|
|
|
|
Do You Know?
|
|
I have been asking myself some serious questions today and since there is no one here but my dog Sara and I there have not been very many answers forthcoming. So I have decided to share these self-asked questions with you and the answers that I have dug out to save you the tedium of searching through literature and the internet for answers.
1. How many of the seven dwarfs can you name?
Ans. Well, Disney's seven dwarfs were Dopey, Happy, Bashful, Grumpy, Sneezy And Doc. The Brother's Grimm who created the seven dwarfs even before Disney never did give them any Christian names . But now I'll get down to the real question—all of the dwarfs had beards save only one—which one? (The answer is Dopey)
2. So you know poetry? Then I am sure that you have read or heard the poem that begins:
"Half a League, Half a league, Half a league onward,
Into the valley of death rode the...
Rode the who? Of course you knew, "The six hundred". Actually there were 673 of them but we have to allow Tennyson a little poetic license when he wrote "The Charge of the Light Brigade".
But in the spirit of the true trivia nut that is not good enough
. The real question Are you ready? How far is half a league? (The answer is that a league is not so easy to define. It originally was intended to be I/20th of a degree of latitude but by the time Tennyson wrote "The Charge of the Light Brigade" different systems were in use and a league could vary from 2 ½ miles to 4 ½ miles. So to determine what Tennyson meant we sought a measurement of the length of the valley down which the Light Brigade rode and found that the valley was only 1 1/4 miles long so Tennyson was thinking of a League as 2 ½ miles when he wrote the poem. Actually there is a curve in that valley such that the Light Brigade only had to face the Russian cannon for only a third of a league—but accuracy doesn't always make good poetry so lets just let Tennyson have his "Half a League". Oddly when Texas joined the Union it retained its mineral rights for "seven leagues from low tide" which would be 21 miles by the then recognized length of a marine league to be three miles so we got 21 miles of oil land whereas the other states mostly only got three miles. I am a trivia nut. Now I am off thinking about the fact that Mexican Law allowed early emigrants to Texas to settle on a "league and a labor" of land which was 9 square miles plus all the ground a man could plow in one day (which incidentally was reckoned to be 146 acres.) That was with an ox-drawn plow and a long summer day. See what all you can get into reading poetry?
3. I used to have a couple of horses out here at the farm. Actually they belonged to Frank and to a friend of his who was a farrier. For the life of me I can't remember their names. We actually got rid of them because they spent most of their time on the front porch of the house. But to get to the question—would you be surprised if I told you one of those horses was 22 hands high?
Answer; Yep horse height is measured in :"Hands" and a hand is 4 inches and is measured from the ground up to the point between the shoulder blades called the "withers" at the base of the neck. And if I told you I had a 22 hand high horse you could laugh because the world record high horse was an English Shire Horse foaled in 1850 that measured 21.5 hands high or 86 inches. Sixteen hands high is considered quite tall for a modern horse.
But now for the trivia lover's question: what was the name of Festus' mule in Gunsmoke?
(The answer is "Ruth") and the name of U.S. Grant's horse in the Civil War? (The answer is "Cincinnatus").
4. Most of us Texans and poker players the world over know that Wild Bill Hickock was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall while playing five card draw in a poker game in Deadwood Gulch South Dakota and I'll even bet that most of you know what hand he was holding when he was killed. What was it?
Answer–He was holding two aces and two eights which is almost universally called "a deadman's hand" in poker. But the real trivia nuts will want to know what was the fifth card in his hand? ( it was the jack of diamonds)
5. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as explained in Revelations 6th Chapter appear on four horses of different color . The rider of the black horse carries a set of scales, the rider of the white carries a bow and a crown, the rider of the red horse carries a sword. But what does the rider of the pale horse carry?
Answer: Nothing. The significance of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse has been explained to me several times by as many different people and I am not sure that I have ever really understood what any one of the people was trying to say so in about fifteen minutes before I go to bed I am going to read the sixth chapter of Revelations once again and see if it all becomes clear in my mind. Don't wait up for me to call and explain it all to you.
Now just so you won't think that I am cheating I did not make all this up. I got it from a book called "Did The Corinthians Ever Write Back?"by Ken Weber which is a most interesting book .
And just so you will know we don't really know whether the Corinthians ever wrote back or not
or where they sent their answer if they did. It is a fun book.
Love
Dad, Granpa, ami
|
|
|
|
|
