Cowboy

It is believed that the term “cowboy” originated as a derogatory term used to describe black cowhands.

The Oxford English Dictionary lists the satirist Jonathan Swift as the first person to use the word “cowboy”.

The traditional cowboy look arose from Mexican vaqueros and the word buckaroo came about as a mispronunciation of the word vaquero.

In the American West of the 1800s, up to one in four Texan cowboys was African American. The number of Mexican cowboys was even greater.

A 19th century breakfast for an American cowboy included salt pork or bacon, and eggs, which being shipped west for considerable distances, sometimes went bad.

Dinner (the noontime meal) and supper was similar to breakfast, with the addition of beef and beans and canned or dried fruit for dessert.

Cowboys everywhere liked fresh beef especially steaks, fried well-done in a cast iron skillet, piled high. Accompanying this would be soda biscuits made from sourdough and gravy.

During cattle drives, cowboys often had to make do with less appealing cuts of meat such as pork butt, pork ribs, beef ribs, venison and goat. These tough pieces of meat were slow cooked at a low temperature for five to seven hours over wood or charcoal.

Cattle drive cooks had to serve three meals a day, seven days a week. They kept alert to find and pick up wood for the fire as they traveled in the chuck wagon. They had to constantly go ahead of the cattle drives and prepare food in all types of weather, holding a tarp over the fire, if necessary.

Cooks were also "jacks of all trades," often playing the roles of doctor, barber, and even dentist for the drive hands.

American cowboy, 1887

The cowboy's clothing was suited to his job. He wore a woolen or cotton shirt and heavy woolen trousers. Over his trousers were his chaps (pronounced shaps, from the Spanish chaparajos). These leggings were of heavy leather for summer wear and of fur for the cold northern winters. They protected his legs from brush, cactus, and frost.

Around the cowboy's neck a big handkerchief was tied to protect him from the sun. It could also be pulled up around his mouth and nose when dust was thick.

A high-crowned, broad-brimmed felt hat, the sombrero, shielded the cowboy from the sun and rain. Some preferred the bowler hat, because of its practicality and strength

The cowboy's soft-legged boots had high heels set far under the instep to hold his ankle clear of the heavy stirrup.

The world record for the largest cowboy boots ever made was awarded for a pair measuring 2.5 meters tall and 2.38 metres long – they were made from five cows’ worth of leather.

Sources Cool Trivia, Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc, Food For Thought by Ed Pearce

Cow

HISTORY

People probably domesticated cows somewhere in southwestern Asia during the early part of the New Stone Age. It most likely occurred when they were attracted to the fields of grain and robbed the locals of their food. Captured and bred the cows were farmed both for their meat and their milk.

Until the 1850s, nearly every family in the U.S. had its own cow.

Pauline Wayne, supplied President Taft with milk during his time in the White House. Pauline was allowed to freely roam the White House grounds and became a common sight and press favorite.

Elm Farm Ollie was the first cow to fly in an aeroplane. The milk she produced during an air-trip on February 18, 1930 was dropped by parachute over the city of St Louis.

When John Wayne used to stay at the Sunset Tower Hotel in Hollywood, he kept a cow on the balcony of his apartment there. When he served visitors coffee the king of the cowboy actors would wave towards the window and say: "Help yourself to milk."

During the Blitz in World War II, some British farmers painted their cows with white stripes in case they wandered onto roads in the dark during blackouts.

A Charolais cow called Charlene Mooken was slated to meet her end at an Ohio slaughterhouse. On February 15, 2002 Charlene Mooken  jumped a 6 foot fence at a slaughterhouse in Cincinnati, and evaded pursuers for almost two weeks, making national news headlines. Impressed with her show of spirit, she was given a stay of execution and allowed to live out her days at an animal welfare sanctuary.

Charlene Mooken

Three cows that were swept off an island in North Carolina during Hurricane Dorian in September 2019 were found alive on a different island. Cape Lookout National Seashore Park officials say they believe the three stranded cows swam up to five miles.

ANATOMY

Cows have "stay apparatus" in their legs -- tendons and ligaments that allow them to remain standing with minimal muscular effort. However, while this allows them to doze while standing, they can enter REM sleep and dream only while lying down.

The sweat glands in a cow are in the nose.

All cows all over the world have different patterns of spots and not a single one has identical spots to another.

Cows only have teeth on their lower jaw. Their upper jaws just have tough pads of skin.

Blossom, a Holstein cow, holds the distinction of being the tallest cow ever recorded, standing at an impressive height of 190 centimeters, or slightly over 6.2 feet. This remarkable stature was attributed to a combination of genetics and a well-balanced diet. Blossom was nourished with a high-quality regimen comprising corn, soybeans, and hay, ensuring her growth and overall health. Additionally, regular exercise played a role in maintaining her robust musculature.

On May 25, 2015, Blosom's life came to an end due to an irreparable leg injury. 

BEHAVIOR

A cow will always get up rear legs first.

Cows show their emotions through the posture of their ears.

Cows 'moo' in regional accents.

Cows only sleep for four hours a day.

When they are isolated from their companions, cows experience separation anxiety.

A lactating mother cow will consume about 70 pounds of feed per day.

Cows eat only grass but have 25,000 taste buds: two and a half times as many as humans.

A cow on a dairy farm drinks as much as 50 gallons of water daily.

When eating, a cow chews at least 50 times a minute. It eats about 100 pounds of food a day.

The average cow makes more than 40,000 jaw movements a day and produces 15-20 gallons of saliva.

The CDC estimates that cows kill 22 people a year in the US — and 75% of those are known to be deliberate attacks.

POPULATION

There are approx. 1.5 billion cows in the world of which roughly a quarter are in India.

All the cows in the world weigh almost twice as much as all the people.

The Sanskrit word for “war” means “desire for more cows.”

Cows have their own Bill of Rights in India.

Argentina, Australia, Brazil  New Zealand,and Uruguay are the only countries with more cows than people.

Vermont has the greatest number of dairy cows in the US in ratio of cows to people.

A cow is not a cow until it has had at least one calf. Until then it is called a heifer.

