Talking

Humans use a total of 72 different muscles in speech.

Pixiebay

While talking, the vocal cords of the average male are "blown" apart and then "sucked" back together again about 110 times per second.

The average talker sprays about 300 microscopic saliva droplets per minute, about 2.5 droplets per word.

From the 1500s to the 1700s, British kings would appoint a "Groom of Stool" – Someone who would talk to them while they used the toilet.

King Charles II of England enjoyed talking, especially telling stories of his own life. His courtiers would, having heard the same story for the thousandth time, try to get away if they could, using any excuse to withdraw.

Charles in Garter robes by John Michael Wright or studio,

Thomas Jefferson was apparently a poor public speaker with a thin, fine voice. He talked with his arms folded.

As a boy in Scotland, Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) made a talking doll that said "mama". So convincing was it that his neighbors began hunting for an abandoned baby.

Albert Einstein was unable to speak until the age of three when at supper one night he broke his silence to say "The soup is too hot" . His parents asked why he hadn't talked before. "Because up to now everything was in order."

Einstein aged 3

Emily Dickinson was diagnosed as having "nervous prostration" by a physician during her lifetime. From 1867, the American poet began to talk to visitors from the other side of a door rather than speaking to them face to face.

In using the early telephones people rang a bell by hand and then said into the instrument, "Are you ready to talk?" or asked some similar question. One day Thomas Edison was working in his laboratory to perfect the telephone. According to one story, he picked up the instrument during a test and said into the transmitter, "Hello!" This greeting soon became a standard way to start a telephone conversation.

The oldest known song featuring a man talking to his girlfriend over the phone is "Hello! Ma Baby" (made popular by Looney Tunes' Michigan J Frog). It was written in 1899 by the songwriting team of Joseph E. Howard and Ida Emerson, known as "Howard and Emerson", when only 10% of the population had telephones. Its subject is a man who has a girlfriend he knows only through the telephone.

Original sheet-music cover from 1899

When Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud met for the first time, they talked for thirteen hours straight.

President Calvin Coolidge was nicknamed "Silent Cal" because he did not talk much.

U.S. President Herbert Hoover and his wife would talk in Mandarin Chinese to prevent White House staff from eavesdropping.

The first words spoken in a movie were “wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet” in the 1927 film The Jazz Singer.

Franklin D. Roosevelt didn't like the polite small talk of social functions so he would sometimes amuse himself by greeting his guests with the words "I murdered my grandmother this morning ". The response was invariably of polite approval. Nobody ever paid attention to what was actually said at these functions!

In the 1990s the CIA tried to discredit the US Ambassador to Guatemala after they bugged her room and heard her talking lovingly to a woman named Murphy, and accused her of having an affair with the woman to Washington. There was no affair she was talking to her poodle named Murphy.

On September 22, 1990, British electronics salesman and comedian Steve Woodmore recited a piece of the famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy from William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark in 56 seconds, yielding an average rate of 637 words per minute.

For five years, Woodmore held The Guinness World Record for fastest talker. He was usurped by Toronto-born Sean Shannon, who read the famous Hamlet 'to be, or not to be' soliloquy at a rate of 655 words per minute on August 30, 1995 at Edinburgh.

When someone talked about Queen Elizabeth II, she was called "The Queen" or "Her Majesty". When someone talked to her, she was called "Your Majesty". After the first time, the person talked to the Queen, they could say "Ma'am" - pronounced "Mam".

Just as some people talk in their sleep, sign language speakers have been known to sign in their sleep.

According to a recent survey done by Time Magazine, 59% of Americans would rather have a dental appointment than be sitting next to someone talking on a cell phone.

Source Compton's Encyclopedia

Take-out or Take-away

Take-out is cooked food, which is sold for consumption away from the place where it was prepared. It also known as take-away in the United Kingdom and parcel (in Indian and Pakistani English.

Pixiebay

The concept of prepared meals to be eaten elsewhere dates back to Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome where market and roadside stalls selling food were common.

The Romans introduced the first fast food commercial establishment, called a thermopolium, that sold hot ready-to-eat food. Hot meals were served and stored in smaller pots. Lentils, meat, cheese, nuts and a type of fish sauce known as garum were all staples. The word thermopolium literally means "a place where something hot is sold."

