The first telephone directory, consisting of a single page, was issued on February 21, 1878. It covered 50 subscribers in New Haven, Connecticut in the United States. The Reuben H. Donnelly company asserts that it published the first classified directory, or yellow pages, for Chicago, Illinois, in 1886.
The first British telephone directory was published on 15 January 1880 (the year after a public telephone service was introduced into the UK) by The Telephone Company. It contained 248 names and addresses of individuals and businesses in London; telephone numbers were not used at the time as subscribers were asked for by name at the exchange. The directory is preserved as part of the British phone book collection by BT Archives
The first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in WWII killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo
Tablecloths were originally meant to serve as towels with which guests could wipe their hands and faces after dinner
It is estimated that in excess of 3,000,000,000 Bibles have been sold throughout the world
In 1999, Pepsi, Inc. managed to have paid $0.00 in income tax - As of 2009, 19 of PepsiCo's product lines generated retail sales of more than $1 billion each, and the company’s products were distributed across more than 200 countries, resulting in annual net revenues of $43.3 billion. Based on net revenue, PepsiCo is the second largest food & beverage business in the world. Within North America, PepsiCo is ranked (by net revenue) as the largest food and beverage business
In 1987 American Airlines saved $40,000 by eliminating one olive from its First Class salads
In 1976 an LA secretary named Jannene Swift officially married a 50 pound rock in a ceremony witnessed by more than 20 people
If a surgeon in Ancient Egypt lost a patient while performing an operation, his hands were cut off
Harry S Truman was the last U.S. President with no college degree
Clocks made before 1660 had only one hand - an hour hand
Canada's new flag, with its maple leaf design, was unfurled in 1965 in Ottawa
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| Canadian flag prior to 1965 |
Dogs and cats, like humans, are either right or left-dominant showing a preference, for example, in which paw is used for moving a toy or preening themselves
The earth rotates more slowly on its axis in March than in September
Despite the images we have in our minds scientists aren't sure what color dinosaurs were and it is our imaginations that have attributed largely greens and browns to these creatures - Scientists depict greens and browns as dominant colors based on lizards and reptiles alive today
The weight of a carat (200 milligrams), standard unit of measurement for gemstones, is based on the weight of the carob seed
The average temperature at 40,000 feet above sea level is -60 F
In 1897, Bayer, who is the maker of Aspirin, marketed the drug heroin
In the US alone, on average, more than ten people annually are killed by vending machines, usually by titling them and then not being able to support the weight of the machine
Hippo milk is pink
The human brain has the capacity to store everything that you experience, including sounds and sights that are "random and background" that you may have only consciously noted for a second when it happened
Just before the US invaded Baghdad in late March 2003, nearly $1 billion dollars was stolen from the Central Bank of Iraq and is now the largest bank robbery in history
It has been calculated that a single breath from a mature blue whale can inflate up to 2,000 balloons
NEWS FEED:
A loaded handgun fell from the pocket of a kindergarten student in Houston, Texas, in April 2011, firing a single bullet that slightly wounded two classmates and the "shooter"
Lakewood, Colorado police, attempting to wrest control of a sharpened stick that a second-grade boy was using to threaten classmates and a teacher, gave him two shots of pepper spray. (The boy had just finished shouting to police, "Get away from me you f--- ers")
In June 2011, officials of California's Alvord Unified School District announced that their brand-new, $105 million high school, Hillcrest, would remain unused for the coming school year (and perhaps beyond) because the budget-strapped state does not have $3 million to run the school for a year. (In any event, it costs $1
million per year just to maintain the building to prevent its deterioration)
A Mumbai, India, company, Aegis Communications, announced in May that it will hire about 10,000 new employees to work in its call centers fielding customer service problems for U.S.-based companies. However, those jobs are not in India. Aegis will outsource those jobs to Americans, at $12-$14 an hour, at nine call centers in the United States
Tennessee State Rep. Julia Hurley apologized in July 2011 and said she would pay for the refinishing of her desk in the legislative chamber after it was revealed that she had carved her initials in it during a January session. "It was like one in the morning on the last day of the session," she told WSMV-TV. "I wasn't thinking straight." Rep. Hurley, 29, who has a daughter, 14, unseated a nine-term incumbent legislator in 2010 with a campaign that touted her time as a Hooters waitress. "If I could make it at Hooters," she wrote in the restaurant's magazine, "I could make it anywhere"
