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Q: How did Groundhog Day start, and why do they think that a groundhog can predict the weather?
A: German tradition holds that if the sun comes out on Candlemas, the precursor to Groundhog Day, the hedgehog (or badger) will see its shadow and six more weeks of winter will follow. When German settlers came to Pennsylvania they continued this tradition, using groundhogs instead of hedgehogs to predict the weather.
The first official Groundhog Day was celebrated on February 2, 1886 in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. The legendary first Groundhog Day trip to Gobbler’s Knob was made the following year by a group of groundhog hunters who dubbed themselves “The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club.” A local newspaper stated that Phil, the Punxsutawney Groundhog, was the one and only official weather prognosticating groundhog. The groundhog’s full name is actually “Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators and Weather Prophet Extraordinary.” It was so proclaimed by the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club in 1887, the same year they declared Punxsutawney to be the weather capital of the world.
Phil’s fame began to spread and newspapers from around the world began to report his predictions. Growing legions of fans started making the trek to Punxsutawney every February 2. With the release of the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray, the crowds began to number in the tens of thousands, even though the movie was actually filmed in Woodstock, Illinois. Phil’s yearly Groundhog Day predictions are actually even entered into the Congressional Record!
For most of the year, Phil lives in a climate-controlled home at the Punxsutawney Library. He is taken to Gobbler’s Knob and placed in a heated burrow underneath a simulated tree stump on stage before being pulled out at 7:25 am on Groundhog Day to make his prediction.
Phil is reputed by townspeople to be more than 100 years old, surviving beyond a marmot’s normal life span thanks to the strong constitution of his wife, Phyllis, and a steady diet of Groundhog Punch (obviously a euphemism for groundhog Viagra – note the big smile on Phyllis’ furry face).
Most major television stations across the country, as well as the big screen in Times Square, broadcast the official Groundhog Day ceremony.
When asked about the other weather predicting groundhogs around the country, Alan Freed, Webmaster for Punxsutawneyphil.com and Groundhog.org, says “We’ll take ‘em seriously just as soon as a major motion picture is created in their honor!”
Source: http://pittsburgh.about.com/cs/punxsutawney/a/groundhog_day.htm
Q: How was Bill Clinton impeached, yet he served two full terms as President of the United States?
A: Bill Clinton, President of the United States, was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice on December 19, 1998, but acquitted by the Senate on February 12, 1999. With a two-thirds majority required for conviction, only 45 senators voted guilty on the perjury charge and 50 on the obstruction charge.
What prompted these charges? In taped phone conversations, Monica Lewinsky, a former White House Intern, discussed having oral sex with Clinton. Details were also pulled from her e-mails and hard drive. Apparently, Bill’s hard drive couldn’t resist the temptation. At the deposition, Clinton claimed “sexual relations” meant only vaginal intercourse. Really, Bubba? No wonder Hillary never looks very happy – maybe it’s time to buy a new dictionary or copy of the Kama Sutra. Clinton also contended that his statement that “there’s nothing going on between us” had been truthful because he had no ongoing relationship with Lewinsky at the time he was questioned.
So Bill Clinton was indeed impeached by the House, but acquitted by the Senate and, therefore, was able to complete his second term as president.
Looking back, my advice to Monica Lewinsky would have been to keep her mouth shut on the phone and when she’s on her knees in the front of the president.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Bill_Clinton
Was Walt Disney frozen just before he died with the intentions of being brought back to life?
No. According to a copy of his death certificate, Walt Disney died of lung cancer and was creamated at Forest Lawn Cemetary on 12/17/66 (two days after he died).
The rumors probably started since the grounds keepers at the cemetery won’t disclose the location of Disney’s remains.
Evidently, Mr Disney spend a lot of time under the Pirates of the Carribean section of Disneyland. The rumor is that Disney was cryogenically frozen and was tucked away nicely under the Pirates exhivbit. As the story goes, Disney wanted to be frozen in time and unfrozen after there was a cure for cancer.
That however didn’t actually happen.
Can Sarah Palin really see Russia from her home in Alaska?
No. Sarah Palin can not see any part of Russian land from her house in Alaska, that is unless she’s watching TV, looking at a picture or maybe on a globe. However, Palin actually never claimed to be able to see Russia from her house. It was actually Tina Fey who made that statement while she was playing Palin in a Saturday Night Live skit.
