Last week, looking for stories about your obscure local landmarks, we dangled a copy of James Loewen’s Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. Now it’s time to pick a winner.

The grand prize (the book) goes to Liz:

In Orange County, Virginia there is a tombstone marking the final resting place of Stonewall Jackson’s left arm. After a successful Civil War battle, Jackson was mistakenly shot in the arm by his own troops. His arm was amputated and he was transported to another area to catch a train to Richmond. He died along the way.

His left arm was then taken to a hill near the field hospital and buried.

I love the quote from Robert E. Lee after learning of Jackson’s death: “He lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm.”

As for the runner-up…
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Writer/software guy Rands recently sent out a fairly innocent tweet* saying: “Making a list of superstitions / foolish consistencies / lightweight OCD behaviors e.g. I always put my RIGHT shoe on first. You?” He quickly received nearly fifty replies (okay, tweets) from others with minor quirks. Rands compiled them into The Quirkbook, and it’s delightful reading. (* = For the uninitiated, a “tweet” is the term for a message on Twitter.)

Here are a few of my favorites from the list:

brentsimmons I always sit on the right side of the plane, where it’s safe.

ckolderup volume levels on TV/stereo/etc must be even or divisible by 5

epochblue M&Ms must be eaten in even numbers. You wouldn’t want one side of your mouth to get jealous while the other eats an M&M, would you?

gooddoug Also, whenever I get a paper coffee cup sleeve, I _HAVE_ to line up the fold with the join in the paper cup. Always.

OcelotPotPie I always set my alarm clock in odd numbers. For example, waking up at 8:00AM is an alarm set to 8:01AM. Or 8:59.

Rands got the name “Quirkbook” from Twitter user robertpalmer, who mentioned that such a book was used at his former office to collect little obsessions or oddities.

So what’s your quirk? I’ll start: I check that my keys are in my pocket at least five times as I’m walking out the door, with one last check as I’m actually closing the door. Physical contact between hand and keys required, no touching through the pocket. Also, wallet must be in left pocket. Oh, and I like to stop the microwave when one second remains, to avoid the beeping. I could go on. But I want to hear yours!

(Illustration from The Atlantic’s article Quirked Around.)

According to the Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, the core meaning of the word pie (or piece) in Celtic and later medieval Latin was twofold: a morsel which could be eaten with the fingers and which also contained some type of filling - in short, a pastry envelope. The ease by which these treats could be made in a simple medieval kitchen caused the pie to be an important part of British cooking. Of course, pie is enjoyed all over the world, and its place of origin is most often determined by its shape - from Spanish empanandas to turnovers to, yes, the Pop Tart!

• Like pretty much everything it seems, pie has it’s own day. Created by the American Pie Council, January 23rd has been earmarked National Pie Day (not to be confused with March 14th, also a Pi Day)

• Would it be a true Dietribes without the mention of an eating competition? As far as pie-eating goes, one of the most famous (and the most disastrous) pie-eating contests imaginable has to be the “Complete and Total Barf-A-Rama” from the iconic film Stand By Me.

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You’ve probably seen some “Me” movies. If you’re lucky, All of Me was among them. If you’re unlucky, Mac and Me was. Either way, the word “Me” appears in the titles of dozens of Hollywood feature films. In today’s lunchtime quiz, you’ll try to match 12 film titles with the 12 actors who portrayed the “Me” in each one. Some are easy; a couple of them may be difficult, however.

Take the quiz, and good luck!

We try hard to remain fair and balanced, to borrow a phrase, here at the _floss. That can be tough for a ragin’ liberal like myself, so generally my strategy is to just forget politics and blog about cats instead. (It’s tough to politicize cats — unless you’re a die-hard cat-hating dog person.) But I ran across something so interesting the other day — and so seemingly factual, that I felt we could have a civil discussion about it here without ragin’ partisanship of any kind muddying the waters. It was an article in the New York Times which pointed to a new study and a new book which tracked various indicators of U.S. economic growth since 1948 under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and looked at the numbers. And very interesting numbers they are!

