Timbits2Toonies

Today is National Wombat Day in Australia. When the tree is four years old, olives are harvested. The cities with the most CCTVs are Beijing, London and Chicago. Christianity, Islam and Judaism forbid tattooing.  The world’s best diplomat is the olive branch.  Closed captions on television shows has been with us officially for 38 years. A newborn baby porcupine is called a porcupette.  Today in 1964, Parliamentary committee selected the design for our new national flag. Junkyard magnets—the ones that lift cars—generate two tesla.  Geneticists crossed a porcupine with a sheep and got an animal that knits its own sweaters. There are nine basic origami folds.  The Little Tea Pot, short and stout, is 79 years old.  There are no height restrictions on horse jockeys.  Puns about orange pekoe are teadious. The Newfoundland & Labrador Liquor Commission operates 29 outlets in the province.  Fing...

Today marks the birth of the Báb for practitioners of the Bahá’ï faith. A group of bakers is collectively known as a Tabernacle.  It has been 43 years since advertising was banned on CBC Radio. The apostrophe first appeared in France in 1529, to show a letter had been dropped from a word.  The third degree is a diploma for successful criminals.  Tonka Toys takes its name from ’Tanka’, the Dakota Sioux word for ‘great’ or ‘big’.  There are three categories of verbs in the English language. On this date in 1875, Icelandic immigrants founded Gimli, Manitoba.  Velveta was marketed as a nutritious health food in the 1920s and ’30s.  Patients must brace themselves for visits to the orthodontist.  Andorra has not been to war in nearly 1,000 years. Bread consists of two parts: the outside is called the crust, inside is the crumb. The Royal Canadian Navy was established in Halifax, today in 1910.  To speak to the...

You can count on it, today is World Statistics Day.  With a population of 1.3 million, one out of every four Calgarians are foreign born. Snow White met the Seven Dwarfs in 1812. A guinea pig sleeps four hours a day, in ten-minute intervals.  Money is called dough because we all knead it. Fear is quantitative, humans can smell it.  Scientists have proven that travelling reduces heart attacks and improves memory. The human knee has fourteen ligaments. Today in 1865, Queen Victoria mfr Ottawa the capital of what would soon be Canada. Cash cows give richer milk. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has eight temples in Canada. Europeans were introduced to tea in the late 16th century. At this very moment there are more than 1.9 billion websites on the Internet. Today in 1956, the first Black Brant rockets were fired into space from the Churchill Rocket Research Range in Manitoba. This month’s hydro bill is a shocker. ...

Today in AD 1512, a Doctorate in Theology was conferred upon Martin Luther. The Little Engine that Could has been chugging along since 1930. 1.47 billion people visit Facebook every day.  Germany withdrew its membership from the League of Nations today in 1933. It is a little known fact that bagpipers walk while they play to get away from the noise.  The sunflower is the symbol of loyalty.  The people spoke; today in 2015 the Grits trounced the Tories in the federal election.  German Shepherds first appeared as a breed in 1899. 4.2% of Queensland’s population is Aboriginal.  My neighbour speaks Esperanto like a native.  The first vending machine dispensed holy water in first-century Roman Egypt. In days of yore, sailors believed that having a black cat on board the ship brought good luck.  Saint Agatha is the patron saint of nurses.  Fiat began building tractors in 1919 and is second in world producti...

We ring in a new year in 80 days.  Eight nations border the Adriatic Sea.  Women have twice as many pain receptors as men.  The British submarine  HMS Artful can stay submerged for 25 years without surfacing. After buying a waterbed, the newlyweds drifted part. Samsung means ‘tri-star’ in Korean.  Little Jack Horner has sat in the corner for 239 years. Camel meat must be braised before cooking, to make it palatable. Today marks Persons Day in Canada, the date in 1929 when the Imperial Privy Council ruled that women were persons, not chattel.  When bottled water is marked down by 50%, it’s a liquidation sale. The average pumpkin contains 500 seeds.  Arts Décoratifs, a.k.a. Art Deco, was first showcased in Paris, in 1925.  Cheesecake was a well-known dessert in ancient Greece. Lights! Camera! Today in 1977, we became the first nation to broadcast Parliament live. Rain falls on a regular basi...

The Government of France owns 15% of Renault.  250 millilitres of white, long-grain rice contains 205 calories. From St. John’s to Victoria, cannabis is legal as of today.  There are more Indian restaurants in London than in Mumbai and Delhi combined.  Folks who enjoy bowling say it’s right up their alley.  Today in 1956, Queen Elizabeth II opened the world’s first commercial nuclear power plant. The Roman numeral system consists of seven symbols: I, V, X, L, C, D and M. From Windsor, ON to the Québec border, the 401 is North America’s busiest highway. Brazil has more than 240,000 dentists—the most on the planet.  A collective of fingerprints is called a whorl pool. Québec’s Minister of Labour, Pierre Laporte, was murdered by the FLQ today in 1970. The good citizens of Christchurch are called Cantabrians.  Earth's biggest labour union is the US National Education Ass'n, with 2.7 million members. Today in 1980, Joh...

Trick or treat! There are 15 days until Hallowe’en.  The pendulum clock was invented in 1656 by Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens. 22% of science fiction novels are written by women. Building wagons since 1852, Studebaker entered the automobile field in 1902.  Death is the only escape from taxes.  At USD$3,000 a metre, vicuna is the rarest and most expensive wool in the world. Walter his brother Roy Disney incorporated The Walt Disney Company 95 years ago, today. At 42 kilometres square, Pelee is the largest island in Lake Erie and home to 235 people.  There are three types of meteorites. Hangings are suspended sentences. Chile and Japan are the world’s number one and number two producers of iodine.  On this date in 1984, Reverend Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  A pumpkin that fits in one’s hand is called a Jack Be Liittle, nickname JBL.  600 people a day are diagnosed with leprosy around t...