything



String theory is an alternate theory of existence in our reality whereby tiny strings of small subatomic particles manifest different substances based on differing vibrations.

They can manifest as matter or force. For example, magnetic attraction and gravity are not seen yet they are an interaction of strings because they exist at a subatomic level.

Your body, your soul, everything you can feel or see is made up of the vibrations of strings. Upon death, some of these strings remain in the dead body as it decomposes into another set of strings and another set of strings continues to vibrate as your essence enters another realm, called the soul.

The conventional view of the universe is that it is made up of 4 dimensions:

  • Height
  • Width
  • Length
  • Time

String theory is referred to as the "theory of everything." Proponents believe miniscule "strings" of energy vibrate in 11 dimensions (10 dimensions of space and one of time) thereby creating every force and particle in the universe.

According to string theory, the strings possess length, but do not possess height or width. The electrons and protons within an atom are vibrating lines. Thus, every atom (made up of an electron spinning around a nucleus of protons and neutrons) contains protons, electrons, neutrons and strings.

This explains such phenomena as existence after death, ghosts, communicating with spirits or dead relatives, poltergeist, precognition, psychic ability, paranormal activity, psychometry, remote viewing, voodoo, power of prayer, hidden abilities of which most people are unaware, etc.

Basically, all things in the universe and beyond are continually vibrating (oscillating) at different frequencies. These vibrations create waves emanating from the object that generates them. These wave-fields contain information about the object that created the wave-field. Thus, everything we see (or sense or feel) has been created as a hologram -- a three dimensional image that we perceive from a two-dimensional object.

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” Nikola Tesla

M-Theory is an extension of string theory that proposes 11 dimensions whereby additional dimensions are so miniscule that they exist within tiny atoms.

M-theory proponents theorize that our universe resides on a floating membrane, along with an infinite number of parallel universes, and within these parallel universes there are many "copies" of the same particle.

Thus, theoretically, there could be copies of the same person existing simultaneously in multiple universes. However, there would probably be key differences among them, since different universes could possibly have a set of different physical principles governing them.

Therefore, it's conceivable that you could communicate with a copy of a person in a parallel universe who has passed away in this universe (communication with the dead).

"The more you know, the more you know you don't know." Aristotle

Value every moment in this beautiful life -- all is well.
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Quote for the Day -- “If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” Albert Einstein
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Bret Burquest is the author of 11 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a few dogs and is trying to survive, among other living entities who are also trying to survive.
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Monday, April 17, 2017

Secret War Against Extraterrestrial Intrusions



The most widely accepted theory of how the moon was formed is that a young planet collided with Earth more than four billion years ago, creating scattered debris that came together to form the moon.

However, there are numerous extraordinary anomalies to indicate that the moon is actually hollow and possibly artificial.

The moon is 2,160 miles in diameter, larger than the planet Pluto. It is 400 times smaller than the sun and 400 times closer to the Earth than the sun. Thus, during a solar eclipse as viewed from Earth, the moon appears to be the same size at the sun, as if perfectly positioned in place.

If you divide the circumference of the sun by the circumference of the moon and multiply by 100, the result is the circumference of the Earth. If you divide the size of the sun by the size of the Earth and multiply by 100, you get the size of the moon.

The outer surface of the moon is extremely hard. It has no magnetic field, yet moon rocks are magnetic.

In November of 1969, the Apollo 12 mission to the moon, the crew landed on the moon in a rough manner onto the surface, some 40 miles away from their intended destination. Upon impact, the moon "reverberated" as if it was an artificial moonquake.

NASA scientists declared that the moon "rang like a bell" for eight minutes, and continued to reverberate for more than an hour.

In 1970, the Apollo 13 mission to the moon was aborted due to severe technical problems. The Saturn V launch vehicle (weighing 15 tons) was purposely crashed onto the surface of the moon, some 100 miles from where the Apollo 12 crew on the previous mission had set up the seismometers. The impact was the equivalent of 11 tons of TNT.

