Tidbits of Grand Forks - February 16, 2023

By Kathy Wolfe

Tidbits is going around and around with these facts on carousels!

• Carousels didn’t start out as a source of amusement. During the 12th century, they were a training machine for warriors. In fact, the Spanish and Italian words “garosello” and “carosella” translate “little war.” Cavalry soldiers in combat training would ride on hanging saddles carrying spears, and would attempt to aim the lance through hanging metal rings. The training included games, competitions, and jousting exercises.

• The first known carousel ride in the U.S. ran in 1799. Located in Salem, Massachusetts, it was known as the “wooden horse circus ride” and the “Trojan Circus Ride.”

• It wasn’t until the 1800s that platform carousels became popular for amusement. At first, they were powered by humans, animals, or bicycles, but it wasn’t long before steam became the choice for power.

• Wooden horses weigh about 100 lbs. Weight varies on the other types of mounts, including zebras, tigers, pigs, dragons, lions, and unicorns.

• Stationary chariots were added to the platform around 1900, which allowed for ladies to ride comfortably without climbing up on a horse.

Quiz Bits

How long does a ride on Disney World’s Prince Charming Carousel last?

Name the famous aviator who rode a Coney Island carousel to relax shortly before his famous flight.

American carousels rotate in a

1861 brought the first carousel powered by _______.

What is the only country that the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn pass through?

What was the name of the saloon in the 1960s series “Gunsmoke”?

To date, how many people have walked on the moon? How many “Police Academy” movies have been produced? What is author Mark Twain’s real name?

BY:

CAROUSELS (continued):

• Carousel animals fall into three categories, based on their stance. “Standing” animals have at least three of their feet on the platform, while “prancers” have their two front feet in the air and two back feet on the platform. “Jumpers” have all four feet in the air as if they are running. Each carousel has a “lead horse.” You can find it by looking for the fanciest horse in the outer row.

• Coney Island’s first amusement ride was a carousel installed in a bathing pavilion in 1875. An 18-year-old German immigrant was a woodcarver in a furniture factory, who began carving horses in his spare time. He approached William Vanderveer who owned several bathhouses and a three-storey hotel and the carousel was installed on Ocean Parkway, becoming an instant success. By 1905, there were 24 carousels at Coney Island.

• That young German immigrant was named Charles Looff, and after his first effort at Coney Island, Looff went on to hand-carve 40 carousels between 1876 and 1916, about ten of which survive. His creations were quite ornate, with gold and silver ornamentation, sparkling mirrors and jewels, and horse manes and tails made with real horse hair. Although the majority of old carousels are located in the eastern United States, one Looff carousels still operates at Riverfront Park in Spokane, Washington. In 1909, Looff’s daughter lived in Spokane, where her husband owned Natatorium Park, a swimming venue and amusement park. Her father gifted her with a carousel of 54 horses, a giraffe, a tiger, a goat, and two chariots, all handcarved. A 1900 German organ provided the music. The carousel remained in operation there until the facility closed in 1968. It was moved to Riverfront Park in 1975 in time for Spokane’s World’s Fair.

I caught a cold on a carousel. I think there was something going around.

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CAROUSELS (continued):

• East Providence, Rhode Island, is home to the Crescent Park Carousel, another Looff creation, with its 61 horses in operation since 1895. Three of his carousels survive in California, at least two in Rhode Island, and others in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Ontario, Canada.

• North America’s oldest, continuously-operating amusement park is located in Bristol, Connecticut. Lake Compounce, which opened in 1846, is home to a Charles Looff carousel that was built in 1898, and was moved to the park in 1911. A new feature was added at that time, a mechanism that enabled the horses to go up and down.

• Coney Island’s Dreamland Park, home to the many carousels, was hit by fire the day before its Memorial Day seasonal opening in 1911. More than 400 Brooklyn firefighters battled the blaze, but within four hours, the park was nothing but ashes, a loss of more than $5 million.

• The B&B is the only survivor of all of Coney Island’s carousels. Built in 1906, it features 50 hand-carved horses and two chariots. Thirty-six of the horses, connected to brass poles, move up and down, while the other 14, along with the chariots, are stationary. In 1917, the carousel’s organ was brought from Germany, and remains one of just three in existence. The B&B has been completely restored and can be found in Coney Island’s Luna Park.

• Publicity for the carousels of the 1800s was augmented by statements from physicians who recommended rides as an aid to health, touting their contribution to improved blood circulation.

