THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

ANECDOTES

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In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 thriller, Psycho, the sound effects for the famous shower scene were actually created by repeatedly stabbing a casaba melon.

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O J Simpson was originally cast to play Terminator, but the studio was afraid that no one would buy him as a remorseless killer.

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John and Frances Gunther’s son, Johnny, died in his eighteenth year, and was buried on July 2nd 1947. He was a handsome, tall, fair-haired boy who went to Deerfield Academy where he majored in mathematics and chemistry. For fourteen months he had suffered from a brain tumor for which he had had two operations. But even after the second, he passed his examinations for Columbia. After his first operation, the doctors asked John and Frances about the advisability of telling Johnny what was the matter with him. The doctors thought it wiser to explain, and the older Gunthers agreed. The surgeon went to Johnny alone and told him the full gravity of a brain tumor.

The boy listened carefully, then looked the doctor in the eye and asked, “How shall we break it to my parents?’ “

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Sir Alec Guinness was seldom recognised in public.

In one of the stories he told about himself, Guinness checked his hat and coat at a restaurant and asked for a claim ticket. “It will not be necessary,” the attendant said. Guinness later retrieved his garments, put his hand in the coat pocket and found a slip of paper on which was written, “Bald with glasses.”

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The above reminds me of the story about Fred Astaire when he went for a screen test in the early 1830’s. His evaluation written on his report card was “Can’t act; slightly bald; can dance a little.”

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After watching Cary Grant on a television broadcast, his mother, then in her nineties, reprimanded him for letting his hair get so gray. “It doesn’t bother me,” he replied carelessly.

“Maybe not,” said his mother sternly, “but it bothers me. It makes me seem so old.”

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In the early days of his career, author Erle Stanley Gardner churned out stories for pulp magazines at the rate of 200,000 words a month. As he was paid by the word, the length of the story was more important to him than its quality, and he tended to draw the maximum potential from every incident. His villains, for example, were always killed by the last bullet in the gun. Gardner’s editor once asked him why his heroes were always so careless with their first five shots.

“At three cents a word,” replied Gardner, “every time I say bang in the story I get three cents. If you think I’m going to finish the gun battle while my hero has got fifteen cents’ worth of unexploded ammunition in his gun, you’re nuts.”

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According to legend, while still a prince in Greece, Alexander the Great sought out the famed ascetic Diogenes, who rejected social niceties and slept in a large barrel or clay jar. Alexander approached Diogwenes and asked if there was anything he in his great riches could do for him. “Yes,” Diogenes replied, “stand aside; you’re blocking my sun.”

Alexander was charmed by Diogenes’ refusal to be impressed, stating, “If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.”

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Oscar winning film director Christopher Nolan does not have a cell phone or an email account. When Warner Bros. assigned him an office email account, he was unaware until some time later, Nolan commenting that “There were thousands of e-mails in this account – some from quite important people, actually … I had them take it down, so people didn’t think they were getting in touch with me.”

On the topic of cell phones, he said: “It’s not that I’m a luddite and don’t like technology; I’ve just never been interested. When I moved to Los Angeles in 1997, nobody really had cell phones, and I just never went down that path.”

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David Niven speaks of a conversation with Greta Garbo one day in a rainstorm:

“I often wondered if something of [vertigo] had overcome Garbo at the pinnacle of her career, so seeing her before me, carefree and happy, munching away contentedly with the rain cascading off the table, I decided it might be a propitious moment to try and find out.

“ ‘Why did you give up the movies?’ I asked.

“She considered her answer so carefully that I wondered if she had decided to ignore my personal question. At last, almost to herself, she said, ‘I had made enough faces.’ ”

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Zsa Zsa Gabor once appeared on a television program in which guest celebrities attempted to solve viewers’ conjugal problems. The first question came from a young lady: “I’m breaking my engagement to a very wealthy man who has already given me a sable coat, diamonds, a stove, and a Rolls-Royce. What should I do?”

“Give back the stove,” advised Zsa Zsa.

