by Bill McLain
FACTOIDS
At birth a dalmatian is always pure white. The spots appear later as the dog grows.
The haircut typically seen on poodles is a carryover from when the dog was used as a retriever. Hair pompoms were left on the joints to keep the dog warm and help it swim better.
The “apso” in the Lhasa apso dog from Tibet is a Tibetan word meaning “goatlike.” The dog was named after the city of Lhasa in Tibet.
Queen Victoria was the first person in England to ever own a dachshund. Dachshunds were actually bred to fight badgers in their lairs.
The Irish wolfhound is the largest breed of dog and the Chihuahua is the smallest. The Saint Bernard is the heaviest breed.
According to the American Kennel Club, the five most popular breeds of dog, in order, are: Labrador retriever, rottweiler, German shepherd, golden retriever, and poodle—all in the top ten list of most intelligent dog breeds.
DID YOU KNOW?
Although people talk about “training a dog,” the truth is that the owner must be trained first. A good dog trainer’s prime job is to teach you how to become the trainer for your own dog.
Unlike humans, dogs do not believe in equality. Dogs classify everything as either “leader” or “follower.” If you do not become the “leader” the dog will learn nothing. If you start reacting to the dog’s behavior, then it is training you!
There are many factors that enter into proper training of an animal. However, the two most important things when dealing with any living creature are quite simple: love and patience.
Do fish drink water? (“Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.”)
Although fish do drink water, their primary method of obtaining fresh water is through osmosis. The water seeps into their body through tiny holes in their skin.
Osmosis is simply the movement of a solution (such as salt and water) through a semiporous membrane (such as a fish’s skin) until the concentration of the solution becomes equal on both sides of the membrane.
When a fish lives in salt water, the ocean water contains more salt than does the liquid in the fish. Thus, osmosis draws water out of the fish and the fish needs continually to drink water to replenish the liquid being drawn out of its body.
When a fish lives in fresh water, the water has less salt than does the liquid in the fish and water is drawn through the fish’s skin into its body. Therefore, freshwater fish do not need to drink water. However, they swallow some water when they open their mouths to eat.
FACTOIDS
Some very small reef fishes live only a few weeks or months, but sturgeons can live to be more than 50 years old. Rougheye rockfish can live to be 150 years old.
The ocean sunfish is so heavy that it is difficult to catch and weigh. All species of this fish are from 7 to 10 feet long. One sunfish tipped the scales at just over 3,100 pounds.
The largest fish is the whale shark, which can be more than 50 feet long and can weigh about 2 tons. The smallest fish is the goby, which is rarely longer than a half inch when it’s fully grown.
Although it’s estimated that there are 20,000 different species of fish (some scientists believe there may be as many as 40,000 species), the most common fish in the ocean is the cyclothone. It is a deepwater fish about the size of a small minnow and lives in all the oceans of the world at depths of 1,500 feet or more.
DID YOU KNOW?
One of the most fascinating fishes is the seahorse, which is a true fish. These small creatures, which look like miniature horses, have some fascinating habits.
Seahorses are monogamous and stay with one partner for their entire lives. Every morning they perform a greeting dance to reaffirm their pledge to each other. If a partner dies, it is a long time before the seahorse will search for a new partner.
The male seahorse becomes pregnant and nourishes the young until they are born. Once the young are born, parental care ends and the baby seahorses must fend for themselves. A baby seahorse faces many dangers. It must protect itself from predators, and if it mistakenly eats a small air bubble thinking it’s food, it will die.
Seahorses are not very agile and rely on camouflage for protection. They can rapidly change the color of their bodies to blend into whatever background they are in at the time.
Unfortunately these wonderful little horselike fishes are becoming an endangered species. Asian countries use them for food, medicine, and aphrodisiacs, and the curio and aquarium market is also steadily growing. China alone consumes over 6 million seahorses a year. There are at least 36 countries engaged in buying and selling seahorses.
A seahorse rarely lives more than three years, but with its popularity as a food and medicine, not many will live even that long.
More questions? Try these websites.
A VIRTUAL ZOO
http://www.sandiegozoo.org/apps/animals/
This site provides both pictures and descriptions of animals. Click on Mammals, Birds, or Reptiles. Then click on the name of the animal you’d like to see. For other zoo sections, use the Available Main Sections pull-down menus on this page.
WILDLIFE
http://www.selu.com/~bio/wildlife
This site has pictures and descriptions of animals as well as information on conservation. You can also search for a specific animal. When you go to the site, first click on Wildlife Gallery. Then select the animal, bird, or reptile to see its photograph. If you click on Wildlife Links and then click on Animals, you’ll see a list of categories of different animals. Click on a category to display a list of Web links related to that animal.
LIVESTOCK
http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/
Everything you want to know about livestock: horses, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs—even buffalo and camels. First click on Breeds of Livestock, then click on the category you want to see, such as Horses. Scroll down the left column and select the breed of horse, such as Appaloosa. The page will display a photograph of the horse as well as its history and other interesting information.
