Valentines Day

 

We’d like to take a moment to wax sentimental – it is, after all, Valentines Day. We truly appreciate our readers and our many advertisers.

That said, we also love trivia. Since we can’t take all of you out for a fancy dinner nor can we send everyone bouquets of flowers, we’ll just share some fun (and offbeat) Valentines Day facts:

• Thirty million boxes of chocolates are purchased every year for Valentines Day. Sweet! But did you know that the Richard Cadbury came up with the notion of boxed V-Day candy in the late 1800’s?
• On Valentines Day in 1876 Alexander Graham Bell applied for a patent for the telephone. 49% of Americans show their affection on this day with a phone call to loved ones.
• Verona, Italy was the hometown of Romeo & Juliet. Every year, over 1000 love letters arrive in that city, all addressed to Juliet

Off to see the blizzard?

We don’t know about you, but we’re getting ready to batten down the hatches for a storm that may turn out to be quite a blizzard. Even if it isn’t a full-blown nor’easter, we’re still in store for a little of the white stuff within the next 48 hours. It goes without saying, we suppose, that we’re thinking snow. Because we love strange little details, we wanted to dig up some cool (see what we did there?) snow facts:

• The largest recorded snowflake was 15″ across and 8″ thick – wow!
• The patent for the first snow shovel (one that both scooped & scraped) was granted in 1889 to Lydia Fairweather
• Chionophobia is the fear of snow
• Snowflakes fall at 5.5 feet per second
• The Victorian Era was a period with serious air pollution. Because of this, the snow that fell was often dark gray
• The U.S. averages about 105 snowstorms each winter