Thermopolium were mainly used by the poor or those who simply could not afford a private kitchen, sometimes leading them to be scorned by the upper class. In the ruins of Pompeii and the nearby town of Herculaneum, archaeologists have found 200 thermopolia. As there is a distinct lack of formal dining and kitchen area in these homes, this suggests that eating take-out food was very common there.

Thermopolium in Herculanum. By Aldo Ardetti at Italian Wikipedia,

French fries originated in Belgium in the 18th century where Belgian street vendors sold thin fried potatoes called "Belgian fries" from pushcarts. The French later adapted the idea and their version was known as "French Fries".

In 1789 Thomas Jefferson brought back with him to America the joys of fried potatoes after sampling them in Paris. He described them as "potatoes, fried in the French manner" with beefsteak.

In England, french fries are known as chips. Their popularity there  received a huge boots in the 1860s as a result of the opening of fish and chip shops such as Joseph Malin's in London.

In Victorian England, the streets flowed with traders selling, baked potato, meat pudding, fried fish, hot eels, pickled whelks, oysters, trotters and pea soup. In the 1850s there were 500 London traders selling hot eels alone.

The first time a food takeaway order was made by telephone was in 1922 at a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles called Kin-Chu Cafe. 

In 1940 Colonel Harland Saunders who owned a small restaurant and petrol station in Corbin, Kentucky invented his Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe with a secret blend of 11 herbs and spices. The first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise opened for business in Salt Lake City twelve years later.

In the late 1940s, it was common to see carhops serving those who wanted to order food from their motor vehicle. Harry Snyder of Baldwin Park, California had the idea of a drive through hamburger stand where customers could order through a two-way speaker box. He opened in 1948 California's first drive through hamburger stand, named "In-N-Out Burger".

Eight years after brothers Dick and Maurice McDonald opened a tiny hamburger restaurant on a street corner in San Bernardino, Los Angeles, in 1940, they replaced the trained cooks in their eatery with low-paid teenagers who simply flipped burgers and dunk fries in oil. The menu was reduced to a few items and cutlery and china was discarded. Customers had to queue for their food and eat out of a cardboard carton with their hands. Products were offered as either "eat-in" or "take-out". Prices were reduced and people piled in. By 1988, 51% of McDonald's turnover was being generated by drive-throughs, with 31% of all US take-out turnover being generated by them by 1990. 

In 1954, James McLamore and David Edgerton founded Burger King. They sold burgers and milkshakes for 18 cents each.

In 1982, American Ingrid Kosar, inspired by ski clothes, invented the thermal bag for keeping takeaways warm. Domino's Pizza bought her invention.

In the Western world today, many barely know how to cook. With frozen foods that just need to be heated up and the ready availability of takeout foods, they no longer have to.

Take out collage. Wikipedia

In addition in the west the increase in different members of a family working different shifts and a growing number of single households is resulting in around half of all meals taken at home now being a solitary experience. Frequently dinner is a ready meal heated up in a microwave and consumed in front of the television.

The Deliveroo algorithm that is used to ensure customers receive the correct food is based on India's 'dabbawala' delivery system, a method of marking lunch boxes that was devised in the 1890s. 

Sila Suthara is a roadside vendor in Phetchaburi, Thailand, who for 20 years has used a grill made of 1,000 mirrors to focus sunlight to cook chicken and pork. A chicken cooks in about 12 minutes.

Sources Food For Thought by Ed Pearce, Daily Mail Weekend magazine

Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal is a white marble mausoleum in Agra, central India built by Shah Jahan for his late wife Mumtaz Mahal. 

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Mumtaz Mahal (born Arjumand Banu Begum) was a Persian princess who was the chief consort of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. Their marriage took place on April 30, 1612,  five years after the year of their betrothal and the pair was very much a love-match. She was her husband's constant companion and trusted confidant and in their nineteen years of marriage, they had fourteen children together (eight sons and six daughters).

Mumtaz Mahal was accompanying her husband on a military campaign in Burhanpur, Deccan (present-day Madhya Pradesh) when she went into labor. It was a prolonged labor of approximately 30 hours and the exhausted mother died from a postpartum hemorrhage on June 17, 1631 after giving birth to her fourteenth child, a daughter named Gauhar Ara Begum.
 

