The First Book of Factoids | Page 4

the priest, in the 10th
millennium BC (c. 12,000 years ago).
Curiously, he also said that the Atlantians conquered all the lands of
antiquity, bar Athens (which only came into existence in the Neolithic
period, about 3000 years later).
Arab geographers propagated the story of Atlantis and medieval
European authors referred to it as fact.
Current oceanographers, scholars and conspiracy theorists place
Atlantis all over the map - from an island in the Aegean Sea (Thera, or
Santorini it suffered an earthquake in 1640 BC and housed the
flourishing Cycladic civilization), through the Canary Islands to

Scandinavia. Considering that many ancient civilizations - such as Troy,
long considered a mere fable - were unearthed by archeologists, it is not
futile to continue to look for Atlantis.
http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Archaeology/Alternative/Lost
_C ivilizations/Atlantis/
Automatic Switchboard (Phone Exchange)
Almon B. Strowger, an undertaker in Kansas City, faced unfair
competition. The wife of a competing undertaker was an operator at the
local (manual) telephone exchange. She re-routed calls to her husband,
even when the caller asked for Strowger.
In an effort to get rid of her, Strowger invented the first automatic,
electromechanical switchboard and, together with his cousin, produced
the first model in 1888. He was granted a patent in 1891.
Strowger joined forces with Joseph B. Harris and Moses A. Meyer to
form "Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange" in October 1891. A
year later, the first Strowger exchange was installed with great fanfare
at La Porte, Indiana. It had less than 80 subscribers.
Strowger died in 1902 but his company still survives as AG
Communications Systems.
http://www.roserpark.net/greenwood/strowger.html
http://www.strowger.com/history.html
http://www.agcs.com
B
Barbie
Barbie was invented by Ruth Handler in 1959. It was modelled on a
minuscule German sex doll called "Lilli". Barbie was the nickname of
Ruth's daughter, Barbara. Ruth proceeded to found Mattel with her
husband, Elliott. It is now one of the world's largest toy manufacturers
(revenues - c. $5 billion annually, a third of which in Barbie sales).
More than 1 billion Barbies were sold by 1996. Mattel commemorated
this event by manufacturing a "Dream Barbie".
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~tsawyer/barbie/barb.html
http://www.barbiecollectibles.com/whatshot/barbiehistory/index.asp
http://www.mattel.com/our_toys/ot_barb.asp
Bathory, Erszebet

If you think that today's serial killers are unsurpassed, try this for size:

In 1611, Countess Erszebet Bathory was tried - though, being a
noblewoman, not convicted - in Hungary for slaughtering 612 young
girls. The true figure may have been 40-100, though the Countess
recorded in her diary more than 610 girls and 50 bodies were found in
her estate when it was raided.
The girls were not killed outright. They were kept in a dungeon and
repeatedly pierced, prodded, pricked, and cut. The Countess may have
bitten chunks of flesh off their bodies while alive. She is said to have
bathed and showered in their blood in the mistaken belief that she could
thus slow down the aging process.
Her servants were executed, their bodies burnt and their ashes scattered.
Being royalty, she was merely confined to her bedroom until she died
in 1614.
She was married to a descendant of Vlad Dracula of Bram Stoker fame.
She was notorious as an inhuman sadist long before her hygienic
fixation. She once ordered the mouth of a talkative servant sewn. It is
rumoured that in her childhood she witnessed a gypsy being sewn into
a horse's stomach and left to die.
For a hundred years after her death, by royal decree, mentioning her
name in Hungary was a crime.
http://www.angelfire.com/realm/shades/demons/vampires/booksandmo
vieseb athory.htm
http://www.alienplayground.net/disgusting/idols.html
http://bathory.freehosting.net/ebathori.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/objectrelations.html
Berliner
When President John F. Kennedy sought to impress the Germans in
1961 - then besieged by the Russians - he visited Germany and
famously said, in a public speech: "Ich bin ein Berliner". Alas,
"Berliner" in German is also a kind of yummy doughnut with jam
filling and vanilla icing. This gave rise to the fallacy - adopted even by
"The Economist" - that "Berliner" is wrong usage or gaffe.
It is not. "Berliner" in German means "that which belongs to Berlin or
of Berlin". The Berlin Wall is the "Berliner Mauer", for instance.
Berlinerin is the female form of Berliner. Kennedy was grammatically
correct to have said "Ich bin ein Berliner".
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/weekly/aa021700a.htm

http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/berliner.htm
Bible
The Jews do not include the 27 books of New Testament in their Bible.
The factoids below relate to the version of the Bible used by Christians
everywhere: Old (39 books) and New Testament. Altogether 1189
chapters (929 of which are in the Old Testament), 31173 verses. The
Old Testament contains 592439 words (2728100 letters), the New
Testament contains 181253 words (838380 letters). Of the 27 books of
the New Testament, 14 were written by St. Paul.
The Bible contains words in Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek.
The Bible is the bestseller of all times. More than 50 copies are still
being sold every minute. The Bible is also the most shoplifted book in
the