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In December 1948, a Washington, DC, radio station telephoned various ambassadors in the capital, asking what they would like for Christmas. The unedited replies were recorded and broadcast in a special program the following week. “Peace throughout the world,” proclaimed the French ambassador. “Freedom for all people enslaved by imperialism,” demanded the Russian ambassador. “Well, it’s very kind of you to ask,” came the polite voice of Sir Oliver Shewell Franks, “I’d quite like a box of crystallised fruit.”

ON THIS DAY

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June 7, 1929

Lateran Treaty ratified

The Lateran Treaty was one component of the Lateran Pacts of 1929, agreements between Italy under Victor Emmanuel III and Benito Mussolini and the Holy See under Pope Pius XI to settle the long-standing Roman question, a dispute regarding the temporal power of the popes as rulers of a civil territory in the context of the Italian Risorgimento.

The treaty and associated pacts were named after the Lateran Palace where they were signed on 11 February 1929, and the Italian Parliament ratified them on 7 June 1929.

The treaty recognised Vatican City as an independent state under the sovereignty of the Holy See. Italy also agreed to give the Catholic Church financial compensation for the loss of the Papal States.

In 1948, the Lateran Treaty was recognised in the Constitution of Italy as regulating the relations between the Italian Republic and the Catholic Church. While the treaty was significantly revised in 1984, ending the status of Catholicism as the sole state religion of Italy, the Vatican remains a distinct sovereign entity to the present day.

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

FUNNY FRIDAY

---- 😊😊😊 -----

Hello Byters.

There is no From the Vault category today, that is because the whole of today’s Bytes is humour from past Bytes' posts.

Hopefully you will be amused if you read the items for the first time, or een if you are reading them again.

Enjoy.

Caution: risqué content ahead.

---- 😊😊😊 -----

A man takes his young son to the London Zoo. The young lad is especially keen to see the monkeys but when they arrive at the monkey enclosure, there is not a single monkey to be seen. He says to the nearby keeper in a broad Northern accent, “ ‘Ere, where’s all the moonkeys then?” The keeper replies “They’re all in the ‘uts. It’s the matin’ season.” The man says “Do you think they’d coom out if I threw a peanut?” Replies the keeper “Would you?”

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A young Chinese couple get married.

She's a virgin & they are both waiters.

Truth be told, he is a virgin too, but she doesn't know that.

On their wedding night, she cowers naked under the sheets, as her husband undresses in the darkness.

He climbs into bed next to her and tries to be reassuring.

"My darring," he whispers, "I know dis you firss time and you berry flighten. I pomise you, I give you anyting you want, I do anyting juss anyting you want. You juss ask.”

“Whatchu want?" he says, trying to sound experienced and worldly, which he hopes will impress her.

A thoughtful silence follows, and he waits patiently and eagerly for her request.

Se eventually shyly whispers back, "I want to try someting I have heard about from other girls ... Nummaa 69".

More thoughtful silence, but this time from him Eventually, in a puzzled tone he asks her...

"You want ... Garric chicken with corrifrowa?"

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An elderly chap living in the bush felt sickly and went to the doctor for a look at. The doctor looked him over and said, "Bring a urine specimen to me in the morning to help me find out what’s wrong."

He went home and said to his wife "The doc wants me to bring him a specimen in the morning. What’s a specimen?”

When his wife said that she didn’t know either, he said “I’ll go ask the brother.”

“Don’t go near your brother,” she says, “you know you two always argue and it always ends in a blue.”

“What can go wrong?” he asked. “I’m just asking him for some info.”

He returned some time later with his clothes torn, a black eye and bruises.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” said his wife. “What happened this time?”

“All I know is that when I saw him I asked him what a specimen was,” replied her husband. “He said ‘Piss in a bottle’, so I said 'Go shit in yer hat' and that’s when the fight started.”

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This is an item that relies a lot on the accents involved, so it loses a lot in conversion into written format. Nonetheless it is worth posting, so try to visualise the scene with the appropriate accents being used.

Two Indian gentlemen (ie from India, not Native Americans) were deep in discussion.

One said “It is W - O - O - M."

“No,” said the other, “It is W - O - O - M - B."

“No, no, no you silly, silly man, it is W - O - O - M !”

“W - O - O - M - B !”

