Did you know?: Were Neanderthals really just brute cave men?

Mark your calendars!  This Friday, at 10:46 am Eastern Standard Time, spring begins!

It’s the vernal equinox, the time of the year when the duration of day and night are just about the same length (as close as they ever get, anyway) and we see the annual renewal of the world – in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway.  Down below the Equator, things are heading toward winter.

Here’s hoping your spring goes exactly the way you want it to!  For me, it always does, since the trivia flows nonstop.  Enjoy!

Did you know …

… the brother of a notorious gangster was a Prohibition officer?  While Chicago mob kingpin Al Capone (1899-1947) was keeping his city afloat in bootleg booze during Prohibition, his older brother James (1892-1952) was one of the top enforcement officers in the country.  James Capone changed his name to Richard James Hart following World War I in an effort to distance himself from his Italian ancestry and from his notorious younger brother.  He became an agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Nebraska in 1926, and later became a top Prohibition agent until Prohibition itself was repealed in 1933.  Later in life, the elder Capone became a justice of the peace, even while his more famous younger sibling was serving time in Alcatraz for tax evasion.  (Family ties, indeed.)

… packaged baby food is not the most nutritious baby food out there?  It’s actually only about half as nutritious as an equivalent meal made from scratch at home.  (Yeah, that packaged baby food pork chop is a real doozy.)

… the Nazis tried to teach dogs to talk and read?  In 2011, it was revealed that the Nazis had tried to teach dogs to speak, read and spell – and even conducted experimental research in man-to-dog telepathy.  Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was a well-known dog lover, and he instructed that the research be undertaken hoping that dogs would learn to communicate with their SS masters.  According to an article in the Daily Mail, some dogs were said to have been able to imitate the human voice, with one apparently able to say, “Mein Führer.”  (I have a line here, but it would close the show.)

… opossums do more than just “play dead” when confronted with danger?  Sure, we all know where the expression “playing possum” came from.  But these remarkable little critters, when cornered, also can foam at the mouth voluntarily to try to convince the predator that it is toxic or sick.  If that fails, they can also produce a fluid that smells almost as bad as a skunk’s spray.  (Amazing little ones, aren’t they?)

… scientists now think Neanderthals were not really stupid cavemen?  For a long time, people thought of our early human cousins as dumb brutes because their skeletal remains led to that belief.  Neanderthals had ridges of bone above their eyes, they were short, and their bones gave the appearance of having supported very muscular bodies.  But recent research has shown that Neanderthals – who disappeared about 30,000 years ago – had a more complex life than that of just brute cavemen.  The tipoff was a burial site, which held a Neanderthal skeleton, some tools, and the remains of food and flowers.  That indicated a belief in an afterlife – something that had to be communicated verbally, meaning Neanderthals had language and, presumably, intelligence.

… two major milestones in human history happened less than a century apart?  In 1903, the first powered flight of a heavier-than-air machine took place at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, by the brothers Orville (1871-1948) and Wilbur Wright (1867-1912).  Just 65½ years later, Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) stepped onto the surface of the Moon.  (That, friends, is known as progress.)

… a popular comic strip was born out of office politics?  Dilbert, the office-based comic strip created by Scott Adams (1957-2026), was originally based on the experiences he was having at his place of employment.  It must not have been a great place to work for Adams; rather than fire him, his bosses gave him meaningless work in an effort to get him to quit.  Adams used the meaningless work as a basis for the office in the strip.  (It worked.)

… four future presidents attended the inauguration of the 16th President?  On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was sworn into office as the 16th President of the United States.  Attending the inauguration were future presidents Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893), James A. Garfield (1831-1881), Chester A. Arthur (1829-1886), and Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901), the 19th, 20th, 21st and 23rd Presidents, respectively.  (A rather august grouping, no?)

… an improvement on the bicycle was invented in 1932?  Called the cyclomer and invented in Paris, the new bike was designed to operate on land and water.  It had hollow wheels and attached floats, but didn’t work as planned.  The cyclomer wasn’t able to get any kind of good traction on land, and in the water it would float but wouldn’t move very well, no matter how hard you pedaled.  (Well, nobody said it was a good improvement.)

… a future First Lady wanted to be an astronaut?  In 1961, when she was fourteen,  Hillary Rodham Clinton (born 1947) wrote to NASA and asked about how to become an astronaut.  The space agency replied, “Girls cannot become astronauts,” and her dreams were dashed.  (I’d say she more than made up for it.)

Now … you know!