Which came first, Dial-a-Joke or 976-BABE? Actually, the first telephone entertainment was designed for lonely people seeking spiritual fulfillment instead of hot young singles.

On Thanksgiving Eve 1955, Rev. R.R. Schwambach, pastor of the Bethel Tabernacle Church in Evansville, Indiana, rented a grey, typewriter-sized machine from Indiana Bell. He recorded a 43-second non-denominational prayer and hooked the gadget up to the church’s telephone. An article in the November 23, 1955, edition of The Evansville Courier printed the phone number for “Dial-a-Prayer” and explained that folks feeling the need of comfort and inspiration could call at any hour of the day or night. Rev. Schwambach thought he’d leave the machine up for the duration of the holiday weekend, but the service proved to be so popular (the phone company reported a backlog of some 5,000 calls and ordered the church to install additional lines) that he continued to record a new message every day. Similar services started popping up first at other churches in Indiana, then across the country. Bethel’s prayer line is considered to be the first in the country, and is still operating today.

Not long after Dial-a-Prayer was launched, The Evansville Courier featured it in its pages once again. This time, the story centered on a Mr. and Mrs. William E. Belwood, whose phone had been ringing off the hook for days. You guessed it – their number was just one digit different than that of Dial-a-Prayer.

John David Sweeney, Jr., of Westchester County, New York, was issued Social Security Number 055-09-0001 in November 1936. The Social Security Administration worked with the U.S. Post Office Department to develop a plan to issue numbers to American citizens. First, SS-5 forms were sent to employers across the country for their employees to fill out. The completed forms were either mailed or returned to the local post office in person, where they would go to selected processing centers. There, the information for each person went into a file, and clerks typed up a Social Security card and mailed it to the recipient.

The files were sent to the main processing center in Baltimore, where they began the process of becoming part of a permanent record of each number holder’s earnings. When the first batch of 1,000 forms arrived, the head of the Division of Accounting Operations pulled the top one off of the pile (which was John Sweeney’s) and declared it to be the first “official” Social Security Record. Sweeney died at the age of 61 and never collected any Social Security benefits, but his widow received checks until her death in 1982.

By the way, the person with the numerically-lowest Social Security Number (001-01-0001) was Grace D. Owen of Concord, New Hampshire.

The first two qualifications you’ll need are patience and an alternate source of income.

There are only two umpire schools accredited by The Professional Baseball Umpire Corporation, both of which are located in Florida. Tuition will run you about $3,000 at either. Once enrolled, you’ll be instructed in subjects like the rules of baseball, proper signaling, and the philosophy of umpiring. Instructors are looking for more than umps that know the rules; they want umpires who exude confidence, display a strong on-field presence, have knowledge of the mechanics (where to go when the ball goes into play), and good use of voice.

Out of the approximately 300 graduates, only the top 25 from each school are selected to attend an evaluation course. There, instructors monitor the students and make recommendations to Rookie and short-season Class A league presidents about candidates for hire. If you’re one of the chosen few, you’ll spend several years working your way up to the highest minor league level, Class AAA, from which MLB scouts for umpires. As a Rookie or Class A short season umpire, you’ll earn about $2,000 per month, and it takes an average of eight to 12 years to work your way up to Triple-A, where the income reaches a more comfortable level.

Does it seem like the commercials on television are MUCH LOUDER than the regular programming? Shouldn’t there be a law against that?

Actually there is a law, sort of. The FCC limits the volume of audio transmissions by television broadcasters; that is, they dictate the highest level or modulation that the transmitters can send their signals to a TV set. The volume level stays the same when a commercial break comes on, but savvy advertisers take advantage of sound technology and fill up the entire audio spectrum with sound. Using signal compression, they often layer music, sound effects and speech throughout the full dynamic range. The result is a sound that is denser and more complex than that of the regular programming, which our ears interpret as “louder.”

In addition, a studio-produced TV program usually doesn’t constantly broadcast at peak volume; it has “peaks” and “valleys” of loudness, as humans do in normal everyday conversation. But advertisers only have 30 seconds to get your attention, so they traditionally assault us at the full volume limit for the duration of their message.

In the year 2000 alone, 16 million parents brought their babies to the pediatrician for treatment of an ear infection. Thirteen million prescriptions for antibiotics were written as a result. But the truth is, approximately 80 percent of ear infections clear up on their own without the use of antibiotics.