Portrait of Mumtaz Mahal 

The Empress' body was temporarily buried at Burhanpur in a walled pleasure garden known as Zainabad. In the immediate aftermath of his bereavement, Shah Jahan was inconsolable and he went into secluded mourning for a year.

In December 1631, Mumtaz Mahal body's was disinterred and transported in a golden casket back to the Mughal Empire capital, Agra. There it was interred in a small building on the banks of the Yamuna River. 

Shah Jahan stayed behind in Burhanpur to conclude the military campaign and while there, he commissioned the construction of a suitable mausoleum and funerary garden in Agra to be built in the memory of his wife. 

Shah Jahan would spend the next two decades building his beloved wife's mausoleum, the Taj Mahal. It required the labor of 20,000 stone carvers, masons and artists from all over India and Central Asia. It is generally thought that Ustad Ahmad Lahauri was in charge of the construction.

The Taj Mahal was built with materials from all over Central and East Asia. So much white marble and precious stones was used in its construction that it nearly bankrupted the Mughal empire. Over 1,000 elephants were used to transport white marble from Rajasthan, jasper from Punjab, jade and crystal from China. In all, 28 types of precious and semi-precious stones were inlaid into the building.

The principal mausoleum was completed in 1643 and the surrounding buildings and garden were finished a decade later.

The actual tombs of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan in the lower level. Donelson 

In order to misguide Japanese bombers during World War II,  the Taj Mahal was disguised with a huge scaffold which made it look like a stockpile of bamboos. The idea worked and was used again in 1971 at the time of Indo-Pak War.

The Taj Mahal complex is believed to have been completed in its entirety at a cost estimated at the time to be around 32 million rupees, which is around 52.8 billion Indian rupees ($827 million US) based on 2015 values.

The Taj Mahal was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983, for being "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage". 

It attracts 7–8 million visitors a year. Most tourists visit the Taj Mahal in the cooler months of October, November and February.

It is forbidden for aircraft to fly over the Taj Mahal.

The Taj Mahal's white marble exterior is gradually turning yellow due to high levels of air pollution.

Source Irancivilcenter

Taizé Community

In 1940 an ecumenical community, Taizé, was founded by a Swiss Reformed Protestant Brother Roger (1915-2005) on a mountain near Cluny in southern Burgundy, France. Originally it was a small quasi-monastic community of men living together in poverty and celibacy.

Brother Roger Wikipedia

Today members observe a rule similar to most monastic orders and their wish is to promote Christian unity, particularly between Protestants and Catholics.

In 1974 Taizé organized a "council of the youth" and since then thousands of Catholic and Protestant Christian youths from all over the world have visited the community.

Over 100,000 young people from around the world make pilgrimages to Taizé each year for prayer, Bible study, sharing, and communal work.

Tragically a schizophrenic Romanian woman stabbed Brother Roger in the throat during the evening prayer service at Taizé in front of 2,500 horrified young pilgrims on August 16, 2005. He died within minutes.

Taiwan

Taiwan is an island 180 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of the China mainland, south of Japan, and north of the Philippines.

Location map of Taiwan. Wikipedia

HISTORY

Taiwanese aborigines are the indigenous peoples of the island of Taiwan. Although each group holds a variety of creation stories, contemporary research suggests their ancestors may have been living on the islands for approximately 8,000 years before major Han Chinese immigration began in the middle of the last millennium.

In 1517, a Portuguese discovery ship were the first Europeans to view the island.  They named it "Ilha Formosa", or "Beautiful Island" in Portuguese. The name "Formosa" remained in common use among English speakers into the 20th century.

Formosa was occupied by the Dutch from the 1620s, until the Chinese general Koxinga seized the island at the Siege of Fort Zeelandia, which ended on February 1, 1662.

Fort Zeelandia, the Governor's residence in Dutch Formosa

In 1683, following the defeat of Koxinga's grandson by an armada led by Admiral Shi Lang of southern Fujian, the Qing dynasty formally annexed Formosa. Use of the current Chinese name Taiwan was formalized the following year with the establishment of Taiwan Prefecture. Through its rapid development the entire Formosan mainland eventually became known as "Taiwan."

