Cracked Egg Trivia

I recently read The Outsiders for the first time, and I loved it so I decided to do some research about the woman who wrote it. Susan Eloise Hinton was born on July 22, 1948, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1965, when she was just 16 years old, she began work on her first book, The Outsiders. She was inspired to write the book by two rivaling gangs at her school, Will Rogers High School, the Greasers and the Socs. She decided to write the book from a Greaser's point of view to show empathy toward the gang in real life. The Outsiders was published by Viking in 1967, written by S.E.Hinton. She decided to use this gender-neutral moniker so that male readers wouldn't be put off by a woman writing from a boy's point of view. After the success of The Outsiders she gained a wild amount of popularity putting a lot of pressure on her, and resulting in a three-year long writers block. Her boyfriend (now her husband) helped her get past it by making her write two pages a day if she want...

Martha Skelton Jefferson was born Martha Wayles on October 30, 1748. Her father, John Wayles, worked for Farrell & Jones (who were Bristol-based merchants) as an attorney, slave trader, and business agent. He was also a prosperous planter. Her mother, Martha Eppes, was a daughter of Francis Eppes, and came from an early Virginia settlement along the James River, Bermuda Hundred. Martha Wayles became Martha Skelton at the age of 18 when she married Bathurst Skelton on November 20, 1766. They had a son named John who was born in the November of the next year. On September 30, 1768, Bathurst died after a sudden illness. And on June, 10, 1771, their son John died of a fever. Martha then married Thomas Jefferson on January 1, 1772. After their wedding they spent two weeks at Martha's father's plantation, The Forest. Then they set out for Jefferson's plantation, Monticello. They made the 100-mile journey in a two-horse carriage during one of the worst snowstorms to hit ...

The "first lady" doesn't have to be the president's wife, and throughout history there have been different kinds of first ladies. Daughters, nieces, and even daughter-in-laws have all taken on the role. This can happen for many reasons, in Buchanan's case he never married, in Thomas Jefferson's his wife died before he became president. That is where I ran into problems. Should I write about the president's wife or the woman who acted as the "first lady"? The obvious choice would be the first lady, but this series is called "Life Before the White House", and would it be right to ignore the women who played such important roles in our presidents lives before they were ever elected? I decided to honor both, and whenever there is a case like is mentioned earlier I will write about both women. The first ladies that served during the presidency, and the ones that served before.

To animals its food, and to us its something to be mowed, but grass is so much more than that. Here are three quick facts about the under appreciated grass, plus a little extra. 1. There are a lot of different kinds of grass. In total there are over 10,000 types of grass, and they all belong to the Poaceae or Graminae family. Grasses are split up into many different groups though. There are turf grasses (the grasses that grow in places like your yard, golf courses, and playgrounds), forage grasses (which are grasses used for livestock grazing), and cereals (such as wheat, barley, rye, oats, rice, and corn) among others. 2. Palm trees are a type of grass. That's right palm trees are technically classified as grasses. Grasses are monocots, which means that they have one seed and a fibrous stem, and palm trees fit those requirements. Although they are often categorized as trees because of their size. 3. Grass is used to make some alcoholic beverages. Whiskey is made with ...

Most of us have heard of Pocahontas, and some of us might have even watched the movie (it's one of my favorites). But I wanted to talk about the story behind the story, the truth about the woman behind the myth. Her real name was Amonute, although she went by Matoaka, and Pocahontas was her nickname. Pocahontas means "playful one" or "ill-behaved child". She was born sometime around 1595, and was the daughter of Powhatan. Powhatan was the ruler of over 30 Algonquian-speaking tribes who lived in the Tidewater region of Virginia, the area around the future site of Jamestown. In 1607, when Pocahontas was 11 or 12, John Smith was kidnapped by her brother and brought to meet Chief Powhatan. What happened after is the subject of an often heated debate. Smith claims that his head was placed on two stones and was about to be smashed when Pocahontas placed her head on top of his, saving his life. However some people think that he was lying since his stories about the...

