Tidbits of Grand Forks - January 5, 2023

TIDBITS® SAYS

By Kathy Wolfe

Can you really wrap your mind around how much one million is? This week, Tidbits hopes to put this number into perspective for you by presenting a variety of “a million” things!

• One million is written as the number one followed by six zeroes. It’s equal to one thousand thousands. It’s the square of 1,000 (1,000 x 1,000) and the cube of 100 (100 x 100 x 100).

It takes 694.5 days for one million minutes to elapse, with one million seconds the equivalent of 11.57 days. In Roman numerals, it’s depicted with the letter M with a bar above it.

• How long does it take to count to one million?

It took the record holder, Jeremy Harper, 89 days of counting out loud to reach a million, nearly three months. From June to September of 2007, Harper spent 16 hours every day counting out loud to attain this milestone. He never left his house during the time period, and took breaks just to eat and sleep. Harper didn’t labor at the task just for himself – he raised upwards of $10,000 for a charity that provided financial aid for the disabled.

• Taking a road trip? Conventional car tires will rotate a million times by the end of about 1,200 miles.

THANKS A MILLION (cont.)

• We don’t know how fast Les Stewart of Australia types, but it took him 16 years to type to one million, a feat undertaken from 1982 to 1998. Les typed about three pages a day with one finger, 20 minutes every hour. He didn’t take the easy way out – he typed all the numbers in words, not numbers on his manual typewriter, typing “nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine” and “one million” for his final entries on November 25, 1998. Typing isn’t the only record Stewart set. Years before, he had already broken Australia’s record for treading water and set another new Australian record when he swam continuously for 30 hours.

• Eleven countries around the world have cities with a million or more people. China has the most, 102 cities there with a population over a million. Ten of those have over ten million residents! Forty-six cities in India have reached a million people, 17 in Brazil, 15 in Russia, and 12 in Japan. The United States now has 10 cities with a population exceeding one million. California and Texas account for six of these, with three cities each. Rome was the first city to reach one million people, way back in 133 BC. It took nearly 2,000 years before the next city attained that number, London in 1810. New York City achieved that status around 1873, the first U.S. city to make the mark.

• There are about 56 million millionaires in the world. Of these, nearly 40% live in the United States, 9.4% live in China, with Japan home to 6.6%. New York City alone has nearly one million millionaires, more than any other city in the world. About 580,000 millionaires live in Los Angeles. It’s estimated that 84% of millionaires are college graduates.

On Dec. 8, 1987, what member of the Philadelphia Flyers became the first goaltender in NHL history to score a goal by intentionally shooting the puck into the opponent’s net? How many overtimes did it take for the Illinois Fighting Illini to defeat the Penn State Nittany Lions 20-18 in their October 2021 college football game?

Name the first golfer to reach one million

DaVarryl Williamson, a pro heavyweight boxer from 2000-2014, had a powerful right-handed punch that earned him what nickname?

What soiled article of clothing from Game 2 of the 2004 World Series was sold at auction for $75,330 in 2021?

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THANKS A MILLION (cont.)

• What does a million dollars look like? A stack of one-dollar bills, each with a thickness of .0043 inches, would measure 4,300 inches (358 feet). That’s about the height of a 30 to 35-storey building. If you were to use $100 bills, you’d need 10,000 of them, a stack that would measure 43 inches.

• If you took the time to stack one million pennies on top of each other, the tower would be almost a mile high.

• Take a million dollars and divide it evenly among all U.S. residents. What would each receive? About one-third of one cent.

• The Ford Motor Company introduced its Model T in October, 1908, with a price tag of $850. Customers could choose gray, green, blue, or red. In 1914, in an attempt to lower the price, Henry Ford changed the color of all Model T’s to black, resulting in his famous quote, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants – so long as it’s black!” After seven years of production, Ford sold its one-millionth Model T in 1915, the first car to reach this milestone. By the time the last Model T rolled off the assembly line in 1927, 15 million had been sold.