NASA scientists said the moon "reacted like a gong" and continued to vibrate for three hours and twenty minutes, at a depth of 25 miles.

A supervisor of the Data and Photo Control Department during the Apollo missions, Ken Johnson, claimed that that the entire moon "wobbled" in such a precise way that it was "almost as though it had gigantic hydraulic damper struts inside it."

In 1972, the moon was struck by a meteor with the impact of 200 tons of TNT. This created enormous shockwaves deep into the interior of the moon, but none of the waves came back.

The outer surface of the moon contains many minerals that are found in processed metals, which have never been discovered to occur naturally.

  • Uranium 236 (found in reprocessed uranium & spent nuclear fuel, as long-lived nuclear waste)
  • Neptunium 237 (byproduct of nuclear reactors & plutonium production, a radioactive metal)
  • Iron particles (don't rust, not a natural phenomenon)

Dr. Harold Urey, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, was puzzled by the moon rocks, calling them "mind-blowers." He said he was "terribly puzzled by the rocks from the moon and in particular their titanium content."

Dr. S. Ross Taylo0r, the geochemist in charge of lunar chemical analysis, has postulated that the moon had to be covered with melted rock containing fluid titanium. However, the titanium could not have been distributed in this way, leading to speculation that a highly advance technology developed by unknown entities must have been responsible to this anomaly.

According to Alexander Shcherbakov and  Mikhail Vasin of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the moon is likely to have been a very ancient spaceship -- a planetoid that had been hollowed out by unknown beings with highly advanced technology.

The two scientists declared: "If a material had to be devised to protect a giant artificial satellite from the unfavorable effects of temperature, from cosmic radiation and meteorite bombardment, the experts would probably have hit upon precisely these metals... From the engineer's point of view, this spaceship of ages long past which we call the Moon is superbly constructed."

Planet Earth is 4.53 billion years old. The material of the moon is 5.3 billion years old, and the surface dust is even older, 6.3 billion years old. Therefore, the moon existed prior to the existence of Earth.

Shcherbakov and  Vasin continued: "Naturally the hull of such a spaceship must be super-tough in order to stand up to the blows of meteorites and sharp fluctuations between extreme heat and extreme cold. Probably the shell is a double-layered affair -- the basis a dark armoring of about 20 miles in thickness and outside it some kind of more-loosely-packed covering (a thinner layer -- averaging about 2.5 to 3 miles in depth). In certain areas -- where the lunar 'seas' and 'craters' are, the upper layer is quite thin, in some cases non-existent."

The thinner outer layers, averaging about 3 miles in depth would explain why moon craters are not as deep as they should be given the width of the impact zone. Theoretically, meteorites are unable to penetrate deeper into the surface when they collide with the dark armor layer of about 20 miles in thickness. The outer layer (3 miles in depth) acts as a buffer before the object encounters the 20-mile thick armor plating layer, which would only be slightly dented.

Dr. K.L. Anderson, professor of geophysics and director of the seismological laboratory at California Institute of Technology, has declared "the moon is made from inside out." He believes the outer and inner compositions of metals and elements should be reversed. Thus, it's an artificial structure

The density of Earth is 5.5 grams per cubic centimeter and the density of the moon is 3.34 grams per cubic centimeter. Based on astronomical data, NASA scientist, Dr. Gordon MacDonald, has declared that the interior of the moon is must be hollow.

The positioning of the moon dictates the angle at which the Earth rotates (22.5 degrees from vertical) and the speed of Earth's rotation. It also influences global tidal movements and since the human body is 70% water, it may also influence human physiology and/or behavior.

The moon orbits Planet Earth in an almost perfect circular orbit and does not spin on its axis like all the other moons in our solar system, whereby the same side is always facing Earth, leading to the conclusion that the moon was placed in its current orbit and position by an intelligent entity.