...continued

NUGGET OF KNOWLEDGE

The U.S. Post Office has honored the carousel by issuing two commemorative postage stamps, in 1988 and again in 1995.

Who was the first QB to throw for 3 TDs in a Super Bowl game?

Name the music superstar who was fatally shot hours after attending the 1996 Bruce Seldon-Mike Tyson heavyweight boxing match in Las Vegas. First baseman Mo Vaughn was named American League MVP in 1995 as a member of what team?

What boxer fought a trilogy against Muhammad Ali from 1973-76 and held the World Boxing Council heavyweight championship in 1978? (Hint: His son played linebacker for three Super Bowl champions.)

What iconic sports venue first hosted the NASCAR Clash preseason exhibition race in February 2022? Which NFL team won Super Bowl XX? (hint: their only win)

Custodians

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CAROUSELS (continued):

• The “Golden Age” of carousels is considered to be from 1870 to 1930. At the peak, it’s estimated that about 3,000 hand-carved, hand-painted carousels were operating across the U.S. Only about 150 remain.

• World War I put a damper on the Golden Age, with the wood required for war supplies. In addition, the introduction of the roller coaster in the 1920s pushed the carousel out of the spotlight, making it a “children’s” ride.

• What’s the difference between a carousel and a merry-go-round? While “merry-go-round” typically refers to the revolving circular platform in playgrounds, powered by humans, many people call the carousel a merry-go-round. In the United Kingdom, they are sometimes called gallopers.

• Some carousels have a “Catch the Brass Ring” feature, which involves a swinging arm apparatus that dispenses metal rings into the horses’ path. Riders reach out to grab the rings, and if they are lucky enough to capture one, they receive an additional free ride.

• Carousels revolve much more slowly than they did during the Golden Age. Insurance companies put constraints on the speed for safety reasons.

• While modern carousel animals are modeled after the vintage animals, they are now crafted mostly from aluminum or fiberglass rather than wood.

• You can have a ride on the world’s largest indoor carousel in Spring Green, Wisconsin. This enormous carousel, which opened in 1959, is 35 feet tall with an 80-ft diameter, weighs 36 tons, and features 269 animals (none of which is a horse!), 182 chandeliers, a collection of angels flying overhead, and upwards of 20,000 lights.

in Tidbits

by Lucie Winbourne

• In the 1800s, popcorn was often eaten as a cereal with milk and sugar.

• Players of the video game "Call of Duty" have spent more hours thus engaged than the entire course of human existence.

• There are more than 400 Scottish words for snow.

• The longest surgical procedure in history, in which doctors separated a pair of Nepalese conjoined twins who were born with a shared brain cavity, took place in Singapore in 2001 and lasted 103 hours.

• Cats born in May were once thought to be not just poor rodent killers, but prone to bringing home snakes.

• Valentine's Day weddings are apparently 18-36% more likely to end in divorce.

• A Harvard study found that a person's IQ can drop by as much as 13 points when they are under financial stress, due in part to the amount of brain power used to think about such burdens that causes distraction.

• Alexander the Great loved his horse, Bucephalus, so much that when it died in 326 B.C., he named the town of Bucephala for it.

• "Guerrilla grafting" is the illegal process of turning city-maintained sterile fruit trees into fruit producers by splicing compatible branches onto the sterile trees with branches from the fruiting trees.

• When Indian police caught a thief who allegedly stole a gold chain from a woman on the street in Mumbai, the miscreant swallowed the object. An enema was subsequently administered at a hospital, but no results were achieved, until the man was force-fed over 40 bananas -- one of the best digestive food aids -- after which he was made to clean and disinfect the chain before relinquishing it. ***

Thought for the Day: "Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can."

-- Danny Kaye

PEOPLE WORTH REMEMBERING: ANGELO SICILIANO

“Nobody picks on a strong man.” Those are the words of Angelo Siciliano, better known as Charles Atlas. Tidbits invites you to explore the life of this famous bodybuilder.

• Angelo was born in Italy in 1892, and immigrated with his family to New York City via Ellis Island at age 11. By age 16, he had dropped out of school and was a leather worker in the City, making women’s purses.

• As a small and weak adolescent, Angelo was the perfect target for bullies. He later described himself as a “97lb. weakling” who had sand kicked in his face while at the beach. At age 15, after he was attacked and severely beaten by a neighborhood thug, he resolved to make a change in his life.