A refined English lady, looking and sounding somewhat like Dame Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey, overhears and eventually addresses them:

“Excuse me, I couldn’t help but overhear, the word is spelt W - o - m - b. womb.”

One of the Indian gentleman pauses, looks at her and says:

“With all respect madam, we really do not believe that you know what it sounds like when a hippopotamus farts underwater.”

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A certain psychiatrist had fallen into the habit, each day after work, to stop in the local bar for a drink to relax. Being a man of strange tastes, his favourite drink was a chicory daiquiri.

Dick, the bartender, had only this one customer who requested this strange concoction, but because the doctor was a regular, he kept a supply of chicory, in the refrigerator. The doctor always stopped in at the same time every day, so Dick was able to prepare the drink ahead of time and have it ready and waiting for this regular customer.

One day, as Dick was preparing for the doctors arrival, he discovered he had run out of chicory. He was frantic to find a solution to his problem. Then he noticed a bottle of hickory flavoring on the shelf. In the hopes the doctor would not notice, he prepared the drink and slid it onto the bar just as his customer sat down.

After the Doctor took the first sip, he asked "Is this a Chicory daiquiri Dick?"

"No,” said Dick, “It's a hickory daiquiri, Doc!"

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On a golf tour in Ireland, Tiger Woods drives his BMW into a petrol station in a remote part of the Irish countryside.

The pump attendant, who knows nothing about golf, greets him in a typical Irish manner completely unaware of the identity of the golfing pro.

"Top of the mornin' to yer, sir," says the attendant.

Tiger nods a quick "hello" and bends forward to pick up the nozzle. As he does so, two tees fall out of his shirt pocket onto the ground.

"What are those?" asks the attendant.

"They're called tees," replies Tiger.

"Well, what on the good Earth are they for?" inquires the Irishman.

"They're for resting my balls on when I'm driving," says Tiger.

"Feckin Jaysus," says the Irishman, "BMW tinks of everything!"

__________

At dawn the telephone rings:

"Hello, Senor Rod? This issa Ernesto, the caretaker at your country house."

"Ah yes, Ernesto. What can I do for you? Is there a problem?"

"Umm, I just calling to advise you, Senor Rod, that your parrot, he issa dead".

"My parrot? Dead? The one that won the international competition?"

"Si, Senor, this issa the one."

Damn! That's a pity! I spent a small fortune on that bird. What did he die from?"

"He issa eating the rotten meat, Senor Rod."

"Rotten meat? Who the hell fed him rotten meat?"

"Nobody, Senor. He issa eat the meat of the dead horse."

"Dead horse? What dead horse?"

"The thoroughbred, Senor Rod."

"My prize thoroughbred is dead?"

"Yes, Senor Rod, he issa die from all that work pulling the water cart."

"Are you insane? What water cart?"

"The one we issa use to put out the fire, Senor."

"Good Lord! What fire are you talking about, man?"

"The one at your house, Senor! A candle issa fall and the curtains issa caught on fire."

"What the hell? Are you saying that my mansion is destroyed because of a bloody candle?!"

"Yes, Senor Rod."

"But there's electricity at the house! What was the candle for?"

"For the funeral, Senor Rod."

"WHAT BLOODY FUNERAL??!!"

"Your wife's, Senor Rod. She issa showed up very late one night and I issa thinking she issa a thief, so I hit her with your new Ping G15 204g titanium head golf club with the TFC 149D graphite shaft."

SILENCE........... LONG SILENCE.........VERY LONG SILENCE..

"Ernesto, if you broke that bloody driver, you're in deep shit!"

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A man goes to the doctor with a piece of lettuce hanging out of his ear.

“That looks nasty,” says the doctor.

“Yes,” replies the man. “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!”

__________

A doctor gave an elderly patient suffering from haemorrhoids a script for suppositories.

When he met the old man in the street he asked whether the suppositories had had any effect.

“Nahh,” said the old man. "For all the good they did, I might as well have shoved them up my arse.”

__________

Tonto and the Lone Ranger are riding across the prairie when Tonto gets down from his horse and puts his ear to the ground. He looks at the Lone Ranger and says, "Buffalo come."