Thus, the obvious conundrum -- if the moon is hollow, created by a more advanced civilization, placed into its position and possibly occupied by advanced beings, what's up??

Is it possible the moon is observation satellite, occupied by advanced entities??

Do these advanced entities control or utilize human beings on Earth??

Do advanced entities use the moon as a staging area for ET visitation of Earth??

In 1959, Dr. Iosif Shklowvsky, a Russian astrophysicist, proclaimed that Phobos, a moon circling the planet Mars, may be hollow. He based this claim on calculations of the strange orbit and extremely low density of the satellite.

Dr. S. Fred Singer, special advisor to President Eisenhower on space development, said Phobos may be connected to extraterrestrials.

In 1963, Raymond H. Wilson Jr., Chief of Applied Mathematics at NASA, proclaimed that "Phobos might be a colossal base orbiting Mars."

Once again, what's up??

I do not have the answers. However, it seems possible, worthy of examination and exploration.

According to astrophysicist Hakeem Olusevi, "In our galaxy, we're talking about something like 400 billion stars, and we now think there are more Earth-like planets than there are stars. So we're talking about hundreds of billions of planets."

And that's just within our own Milky Way Galaxy.

Olusevi added, "There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe alone, which we think is a tiny fraction of what the universe is."

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” Arthur C. Clark

Perhaps the secret of the hollow moon is that we are faced with an enemy from beyond Earth and have been in a covert skirmish with this enemy for many decades.

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Chairman Gorbachev both realized the threat of extraterrestrial threats and put aside the differences that had become known as the Cold War.

The two super powers have secretly been allies in a joint effort to protect the planet from alien hostilities for many decades, while publically deceiving the world of supposed animosity between the two countries.

When President Reagan initiated the Strategic Defense Initiative (dubbed Star Wars), it was not to combat incoming ICBMs from Russia, but to form a defense against extraterrestrial incursion upon Planet Earth.

"We didn't have to shoot down thousands of Soviet incoming warheads, and the Soviets never really cared about the ABM Treaty in the first place because they knew they weren't going to launch a first strike and neither would we. We both knew who the real targets of the SDI were, and it wasn't a bunch of ICBM warheads. It was UFOs, alien spacecraft thinking themselves invulnerable and invisible as they soared around the edges of our atmosphere, swooping down at will to destroy our communications with EMP bursts, buzz our spacecraft, colonize the lunar surface, mutilate cattle in their own horrendous biological experiments, and even abduct human beings for their medical tests and hybridization of the species. And what was worse, we had to let them do it because we had no weapon to defend ourselves." Phillip J. Corso

Philip J. Corso (1915 - 1998) had a distinguished career as a military Intelligence officer. He was the former head of the Foreign Technology Desk at the U.S. Army's research & Development department and a member of President Eisenhower's National Security Council.

There is a covert oversight outfit that is responsible for protecting Planet Earth from alien interference. It is so top secret that most U.S. Presidents are out of the loop. It all started during the Truman administration in 1947, code-named "Shamrock" (a UFO working group), and has been operational ever since (under various deep-cover guises).

"We can knock these guys down tomorrow with high-energy lasers and directed particle-beam weapons that come right out of a Star Wars movie. And these aren't fiction, they're fact." Phillip J. Corso

United States and Russian military forces have been firing thousands of missiles in the Arctic regions, out of the earth's atmosphere, into the outer regions of our planet's atmosphere. These missiles are being launched from both land-based sites and aircraft.

When this clandestine activity recently came to light, the U.S. and Russian governments claimed to be performing joint war games. These so-called "war games" were never announced in advance to the public.

These bizarre events coincide with reports that the earth's atmosphere is being bombarded by unknown cosmic blasts. The BBC reported that "cosmic blasts (bursts of gamma rays) are the most powerful in the universe. Scientists think a 10-second blast near earth could deplete up to half of the planet's ozone layer."

