Best-Worst-Last-First-Whatever Lists

[Mayerling]

Five B.C. Serial Killers [#-name-year(s)-place then/now-description]:

5-Anula of Auradhapura-50 to 47B.C.-Auradhapura Kingdom/Sri Lanka-Queen regent who poisoned four husbands and a son to remove them as threats to her reign.

It did not seem to do her murderous majesty much good - she only held power three years.

Notable Murder Stories That Somehow Don't Sound True

1) Sawney Bean (no ancient records of this cannibal murder family has turned up in Scotland)
2) Bela Kiss (supposedly a serial killer of women in old Austria-Hungary, who manages to remain one step ahead of the law - including using another dead soldier's identity papers to flee - some say he ended up working peacefully as a janitor in New York City's "Yorkville" section of Manhattan into the 1950s!)
3) Sweeny Todd (in original Thomas Peckett Press novel, "A String of Pearls", of 1844, the story of the evil barber and meat supplier is set in 1782, and the title says "founded on fact"; one study of the novel and it's background suggests two incidents of that period of a lunatic who may have cut two throats, but many dispute this finding.)
4) Florence Maybrick (a possible poisoning of a brutal husband by his unfaithful wife, but a strong possibility of the victim poisoning himself with arsenic used as a tonic and self applied medicine - or of being accidentally poisoned.)
5) Eliza Fenning (executed for attempted murder in 1815 of her employer and his family; most scholars feel the evidence is very weak that she did anything to her employers, and the causes of the mass sickness in the household may have been just that - sickness.)
6) Edith Thompson (most commentators of this story feel she did not plan to manipulate Frederick Byswater into killing her husband Percy Thompson; executed due to adultery being played up, poor performance under pressure in witness box, and government refusing to let pathologist it used (Bernard Spilsbury) testify he found no evidence of poison or glass in Percy's body, as Edith's letters to Byswater suggested.)

[sdreid]

Five B.C. Serial Killers [#-name-year(s)-place then/now-description]:

1-Roman Femme Fatale Poison Syndicate-331B.C.-Roman Republic/Italy-A ring of mostly upper crust women who conspired to rid themselves of troublesome men in their lives with poison.
2-Prince Liu Pengli-144 to 116B.C.-East Han/China-Royal family member who, along with some minions, made sport of brutally murdering lower class citizens in nocturnal raids.
3-Oppianicus the Younger-about 74 to 66B.C.-Roman Republic/Italy-Killed several family members as well as others with poison.
4-Calpurnius Bestia-about 60 to 54B.C.-Roman Republic/Italy-Murdered his wives with the poison aconite.
5-Anula of Auradhapura-50 to 47B.C.-Auradhapura Kingdom/Sri Lanka-Queen regent who poisoned four husbands and a son to remove them as threats to her reign.

[sdreid]

As best I can tell, the most deadly life forms to Americans, excluding disease organisms and other humans, and the approximate number they kill in a quadrennial:

13-Scorpions(1)
12-Aligators(2)
11-Cougars(4)
10-Sharks(6)all "man eating" species
9-Bears(8)all three North American species
8-Pigs(10)
7-Cattle(12)mostly rodeo bull riders
6-Spiders(26)both native poisonous species
5-Snakes(60)all native poisonous species
4-Horses(80)
3-Dogs(124)
2-Bees(212)including wasps and hornets, mostly from allergic reactions to their venom
1-Deer(600)all native species, mostly from traffic accidents they cause particularly with motorcyclists

[Mayerling]

Forgot one.



3-Aarom Burr came up one vote short of becoming President in the Electoral College vote that followed the 1800 campaign.

Possibly "4". In 1824 there was a four way race for the Presidency between Andrew Jackson (the popular favorite), John Quincy Adams (Secretary of State and real author of the so-called "Monroe Doctrine"), William Crawford (Secretary of the Treasury, and an extremely smart creator of a widespread patronage empire) and Speaker of the House Henry Clay (the first of his three Presidential runs). In the end only Adams, Jackson, and Crawford had sufficient electoral votes for them to be considered by the House of Representatives in a run-off. But Crawford had suffered several minor strokes, and was read out of the real running by the electors (ironically he recovered and lived until 1834). Clay could throw his 37 electoral votes to either Jackson or Adams and make one of them President. He finally threw his set of votes to Adams (presumably because Adams promised him the post of Secretary of State, at that time a jumping off point for future Presidents, as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Quincy Adams had held the post - only Washington and John Adams had not). Jackson and his supporters would scream of a "corrupt bargain" for four years, seriously weakening Quincy Adams' Presidency, and laying the groundwork for Jackson's popular election in 1828. Actually Jackson's floor managers had also approached both Clay and Crawford to get their votes for Jackson, so there was a degree of hypocrisy and "sour grapes" here.

You could say "one vote" (Clay's) swung this election.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Forgot one.

The three men who never became President of the United States because of one vote:

1-Samuel Tilden came up one vote short of becoming President in the 1877 Electoral College results

2-Benjamin Wade missed becoming President in 1868 when the Senate failed by one vote (three times) to convict and remove President Andrew Johnson from office

3-Aarom Burr came up one vote short of becoming President in the Electoral College vote that followed the 1800 campaign.

