Did You Know? The Beard Tax

As hard as it may be to believe, there was an actual tax called the Beard Tax.

King Henry VIII imposed beard tax in 1535 to abolish wearing beards, even though he himself wore a beard.  

   King Henry VIII taxed beards even though he wore one too

In 1698, Peter the Great created a beard tax to abolish beard-wearing because he was trying to westernize Russian nobility.  

Peter The Great, Tsar of Russia 

The amount of the tax to be paid depended on the beard wearer's social position.  The higher he was in society, the larger tax he had to pay.  This made facial hair a status symbol.

  

Henry VIII's daughter, Queen Elizabeth I of England brought the beard tax back. 

Queen Elizabeth I of England

She was very strict and taxed anyone with a beard longer than two week's growth.  Facial hair was no longer a status symbol.


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Did You Know? Weight Loss

https://nowyouknowthis2.blogspot.com

 

People weigh less on Friday than any other day of the week.

If you are an ardent weight watcher, track your numbers after you weigh yourself every day. 

Within a few weeks you will notice that you are heavier in the beginning of your work week than you are at the end of your work week.

Researchers from Cornell University tracked 80 adults for a year.  When they weighed themselves every day, they were lightest on Fridays and heaviest on Mondays.  Their weekends were full of fun activities like going out to restaurants for dinner, drinking alcohol, and eating late night snacks. These pleasures were likely the reason for their high numbers they saw on Mondays.


 By working all week at a busier schedule, andby  eating a little more responsibly during the week, their weight hit a low point on Fridays, just in time to go out on the weekend for guilt-free dining and fun with friends.  


The study results may also indicate that the subjects were more careful to eat more responsibly during the week knowing they were going to overindulge on the weekend.


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Did You Know? Hot Sauce

Hot Sauce Is Supposed To Be Hot

When it comes to any kind of hot sauce, you have to remember that these products have a pretty long shelf life. They’re full of natural preservatives like vinegar and they often don’t contain very many actual fruits or vegetables.

Hot Sauce would be called Cold Sauce if it was supposed to be stored in the fridge.

You should store hot sauce away from direct sunlight and keep it in a cool, dry place like a pantry or a cupboard. If you’re a hot sauce fanatic, you might just want to leave it on the table because you know you’re going to use it again with your next meal.

Did You Know? Cueva de los Tayos Caves and Gold

The Cueva de los Tayos is in Ecuador.  Please explore the many links we are sharing in the text of this article. 

The library made from precious metals

It's a huge underground network full of legends about lost gold, giants who walked the earth, unusual sculptures and a library full of tablets made from precious metals. 

Tunnel walls are lined with gold

 It's also been said to be the location of Salesian priest Father Crespi's collection of gold artifacts that were given to him by the local Shuar people.

Originally thought to be small tablets that you could hold in your hand

Turned out to be huge sheets of precious metals that lined the walls of the tunnels

Father Carlos Crespi Croci was a Salesian monk who was born in Italy in 1891.  He studied anthropology at the University of Milan before becoming a priest.  

http://anynewsbd.com/father-crespi.html

In 1923, he was assigned to the small Andean city of Cuenca in Ecuador to work among the indigenous people.  He devoted the next 59 years of his life to charitable work until his death in 1982.

 Father Crespi (1891 -1982)

Father Crespi is known for his multitude of talents – he was an educator, anthropologist, botanist, artist, explorer, cinematographer, and musician.  

Father Crespi's collection

Today he is much remembered for his humanitarian efforts in Ecuador, setting up an orphanage and educational facilities, assisted the impoverished, gave food and money handouts. He cared deeply for the people and won their hearts.  

Exploring Tayos tunnels

A statue of him stands in front of the Church of Maria Auxiliadora, and local people stillshare stories about him.   The City of Cuenca has been working with the Vatican for years to have Father Crespi recognized as a Saint.

Artifacts from the tunnels

Another gold artifact from the tunnels

 Father Crespi's collection was originally thought to be missing but was actually purchased by the Central Bank of Ecuador and is being kept in safekeeping.

