When was the cash register invented?

So here we are again, after celebrating yet another President’s Day.  I’ve told you here before that my idea of the best President was Chester A. Arthur – he didn’t do anything to mess things up, he tried to reform what he could, and he had the coolest sideburns.

My second-best President has to be William Henry Harrison, the ninth man to hold the office.

Why?  Because he was only in office 31 days and didn’t have a chance to do anything goofy.

Hope your holiday was nice, and the trivia below is even nicer!

Did you know …

… the first person to receive two Nobel Prizes was a French scientist?  Marie Curie (1867-1934) received the Nobel Physics Prize in 1903 for her discovery of radioactivity.  Her second Physics Prize award came in 1911, when she was recognized for discovering the elements polonium and radium.  (An energizing scientist, she was.)

… between 1948 and 2015, it was against the law in Japan to dance after 1 a.m.?  (I can’t imagine why … can you?)

… a dead cow was once used to spark a political protest?  In 1960, a U.S. satellite was returning to Earth, and it broke into several pieces as it fell.  One of those pieces hit a farm on the island nation of Cuba, killing a cow.  Because tensions between Cuba and the United States were high at the time, and as a poke at the U. S., a live cow was paraded through the streets with a sign on it saying, “Eisenhower, you murdered one of my sisters!”  President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) was said to have been amused by the protest.  (Or a-moo-sed.  Cuba had a real beef with the U.S. about that.)

… a river in Peru will cook any creature that falls into it?  Its name is the Shanay-timpishka, which translates into the “Boiling River.”  The temperature of the water is close to 200 degrees, and any creature that falls into it will be boiled alive.  The headwaters of the river are marked with a boulder that looks like a giant snake’s head.  Like any such river or other body of hot water, it is located near an active volcano or lava “hot spot” under the Earth’s crust.  (That’s nothing.  There’s a lake in Yellowstone National Park that will dissolve you if you fall in.)

…the cash register was invented in 1879?  James J. Ritty (1836-1918) was the owner of a tavern in Dayton, Ohio, in the 1870s when he noticed some of his employees were taking the customers’ money and pocketing it, rather than depositing the cash where it should be.  On a trip to Europe in 1878, Ritty became intrigued with the idea of a mechanism that counted how many times the ship’s propeller turned around, thinking such a machine could be developed to keep track of how much money came into the bar.  To that end, he developed – after much trial and error – the “Ritty Dial,” which had keys to press depending on how much money was taken in.  He patented it as “Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier” and began making them for other businesses.  Overwhelmed with running the bar and selling cash registers, he decided to sell the cash register business – and the rest is history.  (Ka-ching!)

… actor Bela Lugosi was buried in his most famous costume?  Lugosi (born Bela Blasko, 1882-1956) was one of the biggest stars in the Golden Era of horror movies, the 1930s.  His portrayal of Count Dracula in Dracula is deemed the standard against which other vampire portrayals are compared.  When Lugosi died, he was buried in his Dracula costume, complete with cape.  It is said that at his viewing, a woman brought her terrified son up to Lugosi’s open casket to prove to the child that “Dracula was dead and was not going to get him.”  (I can understand the child’s concern; vampires are undead, of course.)

… a stretch of road plays music?  If you are driving along a section of Route 66 in New Mexico at a steady 45 miles per hour, the road’s rumble strips play “America the Beautiful” as you go over them.  (How patriotic!)

… a 140-minute movie was filmed in a single take?  The 2014 independent German film Victoria was filmed continuously in one take, with no stopping the camera, no reshooting of scenes, and absolutely no cuts.  The movie follows a woman named Victoria who is traveling in Berlin.  One evening, she meets some new friends but as the evening progresses, things go from bad to worse, ending up in a bank robbery.  To accomplish the almost-impossible task of shooting the entire movie in one non-stop take, the actors spent two months rehearsing, and were not confined to a specific script or certain lines.  The movie follows 138 minutes in Victoria’s life and was shot from 4:30 a.m. to 7 a.m. on April 27, 2014.  Sadly, Victoria was not deemed eligible for the Academy Award™ for Best Foreign Language film, because much of the dialog was done in English.  The movie was attempted three times, each in one take; the third attempt was the one that was released.

… wallpaper was invented in 1739?  Plunket Fleeson (1712-1791) stamped designs on paper with wood blocks, then painted in the designs by hand.  He sold this as paper hangings for the wall.  Fleeson, of Philadelphia, advertised in the Pennsylvania Gazette that year for his paper hangings, along with the sale of bed ticking and choice live goose feathers.  (The goose wasn’t included in the deal.)

… New Jersey has the nation’s highest concentration of shopping malls?  (Well, what else is there to do in New Jersey?)

… ladybugs aren’t always very ladylike?  Seemingly harmless, a ladybug can inflict unprovoked bites on human skin, releasing a defensive secretion that causes a stinging sensation.  (You don’t really have to annoy a ladybug to get one to bite you.)

Now … you know!