Twelve or more cows are known as a "flink."

DAIRY AND MEAT PRODUCTION

A cow can produce 25 gallons (95 liters) of milk per week.

Sixty cows can produce a ton of milk a day.

In Somerset, England in 1841, 737 cows were milked to make a 9ft-diameter cheese for Queen Victoria.

A study found that farmers who called their cows by name had a 454 pints (258 liters) higher milk yield over its annual 10 month lactation period than those who did not.

Happy cows produce more milk. Higher levels of serotonin (a chemical associated with feelings of happiness), lead to improved blood calcium in cows, reducing chance of disease and improving nutritional quality of the milk.

A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.

Cows produce five times as much saliva as milk.

1 out of 3 of all cows in the US used for food purposes (beef) are used by the McDonald’s Corp.

60% of a cow is used for food, and parts of the other 40% can be made into antifreeze, blood thinners, insulin, marshmallows, and toothpaste.

FUN COW FACTS

Cows can walk upstairs but not downstairs.

Cow tipping is widely considered an urban legend. The purported activity of sneaking up on any unsuspecting or sleeping upright cow and pushing it over for entertainment is highly unlikely due to their size and weight. Cows are also not as docile as the myth suggests, and they are easily startled. Estimates suggest that at least four people would be required to achieve this.

On average a cow releases 70-120kg of methane per year. The global warming effect of this is equal to burning about 220 gallons of petrol.

Sources Care2.com,  Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc, Daily Express.

Coursing

As a sport, dog racing has its origin in a kind of race called coursing, in which hounds chased game by sight, not by scent.

The popularity of coursing dates back many centuries. It was fully described by the Greek writer Arrian about AD 150.

Many of the European hound breeds were developed in the Middle Ages, when coursing was popular with the nobility.

In coursing, the prey is pursued until exhausted. Then it is killed. Coursing was eventually replaced by fox hunting, which was considered less cruel.

Source Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc.

Coupon

Coca-Cola inventor John Pemberton offered tickets to try his new fangled soda pop for free in 1888 (see below). They are believed to be the first coupon ever.

C.W. Post introduced the grocery coupon in 1895 when he offered “once cent off” to kick off sales for his new cereal, Post’s Grape Nuts.

305 billion coupons were circulated in 2012 in the US and 2.9 billion were redeemed.

Of the 305 billion  coupons distributed throughout the country, 38 percent of them were attributed to food products.

88 percent of consumers use some coupons at the grocery store

The average amount of weeks before a coupon expires is nine.

Source: Coupons.com

County

Cornwall has the longest coastline of any English county, measuring about 433 miles.

The name Cornwall originates from the words “Cornovii” and “Waelas,” meaning hill dwellers and strangers.

Located in south-west England some say the name Somerset derives from Seo-mere-saetan meaning "settlers by the sea lakes".

Devon is the only county in Britain to have two coasts.

All states in the US are divided into counties, with two exceptions: Louisiana, which consists of parishes, and Alaska, which uses boroughs.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, five of the top 10 wealthiest counties in the United States are located in Maryland and Virginia, which are suburbs of Washington, D.C. The median household income in these counties is roughly $134,000.

The smallest county in America is New York County, better known as Manhattan.

Half of the US population lives in just 146 counties out of the 3007 total.

The Los Angeles County in California has a higher population than 43 US states. It holds the same amount of people as the 1,171 smallest counties.

Texas is made up of 254 counties. The largest, Brewster, is bigger than Northern Ireland.

The Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area is a census area located in the state of Alaska. At 147,805 sq mi or 382,810 km2, it has the largest area of any county or county-equivalent in the United States and is roughly the same size as Germany or  Montana. 

Country and Western

Country and Western Country music grew from the folk music that was brought to North America by Anglo-Celtic settlers in the 1700s and 1800s.

While it is challenging to pinpoint the exact first country music song, many consider "The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane" to be one of the earliest recorded country songs. "The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane" was written and recorded by Will S. Hays in 1871. The song features elements commonly associated with country music, such as a simple melody, lyrics about rural life, and a focus on storytelling. It became popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is often recognized as an influential early country music recording.

In 1922 radio stations WBAP in Fort Worth, Texas and WSB in Atlanta, Georgia, broadcast shows called barn dances, modeled after the informal social dancing of the frontier.

Fiddler Eck (A.C.) Robertson traveled to New York City and in 1922 made the first recording of rural Appalachian folk music, “Arkansas Traveller” and “Sallie Goodin,” sett the stage for the development of country music .

Automaker Henry Ford had an intense hatred of what he saw as the urban decadence of couples jazz dancing. In response he pumped huge amounts of money in the 1920s into fiddling contests and promoted square dances across the US to encourage more wholesome forms of entertainment.
His funding helped establish country music culture as we know it today.

In 1924 Vernon Dalhart's "The Prisoner's Song" became the first commercially-successful country single.

The Grand Ole Opry began broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee, as the WSM Barn Dance. On the evening of November 28, 1925, on Nashville’s WSM-AM radio station, announcer George D. “Judge” Hay introduced famed fiddle player Uncle Jimmy Thompson as the first performer for the new show. The show was first called the Grand Ole Opry on December 10, 1927.

The very first broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry came out of a fifth-floor radio studio in Nashville, though listeners were encouraged to think that the whole country music jamboree came out of a barn, with the audience sitting on hay bales. 

Jimmie Rodgers is widely considered to be the "Father of Country Music." He was a singer-songwriter and guitarist who was known for his distinctive yodeling style. Rodgers recorded over 100 songs, many of which became classics, such as "T for Texas," "Blue Yodel No. 1," and "In the Jailhouse Now."

Rodgers' music was groundbreaking for its time. He was one of the first country artists to use electrical instruments and to record in a studio setting. He also helped to popularize the genre of country music beyond its rural roots. Rodgers died in 1933 at the age of 35, but his legacy continues to live on.

In 1927, Victor Records, under the direction of producer Ralph Peer, headed to Bristol, Tennessee to record local musicians. The sessions, referred to by genre historians as the country music "big bang", yielded debut recordings from The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.

