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WITandWISDOM(tm) - December 10, 1999 ~~~~~~~ THOUGHTS: "The ideal marriage is not one in which two people marry to be happy, but to make each other happy." - Roy L. Smith, 1887-1963, Methodist Minister (Nancy Wimer) ~~~~~~~ SPECIAL THOUGHTS: Some years ago a small boy about 10 years old entered a restaurant and sat at the counter. The waitress went over and put a glass of water in front of him. "How much is an ice cream sundae?" he asked. "Fifty cents," replied the waitress. The little fellow pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied a number of coins clutched in it. "How much is a dish of plain ice cream?" he asked. There were many people waiting at the counter, and the waitress was slightly impatient. "Thirty-five cents," she said brusquely. Again he counted the coins. "I'll have the plain ice cream," he said. The waitress took his money, brought the ice cream, put it in front of him, and walked away. When she came back a few minutes later, the boy was gone. She stared at the empty dish and then swallowed hard at what she saw. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish were two nickels and five pennies - her tip. Source: Bits & Pieces, 1996, Copyright (c) Economic Press, Inc., www.epinc.com via http://www.witandwisdom.org ~~~~~~~ TRIVIA: Why do most pencils have six flat sides? . . . Most pencils have six sides. If you cut one across and look at the end, it is shaped like a hexagon. There are three reasons for this. First, it is cheaper to make pencils with six sides because more pencils can be made from the same amount of wood. The wood that could make eight round pencils can be made into nine hexagonal ones. Two other reasons for hexagonal pencils: They are less likely to roll off a desk than round ones, and easier to sharpen than square ones. How do they get the lead (actually, graphite) into the center of the pencil? The wood starts out as two sections, each of which has a long groove. The graphite goes into the groove, and the two pieces are glued together. An essay about the history of pencils, by the familiar "yellow number 2": http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/waac/wn/wn10/wn10-1/wn10-106.html (E-zine: THE LEARNING KINGDOM http://www.tlk-lists.com/join/ ) |