August 2003
Fragrance
Beautywalk is multifaceted online beauty community. Sure it sells beauty products, but there is so much more to the site. It has a short "history of fragrance" page and another interesting one on ingrediance.
1400's - Distillation: The Arabs discovered distillation -- the process of concentrating fragrant essences -- thereby making them vastly easier to ship and a lot less perishable. Around the same time, the distillation of wine was perfected also, which led to the mass production of alcohol or "spirit water" - as healing elixirs. As we'll see, distillation was to have a major impact on perfumery, in 17th Century Hungary.
Oak Island
Activemind.com is a good site for an introduction to various unexplained mysteries. Oak Island interested me.
One summer day in 1795 Daniel McGinnis, then a teenager, was wandering
about Oak Island, Nova Scotia when he came across a curious circular depression
in the ground. Standing over this depression was a tree whose branches
had been cut in a way which looked like it had been used as a pulley. Having
heard tales of pirates in the area he decided to return home to get friends
and return later to investigate the hole.
Over the next several days McGinnis, along with friends John Smith and
Anthony Vaughan, worked the hole. What they found astonished them. Two
feet below the surface they came across of layer of flagstones covering
the pit. At 10 feet down they ran into a layer of oak logs spanning the
pit. Again at 20 feet and 30 feet they found the same thing, a layer of
logs. Not being able to continue alone from here, they went home, but with
plans of returning to search more.
From another site, a brief summary and some theories.
The story of the Oak Island Treasure Pit has been written about in numerous books. To date the treasure has not been uncovered, but tantalizing glimpses of what are purported to be part
of the treasure have been reported. The following are a sample of some of the theories on who buried the treasure on Oak Island:
the most popular theory is that of the early 18th century pirate Captain Kidd, who
frequently visited the region of Oak Island for rest and relaxation and to repair his
ships. He seemed to have a habit of burying part of the treasure he plundered far and
wide.
the most bizarre theory is that the treasure is the original works of William
Shakespeare/ Sir Francis Bacon buried on the site in the late 16th century. This theory is
based on the evidence of a piece of parchment paper brought up from the pit by one of the
treasure hunters.
equally strange is the theory of the crown jewels of France which went missing in 1791
and were said to have been smuggled to Louisburg (north of Oak Island in Cape Breton).
Since Louisburg was frequently attacked by the British when the French owned it, the
jewels were considered unsafe and were transported to Oak Island.
The theories go on but no one knows for sure the origin of the Treasure Pit.
My interest peaking, I did an advanced search in google. This page has customer reviews on a book written on the subject. At a future time I will look into the Sinclair family and the Templars. Below the page are links to books of related mysteries.
But the Templars also had great worldly treasure that was never found. As the bankers of medieval Europe, they were guardians of vast wealth, which they apparently took to Scotland, where they joined up with the rebel forces of Robert the Bruce. In an independent Scotland, the Sinclair family became the hereditary Grand Masters of freemasonry, the successor to the Templars. Sora writes of the journey across the Atlantic of Henry Sinclair, along with the Zeno brothers of Venice. A much better source for this is Andrew Sinclairs wonderful book, The Sword and the Grail, which provides convincing proof that Scottish knights did indeed beat Columbus to the New World. Sora makes use of this source as well as heavily drawing on Holy Blood, Holy Grail. While The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar wanders a bit and makes some amazing allegations (like suggesting the defenses built into the Money Pit were the designs of Leonardo Da Vinci), the book contains a lot of information and is good reading for those interested in exploring alternate views of history.
Gatorade
Last year, one of sports best kept secrets was revealed: the origin of Gatorade. The past two weeks has been the continuing saga in a second commercial. But Gatorade brings more than publicity to UF. The university's 20 percent share of the royalties has brought in $76.4-million. The rest goes to those who worked on Gatorade's development and their heirs. Gatorade's worldwide sales are more than $2-billion a year. Stokely-Van Camp is a subsidiary of Quaker Oats, which PepsiCo acquired.
Back in the late 1960's, several of the
Chiefs' star players suffered from dehydration in the hot and
humid Missouri heat. Offensive center E.J. Holub - known as the
toughest player on the team - even passed out in the middle of
practice due to becoming severely dehydrated. Concerned, Coach
Stram spoke with his friend, University of Florida coach Ray
Graves, in search of a solution.
Coach Graves told Coach Stram about a
relatively new concoction, Gatorade, which helped replenish and
rehydrate his college football players, improving their
performance. Coach Stram received a few cases of Gatorade, which
he and trainer Wayne Rudy introduced to their team, and the rest
is history. The Chiefs noticed dramatic improvements in their
energy levels and performance, and went on to become the
champions of Super Bowl IV during this time.
TV Spinoffs
This site is devoted to spin offs of shows and crossovers between shows. Here's a page about Wings being a crossover of Cheers.
Wings was made by some of the folks who worked at Cheers and they are both
similar shows: they both are set at public places (A bar/an airport) with a romantic subplot (Sam and
Diane/Joe and Helen). They both have the requisite angry almost unlikable character (Carla
Tortelli/Roy Biggins), they both have the "wacky" somewhat "off" employee (Woody and Coach/Lowell)...
They're very similar. Wings even followed Cheers on the TV schedule for a
nice chunk of its run.
Natalie Wood
A little trivia on Natalia Zakharenko, daughter of Russian immigrants.
An accident on a movie set when she was 9 years old left her with a permanently weakened left wrist and a slight bone protrusion which for the rest of her life she hid with large bracelets. Regardless of the movie role, or anytime that she was out in public, she always wore a large bracelet on the left wrist.
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