If doctors are aware of these statistics, why do they keep pulling out the prescription pad? Well, many parents don’t feel as if they’ve had a satisfactory visit with the pediatrician unless they walk out with a slip of paper for the pharmacist. Also, childcare providers often won’t let a sick child return to daycare without evidence that they’re under a doctor’s care, which in most cases means “show me the medication!”

The American Academy of Pediatrics is concerned about the increase of drug-resistant bacteria from the overuse of antibiotics, and has issued a new set of guidelines in prescribing them in regards to children and middle ear infections. Any child under six months of age is automatically treated with antibiotics in order to prevent possible complications such as meningitis. With children older than six months, the doctor must consider several factors, including the suddenness of the onset of symptoms, before relying on antibiotics.

Those words were, simply, “ho-ho-ho.” And no, we’re not talking about Santa Claus. We are speaking of the Jolly Green Giant, named by Advertising Age magazine as the third most recognizable advertising icon of the 20th century (after Tony the Tiger and the Marlboro Man).

The big green guy never said much except for his trademark three-syllable laugh. (He let Little Sprout do most of the talking.) Baritone singer Elmer “Len” Dresslar Jr. stepped into a Chicago recording studio in 1959, sang his “ho-ho-ho,” and left. “I’m the king of minimalists,” he would later say in an interview. Dresslar recorded 15 albums with the jazz group Singers Unlimited and appeared in a touring production of South Pacific. He also provided the voices of two popular Kellogg’s cereal characters, Dig ‘Em frog and Snap of Rice Krispies. His deep voice also admonished listeners that “when you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer.”

But it was his Jolly Green Giant voice that was beamed into households for 40-some years, earning him a nice chunk of change in annual royalties. His elder daughter, Teri Bennett, said that up until his death at the age of 80, Dresslar never got tired of “ho-ho-ho”-ing for fans. “If nothing else, it put my sister and I through college,” she added.

When it comes to Internet memes, few can match the inherent cuteness of the pancake-wearing rabbit. The bunny was first discovered in 2001 by syberpunk.com, a website that specializes in Japanese cultural oddities. The site’s owner had been browsing for random images online, and came upon a photo of a rabbit with a pancake on his head. Further investigation revealed that the rabbit’s name was Oolong, and he was the beloved pet of a photographer named Hironori Akutagawa. Akutagawa noticed that Oolong would sit still no matter what was placed on his head, and he dubbed this particular brand of behavior “head performance.” He developed a website filled with photos of Oolong’s head performances featuring everything from a teacup to a waffle to various types of fruit placed on the bunny’s noggin.

Once that first photo of Oolong was linked on Syberpunk, Akutagawa’s website received 150,000 hits in just one week. Oolong was a bona fide celebrity, which also means that his owner was the target of some hate emails, accusing him of rabbit abuse. (For the record, animal behaviorists say that many animals, including cats and rabbits, have a natural tendency to cuddle and will nuzzle their heads under their owners’ chins. Having a light object placed on the head is similar to petting or stroking, and they find it comforting.)

Sadly, Oolong went to Bunny Heaven in 2003 at the ripe old age (for rabbits, anyway) of eight and a half. Akutagawa has a new rabbit, a gorgeous doe named Yuebing (“Moon cake”). Yuebing is slowly learning the art of head performance, but so far, she hasn’t displayed the natural talent of Oolong.

Long before Time/Life ran its first infomercial, and well before Now! That’s What I Call Music was a gleam in Richard Branson’s eye, there was K-Tel. For kids in the 1970s and early 1980s who didn’t have the cash to buy every 45 they liked, K-Tel albums served as an affordable pipeline to the hits of the day.

Philip Kives was a salesman hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba. One of his most successful products were knives that he purchased in bulk from from a supply house owned by Seymour Popeil (father of inventor Ron). When Kives’ sales numbers went into the millions, Popeil cut off his supply and started selling the knives on his own. Kives had learned a bit about advertising during his knife days, however, so he decided to branch out in to record albums. His idea – cram some 20 to 25 songs on one LP (the average album at the time held about a dozen songs) and pitch them on hard-hitting rapid-fire TV commercials. The ads were ahead of their time; serious musical artists weren’t promoted on television at the time, and young music buyers were mesmerized when they heard a succession of five-second snippets of their favorite tunes on TV. Then there was the price factor; at at time when a 45 rpm record cost 69 cents, K-Tel albums typically offered around two dozen songs for the low price of $4.99. The format was a winner; K-Tel’s sales totaled in the billions, outselling many of the leading artists of the day.

