This past Monday, we asked you to name the only sport in which the ball is always in possession of the team on defense, and the offensive team can score without touching the ball. The answer: Baseball ! !
How’s Your Batting Average?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch . . . to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!”
How to Be a Good Sport
Can you name the only sport in which the ball is always in possession of the team on defense and the offensive team can score without touching the ball?
Backwards and Forwards and Even Upside Down
This past Monday, we asked you what racecar and kayak have in common.
Many thanks to James Holmes, Managing Director, Unison Site Management, who correctly noted they are both palindromes – words or phrases which are the same spelled backwards and forwards. Thanks James!
Level, eye, civic, noon, radar and tenet are other palindromes and so is the phrase: “was it a cat I saw”. BTW, how many of you knew the only language in the world whose name is a palindrome is Malayalam, a language spoken in parts of India?
For you serious trivia buffs, the longest known palindrome in the Oxford Dictionary is “tattarrattat”. Ba da bing, ba da boom!
Thomas Jefferson
“It is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
Things You Ride In
What do racecar and kayak have in common?
As you might guess, this is a trick question and the title above is not the answer.
He Left the Stage and Went Out the Back
In answer to our UBCF question last Monday, the phrase “Elvis has left the building” was first used in December of 1956, by promoter Horace Lee Logan to quiet down the audience in Shreveport, Louisiana, so other performers that followed him could continue playing. The entire statement Logan made was “All right, all right, Elvis has left the building. I’ve told you absolutely straight up to this point. You know that. He has left the building. He left the stage and went out the back with the policemen and he is now gone from the building.” [UBCFA: March 3, 2017]
John Lennon
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.“
Elvis Has Left the Building !
What is the origin of the phrase “Elvis has left the building”?
[UBCFQ: February 27, 2017]
The Rest is History
In answer to our Benjamin Franklin question, the Boston Tea Party which protested the harsh taxes imposed on the American colonies, took place on December 16, 1773. In an effort to placate the angry British government, Benjamin Franklin offered to give them his personal fortune in order to pay for the spoiled tea on the condition that they withdraw the taxes. The British declined and instead responded by closing Boston harbor. The rest, as they say, is history.