Artifacts from the tunnels now in safekeeping

Comparison

The caves and gold treasures gained worldwide attention in 1973 when Erich von Däniken published his bestselling controversial book, The Gold of the Gods.

Explorers in the tunnels of Tayos

An expedition in 2015 explored the Tayos caves and they found new entrances to the cave system and remnants of a lost jungle city. 

Amazing picture of an explorer's perspective of the caves

More expeditions followed with another planned in 2020.  It has been said the only access in by diving underwater and swimming to the caves. 

Showing the magnificent size! 

With more expeditions planned, we can expect to hear much more about this as new expeditions uncover more secrets of the tunnels under the Cueva de los Tayos.

Showing the size comparison

Gold inside one of Tayos' caves

Inside the caves of Tayos

You can read more about Father Crespi's story and view artifacts here: (opens in a new window)

https://hiddenincatours.com/ancient-sumerians-in-ecuador-the-father-crespi-mystery/ 

and a rare 4 minute video of Father Crespi here:

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Did You Know? Proper Storage of Garlic

Keep Garlic Out Of The Fridge

Garlic is a food item that doesn’t need to be stored in the fridge. If you do like to keep it cold, know that it can get rubbery and even start to sprout. It can look totally normal, but then when you cut it open, you’ll notice little green sprouts inside.

Garlic is best stored in a Garlic Jar. 
Do you have one?

Leave your garlic in a specialized garlic jar with a lid. Or you can store it in a pair of breathable nylon pantyhose. 

However, you can also peel the garlic and store the peeled cloves in a proper container in your freezer. The cold of the freezer is different than the cold from the refrigerator. A freezer maintains a constant in the freezer's sub-freezing temperatures while a refrigerator is always playing catch up as it cycles so the temperature keeps cycling within the pre-set range.

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Change

Did You Know? Proper Storage For Honey

Oh Honey, Don’t Put Honey In The Fridge

You shouldn’t store honey in the refrigerator. The cold air will cause the honey to crystallize, which isn’t good. 

If your honey does crystallize, just put the whole jar in a warm water bath to dissolve the crystals.

 

According to Martha Stewart, Honey doesn’t need to be kept in the fridge or freezer for it to last a long time.

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Advice

Did You Know? Refrigerating Eggs

Eggs Don’t Need To Be In The Fridge

In many countries, eggs aren’t kept in the refrigerator in grocery stores or in people’s homes. That’s how it’s done across the pond in the UK. 

A recent study discovered that it actually makes no difference whether or not you store your eggs in the fridge, so you need extra fridge space, you can be comfortable taking out the eggs for a few days.

Eggs won't go bad if they aren't stored in the refrigerator

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Wisdom

Did You Know? Proper Storage of Citrus Fruits

Citrus Fruits Belong In The Pantry

Typically, ripe fruit is sweet fruit, which means that fruit that’s kept at room temperature will ripen more quickly and develop more sweetness. Citrus fruit can be rather sour if it’s not given enough time or space to ripen.

Citrus fruit kept at room temperature will ripen faster

Keep fruits like oranges, grapefruits, lemons, and limes out of the fridge. 

If you absolutely love cold oranges, store them outside of the fridge, but pop them into the fridge an hour or two before you want to eat them.

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Quote of the Day - Fortune Cookie

Never care who takes credit for a good deed

Did You Know? How To Skip Ads On Videos

Whether you are technically challenged or just want to learn more about how to do things on Facebook or the Internet, our tutorial blog offers helpful tips, easy to understand directions, with pictures to illustrate.  

A reader asked this question about how to get rid of the advertisements on videos.  We think it might be of interest to all our readers and you can read about it on one of our other blogs at this link:


https://2geekgirls1nerdyguy.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-get-rid-of-ads-on-videos-free.html




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Quote of the Day

Quote of the day

Did You Know? Rules For Married Women

The ancient Olympic Games are said to date back to a footrace held in 776 B.C. where athletes competed in the nude.