However, there are some places in Alaska where you can actually see Russia. Alaska and Russia are seperated by the Bering Strait. At the most narrow portion, pnly 55 miles seperates Russia from Alaska. It might be a stretch to catch a glimpse of Russia while standing in Alaska there, but there are two small islands located within that body of water. The Little Diomede is in Alaska and the Big Diomede is in Russia. With only 2.5 miles separating the two, it is possible to see to from one to the other. Here’s the view from Alaska to Russia:
Even more interesting, looking at the Big Diomede from the Little Diomede is like looking into the future. That’s because the Big Diomede is on the other side of the International date line making it hours ahead of the Little Diomede!
It was, however, the proximity of these to Islands that Sarah Palin used to explain her experience in foreign affairs. Ms. Palin told ABC’s Charlie Gibson that she had experience working with foreign leaders since you could see Russia from Alaska.
Today’s installment of “Things that make you go hmmm…” hopes to answer the age old Thanksgiving question…. “Does turkey really contain an ingredient that makes you sleeping after eating it?
Here’s the answer to that question compliments of the folks at about.com:
Unless a microwave dinner is your idea of a Thanksgiving feast, you probably have had firsthand experience with the after-dinner fatigue that sets in after the meal. Why do you want a nap? To escape the dishes? Perhaps, but the meal itself plays a big part in the way you feel.
The turkey is often cited as the culprit in after dinner lethargy, but the truth is that you could omit the bird altogether and still feel the effects of the feast. Turkey does contain L-tryptophan, an essential amino acid with a documented sleep inducing effect. L-tryptophan is used in the body to produce the B-vitamin, niacin. Tryptophan also can be metabolized into serotonin and melatonin, neurotransmitters that exert a calming effect and regulates sleep. However, L-tryptophan needs to be taken on an empty stomach and without any other amino acids or protein in order to make you drowsy. There’s lots of protein in a serving of turkey and it’s probably not the only food on the table.
It’s worth noting that other foods contain as much or more tryptophan than turkey (0.333 g of tryptophan per 100 gram edible portion), including chicken (0.292 g of tryptophan per 100 gram edible portion), pork, and cheese. As with turkey, other amino acids are present in these foods besides tryptophan, so they don’t make you sleepy.
So while it might not be the turkey that makes you pass out at the end of the day, you probably don’t want to stuff yourself with too much of anything else either. It might just be that eating so much food can just wear people out!
If you want to learn more about nutrition, a nutrition degree online may
be an option for you.
[Editor's Note: This is our first installment of our first regular column here at the new queerplanet.net. "Things that make you go hmmm..." is a chance to answer some of those question that you can't typically find or to settle a debate between you and someone you know.
If you've got a question that you want us to try and answer or a queer fact that you want to share, then e-mail us at hmmm@queerplanet.net. We'll feature the best questions or most interesting facts here at queerplanet.net with the rest of our abnormal news and world wide weirdness. Now, here's our first installment of "Things that make you go hmmm..."]
Question: Does the human body really lose 21 grams at the time of death? If so, where does it go?
Answer: This seems to be one of those controversial tidbits that leaves us guessing. Evidently, there have been several studies that show the body does loose up to 21 grams at the time of death. The hard part is explaining what those 21 grams are and where they go. Many people seem to have accepted the fact that this is the human soul, and that it instantly leaves your body upon death.
There was even a movie made about this question in 2003 called “21 Gramm.”
Here’s more from ABC Science:
People have believed that the “soul” has a definite physical presence for hundreds, and possibly thousands, of years. But it was only as recently as 1907, that a certain Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill in Massachusetts actually tried to weigh this soul. In his office, he had a special bed “arranged on a light framework built upon very delicately balanced platform beam scales” that he claimed were accurate to two-tenths of an ounce (around 5.6 grams). Knowing that a dying person might thrash around and upset such delicate scales, he decided to “select a patient dying with a disease that produces great exhaustion, the death occurring with little or no muscular movement, because in such a case, the beam could be kept more perfectly at balance and any loss occurring readily noted”.
He recruited six terminally-ill people, and according to his paper in the April 1907 edition of the journal American Medicine, he measured a weight loss, which he claimed was associated with the soul leaving the body. In this paper, he wrote from beside the special bed of one of his patients, that “at the end of three hours and 40 minutes he expired and suddenly coincident with death the beam end dropped with an audible stroke hitting against the lower limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound. The loss was ascertained to be three fourths of an ounce.”
He was even more encouraged when he repeated his experiment with 15 dogs, which registered no change in weight in their moment of death. This fitted in perfectly with the popular belief that a dog had no soul, and therefore would register no loss of weight at the moment of demise.