Billboard started tracking country music songs on January 8, 1944 with the "Most Played Juke Box Folk Records" chart.

Written by Jenny Lou Carson and performed by Tex Ritter, "You Two-Timed Me One Time Too Often" becomes the first #1 country hit penned by a woman in 1945.

World War II accelerated country music's growth away from an exclusively Southern and rural phenomenon. Southern servicemen took the music with them to far-flung parts of the nation and the world, while civilian defense workers from the South brought their love of the music into the various centers of war production.

Country music used to be known as "hillbilly" music. Dissatisfied with the pejorative connotations of the term "hillbilly music" in the mid forties, Ernest Tubb coined the term "country" music to include string bands, fiddling bands, and old time singing and dance bands. Decca executives decided cowboy music didn't quite fall in that category, so Tubb came up with "country & western". By 1948, the record industry had stopped using "hillbilly music" altogether.

Billboard magazine published its first country and western album chart on January 11, 1964. At #1: Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire album. The chart changed its name to Top Country LP's in the issue of Billboard dated January 13, 1968, Top Country LPs (with no apostrophe) in the issue dated May 31, 1980, and Top Country Albums in the issue dated October 20, 1984. 

Album cover art for Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash Wikipedia

The first ever CMA Awards were held on October 20, 1967 hosted by singers Sonny James and Bobbie Gentry. The big winning song was Jack Greene’s "There Goes My Everything."

Wanted: The Outlaws by Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser and Jessi Colter became in 1976 the first country album to go platinum.

Country music took over Hollywood in 1980, with the movies Coal Miner's Daughter, Urban Cowboy, Honeysuckle Rose and 9 to 5 all debuting on the silver screen.

Garth Brooks' mainstream success with his 1991 third album, Ropin' the Wind, set the stage for the pop-country of the rest of the decade. It was the first country album to debut at #1 on the pop charts.

Garth Brooks By Steve Jurvetson -Wikipedia

Garth Brooks' “More Than a Memory” debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Song charts in September 2007, the first song to do so in its history.

In 2013 Country was the #1 commercial radio format in the U.S., with 2,042 stations.

One in five country music songs refer to "alcohol," one in three to "tears," and one in seven  to "mama."

Source Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc.

Country

There are 196 countries in the world, populated by 7.3 billion people speaking roughly 6,500 different languages.

Vatican City is the smallest country in the world by both area and population. The whole country is only 108.7 acres, which a population of just 1,000.

By many accounts, the Republic of San Marino, is the world's oldest country. The tiny country that is completely landlocked by Italy was founded on September 3, 301 AD.

The republic of Carpatho-Ruthenia existed for just one day, in 1939.

On December 30, 2012 a British man, Graham Hughes, set a new Guinness World Record by becoming the first person to visit all 193 countries of the United Nations - without using a plane. Mr Hughes spent four years travelling around the world, visiting 201 countries in total.

 American entrepreneur and professor Jim Kitchen is the first person to travel to all 193 United Nations recognized countries and to space. He traveled to space as a member of the NS-20 mission on March 31, 2022.

Apart from Vatican City, which has only 451 residents, the country with the lowest population is Tuvalu in the Pacific with around 10,000.

The seven largest countries in the world (Russia, Canada, USA, China, Australia, Brazil and Argentina) take half of our planet’s territory.

The youngest country in the world is Uganda, where 49% of the population is under 15.

One of the Windward Islands, Saint Lucia was named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse by the French, the island's first European settlers. It is the only country in the world named after a woman

The only countries that are double-landlocked—landlocked by countries that also landlocked—are Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan.

Lesotho, Vatican City, and San Marino are the only countries completely surrounded by one other country. Lesotho is the largest - it's located in South Africa.

Many countries end in the word -istan because "stan" is an ancient Persian word that means "land".

Here is a list of songs with names of countries in their title.

The Council Of Trent

In 1545 the Holy Roman emperor Charles V persuaded Pope Paul III to call the Council of Trent with four cardinals, four archbishops and twenty-one bishops present. The Catholic emperor was concerned about the activities of the Protestant reformers and he wished to inaugurate a Catholic Counter-Reformation to counter activities of the Reformation. Pope Paul III convened the council at Trento (at that time a free city of the Holy Roman Empire under a prince-bishop), on December 13, 1545.

After meeting intermittently for eighteen years The Council of Trent finally finished in 1563 with over 200 bishops are present at the final sessions.

On adjourning, the Council asked the supreme pontiff to ratify all its decrees and definitions. This petition was complied with by Pope Pius IV, on January 26, 1564, in the papal bull, Benedictus Deus, which enjoined strict obedience upon all Roman Catholics. Pope Pius appointed a commission of cardinals to assist him in interpreting and enforcing the decrees.

At Trent a number of abuses were remedied and the Catholics accepted as deuterocanonical several works that Protestants labelled as Apocrypha and considered outside the canon. Tradition was declared coequal to Scripture as a source of spiritual knowledge and the Catholic Church recognized the seven sacraments as official. The council formally declared that in the Eucharist, bread and wine was really changed into the body and blood of Christ in a manner that could be expressed by the word “transubstantiation”. The religious education of priests was improved and the education of children encouraged with the help of the Jesuit order who were asked to set up a school in every town in which they had influence.

At the Council of Trent the Catholic Church absolved Jews of responsibility for Jesus’ death.

Pius IV's Counter-Reformation eliminated all instrumentation except the organ, as well as all secular elements, harmony and folk melodies.

The Catholic Church emerged revitalized from the Council of Trent, the certainty of their identity was strengthened and the Jesuits established flourishing schools all over Europe where young people were taught how to be good Catholics.

The Council of Nicaea

In 319 tall, handsome Arius, a presbyter in Alexandria claimed that, in the doctrine of the Trinity, the Son is not co-equal or co-eternal with the Father. Instead, he stated, Christ is only the first and highest of all finite beings, created out of nothing by an act of God's free will. As Christ had a beginning he isn't eternal and because he isn't eternal he is inferior to God the Father.

The charismatic Arius has won some support for his controversial views but in 321 he was deposed and excommunicated by a synod of bishops at Alexandria.

