Today I’m linking up with Emily P. Freeman to share the myriad interesting things I learned in February.
- I’m starting with the most fascinating thing I came across. When reading Dog Heroes aloud to my kids I learned about hypo alert dogs. They help people with diabetes by alerting them when their blood sugar level changes. According to Wikipedia, high blood sugar smells like tutti-fruity gum and low blood sugar like rusty water or nail polish remover. Isn’t it amazing that some dogs can be trained to smell blood sugar levels? I want to learn more!
2. Songza is now Google Play Music.
3. Valentine cards have a long history.
4. My GPS has all sorts of functions I didn’t know about. Instead of telling me my estimated arrival time, it could display the altitude or a count-down until arrival. (For those who don’t know yet, I am terrible with technological gadgets.)
5. Basque children were sent to the United Kingdom during the Spanish Civil War.
6. Calfskin vellum was used for many important historical British documents (such as Domesday Book, Magna Carta, and the Lindisfarne Gospels); it lasts 5000 years versus 200 for archival paper.
7. Josephine Tey’s real name was Elizabeth Mackintosh. (I’ve read a few of her mysteries. This one is next on my list.)
8. North Americans spend a smaller percentage of their income on food than we did in the past or that people do in other parts of the world. Maybe I should stop fretting about my grocery bills?
9. Night-blooming cereus is a cactus that only blooms once a year. I was introduced to it in The Bean Trees, the first novel by Barbara Kingsolver that I’ve read. (I loved the book; should I tackle The Poisonwood Bible next?)
10. Lupini beans have to be peeled. I learned this after I grabbed a can for a Mediterranean-style salad because I couldn’t find cannellini beans. (They both sound Italian, right?)
11. There are different type of Braille, called grades. In Grade 1 all words are spelled out letter-by-letter. In Grade 2 contractions are used, with one Braille cell standing for groups of letters or whole words. Grade 3 is known as Braille shorthand and has not been standardized. Learn more here.
12. In platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy, a patient’s own blood is treated so the platelet count is five times the usual amount. It is then used to treat injuries and for other applications, such as hair regrowth.
13. The original King James Bible attributed the Epistle to the Hebrews to the apostle Paul.
14. I finally figured out how to transfer audiobooks from the public library onto my (ancient) iPod without first adding the files to my iTunes library. Hooray!
Please share what you learned in February!
I learned about an amazing family who, in the 1930’s decided to transfer from Alberta to Quebec to allow their large Catholic family to be brought up in French. The story is about their run-in with a very dominating priest , who feared for his authority in the village by the well educated father of this family, and commenced a series of persecutions against this family. The book is self published and is called It is Written. I recently met one of the granddaughters who was lovely and so admiring of her family for the grace with which they endured the attacks for 3 years. TB became common in their family of 10 partly due to starvation because the priest took away their land and two children died. I couldn’t put this book down.
@Beverly Troup Sounds like a dramatic and sad story.
The Poisonwood Bible is very sad, but well written. It’s a good bit longer than the Bean Tree, so it’s a commitment. 🙂
@oliviascribbles Thanks. I’ve heard that it’s sad and also that the author is excellent at writing with different voices. I’ll have to get it from the library when I don’t have so many other books on the go!
E once wrote me a love note in Braille and I had to decipher it. I believe it would have been considered Grade 1 Braille.
So fun! Grade 1 was the only type of Braille I’d heard of, but having a sort of shorthand makes so much sense.