Miscellany and Trivia

A woman was waiting at an airport one night, with several long hours before her flight. She hunted for a book in the airport shops, bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book but happened to see, that the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be... grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between, which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.

So she munched the cookies and watched the clock, as the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock. She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by, thinking, “If I wasn’t so nice, I would blacken his eye.”

Wise men and philosophers throughout the ages have disagreed on many things, but many are in unanimous agreement on one point: "We become what we think about." Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A man is what he thinks about all day long." The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius put it this way: "A man's life is what his thoughts make of it." In the Bible we find: "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he."

There were two warring tribes in the Andes, one that lived in the lowlands and the other high in the mountains. The mountain people invaded the lowlanders one day, and as part of their plundering of the people, they kidnapped a baby of one of the lowlander families and took the infant with them back up into the mountains.

Penicillin

Inventor: Alexander Fleming

Year: 1928

What Happened: Halfway through an experiment with bacteria, Alexander Fleming up and went on vacation. Slob that he was, he left a dirty petri dish in the lab sink.

Big Discovery: When he got back, he found bacteria had grown all over the plate, except in an area where mold had formed.

As a Result: That discovery led to two things: 1) penicillin and 2) Mrs. Fleming hiring a maid. 

Saccharin

Inventors:  Constantin Fahlberg and Ira Remsen

Year: 1879

What Happened: After spending the day studying coal tar derivatives, Fahlberg left his Johns Hopkins laboratory and went to dinner.

Big Discovery: Something he ate tasted particularly sweet, which he traced to a chemical compound he’d spilled on his hand. Best of all, it turned out to be calorie-free.

As a Result: He cut Remsen and the university out of millions of dollars when he secretly patented the breakthrough discovery, saccharin.

The Microwave

Inventor:  Percy Spencer

Year: 1946

What Happened: With the end of World War II, the Raytheon engineer was looking for other uses for the magnetron, which generated the microwaves for radar systems. While Spencer was standing next to the device one day, a chocolate bar in his pocket melted.

Big Discovery: The magnetron worked even better on popcorn.

As a Result: Orville Redenbacher (an American businessman most often associated with the brand of popcorn that bears his name) became very rich.

Viagra

Inventors:  Scientists at Pfizer

Year: 1992

What Happened: A Welsh hamlet was ground zero for a test on a pill to fight angina. Unfortunately for the afflicted, it had little success against the disease.

Big Discovery: Though it didn’t work, the men taking part in the study refused to give up their medicine.

As a Result: The scientists switched gears and marketed the drug, Viagra, for a very different purpose.

Botox

Inventors: Alastair and Jean Carruthers

Year: 1987

What Happened: The couple were using small doses of a deadly toxin to treat ‘crossed eyes’ eyelid spasms and other eye-muscle disorders when they noticed an interesting side effect.

Big Discovery: Wrinkles magically disappeared.

As a Result: The expressionless face became the ‘it’ look, thanks to Botox.