What Makes Flamingos Pink?

by Bill McLain

  The first Olympic flag, which was approximately 10 feet by 6.5 feet, was made at the Bon Marche store in Paris, France, and flew over the Olympic stadium during the 1920 games in Antwerp, Belgium. The Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” was also on the flag, Latin for “faster, higher, stronger.” The flag was made of satin and the rings and motto were embroidered. Because it first flew at the Antwerp Olympics, it was called “the Antwerp flag.”

  This original flag was flown at every Olympics from 1920 to 1984. After 64 years of use, the flag started showing signs of wear and a new flag made of Korean silk was presented by Korea. It was first flown in the 1988 Olympic Games.

  If you look closely at the Olympic flag, you’ll see how the five rings are interlaced so that none can be removed. It’s significant that athletes and spectators from all over the world meet at the Olympic games, where they are joined together in a common event.

  FACTOIDS

  When the modern Olympics started in 1896, a silver medal was given for first-place winners because gold was considered inferior. Gold replaced silver beginning with the 1904 Olympics. Today the gold metals are sterling silver covered with a thin coat of pure gold.

  No medals were given in the 1900 Olympics held in Paris, France. Winners were awarded valuable pieces of art.

  In 1996, during the Atlanta Olympic Games, Shun Fujimoto of Japan broke his leg during a tumbling run in the floor exercise. Knowing that his team needed him, he decided to compete in the ring competition in spite of the broken leg. He finished with a triple-somersault dismount. He gritted his teeth as pain shot through his leg when he landed. He didn’t buckle but stood up. He scored 9.7. With the painful broken leg, Fuji-moto had one more thing to do. He managed to climb on top of the podium and stand tall as he was presented with a gold medal.

  Today’s Olympic creed stresses sportsmanship and the importance of participating rather than winning. In ancient Greece, the original Olympic Games were much different. The only thing that mattered was winning. The victor was crowned with a wreath of olive leaves, while those who finished second and third were sent home in disgrace.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  There have been many heroes in the long history of the Olympic Games. One such hero competed in the 1936 games and is still an inspiration to athletes today. He was Jesse Owens.

  Owens was only 23 when he competed in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. He had more to overcome than just athletic competition. Jesse Owens was an African-American. His father was a sharecropper in Alabama, and his grandfather had been a slave. In the 1930s, African-Americans were barred from playing on major league sports teams, a fact rather hard to believe today.

  Adolf Hitler, in power in 1936, believed that the German people were the super race and that everyone else was vastly inferior, especially Jews and African-Americans. The stadium in Berlin was to be a showcase for Hitler’s belief in the superiority of the German people.

  Jesse Owens proved Hitler wrong. Competing against top German athletes, he won four gold medals in the sprints and long jump, a record that was not equaled for almost 50 years when Carl Lewis did the same in 1984. In winning the four medals, Owens broke three Olympic records and tied a fourth. The 10 African-Americans on the United States Olympic team won 13 medals. Hitler refused to shake any of their hands and decided that African-Americans should not be allowed to compete in future games.

  One of the most stirring moments occurred when Jesse Owens fouled on his first two attempts at the long jump and had only one jump left. It’s been rumored that a German long jumper, Luz Long, told Owens to place a towel behind the takeoff board to use as a starting point. Whether it is true or not, the fact is that Owens’s final jump set an Olympic record. Luz Long and Jesse Owens, two competitors, walked off the field arm in arm.

  Of all the tributes paid to Jesse Owens during his lifetime, perhaps the most memorable are the words written on his gravestone.

  OLYMPIC CHAMPION

  1936

  A WINNER WHO KNEW THAT WINNING WAS NOT EVERYTHING

  Who invented Frisbee? (This one’s as easy as pie.)

  It all started with a pie. The Frisbie Baking Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, made pies that were sold to many colleges in New England in the 1940s. The college students soon discovered that if you threw an empty pie tin, it would sail gracefully through the air and could be caught. If you weren’t watching when someone threw a pie tin, it could hit you in the head, which wasn’t a pleasant feeling. Because Frisbie was stamped on the pie tin, students started yelling “Frisbie” to warn the other students that a metal disc was coming their way.

  There is still disagreement among authorities as to whether the company was called the Frisbie Baking Company or the Frisbie Pie Company. There is another controversy because the Frisbie Baking Company also made cookies shipped in round tins: one school of thought insists that students were throwing pie tins, while the other school of thought insists they were throwing cookie tin lids.

  In 1948, a Los Angeles building inspector, Walter Frederick “Fred” Morrison, started experimenting with flying discs. At that time people were talking about UFOs and flying saucers, so Morrison thought he might be able to capitalize on the public’s interest in flying saucers. He decided to make a flying disc out of plastic. His first creation was called the Arcuate Vane, and another version made out of harder plastic was named the Pipco Crash. In 1951, he produced his second model, which he called the Pluto Platter.

  A new toy company, WHAM-O, liked the Pluto Platter and bought the rights to the design. Unfortunately, it didn’t sell very well. The following year, WHAM-O’s president, Richard Knerr, when on a marketing trip to the East Coast, discovered Harvard and Yale students playing with pie tins they called Frisbies. He trademarked the name Frisbee in 1959 and sales soared.