The Lone Ranger looks at him and says, "Wow, that's amazing! How did you figure that out?"

Tonto replies "Ear sticky!"

__________

A limerick writer named Symes

Said, I'm so frustrated at times:

I can do - ock and -uck,

But with -unt I get stuck.

I'm really quite hopeless with rhymes.

A rabbi from far-off Peru

Was desperately trying to screw.

His wife said, “Oy vey!

If you keep on this way

the Messiah will come before you.”

Ethnologists up with the Sioux

Wired home for two punts, one canoe.

The answer next day

Said, "Girls on the way,

But what the hell's a 'panoe' ?"

And to finish, one written by Brit Prime Minister Clement Atlee about himself:

Few thought he was even a starter.

There were many in life who were smarter.

But he finished PM,

A CH, an OM,

An earl and a Knight of the Garter.

---- 😊😊😊 -----

ON THIS DAY

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June 6, 1944

D Day

The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day (after the military term), it is the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of France, and the rest of Western Europe, and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.

150,000 Allied service personnel participated, 4,415 Allied troops were killed and 12 countries were part of the invasion. Total German casualties on the day are not known but are estimated as being between 4,000 and 9,000 men.

The D in D-Day stands for… Day.

It is actually a general term for the start date of any important military operation, and is often used when the exact date has not yet been decided or is being kept top secret. Most military operations will be given a D-Day and a H-Hour, which refers to the specific time of day the operation will start.

Military planners would refer to the days before the operation with terms like D-5, which would mean they were talking about what would happen five days before the planned operation, or D+3, which would refer to plans for three days after.

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

ON THIS DAY

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June 5, 1967

Start of Six-Day War

The Six-Day War was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, primarily Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, from 5 to 10 June 1967.

Military hostilities broke out amid poor relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which had been observing the 1949 Armistice Agreements signed at the end of the First Arab–Israeli War.

In the months prior to the outbreak of the Six-Day War in June 1967, tensions had again become dangerously heightened: Israel reiterated its post-1956 position that there should be no further Egyptian closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. In May 1967, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser announced that the Straits of Tiran would again be closed to Israeli vessels. He subsequently mobilized the Egyptian military into defensive lines along the border with Israel.

On 5 June 1967Israel launched a series of airstrikes against Egyptian airfields and other facilities in what is known as Operation Focus. Egyptian forces were caught by surprise, and nearly all of Egypt's military aerial assets were destroyed, giving Israel air supremacy. Simultaneously, the Israeli military launched a ground offensive into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula as well as the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip. After some initial resistance, Nasser ordered an evacuation of the Sinai Peninsula; by the sixth day of the conflict, Israel had occupied the entire Sinai Peninsula. Jordan, which had entered into a defense pact with Egypt just a week before the war began, did not take on an all-out offensive role against Israel, but launched attacks against Israeli forces to slow Israel's advance. On the fifth day, Syria joined the war by shelling Israeli positions in the north.

Egypt and Jordan agreed to a ceasefire on 8 June, and Syria on 9 June, and it was signed with Israel on 11 June. The Six-Day War resulted in more than 15,000 Arab fatalities, while Israel suffered fewer than 1,000. Alongside the combatant casualties were the deaths of 20 Israeli civilians killed in Arab forces air strikes on Jerusalem, 15 UN peacekeepers killed by Israeli strikes in the Sinai at the outset of the war, and 34 US personnel killed in the USS Liberty incident in which Israeli air forces struck a United States Navy technical research ship.

At the time of the cessation of hostilities, Israel had occupied the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank including East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. The displacement of civilian populations as a result of the Six-Day War would have long-term consequences, as around 280,000 to 325,000 Palestinians and 100,000 Syrians fled or were expelled from the West Bank and the Golan Heights, respectively. Nasser resigned in shame after Israel's victory, but was later reinstated following a series of protests across Egypt. In the aftermath of the conflict, Egypt closed the Suez Canal until 1975.

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TODAY'S DEFINITIONS

 Sent to me by Vince C, thanks Vince . . .

BEAUTY PARLOR

A place where women curl up and dye.