• After viewing a statue of the Greek hero Hercules at a local museum, Angelo set out to improve his physique, and began exercising, doing gymnastics and calisthenics, and lifting weights to make his body stronger. The result was painful muscles and no improvement in his size.

• A trip to the zoo changed all that. As Angelo watched a lion in his cage, he was struck how the huge animal sustained a muscular physique while confined to a cage with no exercise. Then he observed the lion rise and stretch its body. It was a process of pitting one muscle against another to create tension. He went home and began working on a system of exercises that required no equipment but the human body.

• A couple of local contests brought Angelo into the spotlight, first when he was named “America’s Most Handsome Man” in 1921, and “America’s Most Perfectly Developed Man” in 1922. After years of attending Coney Island’s strongman shows where he questioned the men about their diet and exercise regimens, Angelo himself took the role in the park’s Circus Side Show, performing feats of strength.

• In 1922, after being told numerous times by friends that he resembled the statue of Greek hero Atlas that stood atop a Coney Island hotel, Angelo legally changed his name to Charles Atlas. Later that year, he began marketing his first bodybuilding correspondence course, assisted by a health and fitness doctor. Atlas called his training manual “Health & Strength by Charles Atlas,” and included his exercise regimen along with advice on diet, grooming, and personal behavior.

• The demand was incredible, and in 1928, he worked with a Madison Avenue advertising exec, Charles Roman, who coined the phrase “Dynamic Tension” for Atlas’ mail-order program. The first ad mirrored Atlas’ adolescent experience of having sand kicked in his face, with ads in comic books and pulp magazines appealing to young teenage men. The ads pictured the “puny” weakling having his girl stolen by a bully. After engaging in Atlas’ program, the young man kicks sand in the face of the bully and gets the girl back. Within months, Atlas and Roman were millionaires.

• Atlas increased his popularity by executing feats of strengths, including pulling six cars chained together for half a mile, and towing a railroad engine along the tracks with a rope. The heroic Atlas rescued occupants of a rowboat struggling a mile off the New York shore by swimming to the craft, tying a rope around his waist, and swimming back to shore, towing the boat behind him.

• Charles Atlas was the model for 45 sculpted works across the nation, including that of George Washington in New York City’s Washington Square and Alexander Hamilton at Washington, D.C.’s Treasury Building.

• Boxing champions Max Baer, Rocky Marciano, and Joe Louis were among loyal Atlas devotees.

by Matilda Charles

Lowering Our Drug Costs

I got a shock the other day when I went to the pharmacy to pick up the latest refill of my three drugs and realized that the pharmacy assistant had neglected to run it through GoodRx, the program that helps reduce the price of our drugs. Once he did that, the cost dropped significantly.

It made me realize just how much other seniors are paying for the drugs we need to stay healthy. There are ways to cut those costs. It just takes a little work and a lot of monitoring on our part to make sure it happens.

As mentioned, there's GoodRx (www.goodrx.com), which I've used for several years. Their website isn't the easiest to use, but after you try it once, you'll appreciate being able to cut the costs of your drugs every time you need a refill.

There are other ways as well:

RxAssist (www.rxassist.org) has programs that are run by the pharmaceutical companies to help those who can't afford their prescriptions. If your drugs cost more than $10, present your RxAssist card to get the lowest price. Check the website for a long directory of patient assistance programs. Beware that some programs involve a small fee to be a member and many have eligibility requirements.

Consider Walmart pharmacies for their generic program. A 30-day prescription will cost $4 and only $10 for a 90-day prescription. Not all generic drugs will qualify for those prices, but it's worth making a call to your local Walmart pharmacy to find out if your drugs are on that list.

NeedyMeds website (www.needymeds.org) was started by a physician in 1997 to help gather information about reduced drug and health care costs. The website says over $337 million has been saved so far.

And finally, check the prices at Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs (costplusdrugs.com). For some drugs, this one is the lowest of all.

Smith, Owner Petersburg, ND

SERVICE BITS

Car Crushing

• On Feb. 19, 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Poland to a prosperous merchant family. Originally designed for a career in church law, he is considered the father of modern astronomy and was the first European scientist to propose that Earth and other planets revolve around the sun.

