/ By Blase Iorio / Fun Fact Friday/ • / 0 Comments

Groundhog Day 2019

It’s that time of year again…Groundhog Day! Groundhog  Day always falls on February 2. This marks the midpoint between the winter solstice in December and the spring equinox in March. The world’s eyes will turn to a small town in Pennsylvania to find out if there will be six more weeks of winter or an early spring in 2019. It’s all in the hands of the prognosticator of prognosticators, Punxsutawney Phil. The festivities date back for over a century with Phil emerging from his den every year at 7:20 a.m. The crowd lines up overnight to start partying. There are bonfires, singing, dancing, and fireworks in anticipation of Phil not seeing his shadow. If not, then we will have an early spring. News crews from around the world will be at Gobbler’s Knob to record the event. There are many imposters in the country….but only one Phil. Stop back Monday (2/4/19) to find out what he did or did not see!


www.pennlive.com

/ By Charity Boughner / Fun Fact Friday/ • • / 0 Comments

Fun Fact Friday

HomePlate

The baseball home plate is 17′ wide and made of rubber.  The designer Robert Keating picked rubber as the material because of the springy nature.  The material prevented a harsh vibration to the batter’s hands when they struck the base with the end of their bat, and would prevent injuries from occurring when base runners slid into home.

 

Source: Today I Found Out, https://flic.kr/p/7WQPN2

 

/ By Charity Boughner / Fun Fact Friday/ • • / 0 Comments

Fun Fact Friday: Valentine’s Edition

LoveBirds

  • About 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged in US each year. That’s the largest seasonal card-sending occasion of the year, next to Christmas.
  • Women purchase 85% of all valentines.
  • Parents receive 1 out of every 5 valentines.
  • About 3% of pet owners will give Valentine’s Day gifts to their pets.
  • Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day are the biggest holidays for giving flowers.
  • Worldwide, over 50 million roses are given for Valentine’s Day each year.
  • California produces 60 percent of American roses, but the vast number sold on Valentine’s Day in the United States are imported, mostly from South America. Approximately 110 million roses, the majority red, will be sold and delivered within a three-day time period.
  • 73% of people who buy flowers for Valentine’s Day are men, while only 27 percent are women.
  • In the Middle Ages, young men and women drew names from a bowl to see who their valentines would be. They would wear these names on their sleeves for one week. To wear your heart on your sleeve now means that it is easy for other people to know how you are feeling.
  • The Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare’s lovers Romeo and Juliet lived, receives about 1,000 letters addressed to Juliet every Valentine’s Day.
  • Richard Cadbury invented the first Valentine’s Day candy box in the late 1800s.

These fact are from a fun site dedicated to everything Valentine’s, www.stvalentinesday.org.

/ By Charity Boughner / Fun Fact Friday/ • • • • / 0 Comments

Fun Fact Friday: Super Bowl Edition

Super Bowl 50

*Normally, Super Bowls are denoted with Roman numerals and have been since Super Bowl V in 1971. But this year, the NFL announced this was to be Super Bowl 50, not Super Bowl L. But don’t worry; the Roman numerals will be back next year with Super Bowl LI.

*The Panthers are one of 13 teams that have never won a Super Bowl. They only have one other appearance, which was in 2003. No one from that team is still on the roster, and only two (Julius Peppers, Steve Smith) are still in the league.

*The age difference between Peyton Manning (39) and Cam Newton (26) is the largest between starting quarterbacks in Super Bowl history. The difference is 13 years and 48 days, beating the previous high of 12 years and 250 days when Manning faced Russell Wilson in 2013.

*Super Bowl 50 marks the first time two QB’s taken No. 1 overall in the NFL Draft are going head-to-head. Manning was taken No. 1 in 1998 out of Tennessee, while Newton was taken No. 1 in 2011 out of Auburn.

*Peyton Manning is tied with Brett Favre with 199 career wins (regular season and postseason combined). If he wins the Super Bowl he can hold the all-time record.

*If the Panthers win and QB Cam Newton is voted the game’s MVP, he’ll become only the fifth player in history to win the Heisman Trophy and Super Bowl MVP. The only four to do it: The Cowboys’ Roger Staubach in Super Bowl VI, the Raiders’ Jim Plunkett (XV); the Raiders’ Marcus Allen (XVIII) and the Packers’ Desmond Howard (XXXI).

*NFL referee Clete Blakeman, who botched the coin flip before the overtime period of the Cardinals’ playoff win against the Packers, will conduct the flip and work the game.
 DenverBroncosLogoCarolinaPanthersLogo

Super Bowl Facts

 

*The name “Super Bowl’’ was conceived by Kansas City Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt during a planning meeting in 1966 for the inaugural game. When owners were stuck trying to think of what to call the game, Hunt suddenly remembered that two of his children were obsessed with a popular toy of the era, the Super Ball. That’s when he blurted out, “Let’s call it the “Super Bowl!’’’ and it gained instant approval.

*Super Bowl XLIX in 2015 between New England and Seattle was the most watched telecast of all time, with an average viewership of 114.4 million. Five years earlier, SB XLIV was the most-watched program of any kind in American TV history (106.5 million viewers), beating the 27-year old record held by the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983 (105.97 million viewers). Denver’s Gary Kubiak is the third coach to take a team to the Super Bowl in his first season of coaching the team (Kubiak previously coached the Houston Texans from 2006-13). It was previously done by San Francisco’s George Seifert (SB XXIV) and Indianapolis’ Jim Caldwell (SB XLIV).

*The Lombardi Trophy has been manufactured since SB I by Tiffany & Co. It is made of sterling silver, stands 22 inches tall and weighs seven pounds. The football atop the trophy is regulation size. Tiffany assesses the street value of the silver at about $3,500.

*The youngest head coach to win the Super Bowl was Mike Tomlin, who was 36 when his Steelers defeated Arizona in SB XLII in 2009.

*The oldest head coach to win the Super Bowl was Tom Coughlin, who was 65 when the Giants defeated New England in SB XLVI in 2012. Read More

/ By Charity Boughner / Fun Fact Friday/ • / 0 Comments

Fun Fact Friday

Martin_Luther_King,_Jr_

In honor of Monday being Martin Luther King Day, todays fact is about Martin Luther King, Jr.

The civil rights leader was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929. However in 1934 his father, a pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, traveled to Germany and became inspired by the Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther. As a result, King Sr. changed his own name as well as that of his 5-year-old son.

 

 

Source: www.history.com, Wikimedia Commons