• Marlon Brando was the first actor to receive $1 million for a film role, that of Fletcher Christian in 1962’s “Mutiny on the Bounty.” But by the time he collected $5,000 a day for the shooting running over schedule, Brando had collected over $1.2 million. He used some of his earnings to buy an island near Tahiti. The next year, Elizabeth Taylor became the first actress to capture the $1 million in her role as “Cleopatra.”

Opportunity ↔ Opportunity ↔ For You?

710 S 14th St, Suite C Grand Forks, ND 58201-4340 Tel. - (701) 780-2086, Fax - (701) 787-0029 www.dell-comm.com

If you no longer see a path forward in your current position and/or you would like a new challenge in the exciting Telecommunication field, Dell-Comm Inc., may be your perfect opportunity! Dell-Comm Inc., a local telecommunications company, is in search of an operations supervisor in Grand Forks that can oversee field operations and material management. If you have 3+ years of experience in the telecommunications industry, are organized and self-motivated, we want to hear from you. We offer a competitive salary, medical/dental insurance and 401k plan w/match.

Send resume via Email to: GrandForksND@dell-comm.com or Fax to: (701) 787-0029

An

EEO/AA Employer

THANKS A MILLION (cont.)

has been dubbed “the show about nothing.” But it can also be called the first television series in which the star earned $1 million per episode. During the show’s first season in 1989, Jerry Seinfeld was earning $20,000 per episode. That was doubled to $40,000 for seasons 2 and 3, and hiked to $100,000 for 4, 5, and 6. Jerry’s salary was $500,000 per episode for seasons 7 and 8, and for the final season, the $1 million mark was hit. When you add it all up, the total for 180 episodes was nearly $60 million! The $1 million per episode record held until 2002 when each of the cast pushed for and received that

Adele’s megahit song “Hello” was the first song ever to sell a million downloads in a week, topping 1,112,000 in the week of its 2015 release. But the honor of a singer being the first to reach one million copies of a record sold happened long before! In 1902, Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso’s “Vesta la guibba” from the opera “I Pagliacci” became the first record to sell a million copies. The first American novel to sell a million copies was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic book Uncle , an anti-slavery novel published in 1852. Sales on its first day were 3,000, achieving 300,000 copies in the first year. The book was the 19th century’s second best-selling book, with only the Bible surpassing it. It’s rumored that when President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in the 1860s, his comment to her was, “So this is the

TIDBITS NUGGET OF KNOWLEDGE

In 1978, Major League Baseball’s Pittsburgh Pirates offered right fielder Dave Parker a five-year contract at $5 million, the first to receive that amount. However, the contract included some deferred money, and Parker didn’t ever actually earn that amount. Pitcher Nolan Ryan is actually the first player to make $1 million in a single season, accomplished in 1979.

Financial Solutions for the Military

Visit our Grand Forks Branch or online at servicecu.org.

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Life Insurance From the VA

As of now, for the first time in 50 years, the Department of Veterans Affairs is opening up enrollment in Veterans Affairs Life Insurance, aka VALife. Veterans who are age 80 or under, with any level of service-connected disabilities, are guaranteed to be accepted to receive up to $40,000 in whole life insurance.

A bonus is that there is no requirement for medical underwriting, meaning that no one is going to squint at the health details of your application and try to decide whether or not to offer you insurance.

The VALife changes are to the existing ServiceDisabled Veterans Insurance (S-DVI):

-- You'll be able to apply online and get a fast decision.

-- There is no time limit to apply (the existing insurance requires you to sign up for life insurance within two years).

-- There is no good-health requirement (the existing insurance requires you to be healthy, except for conditions that are service connected).

-- You can now apply for $40,000 in insurance (the existing insurance limits you to $10,000).