1. He was  Mickey Mouse. After Mickey spoke for the first time in "The Karnival Kid", which was released in 1929, Disney decided that he didn't like the way his voice sounded, so he began voicing the iconic character himself until 1947 when he became too busy. 2. He was a father of two. He and his wife Lillian, whom he married in 1925 after a brief courtship, had two daughters. Their eldest daughter Diane was born in December 1933. They adopted their second daughter, Sharon, in December of 1936 when she was six weeks old. 3. He was in the army. He joined the Red Cross Ambulance Corps when he was 16, by forging his birth certificate to show that he was 17 which was the minimum age requirement. 4. He won a LOT of Academy Awards. In fact he holds the record for the most individual Oscar wins. He won 22, and was nominated for 59. 5. He had a secret hideout. He had an apartment above the park's Main Street Firehouse, from which he watched the opening day ...

1. Their fur isn't really white. A polar bear's fur is actually translucent, but light reflects off of it making it look white. Sometimes the bear will even look yellow because of the oils they get on them from eating seals. 2. Although polar bears mate in the spring, the fertile eggs don't implant until fall. This is due to a process called delayed implantation. Not only will the eggs not implant until fall, but they also won't do it unless the mother has enough fat to sustain her and her cubs through the denning season. 3. They have excellent hygiene. Polar bears don't like to be dirty, but its not just because of the smell. Their fur helps insulate them so they won't freeze to death in the cold climate they live in, but the fur isn't as effective if its wet and matted. In the summer months they take a fifteen minute bath in the open water, licking their paws, chests, and muzzles. When they're done, they shake and rub their fur in the snow...

Abigail Smith was born on November 11, 1744, in Weymouth Massachusetts to William Smith, a minister and farmer, and Elizabeth Smith, who was formally a Quincy. The Quincys were a well known political family in the Massachusetts colony. Abigail was often sick as a child, and this was one of the reasons she didn't attend school although later in life she stated that it was also because of the fact that girls at that time were rarely given the opportunity to receive a formal education. She was educated at home though by her mother who taught her and her sisters to write, read, and cipher. Abigail also liked to read, studying French and English literature through her families extensive collection of books, and studying works by people like William Shakespeare and John Milton. When Abigail was 11 years old, she and her sisters began being tutored by Richard Cranch, whom Abigail's older sister, Mary, later married. In 1762 Richard Cranch brought a friend by the name of John Adam...

WARNING: I do not suggest reading this if you're planning on eating anytime soon. Having said that, lets dive right in. In ancient times the methods people used to dispose of their waste varied. In Rome and Greece they sometimes used running water in their bath houses. Although chamber pots were also commonly used, they even brought them to meals and drinking sessions. The pots were then emptied into receptacles on the streets if you lived in large cities like Rome or Pompeii. One fun fact is that workers, called fullers, collected and used the urine from the receptacles to eliminate impurities from cloth. In ancient China during the Han dynasty they used pig toilets, which was an outhouse with either a chute or a hole that deposited the waste into a pigsty where the pigs then ate it. In the Middle Ages garderobes were used, mostly in upper class dwellings. Garderobes were basically slabs of wood or stone with one or more holes to sit on, connected to a chute or pipe tha...

Just the other day I saw a bumblebee while trying to get a picture of a flower, I tried to avoid it because I'm scared of bugs. However they are pretty cute (from a distance) so I decided to learn about them, and there's a lot to know. Bumblebees have a pretty short life span, but they make the most of it. The cycle starts in early spring when the queen comes out of hibernation. She immediately starts to find food and a place to nest, normally someplace close to the ground like under piles of wood or dead leaves, but they've even been known to nest underground in abandoned rodent tunnels. After she finds the perfect spot she lays her eggs, and sits on them to keep them warm for about two weeks. After they hatch she feeds them for another two weeks until they cocoon themselves, they stay cocooned until they're adults. After that all the queen does is lay eggs, and the worker bees take care of everything else. Among the new bees there are drones (male bees), and the fut...