DOGS
http://www.mgr.com/howell/bobpages/mainmenu.htm
There are two ways to use this site effectively. You can use the pull-down menus to select the breed of dog you are interested in, then click on Go To to see a picture of the dog along with information about that breed. Or you can use the menu in the upper left corner of the page to display dogs by breed names, pictures, or types. You can also get information about books or the American Kennel Club.
CATS
http://noahspets.com/catbreed1.html
This site is very easy to use. Just click on the breed of cat you want to see, such as Siamese. You’ll see a photograph of the cat and a very thorough description, including tips on purchasing the cat, related websites, cat care, news, and shows.
Clothing and Apparel
When and where were the first eyeglasses made? (Seeing is believing.)
Although Nero used emerald-colored lenses to view the gladiator games in A.D. 60, it’s questionable whether he could actually see better. The first “reading glass” was developed around A.D. 1000 but was more of a magnifying glass than an eyeglass. Most historians believe the first eyeglasses were invented in 1284 or 1285. No one knows if the inventor was a monk, a scientist, or a craftsman, but all agree that the inventor was Italian.
In the 1300s eyeglasses were a luxury used by the rich as a symbol of their wealth and power. However, when Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1456, the history of eyeglasses changed forever. Because of the widespread availability of books, the use of reading glasses gradually filtered down to the common people and became an important part of everyday life.
However, eyeglasses still had a long way to go. Finding a pair that helped the wearer see better was a time-consuming process of trying on one pair after another until sight improved. In the seventeenth century the Spanish invented the first graded lenses, which solved the problem of the trial-and-error fitting of eyeglasses.
Until the eighteenth century, eyeglasses e
ither balanced precariously on the nose or were held by the rim with one hand. Finally, an optician in Paris added short arms that extended to the temples, and an optician in England carried the idea further by extending the arms to the ears. This became the world standard for eyeglass frames.
FACTOIDS
Although many people have heard that Benjamin Franklin invented the first bifocals, they were actually invented by an English optician almost ten years before Franklin.
Approximately 70 percent of the U.S. population wears eyeglasses or contact lenses.
The first eyeglasses were quartz lenses set into bone or metal mountings. The frames looked as if two magnifying glass handles were riveted together to form an inverted V over the wearer’s nose.
Leonardo da Vinci had an idea for contact lenses in 1508. In 1845 John Herschel had the same idea but it was almost another 50 years before the first contact lens appeared. A German who made glass eyes blew a lens to cover the eyeball of a man whose eyelid had been destroyed by cancer. The patient wore the lens until his death 20 years later. He never lost his vision.
Perhaps the reason that the patron saint of eyeglass makers is not popular is that it’s difficult to remember his name: Sofronius Eusebius Hieronymus.
Where did the idea for underwear come from? (Not from Jockeys.)
Underwear is one of the earliest known types of clothing; its use was recorded as far back as 3000 B.C. It started as a narrow band around the waist from which both decorative and magical pendants were hung. The Egyptians wore woven material wrapped around the body several times and then tied in front.
Loincloths were worn in Crete around 2000 B.C. They were usually decorated, often with intricate patterns. Even today, loincloths are worn in many tropical and semitropical regions of the world.
Between 2105 B.C. and 1240 B.C., men in Babylonia and Mesopotamia wore loincloths as undergarments and women wore short skirts as undergarments.
Around A.D. 200 the Romans wore undergarments. Both men and women wore a loincloth similar to our modern briefs. The women also wore a breast band called a “mammillare.”
In 1850 Amelia Jenks Bloomer advocated a costume for women made up of a short jacket, a skirt extending below the knee, and loose “Turkish” trousers, which were later referred to as “bloomers.” This fashion never caught on, but the term “bloomers” stuck and eventually became the name for loose, baggy underwear worn by women.
The term “underwear” did not come into use until 1879.
FACTOIDS
During World War II, Americans stationed in Europe had a hard time finding men’s underwear. At that time most Europeans considered underwear to be “optional.” Even today American underwear is extremely popular in Europe.
The word “negligee” comes from the French word meaning “careless” or “neglected.” The garment was a soft, loose-fitting gown in contrast to the fashion of tightly corseted and laced clothing.
In the 1900s both men and women wore corsets. Men wore them during sports such as horseback riding.
DID YOU KNOW?
No one knows for sure who started manufacturing underwear in the United States. Some claim it was the Union Underwear Company in Indiana. Others say it was BVD (Bradley, Voorhees, and Day were the three founders of the company). Still others say that the first underwear in the United States was imported from Stanfields in Nova Scotia.
Although there is still debate about who first manufactured underwear in the United States, there is no debate about the product itself. Underwear was made of wool and the itching could drive a person crazy. Relief came when the garment was taken off for the night. It wasn’t until the 1920s that the process of carbonizing wool to remove burrs created a softer fabric. Eventually cotton became the industry standard for underwear.
