Almanac chapter 12: People

                                     Chapter 12

                                       PEOPLE

              Within  seven levels of acquaintance almost any two people in
         America are associated. Chances are you have a friend  who  has  a
         friend  who  has  a  friend....   that  knows the President, Cher,
         Johnny Carson, Connie Chung, and Michael J. Fox.

              The scientist, Louis Pasteur, used to sneak a microscope into
         friends houses under his coat and then examine the food they  were
         about to serve to make sure it was safe from germs.

              It  appears  that Adolf Hitler may not have died from suicide
         as people used to believe. He could still be alive in  hiding.   A
         scientist has tried to match dental records from the corpse in the
         bunker  that  was  supposed to have been Hitler and found that the
         dental features don't match photos taken of Hitler when his  mouth
         was open.

              Ex-First  Lady  Nancy  Reagan  was  in a high school play (in
         1939) in which she had only one line: "They  ought  to  elect  the
         First Lady and then let her husband be President."

              The ex-husband of the columnist Ann  Landers  started  Budget
         Rent-A-Car  with  $5,000 and turned it into a big company which he
         later sold for $10 million.

              Charles Darwin, the evolutionary theorist,  cured  his  snuff
         habit  by keeping the snuffbox in the basement and the key for the
         snuffbox in the attic.

              After Felix Bloch was accused of spying  and  suspended  from
         the  U.S.  State Department, he was bothered by news reporters and
         FBI agents who followed him constantly. But he could do  something
         they  would find difficult. He can walk 25 miles at a time. And he
         did so, much to the dissapointment of those tailing him.

              The FBI was considering that Albert Einstein was  possibly  a
         communist  spy  and was possibly involved in the kidnapping of the
         Lindbergh  baby.   They  accumulated  a  1500  page  file  on  the
         professor.

              One  time  Albert  Einstein was jotting down some notes about
         his thoughts while  attending  a  banquet.   Everyone  rose  in  a
         standing  ovation  and  were applauding, so Dr.  Einstein rose and
         clapped his hands too. He didn't realize the ovation was for him.

              In 1952, Albert Einstein  was  nominated  for  presidency  of
         Isreal.

              Ellen Bloudreaux is blind, has an IQ of around 40, and cannot
         talk,  yet  she  has  totally memmorized hundreds of songs and can
         sing them while playing the piano.  She has not  had  any  musical
         training.

              When  the  Prince  of Wales visited Niagara Falls he tried to
         talk people into letting him ride across the falls on a high  wire
         in a wheel barrow. Evidently the local authorities refused.

              When  the  scientist Nikola Tesla started messing around with
         the newly discovered X-rays, he considered them beneficial for the
         human brain, and spent sessions of as long as 40 minutes  x-raying
         his head.

              Royal  Prince  Mom  Teparit  of Thailand has created the iron
         buffalo  for  his  people,  an  eight-horsepower  rototiller  like
         tractor  that can pull farm instruments through rice paddies seven
         times faster than water buffalo. He has also created a way to seed
         clouds in the orient.   This  not  only  improves  crop  yield  by
         diminishing  droughts  but also can used to defuse typhoons before
         they hit land. He also invented irrigation systems and  many  more
         tools  and  techniques  of  agriculture. He is now working with an
         idea to use electricity to separate hydrogen from sea  water.  The
         hydrogen  can  be burned to create electricity, a portion of which
         will be used to separate more hydrogen. The profit will  be  extra
         electricity.  In  the  course  of  his  work  he has lost complete
         hearing in one ear and partial loss in the other, he has lost  two
         fingers  and  his  spleen  and  gall  bladder  due  to exposure to
         hazardous chemicals and machinery.

              Thomas Edison was kicked out of school because  his  teachers
         thought he was learning disabled. They said he was a "dreamer."

              The Smithsonian Institution was founded by James Smithson, an
         Englishman who never visited America.

              The explorer Lafayette's full name was Marie Joseph Paul Yves
         Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette."

              Leonardo  da  Vinci  could  draw  a sketch with one hand, and
         write  with  the  other  hand  simultaneously.One  of  the  things
         Leonardo da Vinci was most famous for during the time he lived was
         his   weight-lifting   ability.    He  was  well-  known  for  his
         accomplishments as a strongman.

              The French had a man like our Ben Franklin,  but  this  man's
         life  was  more complicated.  Pierre Beaumarchais was a well-known
         playwright who invented an important gadget  that  all  mechanical
         clocks  required  called  the escapement, the part that ticks.  He
         was a secret agent for the King and taught his  daughter  to  play
         the  harp,  he  wrote operas including the Marriage of Figaro, and
         was Voltaire's editor.  Like Ben  Franklin  he  used  considerable
         ambassadorial  skill  to  put  together  financial backing for the
         American  Colonies  in  their  fight  for  independence.    Unlike
         Franklin,  he  spent  many years in jail, charged with treason and
         fraud. He acted as his own attorney.