Here’s the meat of it: since 1948, the Dems have held the White House for 26 years and the ‘pubs for 34, and during that time the country experienced “average annual growth of real gross national product of 1.64 percent per capita under Republican presidents versus 2.78 percent under Democrats.” Now, most economists are quick to point out that a president’s fiscal policy has only limited effect on the economy; despite all the bluster from both sides right now about what should be done about our sagging markets/wages/etc, there’s really only so much the Oval Officeholder can do. But the numbers are so striking, and the historical gap in economic performance between the two parties so significant, that it deserves examination. (more…)

Our Creatively Speaking series of interviews continues this week with Marc Tyler Nobleman, author of the recently published Boys of Steel - The Creators of Superman. I got to know Marc first through his wonderful cartoons, one of which you’ll see tomorrow in our latest caption contest as we prepare to give away THREE copies of Boys of Steel. Part YA picture book, part biography, Marc’s new book follows the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, as they struggle through their teenage years in Depression-era Cleveland. Marc says he grew up thinking he’d, too, become a superhero because his last name already sounded like one. In researching Boys of Steel, he dug up details that haven’t been published before. He was the first to find photos of the building in which Joe Shuster lived and where he and Jerry Siegel forged the Man of Steel; it was demolished in 1975 before the city of Cleveland knew its significance. You can check out those photos and more are over at NobleMania.com or check out Marc’s blog here.
Check out my full interview with Marc below and be sure to tune in tomorrow for your chance to win one of three copies we’ll be giving away!

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By Maggie Koerth-Baker

From getting hitched to saving the environment, here’s proof you can still be a busybody long after you kick the bucket.

1. Get Married

Death is no obstacle when it comes to love in China. That’s because ghost marriage—the practice of setting up deceased relatives with suitable spouses, dead or alive—is still an option.
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Stacy’s 10 winning words post has SCRABBLE on my brain. Further back into the archives, don’t miss David’s history of the game and a lunchtime quiz that yours truly (and wife Kara) wrote about six months ago.

To mix things up, I’ve occasionally played the game with one important rule change: allowing proper nouns to be played on the board. It adds an interesting (and often tricky) element to the game, perhaps because the distribution of letters are different in proper nouns compared to common nouns and other words.

While we’re on that subject…

HERE is the answer.

33 Disturbing But True Facts About Eugenics. As if the word “eugenics” doesn’t already creep you out enough.
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The Top Ten Weird Things Sent Into Space. In a list like this, the sky is nowhere near the limit.
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6 Questions to Ask Yourself to Get the Most Out of Life.  The question I ask myself most often is, “What did I come in here for?”
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Why it’s so hard to swat a fly. This high-tech explanation makes me respect them more. Not really.

The Post-It Note Race. A lot of time and effort went into this Nike ad, but it pays off.
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A video look at the life of Don LaFontaine, a voiceover artist you’ve heard all your life. He died Monday at age 68.

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The weirdest independent candidates in the 2008 presidential election. You can’t get weirder than the Vampires, Witches, and Pagans Party.

On this date in 1944, Bella Rosenfeld Chagall passed away from a viral infection. As the love of Marc Chagall’s life, Bella was his model and his inspiration for 35 years. In honor of their love, and at the request of reader BobM, today we’ll take a look at Marc Chagall (1887-1985) and his 1918 painting, “Double Portrait with a Wineglass,” of himself and Bella.

1. Shortly after arriving back in Paris after several years spent home in Belarus, Marc Chagall was greeted with a surrealist delegation that included Max Ernst. According to TIME magazine, the artists “actually knelt before Chagall, begging him to join their ranks,” but he refused, saying, “I want an art of the earth and not merely an art of the head.”

2. When World War II broke out, Chagall was urged by the Emergency Rescue Committee to move to America, but he was loathe to go. He asked an agent from the committee, Varian Fry, if there were any cows in America. Fry assured him that America had not just cows, but goats too. Chagall then asked if there were trees and green grass. Fry replied, “We have all that,” after which Chagall was apparently “enormously relieved.” The Chagall family and 3,500 pounds of Chagall’s artwork were loaded onto a transatlantic ship, and the family spent the next several years in America.

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