Here's your (not so) totally useless fact(s) of the day:

[phkrause]

Mail Delivery by Mule Still Exists in One Location The creed of the U.S. Postal
Service is “"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these
couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." This is especially
true for the residents of Supai, Arizona, who have their mail delivered by mule.
Supai lies at the Grand Canyon’s bottom, where members of the Havasupai tribe
receive their mail. The route is an eight-mile trip taken by mules and horses.

James

[phkrause]

Until the mid-19th century, recipients—not the senders—usually had to pay for
postage on the letters they received. As a result, people tended to refuse so
many letters in order to escape paying for them, which caused the post office to
spend an inordinate amount of time returning mail to senders. Postage stamps
which were prepaid—were introduced in America in 1847 and eliminated this
problem.

James

[phkrause]

Leap years have 366 days instead of the usual 365 days and occur almost every
four years. How do you remember if it’s a leap year? Simple: If the last two digits
of the year are divisible by four (e.g. 2016, 2020, 2024…) then it’s a leap year.
Century years are the exception to this rule. They must be divisible by 400 to be
leap years. According to these rules, the years 2000 and 2400 are leap years,
while 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300, and 2500 are not leap years. As a bonus,
U.S. leap years almost always coincide with election years.

James

[phkrause]

Established in 1961, McDonald’s Hamburger University was founded by Ray
Kroc. The University was created to train McDonald’s employees in the art of
restaurant management. The 80 acre main campus located in Oak Brooke,
Illinois, has 19 full time professors who are trained to teach in over 28 different
languages. Today, the University enrolls more than 5,000 students annually.
Over 300,000 students and future restaurant managers have graduated from
Hamburger University. And it’s not as easy as you might think. According to a
recent Bloomberg finding, Hamburger University is reportedly harder to get into
than Harvard.

And they just tore it down a couple of months ago (I think they moved it to
downtown Chicago)

James

[phkrause]

Americans can thank Robert Ripley, the American cartoonist who wrote “Ripley’s
Believe It or Not!,” for encouraging the Congress to pass legislation naming a
National Anthem. Many people wrote to Ripley after the cartoon appeared, and
he urged them to write their congressmen. After Congress received a petition
with five million signatures on it, they passed legislation naming “The Star
Spangled Banner” as the National Anthem. President Herbert Hoover signed the
legislation into law in 1931.

James

[phkrause]

Sports fans all know that the national anthem will be sung at sporting events;
however, many don’t know that the first time it was sung was in Brooklyn, New
York, at a baseball game in 1862, during the Civil War. However, the song hadn’t
yet been designated as the national anthem, and wasn’t really a common
occurrence at sporting events. That began to change on September 5, 1918,
during Game 1 of the World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the
Chicago Cubs. By the time World War II rolled around, baseball and football
teams were playing the national anthem as a show of patriotism, and the tradition
continues to this day.

James

[phkrause]

Caesars Palace was the first true themed resort along the Las Vegas Strip. The
Roman-themed hotel has a replica of the Statue of David among other statues
throughout the hotel. This statue is truly special, because it’s an exact replica of
Michelangelo’s masterpiece, sculpted from the same Italian marble Michelangelo
used (Carrara marble). The replica stands 18 feet tall, and weighs more than
nine tons. The original David was unveiled on September 8, 1504 and currently
resides in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy.

James

[phkrause]

The Ratio of the Oreo is Precise. The perfection of an Oreo cookie is down to an
exact science. The cookie- to- crème ratio of an original Oreo cookie is always,
without fail, 71 percent to 29 percent. When it comes to Double Stuf Oreos, it
turns out they are not quite doubled. A cookie-loving math teacher and his
students cracked the case. Turns out Double Stuf Oreos have only 1.86 times
the amount of filling compared to a regular Oreo.

James

[phkrause]

The Oreo Cookies Were Basically a Knock-Off of Sunshine Hydrox. Many people
think that Oreos were the original chocolate sandwich cookie, but Sunshine
Hydrox introduced a cream-filled cookie held together by two chocolate biscuits
in 1908. Oreos are sweeter and less crunchy than the original Hydrox, but that
may not be why Oreos took over the market. The problem with the Hydrox
cookies may have been the name itself, which sounds a bit more like a chemical
compound than something tasty.

James

[phkrause]

Back in 1996, when founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were working on
creating what we now know as Google, they initially called it Backrub—a nod to
the way the search engine analyzed the web's "back links" to determine how
important a site was. A year later, though, they decided they needed to upgrade
to a name that indicated just how much data they were indexing. They eventually
came up with Google, a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the
number represented by the digit 1 followed by 100 zeros.