The Council of Nicaea was called by the Emperor Constantine in 325 to deal with the first major doctrinal controversy of the Christian Church. Arius of Alexandria was still denying the divinity of Christ but Alexander, the Bishop of Alexandria, maintained the orthodox view that the Son is one substance with the Father. Both had their supporters. It opened on May 20, 325 in present-day Iznik, Turkey.

The Council of Nicea was the first general council of the church and 318 Bishops from mainly the eastern parts of the empire attended. Many of them were without various limbs or blinded eyes for they bore the scars of having lived through the various persecutions.

16th-century fresco depicting the Council of Nicaea

The chief protagonists were Arius and the tiny, dark skinned Athanasius, a young deacon also of Alexandria who supported Alexander’s views. Because of his lower rank Athanasius was not eligible to be part of the council and he had to wait outside and whisper what to say to a sympathetic bishop. If a difficult problem cropped up, his friend would step outside and Athanasius murmured the answer.

To loud doctrinal cheers Arius was banished and the council declared Christ by an overwhelming majority to be “of one essence of the Father, not made, being of one substance. The bishops championing Athanasius introduced their own creed, “We believe in one God the father-all sovereign, maker of Heaven and Earth…”

Another result of the council was a decision that Easter would be celebrated on the same Sunday throughout the Church. It was agreed that it would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the spring equinox.

Cough

Root Beer was created by pharmacist Charles E. Hires in 1876 on his honeymoon. He marketed it as an herbal tea made of various roots, berries, and herbs for cough and mouth sores.

Heroin was introduced in 1898 by Bayer as its new "sedative for coughs."

The word "lozenge" is another name for "diamond shaped". We call cough drops lozenges because very early cough drops were often shaped like diamonds.

The speed of a cough is around 60mph.

Coughing can cause air to move through your windpipe faster than the speed of sound – over a thousand feet per second.

About 3,000 droplets of saliva are expelled in a single cough, and some of them fly out of the mouth at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour.

Couch

In Ancient Greece the multipurpose couch was used for sleeping and for reclining at mealtime.

The Romans produced the same basic forms as the Greeks, and again the couch was popular. It eventually reached a characteristic form with a high back and high scrolled ends that terminated in carved animals' heads.

Source Encyclopedia of Britannica

Cotton Swab

Cotton swabs or Q-Tips® were invented in the 1920's by a Polish-born American named Leo Gerstenzang.

Gerstenzang got the idea after watching his wife clean their baby's ears with cotton stuck onto a toothpick.

Gerstenzang developed a machine that wound cotton uniformly around each end of a specially cured birch wood stick. The machine sterilised the swabs and then packaged them in a sliding box.

The phrase "untouched by human hands" became widely known in the production of cotton swabs.

Cotton Swabs were originally called "Baby Gays." It was changed in 1926 to Q-Tips, the "Q" standing for "quality."

The term "Q-tips" is often used as a genericized trademark for cotton swabs in the USA.

Cotton Picking

American inventor Eli Whitney was granted a patent for the cotton gin on March 14, 1794. This simple device quickly removed the tiny seeds from cotton. Prior to the cotton gin, a slave produced one pound of lint in ten hours.

The cotton gin (see below) increased the yield to nearly 1,000 pounds per day, which caused the cotton-producing American states to increase their yield ten times over.

The unwillingness of planters to pay for the rights to use the gin brought many lawsuits. Whitney's machine was copied, his patent was infringed, and his factory was set on fire.

Though Eli Whitney eventually won in court (1807), he profited very little from his invention. He made more money as a gun manufacturer than he did from the cotton gin.

 Eli Whitney's cotton gin is short for "cotton engine".

By 1800 cotton production had increased from about 3,000 bales a year to 73,000. Whitney's cotton-cleaning invention brought prosperity to the South.

In 1944  a mechanical cotton picker was invented. By this stage only 5% of the Cotton crop was picked by hand.

Source Europress Encyclopedia

Cotton

Cotton begun to be used and worn by the Ancient Egyptians in around 4000 BC.

Alexander the Great established cotton growing in Greece.

Cotton, which is called mian or mumian in Chinese, was first produced in China from an area now known as Yunnan, some time around 200 BC.

Raw cotton appeared in Italy about the middle of the 12th century. Traders from Genoa and Venice brought it from Antioch and Sicily and from the Orient by way of Alexandria. Weavers used it to make fustian, a coarse material combining cotton and linen.

By 1767  James Hargreaves had invented the spinning jenny. The machine called for considerable hand labor, however, and Hargreaves' jenny produced inferior yarn.

With the help of a clockmaker, Richard Arkwright constructed a spinning machine that produced a stronger yarn. He set up his spinning-frame in Preston in 1868. It was the first machine that could produce cotton thread of sufficient strength to be used as warp.

In 1777 Arkwright leased the Haarlem Mill in Wirksworth, Derbyshire where he installed the first steam engine to be used in a cotton mill.

Arkwright faced opposition on the grounds that his inventions reduced the need for labour, and in 1779 his large mill near Chorley was destroyed by a mob.

By 1785 about 30,000 people were employed in factories using Arkwright's patents.

Eli Whitney was granted a patent for the cotton gin on March 14, 1794. This made it easier to separate the fibers from the seeds, making it possible to clean 50 pounds of cotton a day, compared to a pound a day before Whitney’s invention.

The first cotton mill to combine all the processes for making cloth under one roof was built in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1814. This coupled with Eli Whitney’s innovation of the cotton gin made so much cotton cloth available that for the first time in history inexpensive, ready-to-wear clothing could be made for working-class people.

The cotton fiber is from the cotton plant’s seed pod The fiber is hollow in the center and, under a microscope looks like a twisted ribbon.

Thomas Edison’s first light bulb filament was made of cotton (1879).

Paper money is not made from wood pulp but from cotton. This means that it will not disintegrate as fast if it is put in the laundry.

The USA is the world's largest exporter of cotton. Its "cotton belt" is made up of 17 states.

The world currently has enough cotton stockpiled to make 127 billion t-shirts.