Before you sign up, read about whole life insurance versus term insurance. Whole life can stay with you for your lifetime as long as you keep paying the premiums, and it accumulates a cash value that you can withdraw or borrow from. Term insurance is for a specific period of time and doesn't accrue cash value. BUT whole life costs more, sometimes a lot more. Do your homework and know what you're getting if you sign up for the VA's whole life.

A fact to notice: With the VALife policy, it will build cash value for two years and then convert to face value. If the veteran dies during the two years, beneficiaries will get back the premiums paid, plus interest.

If you currently have the old S-DVI, you'll be able to switch over to the VALife, should you choose to do so.

To see the fine print, go to www.benefits.va.gov/ insurance/valife.asp. Click on the Cost link to see a chart showing the premiums.

Freddy Groves

by Lucie Winbourne

• Martial arts icon Bruce Lee could throw a single grain of rice into the air and catch it with chopsticks.

• A 2009 study found that lost wallets were 88% more likely to be returned to their owners if they contained a photo of a baby. Barring that, you're also more likely to recover one if you typically carry pictures of a puppy, family members or an elderly couple.

• The word "checkmate" comes from the Arabic "shat mat," or "The king is dead."

• Want your candles to burn longer and drip less? Put them in the freezer for a few hours before lighting them.

• In what must qualify as one of the oddest marketing campaigns ever created, Burger King launched one that entitled customers to a free Whopper if they unfriended 10 Facebook friends. Those folks would receive a message explaining that their digital relationship was less valuable than the sandwich. Hey, we like Whoppers too, but really!

• Dolphins have been witnessed amusing themselves by creating underwater bubble rings.

• There's a Google Map for Mercury, Venus, Earth's moon, Mars, Pluto, three out of four of Jupiter's moons, and all but one of the round Saturnian moons.

• Leonardo da Vinci often bought caged animals just to set them free.

• Early 19th-century composer Robert Schumann had an interesting, if grisly and ineffective, method of attempting to cure any disease he had or might have: plunging his hands into the guts of recently slaughtered animals.

• Sid Nouar, owner of the 1000&1 Signes restaurant in Paris, was the first deaf person to open a restaurant in France. It is also staffed entirely by deaf employees.

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Thought for the Day: "Take action. An inch of movement will bring you closer to your goals than a mile of intention." -- Steve Maraboli

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NELLIE BLY

Oh, the fascinating life of journalist Nellie Bly! Check out the facts on this pioneer of investigative journalism!

• Bly was born Elizabeth Cochran in Pennsylvania during the American Civil War. Forced to drop out of college due to lack of funds, she discovered a column in a Pittsburgh newspaper that changed her life. The column entitled “What Girls Are Good For” described the meaning of a woman’s life as birthing children and keeping house. Elizabeth penned a fiery reply using a pseudonym “Lonely Orphan Girl.” The managing editor was captivated by her response and ran an ad in the paper requesting that the author come forth. A meeting between the two prompted an offer for another article under her pseudonym. Two articles followed, the first arguing that all women need not marry, along with the necessity for better jobs for women. Number two reported the effects of divorce on women, making a case for divorce law reforms. The editor then offered her a full-time job for $5 a week.

• An 1850 song written by Stephen Foster called “Nellie Bly” was the inspiration for her new pseudonym.

• Nellie set out to focus on the conditions of working women. A series of investigative stories about female factory workers led to complaints from those owners, and Bly was transferred to the paper’s fashion, society, and gardening sections. The strong-minded reporter headed to Mexico as a foreign correspondent, where she spent six months describing the conditions of the people, including their present dictatorship. Threatened with arrest, Bly returned to the States, only to learn that news editors would not hire a woman.

Finally, the “New York World,” Joseph Pulitzer’s paper took her on for an undercover assignment. Attempting to expose abuse at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on New York’s Blackwell’s Island, the 21-year-old Bly feigned insanity until she was admitted to the facility. Here she discovered appalling conditions, brutality, and neglect, and published her findings in October, 1887. Her report led to a full investigation of the asylum leading to substantial changes to all medical facilities. It also cemented her popularity as a well-known journalist.

