Silver In Your Socks...!

I had no idea that silver was used in this fashion.

It's always fun to find that precious metals have other uses besides just jewelery! Some of the medical uses of silver I was aware of, but the rest was new to me.

Silver

Stops Your Socks from Smelling


Did you know the socks you’re wearing right now might contain silver? Apart from its many uses in dentistry, jewelry, optics and photography, silver also has some serious antibacterial properties. It can inhibit the growth of bacteria and fungi in fabric, which makes it nature’s own odor stopper. 

Because of this, the clothing industry uses quite a lot of silver—in nanosilver form—to stop the clothes they make from smelling. Apart from socks, almost all of your clothes (up to and including your shoes) may well have some silver in them. Silver’s antibacterial superpowers have also made the metal very popular in the world of medicine as a very effective disinfectant and antiseptic.



One of the greatest things about the internet is that it allows us to learn something new each and every day! I really like that! I'm a sucker for obscure information!

Coffee in the kitchen this morning. Toasted sourdough bread on the side!

Western Wednesday With Belle Starr...!

We don't often talk about the women of the old west, but they were a very important part of western development.

Although most women of the west were unknown to us by name, such is not the case with Belle Starr! She was, without a doubt, one of the "bigger than life" characters in the shady side of the early days! From the folks at History.com, here is her story!

Belle Starr murdered in Oklahoma

The outlaw Belle Starr is killed when an unknown assailant fatally wounds the famous "Bandit Queen" with two shotgun blasts from behind.

As with the lives of other famous outlaws like Billy the Kid and Jesse James, fanciful accounts printed in newspapers and dime novels made Belle Starr's harsh and violent life appear far more romantic than it actually was. Born Myra Belle Shirley on a small farm near Carthage, Missouri, in 1848, she received an education in the classics and became a competent pianist. Seemingly headed for an unexciting but respectable middle-class life, her fate was changed by the outbreak of the Civil War, which ruined her father's business as a Carthage innkeeper and claimed the life of her brother Edwin. Devastated, the Shirley family abandoned Missouri to try to make a fresh start in Texas.

In Texas, Belle began her life-long pattern of associating with men of questionable character. In 1866, she met Cole Younger, a member of the James-Younger gang that was gaining notoriety for a series of daring bank and train robberies. Rumor had it that Younger fathered Belle's first child, Pearl, though the father might have actually been another outlaw, Jim Reed. Regardless, Belle's relationship with Younger was short-lived, and in 1866 she became Reed's wife. Belle was apparently untroubled by her new husband's reputation and she had become his partner in crime by 1869. She joined him in stealing cattle, horses, and money in the Dallas area. Riding her mare, Venus, and sporting velvet skirts and plumed hats, Belle played the role of a "bandit queen" for several years.

In 1874, a member of his own gang killed Reed, and Belle was suddenly on her own. Pursued by the law, she drifted into Oklahoma Indian Territory, where she led a band of cattle and horse thieves. There she met a handsome young Cherokee named Sam Starr, who eventually became her common-law husband and new criminal partner. The Starrs managed to elude capture for nearly a decade, but in 1883 they were arrested for horse theft and both served five months in the Detroit federal prison.

Freed from prison, the couple immediately resumed their criminal careers. In 1886, Belle again lost a husband to violent death when Sam Starr was killed in a gunfight with an old enemy. Belle wasted no time in finding a third companion, a Creek Indian named Jim July, an outlaw who was 15 years her junior. In 1889, July was arrested for robbery and summoned to Fort Smith, Arkansas, to face charges. Belle accompanied her young lover for part of the journey but turned back before reaching Fort Smith. On her way home, someone ambushed and fatally wounded her with two shotgun blasts to her back. Jim July believed the murderer was a neighbor with whom the couple had been feuding, but no one was ever convicted of the crime.

Just like her male counterparts, ol' Belle made enough enemies to last for two lifetimes. I'd say that one of them finally caught up to her! That was often the case in the Wild West, regardless of your gender!

Coffee inside today. Cold front is supposed to move in today, and that means rain!

Creepy Plant Tuesday...!

After the post on the mysterious seeds yesterday, I thought we should look at a really creepy plant today.

There is something about creepy that is fun and scary at the same time, especially if it concerns living things! This one certainly prove of creepy plants!

Bleeding Tooth Fungus

The bleeding tooth fungus looks kind of like a wad of chewing gum that leaks blood like a rejected prop from The Shining.

They're also called the strawberries and cream, the red-juice tooth, and the devil's tooth. Whoever is in charge of naming scary bullshit seems really insistent that this thing looks like a tooth, while mostly skirting over the fact that it freaking sweats blood.

Oh, and they are listed as "inedible," which implies that someone attempted to eat one at some point. On the other hand, the bloodlike substance has anticoagulant and antibacterial properties. It's nature's next penicillin! All you have to do is lick it. Go ahead!

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_18979_10-creepy-plants-that-shouldnt-exist.html#ixzz2JKt9VoLo

I may have to make these creepy plants a regular feature here at the Hermit's. What do ya think?

Better have our coffee inside today. Looks like rain!

Monday Mystery About Seeds...!

With so many folks having dreams about Spring and their future gardens, I thought we would talk about a seed mystery!