It can take 2,700 liters of water to produce the cotton needed to make a single T-shirt.

The Chinese government owns 40% of the world's stock of cotton.

Source Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc.

Kevin Costner

Kevin Costner was born in Lynwood, California on January 18, 1955. He is the youngest of three boys (the middle of whom died at birth) of Bill and Sharon Costner.

At 18, Kevin Costner built his own canoe and paddled his way down the rivers that Lewis and Clark followed to the Pacific.

Despite his present height of 6' 1", Costner was only 5'2" when he graduated high school. Nonetheless, he still managed to be a basketball, baseball and football star.

In 1978 he graduated from university with a BA in marketing and finance.

Before hitting it big in the acting business Kevin Costner worked as a skipper on the ride, the Jungle Cruise, at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.  Funnyman Steve Martin once held the same job.

Costner also gave bus tours to the Los Angeles homes of stars, before he found fame.

His first film role was in the 1981 low-budget softcore film Sizzle Beach (aka. Malibu Hot Summer).

Costner's break came with The Big Chill (1983), even though his scenes ended up on the cutting room floor -- he was remembered by director Lawrence Kasdan when he decided to make Silverado (1985).

Costner at the premiere of Hidden Figures, December 2016

He won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture in 1990 for Dances With Wolves

The Sioux nation gave Costner a tract of land after making Dances with Wolves. Costner built a golf course on that land.

A skilled equestrian, Costner did his own riding in The Postman (1997).

He founded Kevin Costner & Modern West in 2007. The band's debut album, Untold Truths was released on November 11, 2008 by Universal South Records and peaked at #61 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart.

Whilst better known as a movie actor and director, Kevin Costner made one huge contribution to popular music when he convinced Whitney Houston to cover Dolly Parton's country tune, "I Will Always Love You."

Costner is also known for his philanthropic work, including his support for environmental causes and disaster relief efforts. He spent years funding oil-water separation technology that was used to help clear up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. 

Sources Songfacts, IMDB

Costa Rica

Costa Rica was sparsely inhabited by indigenous people before it came under Spanish rule in the 16th century.

Officials in Panama used the name Costa Rica (Rich Coast) for the first time in 1539 to distinguish the territory between Panama and Nicaragua.

Costa Rica never fought for independence from Spain. On September 15, 1821, after the final Spanish defeat in the Mexican War of Independence (1810–21), Costa Rica declared independence from Spain jointly with Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

September 15th is celebrated as Independence Day in Costa Rica even though, technically, under the Spanish Constitution of 1812 that had been readopted in 1820, Nicaragua and Costa Rica had become an autonomous province with its capital in León.

The Costa Rica flag was officially adopted on November 27, 1906. It was updated to reflect concurrent modifications to the national coat of arms in 1964 and 1998. The flag of Thailand is similar to the Costa Rican flag, except the blue and red stripes are reversed.

Flag of Costa Rica

Costa Rica permanently abolished its army in 1949, becoming the first of a few sovereign nations without a standing army. The Costa Rican government stated that the army "would be replaced with an army of teachers." Today, the country has free universal public education and a literacy rate of 97%.

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) ranked Costa Rica first in its 2012 Happy Planet Index. The index takes life expectancy, happiness and environmental sustainability into consideration.

In 2012, Costa Rica became the first country in the Americas to ban recreational hunting after the country’s legislature approved the popular measure by a wide margin.

While Costa Rica has only about 0.03% of the world's landmass, it contains 4% of all known living species of flora and fauna.

Costa Rica is amongst the world´s biggest exporters of pineapples. The country´s pineapple industry is worth US$ 800 million to the national economy.

Around 25% of Costa Rica's land area is in protected national parks and protected areas, the largest percentage of protected areas in the world.

All five volcanoes in Costa Rica are active. They are known as the Poás, the Irazú, the Arenal, the Rincón de la Vieja, and the Turrialba.

Costa Rica stands as the most visited nation in the Central American region, with 2.9 million foreign visitors in 2016.

Costa Rica’s national symbol is the clay-colored robin known as the yigüirro.

Sources Wikipedia, Facts.randomhistory.com/

Cosmetics

The word “cosmetic” comes from the same root as “cosmos” meaning order or adornment.

The earliest cosmetics known to archaeologists were in use in Egypt in the fourth millennium BC, as evidenced by the remains of artefacts probably used for eye make-up and for the application of scented ingredients

Ancient Egyptians first wore paints, especially around the eyes, as protection from the sun; soon personal adornment became a statement of status.

One of the earliest references to cosmetics is in the Old Testament 2 Kings 9:30, which tells of Jezebel putting on eye make-up.

The immoral and effeminate Assyrian monarch Sardanapalus is reputed to have allowed his passion for cosmetics free rein, thereby emphasizing his penchant to dress and paint himself like a woman; when threatened by the rapid advance of a ruthless enemy, he is said to have ordered a pile of aromatic woods to be lighted and to have placed himself upon it with his concubines and treasures, to be suffocated by the fragrant smoke.

Ancient Greeks kept their cosmetics in intricate boxes. Rouge reddened the cheeks, and various white powders (white lead and chalk) were used for a fair complexion.

The Romans were the most extravagant users of aromatics in history. It was quite customary for men to be heavily perfumed and even the legionaries reeked of the fragrances of the East.

Gladiator sweat and fats of the animals fighting in the arena were sold in souvenir pots outside of the games to improve women's beauty and complexion.

Clement of Alexandria in the 2nd century AD encouraged the proclamation of a law to prevent women from tricking husbands into marriage by means of cosmetics.

Cosmetics were regarded in the later Middle Ages as a health threat because many thought they would block vapours and energy from circulating properly. Because men's make-up wasn't as obvious as women's (women wore egg whites over their faces to create a glazed look), it was seen as even more deceptive than women's.

In sober colonial New England makeup was strictly regulated. Tradespeople and poorer citizens were forbidden to wear cosmetics, and those who did were condemned as devil's disciples. Women used chalk, beetroot, crushed rose petals, and ground corn to beautify or protect their complexions.