• The next assignment for the now-23-year-old was to turn a novel into reality. In Jules Verne’s 1873 novel “Around the World in Eighty Days,” a fictional Phileas Fogg and a companion circumnavigated the glove on a wager. Nellie Bly departed on her 24,900-mile trek from Hoboken, New Jersey, in November, 1889, and returned 72 days later, setting a record for around-the-world travel. She had traveled alone nearly the entire way aboard all sorts of transportation including ships, horse, rickshaw, and sampan. Along the way, she actually met Jules Verne, her inspiration for the journey.

• Over the next seven years, Bly penned 11 novels. She wrote “Around the World in Seventy-Two Days” in 1890.

• At age 31, Bly married a millionaire manufacturer 42 years her senior, and took on a new career as head of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company, a producer of boilers and steel containers such as barrels and oil drums. She added inventor to her list of accomplishments, obtaining patents for a stacking garbage can and a unique milk can.

• Following her husband’s death after 15 years of marriage, Bly was back to journalism, reporting on Europe’s Eastern Front in the midst of World War I, which included an arrest on mistaken charges of being a British spy.

• After a lifetime of adventure, Nellie Bly contracted pneumonia and passed away in a New York hospital at age 57.

by Matilda Charles

It was recently disclosed that in the first half of 2022, there were over 1 billion recalls across the country of products that we buy.

That's billion, with a "b." Depending on the level of the recall, some of them can be extremely serious ... even deadly.

How do we know whether we missed an announcement about a product we own? We can go online to Recalls.gov and look. They cover everything from sports equipment to electronics, household items and more. You can search on that site by date, the type of hazard and the country where an item was manufactured. I searched for clothing. It was shocking to see a dozen children's items recalled for fire hazard. And the padded rolling desk chair with the legs that can break. And the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms that don't work. And laundry detergent with dangerous bacteria in it.

To be notified about recalls, go to www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/Subscribe and sign up for the free email alerts.

If you need to keep up with recalls and alerts for a vehicle, go online to www.nhtsa.gov/recalls. You'll need the vehicle identification number (VIN), which can be found on the door jamb behind the driver door. Or you can search by year, make and model of your vehicle. For the very latest vehicle recalls, Kelley Blue Book also has them listed on the front page at www.kbb.com/recall.

Food is another area where we need to keep up with any recalls and warnings. Search for "FDA Recalls, Market Withdrawals, & Safety Alerts" for the latest information on cosmetics, veterinary items, medical devices and food. Right on the front page was a list of alerts for products with undeclared wheat, potential listeria, salmonella and more. In the medical devices it was disturbing to learn of rust on needles.

You'll see a link there to sign up for alert emails. Let's make 2023 our year to be aware and safe.

• On Jan. 9, 1859, Carrie Lane (later Catt) entered the world in Ripon, Wisconsin. A staunch women's suffragist and peace advocate, she founded the League of Women Voters in 1920 and was highly instrumental in the passing of the Constitution's 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote that same year.

• On Jan. 15, 1870, a Harper's Weekly cartoon criticizing former Secretary of War Edwin Stanton with the caption, "A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" helped popularize the use of a donkey to symbolize America's Democratic Party.

• On Jan. 12, 1908, American inventor and electronics pioneer Lee de Forest, sometimes called the "Father of Radio," transmitted a long-distance radio message from the top of the Eiffel Tower for the first time, heard by an audience of 50.

• On Jan. 10, 1942, Mickey Rooney married Ava Gardner. Since both were under contract to MGM, they had to get permission from its head, Louis B. Mayer. According to Gardner, the studio "owned both of us, and did not look kindly on any change in Andy Hardy's status." Though the marriage was short-lived, Rooney later called it "one of the most memorable moments of my life."

