Louise Carroll: Random thoughts blooming in June

Flowers are blooming: I’ve got tiny green tomatoes on my plants and a whole file full of thoughts, quotes and ideas I’ve run across or into. It is time to share them with you.

* In Topeka, Kansas, it is illegal to sing the alphabet on the street at night. I am curious why it was necessary to pass a law against it. Is it a Kansas thing?

* “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” Annie Dillard.

*A Primanti sandwich has been deemed the Coolest Thing Made in Pennsylvania in 2024 in a bracket-style competition by the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry. In the online voting, which concluded on April 11, Primanti Brothers beat out Reese’s Cups in the finals to take home the title. (I would have voted for the Reese’s Cups.)

* “The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you,” Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

* McDonald’s milkshakes contain seaweed in the form of an extract called carrageenan. Does that mean it is good for us?

* The U.S. Patent Office issued a patent to Sarah Boone for her invention of an ironing board. While not the first, her unique padded design was curved making ironing sleeves easier.

* Every Sunday the United States wastes nearly 90% of the recyclable newspapers. This wastes about 500,000 trees.

* The term brain freeze was invented by 7-Eleven to explain the pain one feels when drinking a Slurpee too fast.

* “Kindness is always fashionable, and always welcome,” Amelia Barr, 1831-1919.

* In 1869, a dentist was the first person to add sugar to chewing gum. Another gum fact is Wrigley’s gum was the first product to have a barcode.

* Women are 14% more likely to die in a climate-related disaster than men. Women represent 80% of people displaced by extreme weather.

* “He who allows oppression, shares the crime,” Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802. He was a physician, scientist, reformer and poet: grandfather of Charles Darwin.

* Kellogg’s cornflakes and graham crackers were originally developed to curb sexual urges.

* Currently there are approximately 752 million domestic pigs worldwide. 406 million are in China. And on the subject of pigs, in France, it is illegal to name a pig Napoleon.

* “There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down and the other is pulling up,” Booker T. Washington, 1856-1915.

* About 30,000 Americans are injured by toilets every year, Oh, honestly. I can’t imagine how this can happen. Do you know anyone who was injured by a toilet?

* Everyone has a unique smell, Identical twins smell so alike that, most times, only trained dogs can tell the difference.

* “When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece,” John Ruskin, 1819-1900.

* The sailfish with their stunning dorsal fin and incredible speed of up to 68 miles an hour, is the ocean’s fastest swimmer.

* Elephants are extremely scared of bees.

* There are at least 100,000 chemical reactions going on in a normal human brain every second. Now that boggles my mind. If my brain is so busy, how come I can never think of the word I’m desperately trying to recall or when I start to introduce someone I have known for many years and I can’t think of his name?

* “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the one thing that I can do,” Edward Everett Hale.

* Lightening is five times hotter than the sun.

* Garrison Keillor always closes his Writer’s Almanac articles with, “Be well, do good work and keep in touch.” It is the perfect ending to these random thoughts.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Carroll: Random thoughts blooming in June