Men, as well as women, used cosmetics heavily during the mid-18th century. The effect was not a natural one, however, as complexions were made to resemble porcelain. The face was stark white, with lips of bright red.

After the French Revolution the French wanted nothing to do with the aristocracy and gave up elaborate hairstyles and painted faces.

Back in the 1880s, New Yorker David H McConnell spent his school vacations selling Bibles. But he soon realized that the small samples of rose oil perfume, which he gave out with God’s Word, were received with greater enthusiasm than the Bibles themselves. So he founded the California Perfume Company, the forerunner of Avon.

The world's largest cosmetics company is L'Oréal, which was founded by Eugene Schueller in 1909 as the French Harmless Hair Colouring Company

The California Perfume Company, Inc. of New York filed their first trademark application for Avon on June 3, 1932 with the USPTO. McConnell called it Avon because he had visited Stratford-on-Avon and loved the countryside there.

In 1976 certain ingredients were banned from use by the cosmetics industry because of endangered species legislation that was passed as part of a growing environmental movement.

Of the estimated 1,000 cosmetic companies in 1990, 31 percent of sales were made by the top three--Avon, Revlon, and Estee Lauder.

The average woman puts 168 chemicals on her body every day through the use of make-up and other beauty products.

Europe has banned more than half the cosmetics Americans use on a daily basis due to health risks.

Sources Encyclopedia Britannica, Daily Express, Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc, The Book of Spices by Frederic Rosengarten

Bill Cosby

When Bill Cosby (b 1937) was cast in 1965 alongside Robert Culp in the I Spy espionage adventure series, Cosby became the first African-American co-star in a dramatic television series.

Cosby in 1957. By Navy Medicine from Washington, DC, USA - 14-0007, CC BY 2.0, $3

Cosby met his future wife, Camille Olivia Hanks, while he was performing stand-up in Washington, DC, in the early 1960s, and she was a student at the University of Maryland. They married on January 25, 1964.

Bill and Camille had five children: four daughters and a son. Their son Ennis was murdered on January 16, 1997 while changing a flat tire on the side of Interstate 405 in Los Angeles.

Ennis Cosby, 1992

All of Bill Cosby's children have names beginning with an E, to represent "excellence."

The title character of Bill Cosby's Little Bill book series and animated children's television series (see below) was based on Ennis.

An avid musician, Cosby is best known as a jazz drummer.

Bill Cosby's 1967 musical comedy single, "Little Ole Man" peaked at #4 on the Hot 100. A note-for-note re-recording of Stevie Wonder's “Uptight, Everything's Alright” was used as the backing track.

The Cosby Show was the number one show in America for five straight years (1985–89).

Adam Sandler started his acting career as a recurring character on The Cosby Show in the 80s.

Fatherhood by Bill Cosby, published by Doubleday/Dolphin in 1986, broke the record for the fastest-selling hardcover book of all time. It remained for over half of its fifty-four weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List at #1. The book is a humorous and insightful look at the challenges and joys of fatherhood. It was praised by critics and readers alike, and it helped to cement Cosby's status as one of the most popular entertainers in America.

Cosby's next Doubleday/Dolphin title, Time Flies, had at the time of its publication the largest single first printing in publishing history with 1.75 million copies.

Bill Cosby has more than a dozen honorary degrees.

Cosby's career and image were seriously damaged in the mid-2010s by over 60 sexual assault accusations by women, the earliest of which date back decades. He was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault in April 2018, and sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison on September 25, 2018. Cosby's conviction was a landmark moment in the #MeToo movement, which brought to light the widespread problem of sexual assault and harassment. 

Cosby was released from prison on June 30, 2021, after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction on the grounds that a previous prosecutor had agreed not to charge Cosby in the case.

Source Wikipedia

Hernando Cortés

Hernando Cortés (1485-1547)  was born in Medellin in the South East of Estremadura, South West Spain.

He was the only child of Martín Cortés, a military captain in the infantry.and Catalina Pizarro Altamirano.

Through his mother, he was second cousin to Francisco Pizarro, who later conquered the Inca empire of modern-day Peru.

Cortés studied at Salamanca but in 1501 he abandoned his law studies to take up a life of adventure.

Cortés was a soldier and farmer until 1511 when he sailed under Diego Velasquez to help conquer Cuba.

He was elected in 1511 alcalde, a sort of mayor/judge of Santiago the then capital of Cuba.

In 1519 he was sent by the governor of Cuba to look for a relative of his whom had not yet returned from a voyage to the Gulf. But Cortés had other ideas.

On his first expedition to Mexico in 1519,  he landed with only 650 men and 16 horses, 13 muskets and seven small cannons, Cortés and his men burnt their ships on landing. This sent a clear message to his men: There is no turning back. His men would have to conquer or die. 

They gained support from the Tlaxcalan people who were enemies of the Aztecs. The Tlaxcalans provided Cortés with most of his troops.

Armour, crossbows, guns, cannons and horses were all unknown to the Aztecs.

When the Aztecs first saw Cortés with his black beard and pale skin, they weren't sure if he was a man or a god.

When Cortés arrived in Tenochtitlan, Mexico in November 8, 1519, the Aztec Emperor, Montezuma, received him as a god. (Their god, Zalcoati, had disappeared across the Atlantic and was due to return in 1519.) Cortés told the emperor that he came as an ambassador from the King of Spain with instructions to preach true religion and end their cannibalistic practices.

Cortés destroyed the Aztec fashion industry of jaguar skins and feather cloaks.

He brought silkworm eggs and mulberry trees to Mexico from Spain thus introducing silk to America.

The Spanish conquistador introduced vine growing to Mexico, which then slowly spread north via the Spanish missions.

His first wife the Cuban Catalina Suárez Marcaida, died at Coyoacán in 1522 without issue.

Cortés took numerous captives, one of whom, Malinche (baptised Marina), became his mistress; out of loyalty to him she acted as the interpreter, guide, and counsellor for the Spaniards.

Cortés married his second wife doña Juana Ramírez de Arellano de Zúñiga in 1529. She was the daughter of don Carlos Ramírez de Arellano, 2nd Count of Aguilar and wife the Countess doña Juana de Zúñiga.