Banned

 



Women were banned from participating in the ancient Olympics - and married women were banned from watching or even attending the games. The penalty for any married woman caught sneaking a peek was execution.




More modern Olympic games were revived in 1896 in Athens Greece -- where athletes competed with their clothes on.

You can read more interesting Olympic facts at this link:

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93632621

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Quote of the Day - True Friends

True Friends

Did You Know? How To Test Your Home For Radon

Radon in your home increases your cancer risk

When it comes to reducing your cancer risk, one important step could be right under your nose, or below your feet. 



Getting your home tested for radon can help protect you and your family from a key cause of lung cancer.


According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), each year about 21,000 deaths can be attributed to exposure to radon.  



While that is nowhere near the 480,000 deaths a year caused by smoking, it is still significant. 


Radon is also the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smokers.




WHAT IS RADON?

Radon is a gas that occurs naturally outdoors in harmless amounts. It is produced from the breakdown of uranium in soil and rocks and sometimes becomes concentrated in homes built on top of soil that has natural uranium deposits. 




WHERE IS RADON?

Radon can enter buildings through cracks in floors or walls, construction joints, or gaps in foundations around pipes, wires or pumps. Radon levels are usually highest in the basement or crawl space and that area is where radon testing is recommended.


When radon gas is breathed in, it enters the lungs, exposing them to small amounts of radiation. This may damage the cells in the lining of the lungs and increase a person's risk of lung cancer. 




HEALTH RISKS

The risk of lung cancer is higher in those who have lived for many years in a radon-contaminated house.



The lung cancer risk from radon is much lower than that from smoking. 


However, exposure to the combination of radon gas and cigarette smoke creates a greater risk for lung cancer than either factor alone.



Because radon gas can’t be seen or smelled, the only way to know whether it is a problem in your home is to test for it.  



A Citizen’s Guide to Radon, produced by the EPA, explains how to test your home for radon easily and inexpensively, and what to do if your levels are too high.



TESTING

You can hire a professional tester, or save money and do it yourself with a kit you buy at a hardware store or online. 


Follow the instructions for leaving the kit in your house for the required number of days. Then mail it to a lab and wait for them to send you the results.


If you find out that your radon levels are high, you can take steps to lower the amount of radon in your home. 


The most common method is to have a vent pipe system and fan installed, which pulls radon from beneath the house and vents it to the outside.


It is also possible for radon to enter your home through your water supply, though this is a much lower risk than radon entering your home through the soil. 


If you have a private well, you can have it tested for radon. If the levels are high, you can have the water supply treated so that the radon is removed before it enters your home. 



COST


As with most home repairs, the cost of reducing radon in your home can vary widely, depending on how your home is built (whether you have a basement, crawlspace, or neither) and what kind of system you need.


If you think you have been exposed, you should get tested.  There are no widely available medical tests to measure whether you have been exposed to radon. 


But if you think that you might have been, talk with your doctor about whether you should get regular health checkups and tests to look for possible signs of lung cancer. 


Possible symptoms include shortness of breath, a new or worsening cough, pain or tightness in the chest, hoarseness, or trouble swallowing.


If you smoke and you know you have been exposed to high levels of radon, it’s very important to quit smoking. The combination of cigarette smoking and radon exposure raises the risk of lung cancer more than either smoking or radon exposure alone.


For some people exposed to radon through their jobs, like uranium miners, millers and transporters, the US government has established the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program. It offers compensation for lung cancer and some other lung diseases to people who qualify.


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Quote of the Day - Confucius

Confucius Quote

Did You Know? Fast Facts About Liver Disease

It's amazing that all our organs
can fit inside our abdomen

There are a lot of temptations to overindulge during the summer and Christmas holidays. It is important to eat healthy and continue to exercise.  


Your liver needs foods that contain Vitamins A, E and K to stay healthy. Your liver is a vital organ that you can't live without and it performs over 500 bodily functions. 


If you drink alcohol, do it in moderation. 


If you have risk factors like diabetes or high cholesterol, stay on the straight and narrow, especially when there are multiple opportunities to indulge.


