Tidbits of Grand Forks - March 16, 2023

By Kathy Wolfe

As March comes in like a lion, Tidbits facts about this month’s events.

• Although we know March as the third month of the year, it wasn’t always so! In the oldest Roman calendars, the year was just ten months long, and March was the first month. January and February weren’t added until about 700 B.C., and March became the third month. It was named for Mars, the Roman god of war.

• On March 20 or 21 each year, the sun is directly above the equator, making the day and night of equal length. This phenomenon is known as the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. The word “equinox” has its roots in Latin, translating “equal night.”

• March 6, 1836 was the day the Alamo fell to Mexican troops after a 13-day siege under the command of General Antonio Santa Anna in the midst of the Texas Revolution. The Alamo mission was occupied by about 250 Americans, including soldiers, clergy, slaves, women, and children. The garrison was attacked by approximately 1,500 Mexican soldiers. It’s estimated that about 190 U.S. soldiers were killed, including frontiersman Jim Bowie and folk hero Davy Crockett. About 60, primarily civilians, survived.

MARCH MIXTURE (continued):

• The Ides of March in the Roman calendar was the 74th day of the year, equivalent to March 15. It was a day for religious observances, sacred to Jupiter, the Romans’ supreme deity. It was also a deadline for settling debts. Mostly we think of the Ides of March as the day of Julius Caesar’s assassination. In 44 BC, a clairvoyant told Caesar that his demise would occur no later than that date. Caesar disregarded the prophecy, and on that day, sneered at the seer, “The Ides of March have come,” to which the seer replied, “Aye, Caesar, but not gone.” As Caesar sat in a senate meeting at the Theatre of Pompey, conspirators attacked the ruler, stabbing him 23 times. The attackers, members of the Senate, marched through Rome following the assassination announcing, “People of Rome, we are once again free!”

Quiz Bits

Name the birth month flower for the month of March.

In March, 1931, “The StarSpangled Banner” was designated as the U.S. national anthem. What U.S. president made the declaration?

What volunteer humanitarian organization was founded on March 1, 1961 by President John Kennedy?

What organization was founded by Juliette Low on March 12, 1912?

Based on a mathematic symbol, what do we celebrate on March 14?

Name March’s 2 zodiac signs. The month of March is named for what Roman god?

T or F: Every year, March and June finish on the same day of the week.

• Basketball’s NCAA tournament known as “March Madness” determines the champion team from the Division I level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It was the brainstorm of Ohio State coach Harold Olsen, and in 1939, eight teams –Oregon, Texas, Oklahoma, Utah State, Villanova, Brown, Wake Forest, and Ohio State – competed for the title, with Oregon winning the championship game against Ohio 46-33. In 1951, the tournament was expanded to 16 teams, then to 32 in 1975. By 1985, the field was 64 teams, and is currently 68. UCLA has won the most national titles, with 11 wins. A women’s tournament was added in 1982, with Louisiana Tech taking the championship. The women’s field is also 68 teams. Although the tourney has been held since 1939, it wasn’t until 1982 when sportscaster Brett Musberger used the term “March Madness” during television coverage that the name really stuck.

Dr. John Fulp, D.C.

Dr. Marshal Pederson, D.C.

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What NFL team was George Seifert head coach of following his eightseason tenure with the San Francisco 49ers? What member of the Chicago Bulls was suspended for 11 games without pay for kicking cameraman Eugene Amos Jr. in 1997? Barber Motorsports Park is a racetrack located in what U.S. city?

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Who had more career home runs in Major League Baseball: Cecil Fielder or his son, Prince? In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote a letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis encouraging him to play the season during World War II. The letter is known by what name? Which NFL team was the first to lose 2 Super Bowls?

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MARCH MIXTURE (continued):

• The Eiffel Tower was ascended for the very first time on March 31, 1889. Because the elevators were not yet operating, the group of government officials, along with members of the press, made the trek on foot, a climb that took over an hour, as Gustave Eiffel stopped along the way to point out the structure’s features. Construction began on the wrought-iron tower in 1887 as the main attraction for the upcoming Paris World’s Fair in 1889. It was completed in 2 years, 2 months, and 5 days with no serious injuries or deaths during the process. Standing 1,083 feet tall, about the height of an 81-storey building, it was the tallest structure in the world for 41 years until New York City’s Chrysler Building surpassed it in 1930. Nearly 7 million people visit the Tower every year.

