Sylvia Shults's Blog, page 35

Today I Learned …

Alexey Bykov from Omsk, Russia, faked his own death so that he could propose to his girlfriend. He hired a movie director, stuntmen, make-up artists and a scriptwriter to stage a bogus car crash. The ruse was so convincing that when Irina Kolokov arrived at the scene and was told that Alexey was dead, she broke down in tears, convinced she really had lost him. Alexey jumped to his feet and proposed, still covered in fake blood. She said yes! So what did YOU do for Valentine’s Day this year? (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)

Today I Learned …

Giant redwood trees, which can grow to more than 300 feet tall, get 40% of their moisture from fog at the top of their branches. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)

Lights Out #95: Old Orphanage, Jennie Wade House

You’ll get a double dose of spooky with this episode of Lights Out! The people of Gettysburg didn’t go looking for a battle; the battle came to them. In this episode, we’ll visit not one, but two haunted places touched by the war. The Old Orphanage was a sanctuary for war orphans … until things went horribly wrong. And just across the street is the house where Jennie Wade, the only civilian killed in the battle, lost her life. https://youtu.be/K5WcjBK0w0s

I’m very excited about this episode. Not only are we getting closer to Episode 100, but I’m getting better at the new video rendering program I’m using now. This means that you’ll be treated to an hour-long episode where the pictures match up to the sound much better than in past episodes. Enjoy, and thanks so much for watching!

Today I Learned …

File under “Crazy Rich Asians”: Gan Lin, the wife of a wealthy businessman from Chongqing, China, rented an entire mountain at a cost of more than $5000 a month just so that her daughter Yin could learn about nature. Now that’s a dedicated homeschool mom! (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)

Lights Out News!

There’s amazing news in the world of the Lights Out podcast! The podcast hosting service I use has just partnered with Amazon/Audible. What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means you can listen to Lights Out through Audible. I just posted Episode #95, about the Old Orphanage and the Jennie Wade House in Gettysburg. This is part of the Gettysburg Experience leading up to Episode #100. It also means that you can join over 55 million people who love podcasts, including Lights Out! I’m stoked! (And the YouTube version of the latest episode is coming soon.)

Getting bigger and better all the time!

Today I Learned …

Stretching nearly 25 feet, the Onion Ditch Bridge in West Liberty, Ohio, is made from 120,000 pounds of recycled plastic, including old detergent bottles and car dashboards. Although it cost $250,000 to build, its projected 150-year life span is more than three times longer than conventional materials such as concrete or steel. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Eye-Popping Oddities)

Book Review — Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington, by Ted Widmer

I started this book January 21, 2021, the day after Biden’s inauguration, and finished it the next day. This is a rollicking read that gives the feeling of being on Lincoln’s train careening towards destiny. Widmer is a crackerjack writer — his is one of those nonfiction books that reads like a novel. He throws in the most amazing “oh by the way” facts, too, pointing out things like which future presidents saw Lincoln’s train roaring past (Taft was four years old, and apparently already a chonk). I enjoyed the fact that at the end, Widmer writes about the return trip to Springfield, when the train carried the assassinated president’s body home for burial.
I do have to say that it was deeply surreal reading this just two weeks after the Capitol riots. Why is that, you ask? Because the SAME DANG THING happened in 1861! Congressmen were arguing over the vote count. Some were hoping to prove Lincoln’s presidency invalid and replace him with someone else. Thugs and hoodlums were milling around, disaffected, outside the Capitol building. (They didn’t storm the place that time, though.) The vice president, Breckenridge, was afraid he’d get waylaid as he was carrying the boxes with the votes in them, the boxes he was charged with protecting until the votes could be counted. The nation, and the Lincoln party traveling to Washington, were on tenterhooks all day until the votes were verified and Lincoln was confirmed as President-elect. Any of this sound the least bit familiar? This book is amazing by itself. As an example of “history repeating itself”, it’s unparalleled.

Today I Learned …

There are two skulls in the tomb of Austrian composer Josef Haydn (1732-1809). After his death, his head was stolen by phrenologists (“scientists” who study the shapes of heads — it used to be a thing), and a replacement skull was put into the tomb. Then in 1954, the real skull was returned, but no one took the substitute head out. (From Ripley’s Believe It or Not: A Century of Strange)

Today I Learned …

Dinosaurs laid eggs in a fabulous variety of shapes and colors. According to research on the fossilized pigments from ancient eggs, dinosaurs laid eggs with shells in a rainbow of hues more than 145 millions years ago. Adding blues and greens and speckles to eggs was a way of making them less visible to predators. That’s because calcite, the white mineral that makes up hard eggshells, would glow vivid pink to a dinosaur’s eyes. (From National Geographic)

Today I Learned …

An expert at wreaking long-term revenge was Anton Grellier of Belgium, who never forgave his parents for calling him stupid as a boy. After leaving home, Grellier became a wealthy, successful businessman. He would amuse himself by regularly sending his parents generous checks on which he intentionally made stupid errors so that his parents couldn’t cash them. (From Bizarre World, by Bill Bryson)