CHICKENS

The only animal you eat before they are born

and after they are dead.

COMMITTEE

A body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.

DUST

Mud with the juice squeezed out.

EGOTIST

Someone who is usually me-deep in conversation.

HANDKERCHIEF

Cold Storage.

INFLATION

Cutting money in half without damaging the paper.

MOSQUITO

An insect that makes you like flies better.

 POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

A doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority,

and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media,

which holds forth the proposition that it is

entirely possible to pick up dirt by the clean end.

 RAISIN

Grape with a sunburn.

SECRET

Something you tell to one person at a time.

SKELETON

A bunch of bones with the person scraped off.

TOOTHACHE

The pain that drives you to extraction.

TOMORROW

One of the greatest labor saving devices of today.

YAWN

An honest opinion openly expressed.

WRINKLES

Something other people have....similar to my character lines.

Something other people have....similar to my character lines.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

ON THIS DAY

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4 June 1937

First shopping carts

On June 4, 1937, Sylvan Goldman introduced the shopping cart, in the Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain in Oklahoma City, of which he was the owner. With the assistance of a mechanic named Fred Young, Goldman constructed the first shopping cart, basing his design on that of a wooden folding chair. They built it with a metal frame and added wheels and wire baskets. Another mechanic, Arthur Kosted, developed a method to mass-produce the carts by inventing an assembly line capable of forming and welding the wire. The cart was awarded patent number 2,196,914 on April 9, 1940 titled, “Folding Basket Carriage for Self-Service Stores.” They advertised the invention as part of a new “No Basket Carrying Plan.”

The invention did not catch on immediately. Men found them effeminate; women found them suggestive of a baby carriage. “I’ve pushed my last baby buggy,” offended women informed him. After hiring several male and female models to push his new invention around his store and demonstrate their utility, as well as greeters to explain their use, his folding-style shopping carts became extremely popular and Goldman became a multimillionaire by collecting a royalty on every folding design shopping cart in the United States.

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WEIRD WEDNESDAY

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FROM HISTORY . . .

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The Cadaver Synod (also called the Cadaver Trial) was the ecclesiastical trial of Pope Formosus, who had been dead for about seven months, in Rome in 897.[

Formosus was succeeded by Pope Boniface VI who in turn was succeeded by Pope Stephen VI. Stephen accused Formosus of perjury, of having acceded to the papacy illegally, and illegally presiding over more than one diocese at the same time. He had Formosus's corpse exhumed and brought to the papal court for judgment. At the end of the trial, Formosus was pronounced guilty, and his papacy retroactively declared null.

After pronouncing him guilty, he cut off Formus’s fingers (so he couldn’t issue posthumous blessings) and threw6 his body in the Tiber. Formusus ended up on shore and people started attributing miracles to it. Stephen was quickly deposed, later died in prison and the Catholic church was all like, "let's just pretend this never happened."

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Wilmer McLean (1814 – 1882) was an American wholesale grocer from Virginia. His house, near Manassas, Virginia, was involved in the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. After the battle, he moved to Appomattox, Virginia, to escape the war, thinking that it would be safe.

Instead, in 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in McLean's house in Appomattox, pictured below:

His houses were, therefore, involved in one of the first and one of the last encounters of the American Civil War. Later, McLean is supposed to have said, "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor."

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The Battle of Malvern Hill, also known as the Battle of Poindexter's Farm, was fought on July 1, 1862, between the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, led by Gen. Robert E. Lee, and the Union Army of the Potomac under Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan.

By Captain Conyngham, shortly after the battle:

When charging at Malvern Hill , a company was posted in a clump of trees, who kept up a fierce fire on us...

Their officer seemed to be a daring, reckless boy, and I said to Sergeant Driscoll, ‘if that officer is not taken down, many of us will fall before we pass that clump.’

‘Leave that to me,” said Driscoll; so he raised his rifle, and the moment the officer exposed himself again bang went Driscoll,and over went the officer, his company at once breaking away.

As we passed the place I said, 'Driscoll, see if that officer is dead - he was a brave fellow.'I stood looking on. Driscoll turned him over on his back. [The officer] opened his eyes for a moment, and faintly murmured 'Father,' and closed them forever.

