 |
 |
|
 |
||
|
||
      | Check Order Status Call us toll-free at 888.365.0056. |
|
||
 |
||
 Disappearing Civil Liberties Mug, $12 |
• In one of the earliest forms of democracy, which the ancient Greeks started to practice around 508 BC, citizens were asked to cast a vote for the politician they most wished to exile for ten years. They cast these votes on shards of pottery called ostraka, which has given us the word "ostracize" that is still used today. • The electoral college was created partly because the Founding Fathers worried that, due to a lack of mass communication in those days, the voters in one state may not know enough about the candidates in other states to know whom to vote for in a national election (instead, voters would vote for electors that had the wisdom and knowledge to choose a national candidate). The Whig party tried to rig this system in 1836 by running a local candidate in each region of the country and planning to figure out which one their electors would vote for after the fact. They lost to Martin Van Buren anyhow. |
|
| • In 1800, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr got the same number of electoral votes, which meant that the House had to settle the election. They held thirty-six runoffs and could not decide a winner. Finally, Alexander Hamilton, who was actually Jefferson's fiercest political enemy but who could not stand Aaron Burr, pressured the House enough to tilt the vote to Jefferson (who couldn't stand Burr at all either and had to deal with him as his vice president for four years, since the second place winner ended up as VP on those days). And in an unrelated event, Burr shot Hamilton dead a few years later. | ||
|
||
|
||
• Until the 18th century, the only diamond mines were in India. |
||
|
||
|
||
 Speed Chair, $1000 |
• There is a standard traffic sign in China that can be translated literally as, "Give large space to the festive dog that makes sport in the roadway." • In Britain, the "yield" signs don't say "yield." They say, "give way." The British use this sign far more often than the stop sign, which they imported from the United States. • The longest U.S. highway is Route 6, which starts in Cape Cod, Massachusetts and goes through 14 states, finally ending in Bishop, California. |
|
|
||
|
||
| • Lighting a small fire or lamp inside an igloo actually strengthens and insulates the structure. • When the Eiffel Tower was built for the Paris World Exhibition of 1889, Parisians denounced it as an eyesore, with one critic famously calling it a "positively tragic lamppost." • In Atlanta, Georgia, it is illegal to tie a giraffe to a street lamp. • St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Famer Lou Brock got his 3,000th hit off the Cubs' Dennis Lamp on August 13th, 1979. |
||
|
||
|
||
|
•
One of the most famous literary depictions of skinny dipping is in the long poem eventually called "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman. In one of the sections of the poem, a "richly drest" twenty-eight-year-old woman hides behind her window as she watches twenty-eight men bathe nude and "souse" themselves with spray in the river. She imagines herself as "the twenty-ninth bather," dancing and laughing with the men. • According to Bryn Mawr College tradition, students are supposed to skinny-dip in one of two fountains within the cloisters to ensure their graduation. Rumor has it that Katharine Hepburn started the tradition by skinny-dipping in one of the fountains the night before her graduation ceremony. |
||
|
||
|
||
 License Plate Map, $3500 |
• The Fourth of July honors the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The document had been written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, with advice from a smaller committee, and then revised by a general session of the Congress, after they had passed a resolution to declare independence two days earlier. • In signing the Declaration of Independence, the members of the Continental Congress knew that they were staking their lives to the Revolution - had the colonists lost, all of the signers probably would have been hanged for treason. |
|
• Jefferson did not actually write the official copy of the Declaration with pen and paper - that was done by an assistant secretary of the Congress, Timothy Matlack. That version was then signed by the members of Congress (in a particularly large fashion by John Hancock) a few weeks after the Declaration had been adopted. |
||
|
||
|
||
 Record Bowls, $26 |
•
The idea for Father's Day began when Sonora Dodd was hearing a Mother's Day sermon in Spokane, Washington in 1909. Todd, who had been raised almost entirely by her father, thought of the idea of a holiday honoring fathers, and the got the town of Spokane to hold the first Father's Day celebration on June 19th, 1910. • Although it was celebrated nationwide for years before, Father's Day was not signed into law until Lyndon Johnson did so in 1966, 52 years after Mother's Day. |
|
|
||
|
||
|
|
• Rap star MC Hammer got the name "Hammer" as an eleven-year-old bat boy for the Oakland A's in the 1970's - Oakland's players thought he looked like baseball legend "Hammerin'" Hank Aaron. Born Stanley Burrell in the Oakland projects, Hammer was hired by A's owner Charlie Finley after he saw Burrell dancing outside the Oakland Coliseum to get free tickets. Finley soon promoted Burrell from batboy to honorary "Vice President," actually letting him talk business with other team owners. Hammer would go on to use the A's clubhouse to rehearse his musical act, and he hit superstardom in 1991 with his Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em album, which included the smash hit "U Can't Touch This." • Manhattan is the only borough in New York City without a professional baseball team. |
|
|
||
|
||
|
• The original idea for Mother's Day was actually suggested by Julia Ward Howe, the woman who also wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Having witnessed the horror and tragedy of the Civil War, she attempted to organize a Mother's Day for Peace and unite women across the world against war in 1870. She was also a noted abolitionist and women's suffragist. • Howe's idea had in turn been influenced by Anna Jarvis's idea of Mother's Work Days, which she organized to increase sanitation and health among the armies in the Civil War. Her daughter started a crusade to form a day in memorial of her mother's cause, and in 1908, the first official Mother's Day celebration was held in West Virginia. It became a national holiday in 1914. • Mother's Day is actually the third most popular holiday in the world, behind Christmas and Easter. It occurs at various times of year throughout the world, but it is always celebrated on the second Sunday of May in the United States. |
||
More Uncommon Knowledge: 1 2 3 4 |
||
 |
0 items 0 recipients subtotal: $0.00 |
 |
||
 |
||||
 |
 |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Request a Catalog | |
| About Us | |
| Our Uncommon Mission | |
 |
Follow us on |
 |
Subscribe to This Just In |
|
|
|
Hear Our Story on NPR |
|
|
|
| Privacy Policy Terms and Conditions Affiliate Program Site Map Customer Reviews | Order By Phone: 888.365.0056 |
| ©2000 UncommonGoods™ L.L.C. 140 58th Street Building B Suite 5A Brooklyn NY 11220 | 8 AM to 1 AM EST Mon-Fri and 9 AM to midnight EST Sat-Sun |