Something very strange and potentially dangerous may be taking place here. War games are not conducted in outer space unless an enemy threat approaches from outer space.

During a speech to the United Nations in 1987, President Ronald Reagan announced, “Perhaps we need some outside universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”

Perhaps President Reagan was warning the world about potential extraterrestrial threats.

Perhaps the USA and Russia are pretending to be "enemies" but are in fact secret allies in an effort to protect our planet from outside forces.

Perhaps the USA and Russia are pretending to be "enemies" to keep their respective military budgets and black ops budgets high in order to fund their combined defense in their secret alliance against extraterrestrial threats.

Do big deal -- life goes on.

Do the aliens on the moon pull down their pants and "earth" their lunar friends?
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Quote for the Day -- “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” Carl Sagan
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Bret Burquest is the author of 11 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a few dogs and where life is what happens when you can't sleep.
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Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Far-Out Facts




When George Washington became President in 1789, life expectancy at birth for Americans was 34.5 years for males and 36.5 years for females.

In 1801, when Thomas Jefferson became president, 20 percent of the people in the U.S. were slaves.

Globally, there are some 1,800 thunderstorms in progress at any given moment and lightning strikes the planet 100 times every second. Lightning kills more people in the United States (400 per year) than any other natural disaster.

An average of 140 tornadoes occurs in the United States every year. In the spring of 1974, there were a record 90 tornadoes in one day, from Georgia to Ohio. In 1755, Benjamin Franklin chased a tornado on horseback for three-quarters of a mile, repeatedly lashing out with his whip in an effort to calm the storm.

The first formal rules of baseball required the winning team to score 21 runs.

Baseball pitcher, Hoyt Wilhelm, played 21 seasons for several major league teams in 1952 to 1972. He hit a home run in his first time at bat and never hit another one in more than 400 at bats. His career batting average was .088.

There are more than 10,000 golf courses in the USA.

The Winchester House, near San Jose, California, is 8 stores high and covers 6 acres of ground. It has 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 48 fireplaces and miles of secret passages and hallways. Mrs. Sara Winchester believed that if she stopped adding rooms to her house she would die. After 38 years of continual construction, she died in 1922, at age 85.

In 1829, two young sisters, Susan Tripp (age 5) weighed 205 pounds and Deborah Tripp (age 2) weighed 124 pounds.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, has more dentists and more burglaries, proportionally based on population, than any other city in the USA -- these two statistics are not related.

New York City has 570 miles of shoreline.

In 1911, after Bobby Leech became the second person to survive a barrel ride over Niagara Falls, he spent six months in a hospital recovering from his numerous injuries. He later embarked on a global promotional tour -- in New Zealand, he slipped on a banana peel and died of complications from the fall.

Three of Theodore Roosevelt's four sons were killed while serving the USA in wartime -- Quentin was killed on World War I -- Kermit and Theodore, Jr., were killed in World War II.

Bamboo can grow three feet in 24 hours.

In 1871, the Great Chicago fire killed 300 people -- at the same time on the same day, a fire some 200 miles north in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, killed 600 people.


Whiskey and vermouth (a Manhattan cocktail) was invented by a woman named Jennie Jerome (1854 - 1921), a New York socialite whose father was millionaire Leonard Jerome and whose great-great grandmother was an Iroquois Indian. She met Lord Randolph Churchill at a sailing regatta on the Isle of Wight in 1873, having been introduced by the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward V11) and they became engaged three days later. They were married at the British Embassy in Paris in April of 1874. Their son, Winston, was born two months prematurely in a ladies' cloakroom in a castle in Blenheim, a country home in Oxfordshire, England, where Jennie was attending a dance. In 1921, Jennie slipped down a stairway wearing new high-heeled shoes and broke her ankle. Gangrene set in and her leg was amputated above the knee, whereupon she died at her home in London 20 days later, at age 67. Her son, Winston Churchill, went on to become Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1940, during World War II. He had such a remarkable memory that he was able to recite an entire Shakespearean play or a lecture verbatim.