What better way to accompany the browsing of the seed catalogs than to have a nice mystery to consider? So, grab a fresh cup of your warm beverage and enjoy today's mystery!

Rain of Seeds

February 1979

021

Roland Moody of Southampton, England, was startled to hear small, solid objects hitting the glass roof of the conservatory attached to his house. The objects turned out to be hundreds of seeds—small mustard seeds and cress seeds coated in a jelly-like substance. More seeds continued to fall during the day, eventually covering his garden. One of his neighbors, Mrs. Stockley, told Moody she’d had a similar experience the previous year.

The following day, Moody’s home was struck by corn, pea, and bean seeds that seemed to simply fall out of the sky. His neighbors on both sides were also pelted with peas and beans. Only those three houses in the neighborhood were targeted for the bizarre showers of seeds, and a police investigation was unable to pinpoint a source.

The phenomena gradually decreased and went away. By that time, Moody and his neighbors had endured twenty-five separate barrages and collected ten pounds of beans from their gardens. Moody himself gathered eight buckets of cress seeds. He claimed the produce grown from the seeds was good quality. Both Moody and Stockley were interviewed for Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World television series in 1980. To date, no adequate explanation for the weird showers has been found.

I'm thinking that if we all had a rain like this one, we could have one heck of a garden, right? Would you eat the veggies that grew from seeds from the sky?

Coffee on the patio this morning. I'll break out some fruit bars that are pretty good!

Sunday Grins With Tom And Jerry...!

What would Sunday at the Hermit's be without some cartoons?

Most of you know that, and the fact that many folks continue to stop by on Sunday means that it's OK ! Gotta have a little fun from time to time, right?



Don't tell anyone, but I actually had to laugh out loud at these sound effects. That's my favorite thing about Tom and Jerry!



For many folks, Sunday is a good day for golf. We can do golf! Well, maybe we can't actually do golf, but we can certainly watch!



Well, I guess that's all for today! Should be enough smiles to at least get you started!

Coffee on the patio today. It's a little foggy, but I have donuts if that helps!

Ben Franklin, The Prankster...!

Many things have been written and said about ol' Ben, but here is a bit of trivia you may not know! Ben loved a good hoax!

It's said that Ben always had a good hoax in the works. Being as how his main talent was in writing and printing, he could often pull off things that others couldn't.

Native Indians Sending Scalps to the British

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) is a renowned 18th century philosopher, man of science, and statesman . . . but he was also a prolific hoaxer. From witch trials, and prophesies, to tales of flying kites in thunderstorms, Franklin always had a hoax on the go and in the midst of the American Revolutionary War, Franklin pulled one of his best pranks.

In 1782, a mysterious newspaper called The Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle printed a letter revealing that Indian warriors were being paid by the British to send thousands of American scalps, including those of women and children, to the British royal family and members of parliament as trophies of war. Within days the contents of the letter had reached European shores, where people were obviously horrified.

However, it was all an elaborate trick set up by Franklin. He’d printed the paper himself and handed it out to friends, one of whom had leaked it to a contemporary on the other side of the pond. In truth, the article did its job. Franklin had always intended to turn European opinion against the British in the hope of helping the war effort and he did just that.

You have to respect a man that can pull off a prank of that magnitude, ya know? When you can change the attitude of many folks in a country, you have done something pretty cool!

Coffee on the patio this morning. The temps are supposed to be in the 80's today!

Friday Travels To 1945...!

Seems like lately I have been posting some very dark subject matter. It's time for a happier story.

We are going back to the year 1945 and the dropping of the very first atomic bomb on a city. The destruction and devastation was beyond believe! However, this is a story of one man that survived!

Double Nuked

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was the only officially recognized survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb blasts at the end WW2.

On 6 August 1945, Yamaguchi, a young engineer, was visiting Hiroshima. Seconds after getting off a tram at 8.15am he saw a massive flash of light and was knocked to the ground by the force of the bomb, and passed out as it detonated 600m above the city.

Around 140,000 of Hiroshima’s 350,000 people perished instantly. Though less than two miles from Ground Zero, Yamaguchi suffered only serious burns to his upper body and a perforated eardrum. He spent the night in an air-raid shelter, with people dying and screaming in pain all around him. The following day, Yamaguchi navigated through the piles of burnt and dying bodies to catch a train 180 miles back home to Nagasaki – which, like Hiroshima, was an important industrial and military base.

At 11.02am, and once again less than two miles from the centre, Yamaguchi saw a familiar flash of light. This time a 25-kiloton plutonium bomb exploded above Nagasaki, throwing Yamaguchi to the ground.

As well as almost total deafness in one ear, his skin wounds were bandaged for 12 years, and his wife was poisoned from the radioactive fall-out. She died in 2008, aged 88, of kidney and liver cancer. Their son, exposed to the Nagasaki radiation at six months old, died in 2005 – aged 59.

Before his death of stomach cancer, Yamaguchi became a passionate anti-nuclear weapons campaigner – but he never expressed any anti-Americanism.

I would say that this gentleman was watched over by an angel, without a doubt! One of the most amazing things about this guy, is that he never voiced anti-American feelings! That, my friends, is a miracle in itself!

Coffee on the patio this morning. There are some fresh oranges on the table we can share!