I will forever recollect the frantic grief of Driscoll; it was harrowing to witness. [The dead officer] was his son, who had gone South before the war.

And what became of Driscoll afterwards? … he rushed up, with his coat off, and, clutching his musket, charged right up at the enemy, calling on the men to follow. He soon fell, but jumped up again. We knew he was wounded. On he dashed, but he soon rolled over like a top. When we came up he was dead, riddled with bullets."

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The largest man made explosion prior to the atomic bomb led to innovations in ocular surgery and the founding of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

Two ships colliding in Halifax harbour during on 6 December 1917 during WW1 caused many to rush to their windows to see what the commotion in the harbour was about, one of the ships carrying munitions which were going off like fireworks.

There was then a big detonation which resulted in a 2.9 kiloton explosion that caused a 40 ft tsunami, killed nearly 2,000 people and resulted in about 200 eye removals. Nearly one out of every fifty people in town lost an eye due to flying debris and shattered glass.

Innovations in the treatment of burn victims and pediatric surgeries also resulted from the explosion.

For many years afterward, the Halifax Explosion was the standard by which all large blasts were measured. For instance, in its report on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Time wrote that the explosive power of the Little Boy bomb was seven times that of the Halifax Explosion.

Mont Blanc anchor site

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The dancing plague of 1518, or dance epidemic of 1518, was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (modern-day France), from July 1518 to September 1518. Somewhere between 50 and 400 people took to dancing for weeks. There are many theories behind the phenomenon, the most popular being stress-induced mass hysteria.. Some believe the dancing could have been brought on by food poisoning caused by the toxic and psychoactive chemical products of ergot fungi, that fungus being related to LSD. Contemporaneous explanations included demonic possession and overheated blood. There is controversy concerning the number of deaths.

This is known and believed by some to be a perfect example of a nocebo effect which can make some feel ill simply by being under the expectation of being ill. By August, the "dancing plague" had claimed 400 victims. Dancers were beginning to collapse. It is said some even died from a stroke or heart attack. The victims' movements were described as spasmatic with many convulsions and their bodies were left drenched in sweat. Their arms would thrash violently and some noted that their eyes were vacant and expressionless. Blood would pool into their swollen feet and they would eventually bleed into their shoes. Often, there would also be cries for help from the affected. If the victims did not succumb to a heart attack, they would collapse from extreme exhaustion, hunger, and thirst. There were as many as 15 deaths per day during the outbreak’s peak, but the final number of fatalities is unknown today. No one knew what caused this reaction, which meant no one understood how to remedy it. By early September, the outbreak began to subside.

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Chief Mkwawa

Signed on 28 June 1919, the Treaty of Versailles ended the war between Germany and the Allied Powers. Between the War Guilt Clause and the Financial Clauses, Article 246 stated:

‘Within six months from the coming into force of the present Treaty […], Germany will hand over to His Britannic Majesty’s Government the skull of Sultan Mkwawa which was removed from the Protectorate of British East Africa and taken to Germany.’

Mkwawa had been the chief of the Hehe tribe in German East Africa (now Tanzania), and opposed German rule. In 1895, he declared that ‘rather than submit to German rule he would fight them to the utmost limit, and rather than surrender he would die by his own gun’. He was shot in 1898 after being surrounded by German soldiers.

His head was cut off, dried and taken to Germany.

In 1918 it was suggested that the skull of Mikwawa be recovered and transported back to East Africa as a mark of respect and as a symbol to the populace of German defeat. There was debate about including a provision to that effect in the Treaty but it ended up being included as part of a schedule of various objects, mainly of artistic and archaeological interest, which had been seized by the Germans and which were to be restored.

The Germans searched for it and said they couldn’t find it.

In 1921, Winston Churchill, the newly appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote ‘in the circumstances I do not propose to take further action in the matter’.

The skull was located in storage in a German museum in 1953 and the Governor of Tanganyika, Sir Edward Twining, was tasked with its return. The Foreign Office was anxious for the Treaty of Versailles not to be mentioned at all, as it didn’t want to offend the Germans, and insisted heavily that it was Twining’s responsibility to make sure of it. Twining found it rather irritating and wrote:

‘the facts are that the Germans should not have cut his head off, they should not have sent it to Germany when they had cut it off and if they did not want to return it they should not have lost the war.’