For liver transplants, your new liver will still be functional while it regenerates.  But even if 75% of your liver were removed due to disease or trauma and if you only had 25% left, that 25% could regenerate a full-size liver in 8 to 15 days.  Isn't that amazing?


Now that is Awesome!


WHERE IS YOUR LIVER? 

Your liver is located in the front upper right-hand section of your abdomen, just under your diaphragm and on top of your stomach, right kidney, and intestines.  



WHAT IS ITS FUNCTION?

Your liver is one of your largest and most important organs and performs over 500 functions. Primarily it filters your blood just like the kidneys do, and helps to digest and break down food and drugs to make it easier for the rest of the body to use.  The liver also stores glucose in the form of glycogen and helps in maintaining the proper amount of glucose in the blood




RISK FACTORS FOR LIVER CANCER OR CIRRHOSIS


One main cause of cirrhosis is drinking large amounts of alcohol for many years. 


If you are very overweight, have diabetes or a condition called metabolic syndrome, you are at higher risk of getting nonalcoholic fatty liver disease,  a buildup of fat in your liver which can lead to liver cancer.


Certain diseases can make you more likely to get liver cancer, including:


Long-term hepatitis B or C -- viruses that attack and damage your liver


Cirrhosis -- liver damage that can make scar tissue replace healthy tissue



Liver diseases you’re born with, like Wilson’s disease (when you have too much copper in your liver)



Toxins Raise Your Risk

Some of these can cause liver cancer, including:

Aflatoxins: poisons made by molds that can grow on crops like corn and peanuts if they’re not stored the right way


Arsenic: a chemical that’s sometimes in well water


Thorium dioxide: a substance once used for some kinds of X-rays (it’s not used anymore)



Vinyl chloride: a chemical used to make some kinds of plastics

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF LIVER CANCER

Most people don’t notice any signs of liver cancer early on. Here are some of the main symptoms:

-- Feel full easily or not want to eat

-- Have a lump below your right rib cage

-- Feel pain on the upper right side of your belly or near your right shoulder

-- Have an upset stomach

-- Have swelling in your belly

-- Feel tired and weak

-- Lose weight

--Have white, chalky poop and dark urine


-- Notice your skin and the whites of your eyes are a yellowish color  

TESTS

If your doctor thinks you might have liver cancer, he may recommend:

Biopsy: He will take a small sample of your liver to test for cancer.

Blood tests:  Checks how well your liver is working and look for things in your blood that may be signs of cancer, called tumor markers.

Imaging tests: This might be an ultrasound, CT scan, MRI, or an angiogram, which is a kind of X-ray that looks at your blood vessels.

STAGES 

The stages tell you how far the cancer has spread:

Stage I: One tumor that hasn’t spread anywhere else

Stage II: One tumor that’s spread into blood vessels, or more than one tumor, but all smaller than 2 inches

Stage III: One tumor that’s spread to major blood vessels or nearby organs, or more than one tumor and at least one of them is larger than 2 inches

Stage IV: The cancer has spread to other body parts.

TREATMENT PLANS: 

Treatment for liver cancer depends on the stage you have, as well as your age, overall health, and the health of your liver. If the cancer hasn’t spread and you don’t have other liver problems, you may have:

--Treatment: Surgery to remove the tumor

A liver transplant, where you get a new liver from a donor. This isn’t common.

--Treatment: Ablation Therapy

This tries to kill cancer cells in different ways:

Alcohol: Your doctor puts pure alcohol into the tumors to destroy them.

Freezing: Your doctor uses a thin, blunt instrument called a probe to freeze and kill tumor cells.

Heat: Microwaves can make enough heat to destroy tumors.

Electrical pulses: Bursts of electricity kill cancer cells (this is still being tested).

--Treatment: Targeted Therapy

Cancer cells work differently than normal cells. Targeted therapy uses drugs designed to attack cancer cells based on those differences. This may keep tumors from making blood vessels they need to survive, or it may stop tumor cells from dividing so they can’t grow.

CAN LIVER CANCER BE PREVENTED?