              When Blaise  Pascal  was  a  boy  he  figured  out  Euclidian
         geometry  by  himself.  Nowadays, many kids have trouble with this
         subject even with the help of a teacher and text books.

                                   Show Business

              John Wilkes Booth was one of the most famous  actors  of  his
         time, before he shot Abraham Lincoln.  After that he was ever more
         famous,  but  people  didn't like him anymore. He used to get over
         100 fan letters every week.

              If  anyone  in this century were to attempt to produce a show
         like the freak show of P.T. Barnum, the world would  be  outraged.
         He  included  in  the show at various times: a bearded lady, a man
         who was totally blue due to an industrial accident,  a  woman  who
         was  completely  covered with tattoos, a man with a two-inch thick
         skull that people could smash things  over  harmlessly,  a  rubber
         man,  a  woman  with  a paralyzed face, a midget, a man who looked
         like a dog, a "skeleton dude," a woman who looked like  a  monkey,
         and  a  person  who was so distorted by congenital defects that no
         one could identify exactly what he was.

              W.C.  Fields used to  open  savings  accounts  everywhere  he
         went.   He put over $1 million in 700 different banks. He couldn't
         remember where many of his accounts were.

              Bob Ford, the outlaw who killed Jesse James, later starred in
         a play called "How I Killed Jesse James".

              Hollywood was founded in 1888 by Horace Wilcox.  It was to be
         a model city of people who did not drink alcohol.  There were only
         500 residents until the movie industry came to town.

              Tom Mix, the movie  star  had  special  tires  made  for  his
         Rolls-Royce  which  had  the initials TM imprinted into the tread.
         Whenever he drove on dirt  roads,  he  left  long  trails  of  his
         initials.

              Abbott  and  Costello  had  an insurance policy to cover them
         financially in the event of an argument between themselves.

              The movie, Quo Vadis had over 30,000 people on its payroll.

              Johnny Carson charged Sears Roebuck $1,000,000 for  a  single
         show in October, 1984.

              Remember  the  cartoon, Flintstones?  Pebbles' voice was done
         by Sally Struthers who played Gloria in All in the Family.

                            Some Celebrities' Real Names
                       Alan Alda - Alphonso D'Abruzzo
                       Woody Allen - Allen Steward Konigsberg
                       Alice Cooper - Vincent Furnier
                       Redd Foxx - John  Sanford
                          (remember the show, Sanford & Son?)
                       Judy Garland - Vicki Lester
                       Donna Summers - LaDonna Gaines
                       Elton John - Reginald Dwight
                       Martin Sheen  -  Ramon Estevez

              Siegfield  and  Roy  have had 3274 consecutive sellouts since
         they opened in Las Vegas in 1981.  At 200 seats  a  night,  that's
         6,548,000 people. That's one out of every 38 people in America.

              The  name  of  the  Star Wars Robot, R2D2 came from technical
         moviemaking terminology: "Reel 2, Dialogue 2.

              When  Henry  Winkler  started on Happy Days, he was paid $750
         per episode. By 1982 he was making $80,000 for each show.

              If you paid average eighteen-year-old Americans minimum  wage
         for all the hours of television they have watched, they would each
         get $50,000.

              Only three out of every ten Americans remembers what life was
         like before television.

              There  are at least one tv set for every two Americans. There
         is at least one telephone for every two and there are at least one
         and a half radios per person in the United States.

              An American three-year-old child  spends  an  average  of  30
         hours  per week watching tv. Some kids spend less time, some more.
         This means some kids  spend  more  time  watching  tv  than  their
         parents spend working every week.

              In the country of Cyprus there is one movie theater per every
         eight people.

                                       Music

              When  Beethoven  was  ready to write music, he would start by
         pouring ice cold water over his head to excite his brain.

              At the age of two, Mozart could hear  sounds  and  tell  what
         pitch  they  were.  There  is a story that he heard a pig oink and
         yelled "G-sharp!" Someone duplicated the pitch  on  a  piano,  and
         discovered that it was G-sharp.

              Here's an easy one, see if you can  remember:  What  are  the
         names  of  the four musicians who composed the Beatles?  I'll tell
         you later.

              The Beatles have sold over 1 billion copies. If  you  stacked
         up  all  these  records  and  tapes, the pile would be almost 2000
         miles tall.

              The Beatles are still popular,  they  sold  over  10  million
         copies in 1988.

              Michael Jackson owns most of the Beatles copyrights.

              Answer:  John  Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo
         Starr.