 

Sir Edward Twining delivering his speech, 19 June 1954, on return off the skull

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

ON THIS DAY

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3 June, 1992

Mabo

On this day in 1992, in a landmark decision, the High Court of Australia recognised that indigenous rights to land had continued after the British Crown acquired sovereignty and that the international law doctrine of terra nullius (empty land which could therefore be colonised) was not applicable to Australian domestic law. High court judges considering the case Mabo v Queensland (No 2) found in favour of Mabo, which led to the Native Title Act 1993 and established native title in Australia, officially recognising the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia.

Eddie Mabo died on 21 January 1992 of cancer at the age of 55, five months before the High Court announced its historic decision.

Three years after Eddie Mabo died, that being the traditional mourning period for the people of Murray Island, a memorial service was held. The next day, Mabo's gravesite was attacked by vandals who spray-painted swastikas and racial slurs on his tombstone as well as removing a bronze bas-relief portrait of him. His family decided to have his body reburied on Murray Island. On the night of his reinterment, the Islanders performed their traditional ceremony for the burial of a Meriam king, a ritual not seen on the island for 80 years.

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COLD AS . . .

----------ooOoo-----------

It’s been quite cold here at night, so here are some phrases that may help describe it in general conversation . . .

(Caution: risque content ahead).

As cold as a witch’s kiss.

As cold as a witch’s tit.

As cold as a tomb.

As cold as a polar bear’s arse.

As cold as a corpse.

Colder than the underside of a penguin’s ballsack.

Colder than father’s heart when he left for cigarettes and never came back

Colder than a cast iron toilet seat.

Colder than a mother-in-law’s kiss.

Colder than my ex-wife’s heart.

Colder than a banker’s smile.

Colder than a banker's heart on foreclosure day at the widows' and orphans' home.

Colder than a snowman’s fart.

Colder than a steak in the back of the freezer.

Colder than a Viking’s dick.

Colder than the heart of a landlord.

Colder than a tax-collector’s heart.

Colder than Santa’s jockstrap.

Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

----------ooOoo-----------

. . . and a couple of brief items of humour about cold . . .

Justice is best served cold, because if it were served warm, it would be justwater.

Wife texts husband on a cold winter morning: "Windows frozen, won't open."

Husband texts back: "Gently pour some lukewarm water over it and then gently tap edges with hammer."

Wife texts back 10 minutes later: "Computer really messed up now."

Twenty years from now, kids are going to think 'Baby it's cold outside' is really weird and we're going to have to explain that it has to be understood as a product of its time. You see, it used to get cold outside.

It's so cold outside I saw a politician with his hands in his own pockets.

It was so cold this morning I had to use my Tesco discount card to scrape the ice off my windscreen. Didn't work though, I only got 10% off.

----------ooOoo-----------

. . . plus one longer one (posted in Bytes previously) . . .

Two Canadians die and end up in Hell.

Satan decides to pay them a visit, so he walks into their room and sees them talking and laughing. Confused, he asks them why they're happy.

They tell him, "Well, we're so sick of the cold where we're from, and this place is nice and toasty."

Satan, annoyed, storms away and goes to Hell's boiler room, where he turns up the temperature.

He goes back to the Canadians' room, along the way being begged by all sorts of people to put the heating back down. He enters the room to see the Canadians having a barbecue. Furiously, he asks them what they're doing.

"Well, we can't pass up this wonderful weather without getting out the barbecue!"

Satan realizes he's been doing the wrong thing. He goes to the boiler room and turns it down until it's at a colder temperature than ever seen on earth.

He knows he's won now, so he goes back to the Canadians' room, only to see them jumping up and down in excitement.

He shouts at them in fury, "WHY ARE YOU STILL HAPPY?!?!?!"

They look at him and shout at the same time, "Hell froze over! That means the Leafs won!"

(The Leafs are a Canadiian ice hockey team, The Toronto Maple Leafs.)