Taiwan was ceded to Japan from Qing China under the terms of the April 17, 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, following the Sino-Japanese war. Tang Ching-sung was its first president. The island was not regained by China until the Japanese surrender in August 1945.

The Taiwan flag was first used in mainland China as the Navy flag in 1912 and was made the official national flag of the Republic of China (ROC) in 1928 by the Kuomintang (KMT). It was adopted as the official flag of Taiwan on October 25, 1945. The flag is no longer used in mainland China following the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Taiwan flag

In December 1949 Taiwan became the refuge for the Chinese nationalist government forces of Chiang Kai-shek which were compelled to evacuate the mainland after their defeat by the Communist troops of Mao Zedong. Chiang and his nationalist followers, though only a 15 percent minority, dominated the island and maintained an army of 60,0000 in the hope of re conquering the mainland. They continued to be recognized by the USA as the legitimate government of China, and occupied China's United Nations and Security Council seats until October 1971 when they were expelled and replaced by the People's Republic.

Dwight D. Eisenhower visited Taiwan in June 1960 and an estimated 650,000 people packed into the Presidential Plaza to hear the American president. He lauded President Chiang for his courage and tireless effort in leading the nation in the struggle against in­human tyranny.

The picture below shows President Chiang Kai-shek and the US President Dwight D. Eisenhower waving to crowds during his visit to Taiwan's capital Taipei in June 1960.

During the 1970s the Taiwanese government was forced to adjust to rapid external changes as the USA adopted a new policy of detente towards communist China. This culminated in January 1979 in the full normalization of Sino-American relations, and the severing of American-Taiwanese diplomatic contacts. Other Western Nations followed suit and ended diplomatic relations with Taiwan during the 1970s and early 1980s.

As minister of economic affairs from 1969 to 1978 and Premier of the Republic of China from 1978 to 1984, Sun Yun-suan was credited for overseeing the transformation of Taiwan from being a mainly agricultural economy to an export powerhouse. 

When president Chiang Ching-kuo died of a heart attack at age 77 on January 13, 1988, he was succeeded by  Lee Teng-hui who became the first Taiwan native to become president of the Republic of China. 

In March 2004, China's government passed the Anti-Secession Law, which required the Chinese military to invade Taiwan immediately if they declare independence. The law demonstrated China's concern over a growing move towards independence by the government of Taiwan.

The world's then tallest building, the Taipei 101 was built in Tapei, Taiwan in 2004. It held the world record for skyscraper height until 2010.

View of Taipei City, the capital of Taiwan, including the Tapei 101. Wikipedia.

FUN TAIWAN FACTS

While Taiwan still exists, it is not always considered an independent country, despite being self-governing. Taiwan is officially called the Republic of China (ROC) and The People's Republic of China has consistently claimed sovereignty over the island and asserted the ROC is no longer in legitimate existence. However a number of countries maintain official ties with the ROC and many other states maintain unofficial ties through representative offices and institutions that function as de facto embassies and consulates.

Taiwan competes at the Olympic Games as "Chinese Taipei."

Taiwan is the most populous state and largest economy that is not a member of the United Nations.

There is a Hello Kitty-themed hospital in Taiwan.

There is a chain of toilet-themed restaurants in Taiwan serving food in miniature toilet bowls.

Taiwan was the first country to offer free Wi-Fi to all tourists through over 4,000 hotspots all over the island.

Taiwan is mostly mountainous in the east. It's highest point is Yu Shan (Jade Mountain), which is 3,952 meters high (12,966 ft). There are five other peaks over 3,500 meters.

Mandarin is the language of government and education in Taiwan.

Source Hutchinson Encyclopedia 

Tailor

A tailor is a person whose business is to cut out and make outer garments, especially for men.

A tailor fitting a customer. By Rprakash1782 

The word "tailor", which according to the Oxford Dictionary first appeared in 1297, comes from a French word—tailler—meaning "to cut."

HISTORY

Tailoring has its origins in the trade of linen armorers, who fitted men with padded linen undergarments to protect their bodies against the chafing of chain mail and later plate armor.

Buttonholes were invented by Moorish tailors as a means of fastening garments. They were adopted in Europe in the 13th century.