In Pacific Grove, California, city ordinance 352 makes it a misdemeanor to threaten or kill a butterfly.

Of the first 23 U.S. Astronauts who flew on space missions, 21 of them were first-born sons or an only child.

Mirza Nuruddin Beig Mohammad Khan Salim (1569 - 1627) was the fourth Mughal Emperor, ruler of India and Pakistan. He was known by his imperial name as Jahangir, which means Conqueror of the world, and had 500 royal wives. He also had 5,000 woman and 1,000 young men for alternative pleasure. His pets, stabled near his palace, included 12,000 elephants, 10,000 oxen, 3,000 deer, 2,000 camels, 4,000 dogs, 500 buffalo, 100 tame lions and 10,000 carrier pigeons.

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V once declared, "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse."

When Adolph Hitler ruled Germany, farmers and policemen were not allowed to call their horses by the name "Adolph."

Wanting to demean the Jews in Denmark, Adolph Hitler ordered all Jews to wear a Star of David armband. Soon, Danish citizens of all religions were wearing the armband. King Christian X of Denmark announced, "I am my country's first Jew."

After surrendering in 1886 and being imprisoned in Florida and Alabama, the Apache Chief Geronimo became a member of the Dutch Reformed Church in Oklahoma, but was later expelled from the church for gambling.

Ernest Hemingway donated his prize money as a Nobel Prize winner to the Shrine of the Virgin in Cuba. "You don't ever have a thing until you give it away," he said.

John D. Rockefeller (1839 - 1937) had donated $531,326,842 to charitable causes during his lifetime.

Ten percent of the earth's land mass (approximately 3.9 million square miles) is covered permanently under ice.

  • 80% -- Antarctica
  • 12% -- Greenland
  • 8% -- various mountain peaks & polar islands

Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel but he turned it down, claiming he had no head for human problems.

Thomas Young (1773 -- 1829) was known as "The Last Man Who Knew Everything." He could read at age two and read the entire Bible twice by the age of four. During his youth, he studied 12 languages and could play a variety of musical instruments. In 1803, he worked out the wave theory of light. He made many scientific contributions in solid mechanics, light, vision, physiology, energy, language, musical harmony and Egyptology. He was the first person to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, including the Rosetta Stone.

Writer, Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870), and others, believed that a person should have their bed aligned from north to south in order to get a good night's sleep. The theory subscribes to the notion that by sleeping in this position, magnetic currents flow straight through the body.

Even though he had not lost his eyesight, Thomas Edison preferred Braille to visual reading.

Christian Heinrich Heinecken (1721 -- 1725) was known as the "infant scholar of Lubeck (Germany)." When he was eight weeks old, he could speak German. By age two and a half, he read the entire Bible in Latin. He had learned Latin and French by age three. When he was three years old, he authored "A History of Denmark" which he recited when visiting the King of Denmark later that year. Still being breast fed, he died at age four of celiac disease.

Kim Ung-Yong, born in March of 1962 in South Korea, was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records has having the highest IQ, estimated to be at 210. At age four, he was fluent in Korean, English, German and Japanese, and also composed and published poetry. When he was Four years and eight months old, he performed integral calculus on a live TV program in Tokyo.

Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone. He was also a teacher of the deaf and set the world speed record in 1919, at age 72, by exceeding 70 miles per hour in his hydrofoil boat.

Paul Charles Morphy (1837 -- 1884), born in New Orleans, Louisiana, was considered to be the greatest chess player in the world by age 21. In 1857, not yet of legal age to begin the practice of law, he participated in the first American Chess Congress tournament in New York City, where he defeated all of his opponents (worldwide chess masters) to become the Chess Champion of the United States. On other occasions, he would even play chess blindfolded. In a set of eight games of chess, played simultaneously and blindfolded, he had to remember the positions of 256 chessmen on eight different chessboards. The number of possible variations of playing just the first four moves on each side of a chessboard in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000. In the end, he won six games, lost one and tied one. At age 22, he quit playing chess to embark on a career as an attorney in New Orleans

In 1903, the first automobile to cross the United States, from San Francisco to New York, took 52 days.

