Did you know?

[Aggie]

Did You Know. People used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & Sold to the tannery.......if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor"
But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot......they "didn't have a pot to piss in" & were the lowest of the low
The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.
Here are some facts about the 1500s:
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell . ...... . Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting Married.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof... Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old. Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would Sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.
England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive... So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.
And that's the truth....Now, whoever said History was boring?

[Westerly_2]

Wow, thanks for this. Very interesting . Good to know where all those old sayings came from.

[Aggie]

Rationalization
#1 - Talk to yourself. There are times you need expert advice
#2 - "In Style" are the clothes that still fit.
#3 - You don't need anger management. You need people to stop pissing you off.
#4 - Your people skills are just fine. It's your tolerance for idiots that needs work.
#5 - The biggest lie you tell yourself is, "I don't need to write that down. I'll remember it."
#6 - "On time" is when you get there.
#7 - Even duct tape can't fix stupid - but it sure does muffle the sound.
#8 - It would be wonderful if we could put ourselves in the dryer for ten minutes, then come out wrinkle-free and three sizes smaller?
#9 - Lately, You've noticed people your age are so much older than you.
#10 - Growing old should have taken longer.
#11 - Aging has slowed you down, but it hasn't shut you up.
#12 - You still haven't learned to act your age, and hope you never will.
And one more: "One for the road" means peeing before you leave the house.

[Westerly_2]

;^ )

[Aggie]

Did ya know?
Texas has a gross state product of $1.645 trillion (2017), the 2nd largest in the U.S. As of 2015, Texas is home to six (6) of the top 50 companies on the Fortune 500 list and 51 overall (3rd most after New York and California)............. Texas's household income was $48,259 in 2010 ranking 25th in the nation.

[Westerly_2]

I did not know that.

[Aggie]

Did you know that "upper case" and "lower case" refer to the physical cases where printers keep their letters?

[Westerly_2]

Nope. Interesting.

[Aggie]

Whenever you see the shed skin of a snake, that means it got bigger.
Same rule applies to me whenever you see the empty boxes of Thin Mints scattered around my house.

[Aggie]

Sometimes cowboys referred to beans as “Deceitful Beans” because they talked behind your back.

[Westerly_2]

;^ 》

[Aggie]

"Get the lead out" refers the Wagon Master telling settlers to remove lead used for bullets out of wagon while going up hill. Lead was the most heavy thing in wagon.

[Aggie]

World War II Aviation Gasoline

It has always puzzled me as to why the German Luftwaffe kept on using 87 Octane Aviation Gasoline while the Americans and British used 100 Octane Gasoline in their Spitfire Fighters and Americans used 130 Octane in our P-51 and other fighters. This morning I discovered the reason!
This article by the British Society of Chemists was declassified in 2014
It seems that the German and British aircraft both used 87 octane gasoline in the first two years of the war. While that was fairly satisfactory in the German Daimler-Benz V-12 engine, it was marginal in the British Rolls-Royce Merlin XX engine in British aircraft. It fouled the spark-plugs, caused valves to stick, and made frequent engine repair problems.
Then came lend-lease and American aircraft began to enter British service in great numbers. If British engines hated 87 octane gasoline, Allison 1710 engines built by General Motors, loathed and despised it.
Something had to be done!
Along came an American named Tim Palucka, a chemist for Sun Oil in their Southeast Texas Refinery. Never heard of him? Small wonder, very few people have. He took a French formula for enhancing the octane of gasoline, and invented the "Cracking Tower" which produced 100 octane aviation gasoline. This discovery led to great joy among our English cousins and great distress among the Germans.
A Spitfire fueled with 100 octane gasoline was 34 miles per hour faster at 10,000 feet. The need to replace engines went from every 500 hours of operation to every 1,000 hours. That reduced the cost of British aircraft by 300 Pounds Sterling. Even more, when used in 4 engine bombers. The Germans couldn't believe it when Spitfires that couldn't catch them a year ago started shooting their ME-109 E and G models right out of the sky.
Of course, the matter had to be kept secret. If the Germans found out that it was a French invention, they would simply copy the original French patents. If any of you have ever wondered what they were doing in that 3 story white brick building in front of the Sun Oil Refinery on Old Texas Highway 90, that was it. They were re-inventing gasoline.
The American Allison engines improved remarkably with 100 Octane Gasoline, but did much better when 130 octane gasoline came along in 1944. The 130 octane gasoline also improved the radial engine bombers America produced.
The Germans and Japanese never realized that we had re-invented gasoline. Neither did our "friends" the Russians. 100,000 Americans died in the skies over Europe. Lord only knows what that number would have been without "Super-Gasoline".
And it all was invented just a few miles west of Beaumont, Texas and we never knew a thing about it.