By the late 13th century a tailor was considered a legitimate occupation. In France, the Tailleurs de Robes received a royal charter in 1293.The London Guild of Taylors and Linen Armorers were granted royal arms six years later.

One of the four surviving copies of the Magna Carta, written on dried sheepskin in Latin, was discovered in a London tailor’s shop in the 16th century.

The first English-language tailoring manual was The Taylor’s Complete Guide, which was published in 1796.

Interior of a Tailor's Shop - anonymous painter, c. 1780

The first display windows in shops were installed in the late 18th century in London, where levels of conspicuous consumption were growing rapidly. Retailer Francis Place was one of the first to experiment with this new retailing method at his tailoring establishment located at 16 Charing Cross, where he fitted the shop-front with large plate glass windows. Each of the panes of glass in the shop front cost him three pounds.

The ready-to-wear industry began to develop in the early years of the 19th century. Tailors would cut out several copies of one garment and farm them out to women to sew. At first ready-to-wear clothes fitted poorly. But by the middle of the century their quality had improved.

Before the adoption of the sewing machine in tailor shops, some garments required more than one tailor to work on them at the same time.

The first functioning sewing machine was invented by a French tailor Barthélemy Thimonnier in 1830. His device was the first such machine to replicate sewing by hand and enabled tailors to work on garments on their own.

Unable to attend school, young Andrew Johnson was hired out to a tailor at an early age. He learned the trade but was so unhappy at his job that he refused to serve out his apprenticeship. He later became a successful tailor running a shop in Rutledge, Tennessee.

Andrew Johnson is the only tailor ever to become president. After he's moved into the White House, Johnson would typically stop by a tailor shop to say hello and would wear only the suits that he made himself.  His home and tailor's shop, is today part of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site.

A replica of Andrew Johnson's tailor shop. Brian Stansberry

Jacob Davis was a tailor who often bought bolts of cloth from the Levi Strauss & Co. wholesale house. In 1872, Davis wrote to Strauss asking to partner with him to patent and sell clothing reinforced with small metal rivets as well as the usual stitching.
Levi accepted Davis's offer, and their Levi Strauss blue jeans with copper rivets were sold at $13.50 per dozen.

FUN TAILOR FACTS

Bespoke tailoring is clothing made to an individual buyer's specifications by a tailor. It is called "custom tailoring" in the United States and Hong Kong.

The heart of the "bespoke tailoring" trade in the United Kingdom is Savile Row, a street in Mayfair, central London. 

The term "bespoke" is understood to have originated in Savile Row when cloth for a suit was said to "be spoken for" by individual customers.

Henry Poole is credited as being the "Founder of Savile Row". He moved his tailoring business to 32, Savile Row in 1846, following the death of its founder James Poole. 

Henry Poole & Co on Savile Row, London (2014). By Gryffindor 

When Kathryn Sargent opened her tailors in April 2016, it was the first time in 213 years that London's Savile Row had a female name above one of its master tailor shops.

Tailors' chalk is not real chalk. It is really talc (magnesium silicate). Tailors use it to draw on material when they are making clothes.

Source JournalAlabamachanin

Tail

Monkeys have tails; apes do not.

A cat's tail contains 10 percent of the bones in its body.

Pixiebay

The tails of Manx cats range from a few inches, called “stumpy”, to nonexistent “rumpy”. Legend says that the Manx cat lost its tail when Noah closed the door to the ark too soon.

In the United Kingdom a tax was levied in the 18th century upon working dogs with tails, so many puppies had their tails docked to avoid this tax. The tax was repealed in 1796 but that did not stop the practice from persisting.

Dogs can become afflicted by Happy Tail, a syndrome where the tail is wagged so hard that it hits walls, furniture, and people until it begins bleeding. Because of the wagging, that blood is then flicked onto walls, ceilings, and anything else in the vicinity.

Polish composer Frédéric Chopin wrote his “The Little Dog Waltz,” also known as "The Minute Waltz," after watching his friend’s Pomeranian gleefully chasing its tail.

Keon, an Irish wolfhound, has a 2.6-foot-long tail, which is the Guinness World Record for the longest tail on a dog.

As an aggressive gesture to rivals, the coyote makes its tail bushier and turns it sideways.

Geckos have score lines on their tails that allow them to snap off quickly if a predator grabs them. They then regenerate their tail.