• On Feb. 16, 1894, gunslinger John Wesley Hardin was pardoned after spending 15 years in a Texas prison for murder. Reputed to have fatally shot one man merely for snoring, Hardin likely killed more than 40 people, and while he became an attorney after his release, the following year he took a bullet in the back himself in a revenge shooting.

• On Feb. 18, 1937, severe dust storms hit five western states, resulting in a dozen deaths within a few days. Citizens were advised to plug their window sills and door jambs, and hang wet sheets over their doors and windows. They could taste dirt and dust in their food, and the clouds of it were so thick that they blocked the sun.

• On Feb. 15, 1953, 17-year-old Tenley Albright, of Boston, became the first American female to win the world figure skating championship at an outdoor rink in Davos, Switzerland, with all seven judges giving her a first-place vote. Three years later, at the Winter Olympics, she also became America's first female skating gold medalist.

• On Feb. 14, 1962, Jacqueline Kennedy led a virtual tour of the White House's state rooms, which she had recently refurbished. Wearing a red wool dress and pearls, she described the mansion's antiques, furnishings and historic portraits to a wide TV audience at home, earning both critical praise and an honorary Emmy.

• On Feb. 17, 2007, customs officers in Sydney, Australia, freed Sylvester Stallone after holding him for several hours and confiscating items from his staff members' suitcases. Officials claimed X-rays revealed banned products but refused to give any further details, and Stallone called the incident "a misunderstanding." The actor was in Australia to

his

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• The oldest stationary carousel in the world can be found in Hanau, Germany. Completed in 1780, it was built as entertainment for Prince Wilhelm IX, and was originally driven by a horse and mule navigating together under the carousel platform. The platform with its 12 horses and 4 chariots is housed in a columned Greek pavilion atop a hill in a spa garden. Although it stopped operating in the 1930s, it has now been restored and reopened in 2016.

• One of the fastest carousels is a 1920 creation located on the shores of Lake Erie near Ohio’s Cedar Point Amusement Park. It’s known as the Cedar Downs Racing Derby and is unusual in the fact that the 64 horses move forward and backward, imitating a horse race. Only two of these racing carousels exist in the United States. It’s one of the fastest carousels in the world, with a maximum speed of 15 mph.

Grand Forks

• The oldest galloping carousel in the world had its beginnings in Bressoux, Belgium, where Belgian craftsmen created La Galopant with its 24 jumping horses and two exquisite benches in 1885. It remained there until 1964, when it was brought to New York City for the World’s Fair as part of the Belgian Pavilion. Another World’s Fair, Expo 67 in Montreal, Canada, took ownership in 1967, placing the carousel in the Expo’s amusement park, La Ronde, located on an island in the St. Lawrence River. Strangely enough, the carousel disappeared after the Expo, re-surfacing three years later in a badly damaged condition. After a complete restoration, it was returned to La Ronde. The Six Flags Corporation purchased the ride in 2003, giving it a $1 million refurbishment before placing it in a new landscaped garden in 2007.

Quiz Answers

• Two different New England carousels claim to be the nation’s oldest, oddly enough, both with the same name. The Flying Horses carousel in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, on Martha’s Vineyard, is the oldest “platform” carousel, meaning the horses are mounted on a wooden platform. It’s been in operation since 1876, but only in Massachusetts since 1884. This carousel with its 20 hand-carved horses originally sported real horse hair manes and tails was located on Coney Island’s boardwalk. Westerly, Rhode Island, is home to another Flying Horses carousel, also in operation since 1876. It’s the oldest carousel with horses suspended from a center frame. As the carousel rotates, centrifugal force pushes the horses outward, making them truly “flying horses.” It came to Westerly via a traveling carnival in 1879, and remained when the carnival had to leave it behind.

• Walt Disney World’s Prince Charming’s Regal Carousel was built in 1917 for Detroit’s Belle Isle Park and operated under the name Miss Liberty with a red, white, and blue color scheme. When the Park went bankrupt, the attraction was moved to Maplewood, New Jersey’s Olympic Park, one of the most popular amusement parks on the east coast. The park, which had opened in 1887, was severely vandalized in 1964, which created a serious reduction in earnings, forcing the park to close the following year. After repairs and renovation, the carousel was installed at Fantasyland for Disney World’s 1971 opening. It’s the Park’s oldest attraction, pre-dating Disney World’s opening by more than 50 years. No two of the 90 horses are exactly alike.

Sports Answers

Leg is moved.

Hair is different. 4. Pocketbook is