Although it rarely happens, cotton underwear can fall apart during washing. Because of this, some people actually take their underwear to the dry cleaners.
But with all the available underwear, one debate still rages on. Which is better for a man to wear, briefs or boxer shorts? Despite many compelling arguments on either side, there is still no answer.
Are denim, jeans, and Levi’s the same thing? (Not just for cowboys anymore.)
Denim, jeans, and Levi’s are three completely different items. Denim is a very durable cotton fabric that is usually light blue because it is woven with one colored thread and one white thread. However, the origin of denim is still hotly debated by historians, designers, and writers. Most believe that the origin of the word comes from the French serge de Nîmes, a serge fabric made in the French town of Nîmes before the seventeenth century. However, serge de Nîmes was a silk and wool fabric while denim is always made of cotton. Some think that denim or serge de Nîmes referred to any fabric with a twill weave that resembled the serge made in Nîmes.
In the sixteenth century a fabric called “jean” became quite popular. It was originally a blend of cotton, linen, and/or wool but by the eighteenth century was made completely of cotton. The name is derived from Genoa, the town in Italy where it was first made. The French called the cloth from Genoa “gênes” after the name of that Italian city. Jean cloth was prized because it remained durable even after many washings. Unlike denim, jean cloth is woven from two blue threads rather than a white thread and a blue thread.
Levi Strauss was a wholesale dry goods merchant. After coming to San Francisco in 1853, Strauss earned a reputation for selling quality goods. A tailor who had been making metal-riveted pants for the California gold rush miners needed money for a patent application and asked Strauss to be his partner. The two obtained a patent and began making copper-riveted overalls out of brown cotton duck and blue denim. Denim was a much sturdier fabric than jean cloth.
The company founded by Levi Strauss flourished after his death and the garments produced by the factory were named “Levi’s” after Levi Strauss. By the 1920s Levi’s had become a synonym for the waist overalls which were the most popular men’s work pants in the western United States.
FACTOIDS
Levi Strauss & Company did not start selling its products nationally until the 1950s. Prior to that time people in the Midwest and East could buy products by other manufacturers, but not the true “Levi’s jeans.”
Approximately 2.5 billion yards of denim are produced throughout the world each year.
Over 515 million pairs of jeans are sold in the United States every year.
Today the word “jeans” refers to any pair of pants with two pockets in the front, two in the back, and a small change pocket inside the right front pocket. The pants can be made from any fabric, including corduroy, twill, canvas, or denim.
A pair of 1950s Levi’s jeans that had never been washed was sold to a collector for $91,000.
Most employees of Levi Strauss & Company wear Levi’s jeans to work.
The oldest pair of Levi’s jeans in the world were found in an abandoned silver mine in the California Mojave Desert. They had been made in 1890, and the woman who found them patched them up and wore them for some time before selling them back to Levi Strauss & Company. They are known today as the “Calico Mine Pants.”
DID YOU KNOW?
It took jeans (or denims or Levi’s) many years to climb the ladder of social acceptance.
They were first worn as work clothes because of their durability and were always associated with laborers. In the 1930s the West captured the imagination of people in the United States. Real cowboys as well as stars in Western films wore jeans, and western clothing became a symbol of independence and individualism.
In the late 1940s jeans became more fashionable for leisure activities, but even in the 1950s jeans were associated with juvenile delinquents and could not be worn in most schools. It didn’t help that in the 1960s college protesters wore jeans—once more jeans earned a bad reputation.
Attitudes changed in the 1980s and jeans were finally accepted and could be worn almost anywhere, including places where they had previously
been banned, such as fine restaurants.
Today jeans have become a symbol of life in the United States and will probably be popular for many decades to come.
What is the origin of the neckties that men wear? (Bow or bola?)
It is possible that neckties date back to prehistoric times, although it cannot be proven. Prehistoric humans may have often puffed and pounded their chests to show authority, and the rank of a male in a prehistoric culture often probably depended on his chest ornaments.
The earliest form of a necktie appears in ancient Rome. Roman public speakers wore a neck cloth to protect their throats and keep them warm. Later on, Roman soldiers wore a neck cloth as did ancient Chinese warriors. It is believed that these were not worn as adornments but were used to pad and support the armor the soldiers wore. However, these neck cloths disappeared completely during the Middle Ages.
Most historians believe that the necktie originated in the 1660s during the reign of Louis XIV of France. A regiment of crack Croatian mercenaries who were celebrating their victory over the Turks visited France and were presented as heroes to King Louis. The king, known for his fondness for fashion, noticed that the Croatian officers wore brightly colored silk handkerchiefs around their necks. The king was so enthralled with these that he made them a royal insignia and created his own regiment of royal “Cravattes.” “Cravat” comes from the word “Croat,” referring to the Croatians. When today’s U.S. soldiers wear their dress uniforms, they also wear colored neck cloths representing their unit (blue for infantry, red for artillery, yellow for armored, and so on).