In 1911, the first coast-to-coast airplane flight in the United States, from New York to Pasadena, California, by Galbraith P. Rodgers, took 49 days (many stops).

The budget for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare is larger than the combined operating expenses of all the governments of the 50 states in the USA.

In the old Soviet Union, there were over 170 different languages and dialects.

One of the most original writers in the twentieth century, D.H. Lawrence, amused himself by removing his clothes and climbing mulberry trees.

A mosquito has 47 teeth. When filled with blood, it is able to fly carrying a load twice its weight.

In the U.S. military draft lottery in 1917, one of the holders of the first number (258) was Alden C. Flagg. In the U.S. military draft lottery of 1940, his son, Alden C. Flagg, Jr., was a holder of the first number (158).

The first French soldier who was wounded in the Franco-Prussian War was also the last one to be killed, six months later, in 1871.

In 1951, General Douglas MacArthur was dismissed by President Truman during the Korean War in a dispute over U.S. policy. MacArthur's father, who fought Geronimo was relieved of his command by President Taft for insubordination. MacArthur's paternal grandfather defied orders while engaged in the battle of Missionary Ridge, during the Civil War.

Just prior to World War II, the U.S. Army (including reserves) ranked nineteenth among the world's armed forces -- behind Portugal and ahead of Bulgaria.

In the early 1940s, during the development of the atomic bomb in Alamagordo, New Mexico, applicants for routine jobs (such as janitor) were disqualified if they could read, in an attempt to keep plans and trash from being read. Secrecy was paramount.

Half of the world's population lives in just four countries -- China, India, USA, Russia.

In 1935, "Iran" became the new name for what had been called "Persia" -- prior to being named "Persia," it had been called "Iran."

Congress had originally appropriated $2 million for the construction of the Sam Rayburn House Office Building. When it was completed in 1965, the total cost of construction was $88 million.

Martin Van Buren, the eighth President, became the first man born in the United States to become President.

Jimmy Carter, the thirty-ninth President, was the first U.S. President born in a hospital. The previous thirty-eight Presidents were all born at home.

In 1922, Rebecca Felton, a Georgia Democrat, became the first woman appointed to the U.S. Senate. In 1932, Hattie Caraway, an Arkansas Democrat became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

In 1869, the Territory of Wyoming allowed women to vote in territorial elections. When the Territory became a state in 1890, it was written in the state constitution that women could vote in state and local elections. In 1925, residents of Wyoming elected Mrs. Nellie Taylor Ross as the first woman in the U.S. to become a state governor.

In the early eighteenth century, the Church owned two-thirds of the land in Portugal.

America's most prolific songwriter, Irving Berlin, never learned how to read or write music. He would sing or hum his songs to a secretary who would take notes in musical notation. He composed some 3,000 songs. His song "White Christmas" had sold 113,067,354 records and 5,588,845 copies of sheet music. His song "God Bless America" was not performed publically until 20 years later, on Armistice Day in 1938, when Kate Smith introduced it on radio.

Beethoven was half-deaf most of his life and was totally deaf when he wrote one of his best pieces of work, the Ninth Symphony.

In 1954, in the state of Indiana, professional wrestlers and boxers were required to swear under oath that they were not communists.

Professional basketball player, Wilton Norman Chamberlain (1936 - 1999), a.k.a. "Wilt the Stilt," was over seven feet tall and played 13 seasons in the National Basketball Association. A regulation NBA game is 48 minutes. In the 1961-62 season, Chamberlain averaged more than 48 minutes per game, due to overtime periods, and scored a record 100 points in a single game that season.