• In March of 1973, the eighth studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, “The Dark Side of the Moon,” landed on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart, eventually making it up to Number 1. The album remained on the Top 200 for a record-breaking 741 weeks, setting a record that still remains unbroken. If you count the addition of Billboard’s Catalog Albums chart, which classifies older LPs still selling well, “The Dark Side of the Moon” is still on the charts. It’s been certified 14x platinum in the U.K., and has sold upwards of 45 million copies worldwide. The album has nothing to do with astronomy, but rather the songs deal with the subjects of conflict, wealth and greed, time, mental illness, and death.

• The first-ever telephone call was made on March 10, 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell to his 27-yearold assistant Thomas Watson. Bell himself was just 29 and had received a patent for his invention only three days earlier, U.S. Patent 174465A for a method of transmitting speech by telegraphy. Bell’s words, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you” from the room next door were a bit crackly, but understandable.

...continued

MARCH MIXTURE (continued):

Within a few months, Bell was transmitting conversations between Boston, Massachusetts, and the nearby community of Somerville. Bell cofounded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1885. The Scottish-born Bell was no stranger to inventing. At age 12, he had created a device for de-husking grain, which was put into operation at nearby mills. What happened to Thomas Watson? He went to work for Bell at his telephone company, and invented the telephone ringer, which signaled folks when a call was coming in. He used his royalties to buy a farm, but moved on to founding a ship and engine building company that built naval destroyers for the U.S. military. By 1900, it was one of the largest shipyards in the nation, which Watson later sold to Bethlehem Steel. Watson not only received the very first phone call, he was also the recipient of the first transcontinental call, made from Bell’s New York City office to Watson in San Francisco. The phone receivers were then handed to the mayors of each city to speak to each other.

• Who knew there is a special day set aside to honor the fanny pack? March 9 is International Fanny Pack Day, first designated in 2007. It was inspired by a man on his way home from a Christmas party, who encountered a homeless man. At the party, Nick Yates had been given two gag gifts – a fruitcake and a fanny pack. Stuffing the cake in the pack, Yates headed toward the bus stop. He gave the cake to the homeless man, and was struck with the idea of a co-op with food banks to hand out food to homeless while wearing fanny packs. Yates created a charitable campaign and International Fanny Pack Day was born!

NUGGET OF KNOWLEDGE

You might not recognize the name John Chapman, but undoubtedly you’ve heard of Johnny Appleseed, Chapman’s nickname. During the early 1800s, he travelled throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and West Virginia, planting more than 100,000 square miles of apple trees. Chapman had purchased most of the parcels of land where he planted his seeds. March 11 is the day set aside to honor this nurseryman.

by Freddy Groves

Reports From the VA Office of Inspector General

Who would have thought it ... stealing diabetic test strips for profit? Apparently there's money to be made from those medical supplies. And one Michigan woman, in charge of procurement at a Department of Veterans Affairs pharmacy, made a lot of it, stealing in excess of 7,500 boxes of the strips over the years.

She wasn't alone in the scheme. She'd sell them to a co-thief who'd make her own sales down the line to a third party in Pennsylvania.

The first in line in the theft chain has already confessed and faces 20 years in the slammer, not to mention a very hefty fine. The second in line also confessed. The two of them, however, are pointing fingers at Number Three, who they say is the actual mastermind of the thefts.

Diabetic test strips? Who knew?

Then there is the New Jersey former Marine who claimed PTSD from having to handle human remains after natural disasters in two foreign countries. Before his scheme fell apart, he'd netted in excess of $118,000 in disability benefits. His big mistake, besides telling lies, was that he sent threatening messages to a member of the Office of Inspector General staff, plus anyone else who would be working on the case. He'll be sentenced this summer, but he's looking at 10 years in prison and heavy fines just for the lying part, and five years for the threats as well as big fines.

In Oklahoma, a man phoned a VA facility threatening to kill people ... and then he showed up. His beef, apparently, was not getting a quicker appointment date to be seen at the clinic. He wanted his meds, and he gave them 30 minutes to prescribe them or he'd be there to murder people. Not only did he have a loaded .357 firearm (and a handful of zip ties), but he took the items into a federal facility. He later claimed not to remember making the call.

To read more reports from the OIG, go to www. va.gov/oig and scroll down.

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by Lucie Winbourne

• Believe it or not, cows can be potty trained -- and, it is said, with less trouble than toddlers. It's called MooLoo training, and involves not a toilet, but a special pen with artificial grass. But why bother? The practice helps the environment by reducing air and water pollution and even planet warming.

• The J.W. Westcott II is a boat that delivers mail to ships at sea. Operating out of Detroit, it's the only floating zip code in America.

• In 1931, German engineer Richter Raketenrad built a bike with 12 rockets mounted to its back wheel and reached a speed of 90 kph before his invention exploded and threw him off. While that was, sadly, the end of the rocket bike, Raketenrad himself suffered only a few scrapes.

• Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold.

• For over a year in the mid-2000s, members of the group Untergunther broke into the French Pantheon to repair a clock that had been broken for four decades. They later received court time for the effort but were somewhat vindicated when member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a clock restorer, was hired to repair it in 2018 after further neglect.

• Researchers have found that approximately 97% of people are keeping a secret at any given time, with the average person keeping around 13.

• In 2008, a former high school star athlete escaped a crime scene by using Craigslist to hire a dozen identically dressed (and unwitting) civilians to stand at the exact place and time of the arrival of the armored car that he planned to rob.

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IRENA SENDLER

Thousands of people are alive today due to the efforts of a 30-year-old Polish social worker named Irena Sendler. Here’s the story of this remarkable woman.

• In 1939, when the Nazis invaded Warsaw, Poland, Irena Sendler was a social worker, working in the city’s canteens that offered food, shelter, medicine, and clothing to the city’s persecuted Jews, who were registered at the facility under fictitious Christian names. In October, 1940, more than 400,000 Jews were forced into a locked area about the size of New York’s Central Park. As she observed thousands dying every month from disease and starvation, the 30-year-old Sendler joined Zegota, an underground organization formed to help Jews.

• Sendler’s burden for the Jewish people came from her childhood, when she had lost her father to typhus when she was 7. He had contracted the disease from those he treated that his fellow physicians refused to help out of fear of the disease. After his death, because of his sacrifice for the Jewish community, its leaders offered financial help for Irena’s education.

• As the conditions in the Ghetto became even more dreadful, Sendler expanded her rescue efforts beyond orphans and asked Jewish parents to allow her to get their children to safety. With a plan to reunite rescued children with their families after the war, using a special code, she carefully recorded all the children’s original names, their new identities, and their location. All the information was placed in glass jars which were buried under an apple tree in her neighbor’s backyard, ironically, across the street from German barracks. The jars contained names of more than 2,500 children saved by her and her colleagues.

• Unfortunately, the Nazis became aware of Sendler’s activities. In October, 1943, she was arrested and sent to Pawiak Prison, where she was tortured as the Gestapo broke her feet and legs in an attempt to get her to betray her colleagues and reveal locations of the children. Refusing to give up any information, she was sentenced to death by a firing squad. Posters announcing her upcoming execution were posted throughout the city. But the Zegota organization came to her aid by bribing the German executioner, a person who helped her Sendler escape at the last minute.

• As a social worker of the Contagious Disease Department, Sendler had papers that allowed her to enter the Ghetto. Her mission became the saving of Jewish orphan children by placing them in the safety of convents or locating nonJewish families to adopt them. She had several methods to smuggle the children out, including hiding them under a stretcher that was being loaded onto an ambulance. Some were carried out in caskets, potato sacks, body bags, trunks, or suitcases, while others escaped through sewer pipes or underground tunnels. A Catholic church straddled the boundary of the Ghetto, one with two entrances – a door into the Ghetto and a door into the Aryan side. Irena and Zegota members also prepared false documents that enabled the orphans to exit the church freely. Word Spiral Answer: UMBILICAL

• Pursued by the Gestapo, she was forced to go into hiding until the end of the war, continuing her work as she could. At the end of the war, as the only one who knew the location of the children’s identities, Sendler dug up the jars and attempted to bring the families together. Tragically, nearly all of the parents had perished at the Polish death camp Treblinka.

• In 1965, Sendler was honored by Israel’s Yad Vashem as “Righteous among the Nations.”

Matilda Charles

Funeral Planning: Don't Be Rushed

One life event we don't want to think about having to do for a loved one is planning a funeral. But sometimes we must, and it can be stressful and loaded with the potential to be scammed in some way.

A small amount of help is coming. The Federal Trade Commission wants online funeral pricing. And it makes sense. When you need to organize a funeral, emotions are running high. You won't be at your best when it comes to thinking about pricing and services.

Back in 1984, the FTC created the Funeral Rule, but it only requires funeral homes to show lists of the prices of caskets and any outer burial containers, such as a grave liner. And it was only required that a potential customer be given those prices in person, certainly not by phone. To make it worse, funeral homes only had to show pictures or the item itself after the prices were disclosed.

By then, of course, you were at the funeral home, unhappy and sad and stressed. The last thing you wanted to do is treat it like a car purchase and shop around. So you signed the paperwork on the spot, possibly paid too much and maybe didn't get the items and services you wanted. There are a few ways to ensure that your vulnerability at that time isn't exploited.

Before you leave the house to organize a funeral, go online to check local funeral home websites. They might be among the very few to actually post pricing and services. Take someone with you.

