My first posting

Well, hello, all. I am really not happy with the formatting of my blog, but I think that's mostly because I don't know what I'm doing yet.

Trivia of the Day:

* Coffee was usually roasted at home up until the 1870s. The coffee beans were put in a frying pan and roasted over a charcoal fire.

* For over 20 years, the Glass Orchestra of Canada has been performing music on custom glass instruments that they designed and made themselves. The orchestra uses 1,000 pounds of glass instruments during its performances.

* Honey bees consume 7 pounds of honey for each pound of [beeswax] they produce. The resultant wax is white, odorless, and tasteless. The so-called natural yellow color and pleasant aroma come not from the wax itself but from the pollen and honey stored in the wax honeycomb.

* Beeswax was not used to make candles until around AD300, when the Catholic Church mandated that for certain rituals candles had to contain at least 51 percent pure beeswax, the rest of the candle being either mineral wax or tallow. Some ritual candles today consist of 56 percent to 100 percent pure beeswax.

* Beeswax candles found in Egyptian tombs are still pliable, even though they are thousands of years old. Beeswax candles salvaged from sunken ships are still in good condition even though they have been underwater for hundreds of years.

* Ancient peoples made candles from a variety of ingredients. Many used tallow, or animal fat. The Japanese used wax from an insect, the Chinese extracted oil from the tallow tree seed, and early American settlers made wax by boiling berries from the wax myrtle tree. In India wax was obtained from cinnamon, and in South America wax was obtained by scraping the leaves of the wax palm. American Indians simply stuck a spear through a candlefish and lit it.

* The first flushing toilet was in use almost 4,000 years ago at the Minoan Palace of Knossos on the island of Crete.

* Although not well publicized, ice sculpture competition is part of the Olympics Culture and Art Festival. To qualify for the Nagano Winter Olympics, Steve Brice and Kevin Roscoe created a 2.5-ton ice sculpture called Moment of Truth. It depicted a man fighting a lion and included an intricate net made of ice.

* The color of the egg yolk depends on what the hen has been eating. In this country, adding artificial colors is not allowed so some producers add marigold petals to the hen's food to create a more orange yolk.

I got these from the book Do Fish Drink Water? by Bill McLain. Very cool book! You should check it out! :)