• On Jan. 14, 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met at Casablanca in Morocco to begin work on World War II strategy. At its conclusion, they held a joint news conference at which Roosevelt announced that peace would come "by the total elimination of German and Japanese war power. That means the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy and Japan."

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On Jan. 11, 1964, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Luther Terry issued the first governmental report stating that smoking could be injurious to one's health. Its Saturday date was chosen to minimize the effect on the stock market and maximize coverage in the Sunday papers, and was, Terry said, "a lead story on every radio and television station in the United States and many abroad."

Country Estates at Valley Senior Living

Most of us don’t care much for rodents. Some are just plain nuisances, while others are destructive. But they’re not all terrible. Here are the facts, both good and bad!

• The word “rodent” has its roots in Latin word “rodere,” which means “to gnaw, eat away, or prey upon.” Rodents belong to the order Rodentia, with more than 2,200 different species, and are all mammals covered with hair, accounting for about 43% of all mammals worldwide. They all have tails, and give birth to and nurse living young. Rodents also have the structure of their teeth and jaws in common, with powerful and prominent upper and lower pairs of teeth. Their incisors grow continuously, about 1/8 inch per week.

• Most rodents are herbivorous, consuming seeds, stems, leaves, flowers, and roots. A few are omnivorous, feeding on both plants and animals. When it comes to food, rodents are hoarders, taking more than they can eat, saving it to hide for later. This practice is aided by cheek pouches found in some rodents, bags that can stretch from the mouth to the front of the shoulders, enabling them to store food.

• Mice and rats are the first rodents that come to mind, but the order also includes beavers, squirrels, chinchillas, gerbils, gophers, woodchucks, porcupines, and prairie dogs. You might think moles and hedgehogs would be on the list, but they are a different mammal species.

• Rodents vary widely in size. The largest is the capybara, a South American animal with an average weight of about 110 lbs. The smallest, the pygmy jerboa, found in Pakistan, might be small, 1.7 inch long and weighing less than 1/5 ounce, but it’s capable of jumping up to 9 feet! In North America, the beaver is the largest rodent, with a body length of about 47.2 inches, weighing up to 66 lbs. This rodent’s tiny eyes have a membrane for protection while swimming underwater.

• The lifespan of rodents also differs greatly. Rats live about 12 months, but larger rodents live longer, such as beavers and porcupines, which can live over 20 years. The naked mole-rat has been documented at 30 years.

• Sometimes you might feel your heart racing, but it’s nothing compared to the heart rate of an adult mouse, about 630 beats per minute. The human heart beats between 60 and 100 bpm. Some rodents’ extremely high metabolism necessitates 20 meals a day.

• Nocturnal rodents, active at night, navigate the dark with their long sensitive whiskers. They brush or tap these whiskers, or vibrissae as they are called, on objects to ascertain the size and shape, a practice called “whisking.” They also have oversize eyes, some of which are sensitive to ultraviolet light.

• Beaver trapping and fur trading was a widespread business in the history of North America, resulting in the near extinction of several species in the mid-19th century. In South America, chinchillas are raised strictly for their fur, the most valuable in the world. Wild chinchillas are even more expensive, with coats made with 400 pelts selling for as much as $100,000.

• If it seems that rat populations run high in some areas, it’s because the brown rat gives birth to 22 offspring at a time. The typical house mouse can produce as many as 14 litters a year! The Centers for Disease Control estimates that mice and rats spread upwards of 35 diseases through human contact, whether it be directly through their feces, saliva, or bites, or indirectly through various parasites.

Quiz Answers

1. 2. 3. 4.

Tokyo, with about 37 million. 50 One year Paper

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Ron Hextall Nine Arnold Palmer “Touch of Sleep.”

10,000 Regis Philbin Lee Majors Richard Pryor & John Candy 1,000

5.

Curt Schilling’s bloodstained sock