Get the price list (in writing) of what the funeral home offers.

Before you sign any paperwork, contact the Funeral Consumers Alliance (funerals.org) and get their advice. There's a group in every state. On their website, click on "Consumers" and scroll down to "Don't Know Where To Begin? Start Here."

Remember: Take your time.

SERVICE BITS

• On March 20, 1922, Hubert Work gave an order that all American homes need to be equipped with an item that the majority of us undoubtedly take for granted today: a mailbox. Work was the country's U.S. Postmaster General, and failure to comply with the order carried a penalty of giving up one's mail delivery.

• On March 21, 1928, President Calvin Coolidge presented Charles Lindbergh with the Congressional Medal of Honor for "displaying heroic courage and skill as a navigator, at the risk of his life, by his nonstop flight in his airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, from New York City to Paris, France, 20-21 May 1927, by which Capt. Lindbergh not only achieved the greatest individual triumph of any American citizen but demonstrated that travel across the ocean by aircraft was possible."

• On March 23, 1973, Yoko Ono was granted permanent residence in the United States. However, the good news did not extend to her husband, former Beatle John Lennon. He was issued a 60-day notice to leave the country.

• On March 22, 1978, Karl Wallenda, founder of the Flying Wallendas, fell from a tightrope 10 stories to his death during a promotional appearance for the Pan American Circus. The 73-year-old acrobat was crossing between the two towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

• On March 25, 1995, Howard G. (Ward) Cunningham, an American computer programmer and pioneer in both design patterns and extreme programming, introduced the wiki, or "user-editable website." Today, Wikipedia is the world's most wellknown and widely used wiki.

• On March 26, 2019, former First Lady Michelle Obama's memoir, "Becoming," surpassed 10 million copies in sales just four months after its publication. It had already become America's best-selling book in 2018 after a mere 15 days.

• Prevaricator, falsifier, deceiver, perjurer … no matter what you call them, it’s a person who does not tell the truth, one who makes “an intentionally false statement.” Why do we do it? There are many reasons we do it, but almost always it’s for some degree of self-protection, to prevent damage to one’s reputation, and to avoid confronting facts and feelings.

• Research supports the concept that 95% of people cannot go an entire week without telling at least one lie. A “National Geographic” report indicates that 59% of those between 18 and 44 lie between one and five times every day, with 15% lying more than five times a day. A university study reveals that 18.1% of the study’s participants lie every day. These “daily liars” exhibited lower grade point averages, quality of life, and self-esteem. Most tend to be insecure, manipulative, or distrustful.

• While most people tell the occasional lie, compulsive liars tell lies for no apparent reason, when there is no reason to even do so. Also called habitual liars, they lie without premeditation, making things up on the spot. The lies are frequently ridiculous and impossible to believe, yet the liar is adamant they are true. Compulsive liars are pretty easy to spot – they avoid eye contact, often break out in a sweat, and have difficulty staying focused while talking. They might move things around on the table or move farther away from the person they’re talking to. They frequently ramble on and then move ahead abruptly to change the subject. Their stories don’t usually add up, and when they forget their first lie, they improvise a new one in its place. These liars actually feel uncomfortable telling the truth! Compulsive lying is usually a symptom of a personality disorder.

Quiz Answers

• Similarly, “prolific” liars are prone to believing that lying is acceptable in some circumstances, but not out of concern for others, rather for their own self-interest. Research indicates that they tell about 19 lies for every one lie told by the average person.

• While you can often spot the compulsive liar’s falsehoods, it’s not so easy with a pathological liar. They are excellent liars because they do it regularly, making it difficult to distinguish the truth from their lies. They are typically charming and likeable folks, trying to make themselves the center of attention. Many times, they don’t even realize that what they say isn’t true, and even believe the lie themselves. These manipulative prevaricators will admit their lies only when their statements are proven false and have no remorse or guilt after being caught. The lying begins when the person is young and can continue indefinitely in every area of life. The medical term for pathological lying is “pseudologia fantastica.”

• Those with a narcissistic personality tell lies to boost their image, inventing impressive, farfetched stories centered around themselves as heroes. Sometimes their story is based on truth, but then is wildly embellished.

• Some people tell “white lies,” which are often to make another person feel better, or to avoid hurting their feelings, when the truth might be offensive. What’s the correct response to “Do these pants make me look fat?” White liars might mix the truth and some tact with the lie to prevent damage to another’s emotions.

• The good news is that most people are honest and tell a lie only occasionally, and when they do, they feel guilty about it, admit it, and beg forgiveness. When confronted with the lie, they are truly sorry and desire to make things right and instigate change in their lives.

Sports Answers

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