Kangaroos can't jump without using their tails.

The tufted ground squirrel of Borneo's tail is 30 percent larger by volume than its body. It has the largest-known tail-to-body-size ratio of any mammal. 

Tufted ground squirrel. Joseph Wolf - Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1856 

A peacock's tail feathers can reach up to six feet long and makes up around 60% of its body length.

The tail feathers of Birds of Paradise are so black that they absorb 99.95% of all light, just .01% less than the blackest human-made nanomaterial, and help make brightly-colored patches stand out more during mating dances.

During the Middle Ages, the beaver's flat, scaly tail led many Roman Catholics to class them as fish-which meant Catholics could eat them on Fridays.

The thresher shark was named for its thresher-like tail, which can be as long as its entire body. It uses its tail as a weapon to stun prey.

Common thresher shark (Alopias vulpinus).

When scientists discovered a dinosaur tail perfectly preserved in amber, they found it was full of feathers.

Before the word "queue" meant a line of people waiting their turn, it originally meant the tail of a beast in medieval pictures and designs.

The French actress Sarah Bernhardt was fond of wild animals. According to some biographies (probably more fanciful than reliable) she asked a surgeon to fasten her a tiger tail but he replied it was medically impossible.

During the Second World War, the UK Ministry For Food released a recipe for squirrel tail soup.

All human sperm rotate their tails anticlockwise when swimming.

William Howard Taft

LIFE BEFORE PRESIDENCY 

William Howard Taft was born September 15, 1857 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Alphonso Taft and Louise Torrey.

William Howard Taft

Taft's father was a lawyer. He served as a judge, ambassador and in the cabinet, as Secretary of War and Attorney General under Ulysses S. Grant.

William was a physically active child, playing sports and taking dancing lessons despite his tendency to obesity.

William Taft graduated from Yale College in 1878, second in his class out of 121. He attended Cincinnati Law School while working part time as a courthouse reporter for the Cincinnati Commercial. Taft passed his bar examination in May 1880.

Yale College photograph of Taft

Taft married Helen "Nellie" Herron at her parents' home in Cincinnati on June 19, 1886. They remained devoted to each other throughout their almost 44 years of marriage. The couple had three children, of whom the eldest, Robert, became a U.S. senator. 

First Lady Helen Taft in her official White House portrait

Principally due to his father's political connections, Taft became assistant prosecutor of Hamilton County, Ohio, in 1881. Thereafter, he worked as a lawyer for a few years before serving as a state and federal judge, and then as governor of the Philippines beginning in 1900.

In 1904 Theodore Roosevelt made him Secretary of War. Taft declined repeated offers to become a Supreme Court justice.

Taft was Roosevelt's hand-picked Republican successor in 1908, and easily defeated William Jennings Bryan for the presidency.

 Taft learns by telephone from Roosevelt of his nomination for president.

William Howard Taft was a member of Cincinnati's First Unitarian Church.

PRESIDENCY

William Taft was the American president between 1909-13.

During his time in the White House, Taft focused on the Far East more than Europe, and repeatedly intervened in Latin America.

Taft's large size and his famous chuckle made Taft a memorable figure. He weighed a mighty 332lb — nearly 24 st — at his inauguration in 1909.

Official White House portrait of Taft by Anders Zorn

Chairs were a problem. Taft always "looked before he sat" to avoid armchairs or antiques in which he might get stuck or collapse. 

Taft is said to have got stuck in the White House bath. A replacement was installed, big enough to fit four men.

Taft followed a weight loss program. The president was in contact with Dr. Yorke-Davies for over twenty years and kept a daily record of his weight, food intake, and physical activity. Taft managed to go from 340 to 244 pounds and walked three miles to the Capitol every day.

When William Howard Taft arrived at the White House, he insisted on having an immediate supply of milk. Pauline Wayne became the presidential cow and supplied his milk.

Pauline Wayne in front of the Navy Building,  now the Eisenhower Executive Office Building

William Howard Taft started a presidential tradition pitching out the first ball at the opening of baseball season. He made the pitch at a game between Washington and Philadelphia.

Toy companies failed to duplicate the success of Theodore Roosevelt's teddy bear with William Taft's "Billy Possum."