1. Pac-Man was designed to be endless, but its not. The game was designed to go on forever as long as the player was good enough to keep at least one life. However at Level 256 a bug prevents you from being able to defeat the level, therefore making Level 256 the final round of Pac-Man. 2. You can only ever earn a certain amount of points. Since you can only reach Level 256, there is a maximum amount of points you can get in the game, 3,333,360. You can achieve this score by eating every dot, power pellet, ghost, and fruit, while never losing a life, and then using those lives to get as many points as possible in the final round. 3. Those dots that Pac-Man eats, weren't always dots. I know that's hard to swallow :P, but originally they were going to be cookies. 4. The ghosts that Pac-Man eats, weren't always ghosts. They were actually referred to as monsters on the original arcade cabinets. 5. The ghosts have their own personalities. The red ghost chases P...

Most people know that Pac-Man was and is big, but how big exactly? Well, it made more money than Star Wars in the year after it came out, making over one billion in quarters. It became the highest grossing video game of all time toward the end of the 20th century, dethroning Space Invaders. And the series has been awarded eight records in the Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008. How did it become the "greatest video game of all time"? It all started with its creator, the then 24 year old Toru Iwatani. In April 1979, with a nine-man team, he began work on the classic, and in a year he was finished. The game was originally titled PUCKMAN, referring  to the main character's hockey puck shape. However in 1980 when Midway picked up the game for manufacture in the US, the name was changed to Pac-Man. Iwatani designed the game with the goal in mind to try to attract a wider audience. Because at the time most arcade games were geared towards male users, he ...

Most people know Martha Washington as the "first lady", but her life was much more than that, and I wanted to talk about her life before the White House, including the time she spent without George Washington. She was born in Virginia on her father John Dandridge's plantation, Chestnut Grove, on June 2, 1731. Growing up she enjoyed riding horses, climbing trees, dancing, sewing, gardening, and playing the spinet. Although she still had to study, she was well trained in running a household, but she was also taught reading, writing, and mathematics. At the age of 18, she was married to a wealthy and handsome plantation owner, Daniel Parke Custis. They had a happy marriage, and Custis loved to spoil his new bride with gifts from England. They had four children, but sadly only two survived past infancy. Their names were Patsy and Jacky. Custis became ill in the summer of 1757, and died soon after, leaving Martha a widow with two small children and a 15,000 acre esta...

Elephants are pretty amazing creatures, and here are five facts you may not know about them. 1. They're pregnant for a really long time. In fact, elephants have the longest gestation period of any mammal, 20-22 months! That's a really long time to be pregnant, but scientists believe it pays off. The babies need the extra time in the womb to let their brains develop so they can understand how to use their trunks, and how to fit into the complicated social structure of their herd after birth. 2. Humans can't hear every noise they make. I know you'd think that elephants would be pretty loud, and so they are. However sometimes they'll make a sound with a low enough frequency that we humans can't hear it. How do elephants do it? They use the same physical principles as we do to sing or talk, but since their larynx is so large, it produces much lower notes. 3. They drink a LOT. Elephants drink 20 to 50 gallons a day, that's about as much as you can f...

Ever since I was a little girl, I've loved to learn new things. One of my favorite pastimes was following my mom around, telling her about all the stuff I learned in school that day, and hearing her say she was proud of the work I did. You see, wanting to know everything  there is to know is an inherited trait from my mom's side of the family. It started with my grandparents, who loved nothing more than to sit and watch National Geographic together, and then it was passed on to my mom who is quite possibly the most curious person I've ever met. The idea for my blog came to me about a year ago when I was walking my dog. I was looking at a tree, and all of the sudden I started thinking about things I could do with all the weird, random stuff I know. Then it came to me. What if I started a blog full of interesting facts that aren't common knowledge, where people like me and my family could go to and just read to their hearts content. And Cracked Egg Trivia was born. Al...