James

[phkrause]

18 U.S. states ban or restrict car sales on Sundays. (I thought it was every state!)

James

[phkrause]

Ranch dressing was created in 1949 by a plumber in Alaska. Steve Henson
started cooking for his coworkers and perfecting his buttermilk dressing recipe.
Five years later he moved to California with his wife Gayle and bought a ranch.
His famous buttermilk dressing soon became a staple at the dinner table of
Hidden Valley Ranch and before long the Hensons started selling it to guests and
local supermarkets. Over two decades later in 1972, the couple sold their name
and recipe to Clorox for $8 million. Not bad for a little buttermilk, mayo, and
herbs.

James

[phkrause]

Drew Barrymore holds the distinction of being the youngest person ever to host
Saturday Night Live. When Barrymore first stepped on the Saturday Night Live
stage on November 20, 1982, she was just 7 years old. Barrymore's first time
hosting ‘SNL’, was certainly not to be her last. While her popularity soared
because of the movie E.T. that year, she went on to have a very successful film
career through adulthood. Barrymore has since joined SNL's exclusive Five
Timer's Club - a group of celebrities who have hosted the show at least five
times.

James

[phkrause]

The First Republican President Was Abraham Lincoln.

James

[phkrause]

There are a total of four state capitals in the United States that are named after
former presidents. Lincoln, Nebraska, is of course named after our 16th
President Abraham Lincoln. Madison, Wisconsin is named after our 4th President
James Madison; Jefferson City, Missouri is named for our 3rd President Thomas
Jefferson; and Jackson, Mississippi, is named for the 7th President Andre
Jackson. In addition, our national capital Washington, D.C., is of course named
after George Washington, the 1st President of the United States.

James

[phkrause]

The probability of finding a four-leaf clover is 1-in-10,000.

James

[phkrause]

Twitter Was Almost Named Twitch Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter,
revealed that the original working title for the platform was “Twitch” because
when someone received a message their phone would jitter and buzz. They
ended up turning to the dictionary of all dictionaries - the Oxford English
Dictionary - where “twitter” is defined as a short burst of inconsequential
information like a bird chirp. Since it was exactly what the new platform was
designed to do, that made the name "Twitter" an easy choice. The fact that
the price for the domain name was cheap didn't hurt either.

James

[phkrause]

Jet lag, medically referred to as desynchronosis is a temporary disorder that
causes fatigue, insomnia and sometimes other symptoms, as a result of air travel
across different time zones. For example, someone traveling from New York to
California feels as if the time were three hours later. The condition of jet lag may
last several days until one is fully adjusted to the new time zone, and a recovery
rate of one day per [time zone] crossed is a suggested guideline. The issue of jet
lag is especially pronounced for airline pilots, crew, and frequent travelers.

James

[phkrause]

The word "Liberty" has been required by law to appear on coins since the
Coinage Act of 1792. The Coinage Act was passed by the United States
Congress on April 2, 1792, and created the United States dollar as the country's
standard unit of money, established the United States Mint, and regulated the
coinage of the United States. The Coinage Act of 1792 further specified that the
front of each coin shall be inscribed with the word “Liberty” and the back of each
coin should display the words “United States of America.”

James

[phkrause]

It took the inventor of the Rubik’s cube a whole month to solve it before he
introduced it to the world.

James

[phkrause]

Betty Crocker is a brand and fictional character used in advertising campaigns for
General Mills. Synonymous with baking, Betty Crocker actually started out as a
"kitchen confidante," but she was never a real person. She is the brainchild of an
advertising campaign developed by the Washburn-Crosby Company, a flour
milling company started in the late 1800’s that eventually became General Mills.
The name Betty was selected because it was viewed as a cheery, all-American
name. It was paired with the last name Crocker, the last name of a retired
company executive, William Crocker.

James

[phkrause]

Salisbury steak is a dish, originating in the United States, made from a blend of
ground beef and other ingredients and usually served with gravy or brown sauce.
The dish was invented by James Henry Salisbury, an American physician who
advocated for a meat-centered diet to promote good health. He suggested that
Salisbury steak should be eaten three times a day, with lots of hot water to
cleanse the digestive system. He was an early proponent of a low-carbohydrate
diet for weight loss, and he promoted his diet for that purpose. His diet became
known as the "Salisbury diet". It has been described as an early example of a fad
diet.

James

[phkrause]

Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman originally called the
Maryland presidential retreat, “Shangri-La” after the fictional Himalayan paradise.
Eisenhower, however, wanted a less formal moniker so he renamed it in 1953 in
honor of his 5-year-old grandson, David. “Shangri-La was just a little fancy for a
Kansas farm boy,” he wrote in a 1953.

James

[phkrause]

Nostrils take turns receiving the majority of the air you breathe, which explains
why one is usually stuffier than the other.

James

[phkrause]

Like casinos, shopping malls are intentionally designed to disorient visitors. The
feeling of losing track of time and geography inside a mall is called the Gruen
Transfer.

James