Cortés left his many Indian and white children well cared for in his will, along with every one of their mothers.

In 1521, after four months of siege Cortés captured the flower-covered Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan which was five times larger than London at the time. Cortés replaced it with Mexico City.

In 1522 Cortés was promoted to Governor and Captain-General of Mexico after the sacking of Tenochtitlan.

He lived  in the broad fertile plains of the South of Mexico where he called himself the Marquis of the Valley of Oaxacha.

In 1526 Cortés was sacked as governor of Mexico so ruthless were his methods and he spent the remainder of his life pleading his cause.

Portrait of Cortés at Museo del Prado.

After Cortés bought back chocolate from Mexico, it became a profitable industry for Spain, which planted cocoa trees in its overseas colonies.

Cortés always kept a chocolate pot on his desk.

Cortés was devoted to the Virgin Mary, always keeping a statuette of her upon his person. He said his prayers and attended Mass daily.

Cortés returned to Mexico in 1530 with new titles and honors, but with diminished power.

In 1536, Cortés explored the northwestern part of Mexico and discovered the Baja California peninsula.

Cortés served as a volunteer in 1541 in the unsuccessful Spanish expedition against Algiers, lost a large part of his remaining fortune, and was shipwrecked.

He died in Castilleja de la Cuesta, Seville province, on December 2, 1547, from a case of pleurisy at the age of 62.

Cortés conquered 315,000 square miles in total, defeating the Aztecs, seizing southern and central Mexico and later subjugating Guatemala and Honduras to Spanish rule.

Corset

The corset has been around since Neolithic times when women wore laced bodices made of animal hides.

The fashion for the corset is attributed to Catherine de Médicis, wife of King Henry II of France. In the 1550's she enforced a ban on thick waists at court attendance's and started over 350 years of whalebones, steel rods and midriff torture.

In the 16th century, corsets showed a person’s social standing and, at the French court, no lady-in-waiting was allowed a waist of more than 13 inches.

The authoress Louisa Alcott protested against the corset.

Queen Victoria lamented  the 19th century fashion for the waist being whittled away by the corset into the space that could fit between a man’s hands.

Some Victorian physicians argued that women needed corsets to support their internal organs.

Corsets were often made with whalebone. In the 1800s, the baleen whale was crucial to corset-making.

Ladies wore corsets, which would lace up in the front. A proper and dignified woman, as in 'straight laced' wore a tightly tied lace.

The small town of McGraw, New York, with a population of under 1,000 residents, was once the "Corset Making Capital of America." From the late 1800s into the mid 20th century there were several large corset manufacturing companies located there, with factories that employed as many as 800 workers. 

World War I dealt the corset a fatal blow when the American War Industries Board called on women to stop buying corsets in 1917, freeing up some 28,000 tons of metal! It was enough metal to build two battleships.

Sources CNYNews,  Inventors.about.

Corporation

A New York fishing company became the first corporation to be chartered in the United States in 1675.

U.S. Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation and once the world's largest producer of steel, was incorporated by industrialist J. P. Morgan in 1901.

The General Motors Corporation becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year in 1955.

Corporal Punishment

The medieval school boy princes of Europe employed “whipping boys” to take their punishment for them. When Edward VI of England was a student, his whipping boy was a certain Barnaby Fitzpatrick.

Roger Ascham was a schoolmaster who was tutor for two years to the future Elizabeth I. His book The Schoolmaster, published by his widow in 1570, laid out his liberal ideas, which included him being against corporal punishment.

Poland was the first nation to outlaw corporal punishment in schools in 1783.

Flogging in the British army was abolished in 1859.

The United States Army abolished flogging in 1861.

The Eastbourne manslaughter (R v Hopley) was an 1860 legal case in Eastbourne, England, about the death of a teenage pupil at the hands of his teacher, Thomas Hopley. Reginald Cancellor's parents gave Hopley permission to use corporal punishment to overcome what he perceived as the boy's stubbornness. After the boy died, the teacher insisted that the beating was justifiable and that he was not guilty of any crime. An inquest into Cancellor's death began when his brother requested an autopsy. As a result of the inquest Hopley was arrested and found guilty of manslaughter.  The judge Sir Alexander Cockburn, who was the Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, sentenced him to four years in prison.

Cockburn's requirement for "moderate and reasonable" punishment was established as a legal limit to corporal punishment and is still employed in modern legal scholarship,

The Hopley trial was sensationalized by the Victorian press and incited debate over the use of corporal punishment in schools.

1888 cartoon depicting J.S. Kerr, an Australian proponent of punishment by caning

Physical discipline was officially banned in state-funded schools, throughout the United Kingdom, in 1986

Coronavirus

Coronaviruses are a type of virus that can trigger respiratory infections, from bad colds to – on rare occasions – lethal pneumonia.

Coronaviruses are enveloped viruses with a positive-sense RNA genome. The genome size of coronaviruses are about 26 to 32 kilobases, extraordinarily large for an RNA virus.

Seven strains are known to circulate among humans. These include SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) which killed 4 people in the early 2000s, and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), which has claimed 850 lives since 2012.

The name "coronavirus" is derived from the Latin corona, meaning crown or halo, and refers to how virions look under an electron microscope.

Coronaviruses  viewed under an electron microscope

An outbreak of a novel coronavirus was identified during mid-December 2019 in the city of Wuhan in Central China. It was a group of people with pneumonia with no clear cause. It was soon seen as a new strain of coronavirus, which was named 2019-nCoV.

On January 20, 2020, Chinese premier Li Keqiang called for efforts to stop and control the 2019-nCoV epidemic. Ten days later, The World Health Organization declared that coronavirus outbreak is a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

The 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak was linked to snakes sold at a slaughtered-animal market in Wuhan, where vendors legally sold live snakes from stalls in close quarters with hundreds of others, creating what experts described as a perfect incubator for novel pathogens.

Some investigators believe the coronavirus outbreak may have come from humans eating bats.  Scientists have long struggled to understand how the mammals carry so many viruses without getting sick.

