Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center

From the Education Desk

Welcome to 2010! January 3 is Trivia Day and I thought it would be fun to start the New Year out with some trivial facts to help honor this day.

According to Wikipedia the word Trivia dates back to early Latin and today represents small tidbits of knowledge that, for all intents and purposes, are insignificant to the majority of people. The first known use of the word “trivial” in English dates back to 1589. The first book on Trivia was published by Dell in 1966 and was so popular it landed on the New York Times Best Sellers list. This led to many other books on the subject and in the 1980’s the board game Trivial Pursuit.

Did You Know?

*That the northernmost U.S. state capital is Juneau, Alaska or that “Q” is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any state of the U.S.?

*The sandwich was invented by John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who gave the food its name and that January is the top-selling month of the year for chicken noodle soup. Sixty percent of this soup is purchased during the cold and flu season.

*There are more than 700 species of plants that grow in the U.S. that have been identified as dangerous if eaten, such as, lily of the valley, daffodils, azalea and sweet peas to name just a few.

*Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming has more geysers than any other field known in the world.

* According to one source, Americans buy about 5 million things that are shaped like Mickey Mouse, or have a picture of Mickey Mouse on them, in the course of one day. Disney information states there were 6,469,952 spots painted on the dogs in the original 101 Dalmatians. I love this Disney Trivia!!!

*The T.V. show Seinfeld was set in New York City, however, the exterior used for Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment house is actually in Los Angeles, Ca. The show was originally titled The Seinfeld Chronicles and the pilot, which was broadcast in 1989 featured a kooky neighbor named Kessler. This character later became Kramer. *Americans consume more than 353 million pounds of turkey during National Turkey Lovers Month in June. More than 675 million pounds of turkey is consumed at Thanksgiving.

*Just to give you an idea how the price of real estate has changed, Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan Island from the Manhattoe tribe for trinkets and cloth valued at about $24.00. What a deal that was!

Who knows…this trivia could open up a conversation with a very interesting person sometime!

We have many events for the coming year that are planned and we need YOU to make them GREAT! Please come and visit us and see all the things we are doing.

There is always something new going on. We are very proud of our educational opportunities at RMDRC. One of these is the fact that you can watch us work in the lab and see specimens in different stages of restoration, from sculpting, molding, casting, welding of the framework and painting the completed specimen. If you have a question, suggestion or a comment, e-mail or call me. I would love to hear from you.

I would like to say thank you to all of the children and adults who came to the museum in December and made an ornament for our holiday tree. All of the designs are truly wonderful! We hope you enjoyed making not only the ornament for the museum tree, but that the decoration you made to take home will be a special remembrance of your trip to RMDRC. The ornament you made for our tree is a reminder of how special all of you are to us at the museum. Thank you for sharing your marvelous talents with us.

Here’s to an exciting, fun and educational 2010. We are looking forward to seeing you soon.

Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right……Oprah Winfrey

Regards,
Geri LeBold
Education Director
geri@rmdrc.com