Miscellany and Trivia

Sometimes your biggest weakness can become your biggest strength. Take, for example, the story of one 10-year-old boy who decided to study judo despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in a devastating car accident.

The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master. The boy was doing well, so he couldn't understand why, after three months of training the master had taught him only one move.

"Sensei," the boy finally said, "Shouldn't I be learning more moves?"

"This is the only move you know, but this is the only move you'll ever need to know," the sensei replied.

Not quite understanding, but believing in his teacher, the boy kept training.

Wishing to encourage her young son’s progress on the piano, a mother took the small boy to a concert of the famous pianist, Paderewski. After they were seated, the mother spotted a friend in the audience and walked down the aisle to greet her. Seizing the opportunity to explore the wonders of the concert hall, the little boy rose and eventually explored his way through a door marked “No Admittance.”

When the house lights dimmed and the concert was about to begin, the mother returned to her seat and discovered that her son was missing. Suddenly, the curtains parted and the spotlights focused on the impressive Steinway piano on stage.

A woman was waiting at an airport one night, with several long hours before her flight. She hunted for a book in the airport shops, bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book but happened to see, that the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be... grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between, which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.

So she munched the cookies and watched the clock, as the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock. She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by, thinking, “If I wasn’t so nice, I would blacken his eye.”

Wise men and philosophers throughout the ages have disagreed on many things, but many are in unanimous agreement on one point: "We become what we think about." Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A man is what he thinks about all day long." The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius put it this way: "A man's life is what his thoughts make of it." In the Bible we find: "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he."

There were two warring tribes in the Andes, one that lived in the lowlands and the other high in the mountains. The mountain people invaded the lowlanders one day, and as part of their plundering of the people, they kidnapped a baby of one of the lowlander families and took the infant with them back up into the mountains.

Penicillin

Inventor: Alexander Fleming

Year: 1928

What Happened: Halfway through an experiment with bacteria, Alexander Fleming up and went on vacation. Slob that he was, he left a dirty petri dish in the lab sink.

Big Discovery: When he got back, he found bacteria had grown all over the plate, except in an area where mold had formed.

As a Result: That discovery led to two things: 1) penicillin and 2) Mrs. Fleming hiring a maid. 

Saccharin

Inventors:  Constantin Fahlberg and Ira Remsen

Year: 1879

What Happened: After spending the day studying coal tar derivatives, Fahlberg left his Johns Hopkins laboratory and went to dinner.

Big Discovery: Something he ate tasted particularly sweet, which he traced to a chemical compound he’d spilled on his hand. Best of all, it turned out to be calorie-free.

As a Result: He cut Remsen and the university out of millions of dollars when he secretly patented the breakthrough discovery, saccharin.

The Microwave

Inventor:  Percy Spencer

Year: 1946

What Happened: With the end of World War II, the Raytheon engineer was looking for other uses for the magnetron, which generated the microwaves for radar systems. While Spencer was standing next to the device one day, a chocolate bar in his pocket melted.

Big Discovery: The magnetron worked even better on popcorn.

As a Result: Orville Redenbacher (an American businessman most often associated with the brand of popcorn that bears his name) became very rich.