No, but you can lower your chances of getting liver cancer:

1. Get the hepatitis B vaccine.

2. Stay a healthy weight through the food you eat and exercise.

3. Limit the amount of alcohol you drink: up to one a day for women, two for men.

4. Don’t use intravenous (IV) drugs -- if you do, use clean needles.

5. Get tattoos and piercings only at safe, clean shops.

6. Practice safe sex.

Sources: WebMD, Healthline, and NIH


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Did You Know? Legal, But Poisoned Alcohol

Cause of death - Alcohol Poisoning

In the 1920s through to the mid-1930s, bootlegged whiskey and liquor that was made in homemade stills and gins often made people sick. That's because the liquor produced in these well-hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities.  

But on December 24, 1926, it wasn’t tainted gin that poisoned them. It was the U.S. government.


To keep people from drinking during Prohibition, the government reverted to poison: redistilled industrial-grade alcohol.  This was liquor that was initially produced for things like cleaning supplies and paint. 

When they added unpleasant chemicals so that people wouldn't drink it, they called it "denaturing." It was tactic that had been used once before, back in 1906 for manufacturers who wanted to avoid taxes on spirits.


During Prohibition, people would steal the industrial alcohol and re-process it into a somewhat palatable liquor,  then sell it to thirsty Americans, like Antonio Rizzo, who was arrested in Brooklyn in 1922 at the Eureka Chemical Company when he had in his possession 25 gallons of denatured alcohol and a reprocessing machine.  They threw him in jail.


But pretty soon, the government decided that jailing these offenders wasn’t enough.

So in 1926, the President Calvin Coolidge's Administration decided to make the booze more toxic in the hopes that this would deter people from drinking the stuff. 

The government ordered companies to add even more additives to the industrial alcohol, which actually made it lethal. 

The government wanted to scare people into giving up drinking.


It didn’t work. 

Instead, by the end of Prohibition in 1933, the federal poisoning program had killed at least 10,000 people.


There was an incident in 1928 in which 33 people in Manhattan died in three days, mostly from drinking wood alcohol.

Bootleggers

The government made no attempt to pretend that increasing the denaturing formula wouldn’t lead to deaths.  

Seymour M. Lowman, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of Prohibition, told citizens of the upper echelon of society that drinkers were "dying off fast from poison 'hooch' and that if the result was a more sober America, "a good job will have been done."


Industrial alcohol itself was a deadly cocktail of chemicals. A list of the additives and their uses from studies done by the New York City medical examiner in 1928 included the following:


Kerosene: A fuel made of distilled petroleum used today in jet engines, lamps, and cleaning solvent.

Brucine: A bitter and extremely poisonous alkaloid found in the seeds of the nux vomica plant that is used as an additive in lubricants and local anesthetics.

Gasoline: Refined petroleum used for internal combustion engines.

Benzene: A liquid from coal tar and petroleum that used to be in solvents, but is no longer used because it’s extremely carcinogenic.

Cadmium: A metal that resembles tin that’s used in plating, metal alloys, batteries, and pigments.

Zinc: A metal found in brass and used to galvanize iron and steel to protect against corrosion.


Mercury salts: A chemical compound of mercury and chlorine.

Nicotine: The chief active ingredient of tobacco that is also used in insecticides.


Ether: A highly flammable liquid used as an anesthetic and as a solvent.


Formaldehyde: A compound made from oxidized methyl alcohol that’s used as a disinfectant and preservative in resins and plastics.


Chloroform: A liquid used as a solvent that used to also be used as a general anesthetic.


Camphor: A crystalline compound used in insect repellent, as well as plastic and explosive production.


Carbolic acid: Also known as phenol, carbolic acid is a highly poisonous compound in antimicrobial and anesthetic solutions.


Quinine: A bitter alkaloid used to treat forms of malaria.


Acetone: A liquid made from oxidized isopropanol used as a solvent.


Just reading that list of additives is enough to make you sick.  The government added rat poison, which is defies logic how the government didn't think that 'liquor' wasn't lethal enough to kill.

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