Is the story of a classic naval battle of the Civil War told correctly today?

And now, as we get more and more entrenched into spring, and the baseball season is finally underway…

I find myself stuck for something to say in this space.

There were a couple of odd things I could’ve come up with, but being an odd thing myself, it didn’t seem appropriate (Make of that what you will).

I find that as the columns get older and older, I have more and more difficulty coming up with provocative introductions. So much so that I think I may dispense with them altogether and just get to the trivia, which is really what you come here for.

Drop a line to me at the above e-mail address and let me know if I should stop the introductions. In the meantime, here’s what you’re here for, the trivia.

Enjoy, my friends.

Did you know…

… Armadillos can get leprosy (Yeah, but what do they do with it?)?

… The man who created the polio vaccine made nothing from it? Dr. Jonas Salk (1914-1995) chose in 1955 not to patent his polio vaccine, saying it needed to be freely available for the benefit of humanity. Some say he missed out on earning $7 billion from his discovery (Perhaps, but what he got in return was priceless).

… Basset hounds have a very appropriate name? The dogs were first bred in Belgium and France, and the word basset is a French term meaning “low.” It applies; basset hounds are very low to the ground, standing no more than 14 inches tall at the shoulder (Woof).

… That yellow line you see on football broadcasts does not come cheap? The graphic, used by television networks to show the line the football must cross to make a first down, costs about $20,000 per game to produce (Money well spent, I suppose, but since I don’t watch football I couldn’t say).

… Yawns really are contagious? In one study, about 65% of test subjects had the urge to yawn after merely reading about yawning (Heck, I yawned just writing that).

… Duffel bags are aptly named? Not because the military-issued bags carry your duffel (whatever that is), but because the thick wool which was used to make the original bags came from the Belgian town of Duffel (I thought they were invented by some guy called Duffel. Shows what I know).

… One of the classic battles of the Civil War did not happen the way we are told it did? On March 9, 1862, the first encounter between two ironclad warships took place, called the Battle of Hampton Roads, Virginia. Every school child knows that the fight was between the USS Monitor and the CSS Merrimack, and the Monitor won. Right? Uh, no. The fight was between the Monitor and the CSS Virginia. Before its salvage by the Confederate Navy, the Virginia was the wooden-hulled Union ship USS Merrimack. But it had been salvaged, refit, ironclad and rechristened before the fateful battle. And the battle didn’t exactly settle anything, as both ships survived. The Monitor would be lost in a storm off North Carolina on December 16, 1862, while the Virginia (formerly Merrimack) was destroyed by its crew on May 9, 1862 (As they say, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. No, I don’t know what that has to do with anything).

… Telephone operators weren’t always nice, pleasant people? Not long after the invention of the device, operators would pick up calls and say something like, “Well? Are you there?” Not until 1895 did someone suggest having operators answer with the phrase, “Number, please?” (These days, when we carry our telephones in our pockets, who remembers operators?).

… Zombies may be representations of something else entirely? Critics of the entire zombie genre say that the “living dead” are an extreme representation of conformity. They supposedly represent “the internal struggle many humans have regarding the conflict of individuality vs. conformity,” (That might explain the need to eat brains, too).

… A popular singer credited one of his hits to someone who didn’t write it? Reggae artist Bob Marley (1945-1981) wrote the song “No Woman, No Cry” in 1974, but credited the authorship to his childhood friend Vincent Ford (1940-2008). Ford ran a soup kitchen in his native Jamaica and Marley gave him the authorship credit so the royalties would keep the soup kitchen open.

… The average person sheds about 1 1/2 pounds of skin each year? (Not all at once, I would assume)

… You may suffer from aprosexia? I do, sometimes. It’s the inability to concentrate (I had a hard time concentrating on that one).

… Avocado is poisonous to birds? (Yeah, I’m no big fan of it either).

… The town of Zeigler, Illinois can be rather chintzy? For example, when a fire call comes in to the town’s volunteer fire department, only the first four firemen to arrive at a blaze get paid, according to a city ordinance (And they’re pretty proud of that, too).

… The starting gate at horse racing tracks was invented to settle disputes? Philip McGinnis (1858-1937), a racing reporter in Huntingdon, Quebec, Canada, developed the starting gate in 1902 to help prevent arguments about whether or not horses began a race prematurely (And they’re off!!).

… Clothing sizes are based on local culture? If you don’t believe me, consider this: shirts that are sized as medium in the United States are larger than shirts sized extra-large in China (No comment at all from me. Call me a coward if you will, I make no comment).

Now … you know!

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