Taft was allied with the conservative wing of the Republican Party, while Roosevelt became more liberal after 1909. Roosevelt unsuccessfully challenged Taft for renomination in 1912, then bolted the party and ran as a third-party candidate. The split in the Republican vote left Taft with little chance of re-election, and he lost to Woodrow Wilson, winning only Utah and Vermont.

In 1912, James Sherman—Taft's vice president/running mate—died from kidney disease six days before the general election. His name remained on the ticket.

POST PRESIDENCY

William Howard Taft began his duties as professor of law at Yale University on April 2 1913.

On July 11, 1921, Taft was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He served until a month before his death nine years later. He posted a conservative record, and reformed the court's administration.

Taft is the only man to have filled both offices of President and Chief Justice.

Taft died on March 8, 1930 due to heart failure. Three days later, he became the first president to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Sources Compton's Encyclopedia, Millercenter

Taco Bell

Taco Bell is an American fast food restaurant chain that serves Tex-Mex foods.

Taco Bell, Taos New Mexico - 2011. By John Phelan 

Former U.S. marine Glen Bell started his first hot dog stand, called Bell's Drive-In, in San Bernardino in 1948.

Glen Bell funded his hot dog stand by selling his sister's refrigerator for start-up cash.

In late 1951, Bell sold the hot dog stand and built a second stand that sold hot dogs and hamburgers. 

Glen Bell regularly ate at a popular Mexican restaurant across the road. He attempted to reverse-engineer their taco recipe, before eventually persuading the owners to show him how they were prepared. With this knowledge, he started selling in early 1952 tacos at a stand named Taco-Tia from a side window. Priced 19 cents each, it wasn't long, they were outselling the burgers and hot dogs.

Glen Bell

Bell opened his first stand-alone Mexican restaurant on March 21, 1962. A friend convinced him to be a little egotistical and call his restaurant Taco Bell. Bell franchised his restaurant two years later.

Bell's company grew rapidly, and by 1967 the 100th Taco Bell restaurant had opened.

The 868 Taco Bell restaurant chain was sold to PepsiCo in 1978 for $125 million in stock.

In 1996 as an April Fools Day hoax, Taco Bell printed in six major American newspapers that it had bought The Liberty Bell and was renaming it The Taco Liberty Bell. The joke achieved $25 million in free publicity. 

NASA used Taco Bell tortillas for Space Shuttle missions - bread had too many crumbs so they used tortillas instead, and NASA started making space tortillas. Taco Bell made a tortilla in the 90s with a nine month shelf life, so NASA started using those instead.

In March 2012, Taco Bell teamed up with Frito Lay and created the Doritos Locos Tacos, which is a taco with a Dorito Nacho Cheese flavored taco shell. The success of the Doritos Locos Taco allowed Taco Bell to hire 15,000 new employees.

Taco Bell Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos Closeup | by theimpulsivebuy

When Taco Bell attempted to enter Mexico the locals decried the food as inauthentic. When they returned in 2007, Taco Bell promoted itself as selling "authentic American food", but it closed in January 2010 due to lack of interest.

Taco Bell failed to pay the two Michigan men who pitched the idea of the Taco Bell Chihuahua mascot, and later were court-ordered to pay back  $42.1 million dollars.

As of 2018, Taco Bell serves more than 2 billion customers each year at 7,000 restaurants, more than 80 percent of which are owned and operated by independent franchisees and licensees. 

Taco Bell provides tortillas for NASA to use in lieu of bread, which cause problems due to crumbs getting caught in instruments. The Taco Bell tortillas are ideal due to their long shelf life.

Taco

A taco is a traditional Mexican food. It comprises a corn or wheat tortilla, which is rolled or folded around a filling. Many tacos are made with a spiced beef filling, while others are filled with chicken, pork, seafood or cheese. Garnishes include lettuce, guacamole, or pico de gallo. 

Pixiebay

The word taco comes from Mexican Spanish and is the equivalent of the English word sandwich. It literally means "plug," as in ... we will plug a taco in our mouths anytime.

The taco predates the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico. Archaeologists believe that early Mexicans may have feasted on ground corn meal folded around fish caught in the country's lake region.