  Early Frisbees had instructions written on the underside. They were “Play catch. Invent games. To fly, flip away backhand. Flat flip flies straight. Tilted flip curves.”

  The Frisbee has come a long way since then. There are at least 70 models of flying discs. Ultimate Frisbee, a cross between football, soccer, and basketball, is a recognized sport at hundreds of colleges; there are over 500 Frisbee disc golf courses around the world; and there are championship Frisbee events for dogs and even cats.

  It’s rather amazing when you realize it all started with an empty pie tin.

  FACTOIDS

  Fred Morrison’s father was the inventor of the automobile sealed-beam headlight.

  The outer third of a Frisbee is part of the original patented design and is known as Morrison’s slope.

  During World War II, Morrison was a prisoner of war in the famous Stalag 13 German prisoner-of-war camp.

  The Frisbie Baking Company shut down the same year Morrison received a patent for his flying disc.

  In 1968 the U.S. Navy spent almost $400,000 to study the aerodynamics of Frisbees. They put Frisbees in wind tunnels, took films of their flight, and analyzed them with computers. They even built a Frisbee launching machine on top of a cliff. After the money ran out, the research stopped.

  The first professional model Frisbee went on sale in 1964.

  To help the morale during Operation Desert Shield in 1991, more than 20,000 Frisbees were sent to the troops stationed in Saudi Arabia.

  The world’s record for throwing a flying disc the farthest is held by Sam Ferrans of La Habra, California, who in 1988 threw a disc a distance of 623 feet, 7 inches.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  In 1871, William Russell Frisbie was hired to manage a branch of the Olds Baking Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He eventually bought the bakery and renamed it the Frisbie Baking Company. William ran the bakery until his death in 1903, and his son managed it until 1940. Other heirs continued to operate the bakery from that time on.

  During its peak times, the Frisbie Baking Company opened outlets in other New England states. It grew from a small bakery with 6 routes to a large bakery with 250 routes, and
by 1956 the company was producing 80,000 pies a day. When college students started throwing the empty pie tins around, a company spokesperson complained that the bakery had lost around 5,000 reusable pie tins.

  The bakery closed its doors in 1958. It’s not known where the Yale students purchased their pies after that.

  What does “seeded” mean in tennis? (Another popular sport sprouted from it.)

  In the late 1800s, lawn tennis tournaments often began with matches between the best players. The worst players were scheduled to play near the end of the tournament. Unfortunately, audiences tended to leave the tournament after the best players had finished.

  Tournament promoters realized that they could keep audiences interested if the best players appeared at different times during the tournament. The promoters decided to scatter the top players “like seeds” throughout the scheduled matches so that less expert players would appear in the early matches. The idea of “seeding” is to make sure that the best players meet in the later stages of the tournament.

  Although seeding was used in the late 1800s, it wasn’t used in the United States National Championships until 1922, and in the Wimbledon Championships until 1924. In 1927, a system was devised that put players in fixed positions depending on merit.

  For many years tennis was a sport enjoyed mainly by the more affluent members of society. However, the late 1960s saw a tennis boom. Several factors fueled the new interest in tennis: championships became open to professionals as well as amateurs, television networks began broadcasting tennis matches, and there were changes in fashion and equipment. Tennis balls were made in various colors and tennis rackets became available in many styles and shapes.

  Today, tennis is played by millions of people and watched and enjoyed by countless others. Perhaps “seeding” players also helped make the sport more popular.

  FACTOIDS

  Some people believe that the term “love” for “zero” when scoring a tennis match comes from the French word l’oeuf, which means “egg.” However, the most accepted explanation is that it comes from “doing something out of love” or “doing it for nothing.” In other words, if a person consistently loses, or scores zeros, and keeps playing, that person must truly love the game.

  The strange scoring method in tennis was derived from the four quarters on a clock: 15, 30, 45, and 60. Because 60 minutes is the end of an hour, 60 signified the end of the match. Eventually, the 45 was shortened to 40 for some unknown reason.

  In medieval times, the French nobility played a game called jeu de paume, which means a “palm game,” because the ball was hit with an open hand. Later, rackets were used to hit the ball. A player about to serve the ball would yell out “Tenez!” (Here!) to let the other player know the game was starting. Tenez is the origin of the word tennis.

  The first tennis courts were grass and were called lawn courts. The game was referred to as lawn tennis.

  The longest match of a Grand Slam tournament was in the 1998 French Open when Spain’s Alex Corretja beat Argentina’s Hernan Gumy in 5 hours and 30 minutes. The match was only four minutes longer than the previous record set in the 1992 U.S. Open semifinals. That match between Stefan Edberg and Michael Chang lasted 5 hours and 26 minutes, with Edberg finally winning it.

  If a player wins all 24 points of a set, it is called a “gold set.” The only gold set ever recorded was between Bill Scallon of the United States and Marcos Horever of Brazil. Scallon won by 6 x 2, 6 x 0.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, but a form of tennis is the second most popular sport. It’s table tennis or Ping-Pong. This sport is played by more people in the United States than baseball or football.