[kensei]

This is from memory from a tv show I have buried somewhere in my video collection- The Top 10 most deadly animals based on the number of people they kill worldwide in an average year (from least to most):

10. Bears
9. Sharks
8. Hyaenas
7. Jellyfish
6. Big cats
5. Heavyweights (Elephants, Hippos, etc.)
4. Scorpions
3. Crocodiles
2. Bees & Wasps
1. Snakes

With an aside of course to acknowledge that insects and parasites that cause disease actually kill more than all of them combined.

[GUT]

Consider yourself very lucky GUT.

Jeff

No because herself goes there and buys all sorts of junk to clean and such that can't be eaten.

[Mayerling]

Just saw about Woolworths, they still exist here as a Supermarket, [Grocery Store].

Consider yourself very lucky GUT.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

In realistic terms and excluding Civil War issues, the three states of the United States that were once independent countries:

1-The Republic of Vermont (1777-1791)

2-The Republic of Texas (1836-1846)

3-The Kingdom of Hawaii (1795-1893)

Technically from 1789 to 1790 Rhode Island was not part of the U.S. (it is the last of the original 13 colonies to ratify the U.S. Constitution).

Also for nine weeks in 1848 California was separate as "the Bear Flag Republic" (which their state flag still honors).

Jeff

[GUT]

Just saw about Woolworths, they still exist here as a Supermarket, [Grocery Store].

[sdreid]

In realistic terms and excluding Civil War issues, the three states of the United States that were once independent countries:

1-The Republic of Vermont (1777-1791)

2-The Republic of Texas (1836-1846)

3-The Kingdom of Hawaii (1795-1893)

[Mayerling]

Rulers who were Non-U.S.rulers but born or connected here

Presidents of Texas:

Stephen Austin
Sam Houston
Mirabeau Lamar
Anson Jones

Kings of Hawaii:

Kamehameha I (the "Great") who unified the island kingdom - the only King honored in Congress's Statutory Hall
Kamehameha II
Kamehameha III
Kamehameha IV
Kamehameha V
Liholiho (actually he was closer to a President than King, seeking to change the Constitution)
David Kalakaua
Liliokalani

also the "President of the Hawaiian Republic" after it overthrew the monarchy in 1893:

Sanford Dole (of the Pineapple family)

Filibuster Ruler (briefly) of Nicaragua:

William Walker (1855-57)

Married titles:

Princes Grace (Kelly) of Monaco
Queen Hope Cooke of Sikkim

These are the ones that come to my mind.

[Mayerling]

The two men who never became President of the United States because of one vote:

1-Samuel Tilden came up one vote short of becoming President in the 1877 Electoral College results

2-Benjamin Wade missed becoming President in 1868 when the Senate failed by one vote (three times) to convict and remove President Andrew Johnson from office

Americans some claims as President (even first President) who most reject:

Peyton Randolph of Virginia - First President of the Continental Congress (1774)
John Hanson - First President under the Articles of Confederation (1783)
David Atcheson - Senator from Missouri, and President Pro tempore of the U.S. Senate - on March 4, 1849 (a Sunday) President Polk had vacated his office the day before, and General Zachary Taylor had put off his inauguration until March 5, 1849. Some historians claim that technically Atcheson was President for this one day (our 11 1/2th President?). It was a cold day, and he later said he spent the whole day in bed. Atcheson is remembered for the town in Kansas named for him, and the railroad immortalized in the Oscar winning tune of "The Harvey Girls", "On the Atcheson, Topeka, and the Santa Fe".

[sdreid]

The two men who never became President of the United States because of one vote:

1-Samuel Tilden came up one vote short of becoming President in the 1877 Electoral College results

2-Benjamin Wade missed becoming President in 1868 when the Senate failed by one vote (three times) to convict and remove President Andrew Johnson from office

[Mayerling]

The four smallest denomination U.S. Mint issued coins:

1-Half Cent (1793-1857)
2-Cent (in two sizes/1793-NOW+)
3-Two Cent Piece (1864-1873)
4-Three Cent Piece (in two sizes/1851-1889)

Hi Stan,

One has to keep in mind the relevant issue of inflation rates. A coin that would be a "half cent" today would not pay for it's own mintage. In fact there is a constant argument about getting rid of pennies and nickels for that reason today. But these coins in earlier centuries or periods did have a value - the term "A proper penny" for the British penny used up to the 1960s (which was the size of our half dollar) makes sense when you realize that it bought considerably more in say 1920 than twenty five pennies (for any country) today. A cartoon I once saw from the 1930s (entitled, "When a dollar was a dollar") showed a boy at a general store ordering the equivalent (in our money) of about sixty or seventy dollars worth of goods from that one dollar his mother gave him to spend, and he has enough to purchase some licorice for himself with the remainder! This also explains that when Henry Ford priced the Model T at about $400.00 or so, it was a bargain, provided you had either saved $400.00 over a period of time, or were making enough to put aside money to pay on an installment play. That car (which was somewhat unfrilled, but certainly durable) would probably run to about $30,000 - $40,000.00 today.

Jeff