posted on December 29, 2000 09:03:21 AM new
1) Roman legionnaires were paid in salt.
2) What kind of strike? Gold strike? Dahlonega, Georgia in the 1830s. Labor strike? I think it was in the Pennsylvania coal fields in the late 1800s.
3) Henry Cabot Lodge.
4) "God Bless Us, Everyone"
5) Vulcan is a god in the Roman pantheon. His predecessor was Hephaistos, the Greek god of the underworld. Both were associated with volcanoes (as the most obvious manifestation of the underworld available to the ancients) and were portrayed as smiths. I'm not sure if Hephaistos and Vulcan were the Greek and Roman gods of war but I think that if the Romans ever named a planet after Vulcan it would have to have been Mars.
6) I believe Darwin is the inspiration for this phrase but did not actually coin it himself.
7) 5 (or perhaps 6?) per side.
8) To crop the grass on the lawn. This was not an uncommon practice in earlier times in America but I think it was definitely antiquated by the time Wilson did it.
posted on December 29, 2000 09:48:36 AM new
Without resorting to a web search, #1 is the only answer of which I'm certain.
I am having a difficult time resisting the urge to provide an answer to #8. If I had a suitable photo of Mrs. Wilson, and the ability to post it, I surely would have succumbed.
posted on December 29, 2000 10:03:53 AM new
1) Where does the word salary come from?
I believe it comes from the word "celery" as the early Roman workers were paid in vegatables.
2) When did the first strike in the United States take place?
Immediately after the first pitch was thrown out.
3) who was Richard M. Nixon's running mate in 1960?
Sorry, can't think of a witty answer for this one.
4) What are the last words of A Christmas Carol?
And a partridge in a pear tree.
5) Was there ever a planet Vulcan?
Sure, that's where we got vulcanized rubber.
6) Who came up with the phrase survival of the fittest?
Richard Hatch
7) How many players do you need to start a polo game?
4 or 2 if you have horses.
8) Why did President Woodrow Wilson keep sheep at the White House?
Because there were no interns at that time.
Bonus: What (not who) are the presidents carved on Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, meant to represent?
A Smith Brothers cough drops box
DISCLAIMER: Due to my current medicated state (doctor's orders) I take no responsibility for anything I post here. The only exception is if you find it witty in which case I take full responsibility.
posted on December 30, 2000 10:18:09 AM new
thank you thank you for your answers... especially the funny ones
ok here they are....
1) It evolved from salrium argentium, or "salt money," fees paid to Roman soldiers to buy the then precious commodity.
2)In 1776, in New York, when members of the Journeymen Printers Union struck against their local shops.
3) Henry Cabot Lodge
4) "And so, as Tiny Tim observed, 'God Bless us, EveryOne!'"
5) Astronomers once believed that a planet called Vulcan existed between the planet Mercury and the Sun. It's existence - first proposed by French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier in 1845 - was hypothesized to explain a discrepancy in Mercury's orbit. Vulcan was even reported to have been observed once, but the observation was never confirmed. Einstein's general theory of relativity later explained Mercury's odd orbit, and the existence of Vulcan was discredited.
6) NOT Charles Darwin. The British philosopher and scientist Herbert Spencer introduced the phrase in Principles of Biology (1864-1867) as a way of describing Darwin's theory of natural selection.
7) You need two teams with 4 players each and horses for all of them. the aim is to drive a wooden ball down a grass field and between two goalposts. (which brings up another question: should they scream 'GOAL' when they struck home?)
8) (I thought you guys will have fun with this question)
answer: The sheep were part of the war effort. In 1917, during WWI, President Wilson arranged for a small flock of sheep to graze on the White House lawn, thus freeing up the regular gardeners for military service. Although the sheep began eating more of the White House grounds than the lawn, the Wilsons continued to defend them - citing, among other things, the vast amounts of "White House wool" the sheep generated for the Red Cross.
Bonus:
The four 60-foot-high likeness, sculpted between 1925 and 1941, are meant to represent the following:
George Washington - the nation's founding
Thomas Jefferson - its political philosophy
Abraham Lincoln - its perservation
Theodore Roosevelt - its expansion and conservation
edited to correct spelling
[ edited by toomanycomics on Dec 30, 2000 10:23 AM ]