The virus can incubate in the body for up to 14 days before symptoms appear. They start off as flu-like and may be mild – a temperature, sore throat, dry cough etc. Ninety percent of people get a fever, 80 percent get a dry cough and 30 percent suffer from shortness of breath. Some patients have developed pneumonia, which involves inflammation of the small air sacs in the lungs.

Symptoms of 2019-nCoV (Wuhan coronavirus). 

While Ebola kills half the people who get it and SARS killed 9.6%, the new corona virus’ mortality rate appears to be only about 2.2%, based on Chinese national data from January 20, 2020 onwards.

The first confirmed death from 2019-nCoV occurred in China on January 9, 2020.

The first local transmission of 2019-nCoV outside China occurred in Vietnam from a father to his son  whereas the first local transmission not involving family occurred in Germany, on January 22, 2020 when a German man contracted the disease from a Chinese business visitor at a meeting near Munich.

The first death outside China was reported in the Philippines, where a 44-year-old man confirmed to have contracted 2019-nCoV died on February 1, 2020.

The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak to be a pandemic on  March 11, 2020. At that date, over 125,000 cases of the disease had been confirmed in more than 120 countries and territories, with major outbreaks in mainland China (80,000 cases). More than 4,500 had died (3,200 in China).

The Italian government implemented a national quarantine on March 9, 2020. By that date there had been 7,375 confirmed cases, and 366 deaths in Italy.

Civil Protection volunteers carrying out health checks at Bologna Airport Source Wikipedia

On Friday, March 13, 2020, the U.S. declared a national emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was possibly the worst Friday the 13th of all time.

Every person with 2019-nCoV passes it onto an average 2.6 people.

The virus hat causes Covid-19 can survive for up to 24 hours on cardboard and two to three daus on plastic and stainless steel.

Efforts to prevent the spread of coronavirus have included travel restrictions, curfews, quarantines, event postponements and cancellations, and facility closures. These include nationwide quarantines of Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, and Germany, closing of schools and universities affecting more than 950 million students worldwide, the postponement or cancellation of sporting and cultural events and the suspension of in-person religious services,

"Happy Birthday" gained a second identity in 2020 as the accompaniment to a hand-washing ritual in the Coronavirus pandemic. Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that to wash your hands effectively, you must scrub often with soap and water for 20 seconds It takes about 10 seconds to sing 'Happy Birthday." So if someone sings it twice, that gives them the 20 seconds necessary to wash their hands properly and rid them of COVID-19.

The Chinese province of Hubei, where the pandemic began, lifted travel restrictions on most of its 60 million residents on March 25, 2020, ending a nearly two-month lockdown.

Scientists at Oxford University revealed on June 16, 2020 they had identified the first drug shown to reduce coronavirus-related deaths: an already existing steroid called dexamethasone. It reduced the death rate of patients on ventilators by a third and patients on oxygen by a fifth.

A coronavirus outbreak at the White House in late September and early October 2020 involved at least 35 people, including President Trump, the First Lady, three senators, and a governor. Many of the infections appeared to be related to a ceremony held on September 26, 2020  in the White House Rose Garden for the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, where seating was not socially distanced and participants were mostly unmasked.

After the coronavirus was detected in December 2019,  the genetic sequence of COVID‑19 was published on January 11, 2020, triggering an urgent international response to prepare for an outbreak and hasten development of a preventive vaccine. Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, is a COVID-19 vaccine developed by BioNTech and manufactured and distributed by Pfizer and Fosun Pharmaceutical. It is the first COVID-19 vaccine to be authorized by a stringent regulatory authority

The United Kingdom's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency  gave the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine a temporary regulatory approval on December 2, 2020. It was the first COVID-19 vaccine to be approved for national use after undergoing large scale trials. 

On December 8, 2020, Margaret "Maggie" Keenan, 90, from Coventry, England became the first patent in the world to receive a COVID‑19 vaccine.  The first shots were given in the American mass vaccination campaign on December 14, 2020. 

A computer program named "World One" that was developed in 1973 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), predicted 2020 to be the year when a series of catastrophic events kick off a 20-year process of a slow demise of human civilization.

According to data from the Wikimedia Foundation, in 2020, COVID-19-related articles across all Wikipedias received more than 579 million pageviews. 

"Lockdown" was named the Collins Word of the Year 2020. Several other words related to the Covid-19 pandemic were included in Collins Dictionary's longer list of ten words of the year such as “coronavirus,” and “self-isolate.” 

By February 2021, more Americans had died from coronavirus than on the battlefields of World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined.

The Delta variant, a variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19., was first detected in India in late 2020. It became the dominant variant worldwide and had spread to over 179 countries by November 2021. 

India registered 314,835 new COVID-19 cases on April 22, 2021, which was the highest one-day increase in cases worldwide since the beginning of the pandemic. Over 2,000 deaths were recorded in the 24-hour period as the country struggled with a lack of oxygen and a "double mutant" variant, named B.1.617.

By May 1, 2021, adults in the U.S. across all 50 states were eligible to receive a Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.

The Omicron variant was first detected in South Africa on November 24, 2021. The new variant is more infectious than other variants but less virulent than previous strains, especially compared to the Delta variant.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on May 5, 2023 that it was ending its designation of the COVID-19 pandemic as a global health emergency. The decision came after a meeting of the WHO's emergency committee, which found that the pandemic was no longer a "public health emergency of international concern" (PHEIC).

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman were awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries that led to the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. Their work has had a profound impact on the world, and their contributions have saved millions of lives.

Karikó and Weissman began their research on mRNA vaccines in the early 2000s. They were interested in using mRNA to deliver instructions to the body's cells to produce proteins that could fight disease. However, there were several challenges that needed to be overcome before mRNA vaccines could be safely and effectively used in humans.

One of the main challenges was that mRNA is very fragile and can easily be degraded by the body. Karikó and Weissman developed a modified form of mRNA that is more stable and less likely to be degraded. They also developed a method for delivering the mRNA to the body's cells. Karikó and Weissman's research paved the way for the development of the first mRNA vaccines. 

Sources New York Times. Daily Mail