  Although no one knows for sure, it is believed that table tennis originated in England around the 12th century as a parlor game version of Royal Tennis, as tennis was called then. Initially all the equipment was improvised. A piece of cardboard was the paddle, books were used to form a “net,” and the ball was often a ball of string.

  In the late 1800s, manufacturers of sporting goods started making official table tennis equipment such as solid rubber or cork balls. These early versions of table tennis were called by various names such as Gossima, Whiff-Whaff, and Flim-Flam.

  James Gibb, an Englishman visiting the United States, saw children playing with plastic toy balls and took some back to England to use for table tennis. They were an instant hit. Parker Brothers, Inc., had been making some table tennis equipment at the time and liked the sound of the plastic ball hitting the table. They decided to name their version of the game after the sound of the ball. They called it Ping-Pong.

  As the game grew in popularity, national and international associations were formed. The United States Table Tennis Association wanted to purchase rights to the name Ping-Pong but could not come to an agreement with Parker Brothers, so they named the sport table tennis.

  You can call the game Ping-Pong, table tennis, Whiff-Waff, or Flim-Flam. However, no matter what you call it, it’s an exciting and fun game.

  More questions? Try these Web sites.

  OLYMPIC GAMES

  http://www.pua.org/olympic.htm

  This site has a long list of Web sites devoted to the Olympic Games. It covers both the ancient and modern Olympic Games and includes statistics and other information.

  GOLF

  http://espn.go.com/golfonline/index.html

  http://www.worldgolf.com/

  Both of these sites contain up-to-the-minute news of the PGA, LPGA, and Seniors tours. They also have pages on golf instruction, equipment, and courses. The World Golf site contains a section on women’s golf, as well as classified advertisments.

  TENNIS

  http://www.tennisserver.com/

  This is a comprehensive tennis site with stories and features. It also has daily tennis news sources, equipment tips, rules and codes of tennis, tennis clubs and organizations, and links to other tennis Web sites.

  If you are interested in the origin of tennis, the following Royal Tennis Court site provides a history of the original indoor game, plus details of the court and rules. It also has quotes dating back to Chaucer.

  http://www.reltennies.gbrit.com/index.htm

  PLAY FRISBEE.COM

  http://www.playfrisbee.com/

  If you or your dog are Frisbee enthusiasts, you’ll love this site. It includes information about Ultimate Frisbee, Frisbee golf, freestyle Frisbee, and information about Frisbee-catching dogs. For instance, if you click on “Crucial Information,” you’ll find a link to a jargon dictionary, a “How to” link which explains how to throw a Frisbee, and a link to the history of the Frisbee.

  BOOKS, VIDEOS, AND MERCHANDISE FOR EVERY SPORT

  http://www.onlinesports.com/pages/top/html

  This is like having a gigantic sports catalog store in your computer. You can look for products by type of sport, supplier, item name, player, or team.

  13

  Transportation and Travel

  Why do diesel truck drivers leave their truck engines running when parked? (Not for a fast getaway.)

  Diesel truck drivers keep their engines running for two reasons, even if they’re not in the truck. One is that it takes a diesel engine time to warm up. If they turned off the engine, they’d have to wait for it to warm up again before they could start driving.

  The most important reason is because of their brakes. Truck brakes work on air pressure, created by a compressor that runs off the engine. If the drivers shut off the engine, air bleeds out of the compressor and the brakes lock up. Sufficient air pressure has to build up before the brakes can be released. If the engine is kept running, the compressor keeps the pressure up, and the driver can release the brakes as soon as he gets into the truck.

  A typical semi truck weighs 20 to 30 times as much as an automobile. Even with the best brakes, it cannot stop as fast as an automobile. In fact, a semi has a stopping distance 20 to 40 percent longer than a passenger car. When a big
rig and an automobile collide, it’s no contest. In fatal crashes involving an automobile and a large truck, 98 percent of the people killed were drivers or passengers in the automobiles.

  It’s a good idea to remember that statistic the next time you think about swerving in front of a truck to get ahead. You might even have the right of way. But that won’t help you if the truck can’t stop, and being dead right isn’t always a good thing.

  FACTOIDS

  Over half a million orange barrels used for highway construction zones are produced each year.

  In Massachusetts it’s against the law to deliver diapers on Sunday, even in an emergency.

  In spite of what some people think, wind tunnel tests have proven that if you drive a pickup truck with the tailgate up, there is less drag and you get better gas mileage than if you leave the tailgate down.

  Truck stops pump over 13 billion gallons of diesel fuel a year.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  The Terex Corporation manufactures off-highway mining trucks. One of its trucks, called the Titan, is used at the Elkview Coal Company in Sparwood, British Columbia. It is the world’s largest dump truck.

  The truck is over 22 feet high, almost 66 feet long, and almost 25 feet wide. It weighs 260 tons but can carry 350 tons. When the box is raised to dump a load, the truck is 56 feet high.

  The truck has 10 tires, each having a diameter of 11 feet. If you were six feet tall and stood next to the tire, your head would just be past the middle of the tire.