It takes 314 acres of trees (some 63,000 trees) to create the newsprint on the average Sunday edition of the New York Times.

A Russian Air Force officer, Ivan Mikhailovich Chisov (1911 -- 1986), survived a 23,000 fall from a damaged airplane without a parachute. He fell onto a steep snow-covered slope and slid to the bottom, damaging his spine and breaking his pelvis.

It takes 13 months to train a pilot, but at the Pentagon's School of Music it takes 15 months to train to be a bandleader.

In the mid-1960s, movie director-producer Stanley Kubrick approached Lloyd's of London to obtain insurance against losses if extraterrestrial intelligence were to be discovered prior to the completion and release of his forthcoming movie, "2001: A Space Odyssey." Lloyds of London turned him down.

In August of 1938, Northwestern University conferred an honorary degree on Charlie McCarthy, who was ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's wooden dummy.

There are a half million more automobiles than people in Los Angeles.

Half of the people in the U.S. live in 8 of the 50 states.

  • California
  • New York
  • New Jersey
  • Massachusetts
  • Pennsylvania
  • Ohio
  • Illinois
  • Michigan

Arlington National Cemetery was once part of the property owned by Robert E. Lee, south of Washington, D.C. Graves for soldiers were dug close to Lee's house, and later the area was confiscated. Today, this area is the site (624 acres) of the National Military Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

On April 19, 1861, four members of the Massachusetts Militia were stoned to death by a Baltimore mob of Confederate sympathizers -- they were the first four fatalities of the Civil War.

In the late 20th century, about 100 people per day (over age 14) committed suicide, a 50 percent increase over the previous century.

In 1919, over a million gallons of melted sugar (molasses), weighing 13,500 tons, was stored in a tank in the harbor area of Boston, Massachusetts. When the tank ruptured, it sent a 50-foot wave that engulfed eight buildings, killing 21 people.

According to a study by Brigham Young University, 46 percent of people die within three months after their birthday, but only 8 percent die within three months prior to their birthday.

In 1705, a condemned robber in London named John Smith was being hanged for his crimes. He fell through the drop and dangled at the end of the rope for about 15 minutes, when a courier arrived on horseback with a reprieve, setting Smith free, still barely breathing. Thereafter, he was nicknamed "Half-Hanged Smith."

The most common name in the world is Muhammad.

The original name of Los Angeles was El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula -- meaning "The Village of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Little Portion."

Victoria Woodhull was a radical feminist who ran for the Presidency in 1872. She spent the last four years of her life sitting in a chair because she feared she would die in bed in her old age. She died in 1927, at the age of 89.

Everyone in Iceland must graduate from school and be able to speak three languages in order to get a job.

In its old English form, the literal meaning of "lady" is "loaf-kneader."

The Lesser Antilles, West Indies, was once inhabited by Carib Indians who had three different languages.

  • One language was used by men -- women could use it if speaking to a man
  • One language was used by women -- men would only use it when quoting or mocking the women
  • One language was used by men in councils of war -- never learned by the women

Some 13,700.000 people died in battle in World War I. In the influenza pandemic that followed in 1918, some 500,000,000 people were ill and more than 20,000,000 died. While most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill the young and elderly, the 1918 pandemic predominantly killed previously healthy young adults.

There are thousands of languages used around the world. Some 175 languages are spoken by at least a million people. The 10 most spoken languages, in descending order:

  • Chinese
  • English
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Hindi
  • Bengali
  • Arabic
  • Portuguese
  • German
  • Japanese

There are a zillion more frivolous far-out facts floating around out there, but I will end the list here -- wouldn't want your head to explode.

"Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable." Mark Twain
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Quote for the Day -- "You can observe a lot just by watching" Yogi Berra
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Bret Burquest is the author of 11 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a few dogs and where strange things happen almost daily.
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