Writing at the time of the Spanish conquistadors, Bernal Díaz del Castillo documented the first taquiza, or taco feast enjoyed by Europeans, a meal which Hernán Cortés arranged for his captains in Coyoacán. According to Castillo's chronicle, True Story of the Conquering of the New Spain, they were served pork with tortillas.

Taco Tuesday is a custom in many US cities of going out to eat tacos or in some cases select Mexican dishes typically served in a tortilla on Tuesday nights. However "Taco Tuesday" isn't something just any restaurant can celebrate. It was trademarked in 1989 by a Wyoming-based chain called Taco John's, which routinely sends cease-and-desist letters to other restaurants that use it (except in New Jersey, where another restaurant trademarked it in 1982). 

You're almost 4,000% more likely to find breakfast tacos in Texas than in the U.S. as a whole.

Breakfast tacos. By ryan kuonen from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC, USA 

In Mexico, there are 115,000 taco places. Meaning that, in average, every Mexican person has a taco place 400 meter (0.2 miles) away from them.

Young Norwegians have coined the term “fredagstaco” to describe the cultural phenomenon of starting the weekend off with a serving—or two—of tacos. The taco is by far the most popular dinner on Friday in Norway.  8.2% of Norwegians eat tacos every Friday night.

When filming the 1999 improvised movie The Blair Witch Project, if one of the actors wanted to break character, he or she would say “taco.”

Source Silive

Table tennis

Table tennis is a game in which two or four players hit with small bats a lightweight ball back and forth across a hard table divided by a net. The is also known as ping-pong. 

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HISTORY

Table tennis began, though not under that name, as a parlor game in mid-19th century upper class English homes. The equipment used in those early days was mostly improvised and home-made. The ball was made of string or cork while a row of books, placed across the middle of the table, represented the net. The bat was cut out of a piece of thick cardboard or sometimes paddles made from cigar-box lids were used.

By the 1880s balls and bats were being manufactured for sale. Jaques of London, a family company that still manufactures sports and game equipment today marketed the game as "Gossima." 

In 1901 Jaques of London patented the name Ping-Pong – from the sound of the ball on a table and on a bat of stretched parchment. At first "ping-pong" was used to describe the game played using the rather expensive Jaques's equipment, with other manufacturers calling it table tennis.

Jaques sold the rights to the "ping-pong" name to Parker Brothers in the United States. 

Parker Brothers Ping-Pong game

James Gibb a British engineer who was a devotee of the game pioneered the use of a celluloid ball after discovering novelty celluloid balls on a trip to the US in 1901 and finding them to be ideal for table tennis.

The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), the worldwide governing body for table tennis, was founded in 1926. The ITTF maintains an international ranking system in addition to organizing events like the World Table Tennis Championships. 

The first world championships were held in 1927 and were won by a Hungarian, Dr. Jacobi. 

During the 1936 World Table Tennis Championships, which took place in Prague, the Pole Alojzy Ehrlich and Romanian Paneth Farkas played a record-breaking one-point exchange. The exchange lasted two hours and 12 minutes and the ball crossed the net more than 12,000 times. After two hours, Farkas' arm began to freeze, and he lost the  point.

In the 1950s the sponge or sandwich rubber bat was introduced to Britain by sports goods manufacturer S.W. Hancock Ltd. Up until now, the material for bats had been a universal thin covering of pimpled rubber. The new bats changed the game dramatically, introducing greater spin and speed.

King George VI had a table tennis table installed at Buckingham Palace and, at the outbreak of World War II, provided his daughter (then the young Princess Elizabeth) with facilities for the game at Balmoral Castle. 

Table Tennis was banned in the Soviet Union between 1930 and 1950, because it was thought to carry a serious risk of eye damage. 

Chairman Mao declared that table tennis was the sport of the masses. However, he changed his mind during the cultural revolution.

Table tennis has been an Olympic sport since 1988, with several event categories. 

Summer Olympics Men's Team Table Tennis Final. Joel Solomon

Ping Pang Qiu is the official name for the sport in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Ping Pong is the national sport of China.

Ping pong balls aren't really hollow. They're filled with pressurized gas.

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The International Table Tennis Federation doesn't care what the table is made of as long the ball bounces 230mm when dropped from a height of 300mm.

Sources Europress Encyclopedia, Compton's Encyclopedia