Of course, Kives cut costs by using ultra-thin (read: cheap) vinyl for his albums, and mastered the records at a lower volume, resulting in very thin grooves that allowed for more songs on each side. This mattered little to the target K-Tel purchaser, who wasn’t an audiophile. Those 25 smash hits on one giant LP sounded just fine to folks who listened to the albums on inexpensive “phonographs” instead of high-quality “stereo systems.”

Have you ever noticed that your Tupperware containers and other plasticware usually still have water droplets on them, even after the dry cycle of your dishwasher? Well, you can blame both the U.S. government and the laws of physics for that inconvenience.

Most dishwashers manufactured after 1994 are Energy Star dishwashers, which means that these machine meet strict energy efficiency guidelines set by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. These machines are required to use about 40 percent less energy than the federal minimum standard for consumption.

What this means, basically, is that an Energy Star dishwasher can’t draw enough current to make the water from your hot water tap any hotter. The drying mechanism can’t warm up enough to thoroughly dry materials that don’t conduct heat very well, such as plastic. As a result, that means your Sandwich Savers might require some hand wiping before you put them away.

Yes, you save on your electric bill, but you’ll end up paying the money anyway, when you visit the doctor for a sore elbow.

The “pinup girl” first gained popularity in the U.S. during the 1930s. Prior to that time, proper ladies didn’t expose bare limbs, and even muffler shops would have hesitated to put such “pornography” on display. But once hemlines start creeping north, it wasn’t dirty to show a shapely set of gams, just a bit “naughty.”

Sometimes real celebrities such as Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth posed for pinup photos, but magazine and calendar publishers found that it was more cost-effective to have an artist paint a fictitious beauty than to pay for expensive photo reproductions. One of the most famous pinup artists was Alberto Vargas, a Peruvian artist who emigrated to America in 1916. Shortly after arriving at Ellis Island, Vargas was walking down Broadway at noon and was fascinated by the smartly dressed female office workers who rushed by. He admired their grace and beauty and decided on the spot that he wanted to paint such women for a living.

George Petty, on the other hand, came from a family of photographers, but he decided that he preferred real painting instead of just retouching photos. He found work at a Chicago ad agency, and made a name for himself with his collection of glamorous, airbrushed women (using his daughter Marjorie’s body with a variety of different heads placed on top). His work caught the attention of Esquire magazine, and soon, Petty Girls were featured in each issue. When Petty eventually left Esquire in a salary dispute, the publication managed to locate a more-than-suitable replacement: Alberto Vargas.

What is it about celebrities and perfumes? Why does everyone from Donald Trump to Paris Hilton to Celine Dion to David Beckham have a signature fragrance?

The fragrance business is a $25 billion global industry, and $1 billion of that comes from celebrity name-branded scents. Attaching a star to a cologne isn’t a new strategy, mind you. In 1957, Givenchy created Interdit in honor of Audrey Hepburn, and she was so entranced by the fragrance that she lent her face to advertisements for the perfume. Other “name” brand fragrances came and went (remember the Dynasty-inspired Forever Krystle?), but the true blockbuster celeb scent came in 1991, when Elizabeth Taylor launched White Diamonds. It was a huge seller, as were her subsequent releases, and they continue to earn steady numbers. The only celebrity that has managed to approach La Liz’s numbers in the fragrance biz is Jennifer Lopez, whose Glow broke several sales records when it hit shelves in 2002.

So if celebrity scents don’t have staying power, why do cosmetic companies bother? It costs a lot more to launch an unknown fragrance from scratch and gradually build up an audience. It’s an expensive proposition for something that might not catch on. On the other hand, even if Mary-Kate and Ashley’s signature perfume is only on the shelves for six months, the name recognition guarantees enough sales to make up for the production and advertising costs.

Gather ‘round, sonny, to hear about a time when everything from aspirin to cough syrup with codeine had a simple pop-off or screw-top cap. If you were feeling poorly, you didn’t have to fumble around and make your headache worse by struggling to pry off that dadblamed childproof cap.

Then came the 1950s, when housewives realized – thanks to TV and radio ads – that they needed a variety of potions in their medicine cabinets to relieve everything from coffee nerves to “female problems.” And a mom can’t be every place at the same time, you know, so it was inevitable that some toddlers would be fascinated by these bottles of pretty pills and end up having themselves a poison party. For quite a while, the medical community’s solution to the problem was advising mothers to keep a bottle of Syrup of Ipecac in their refrigerator. But a Canadian pediatrician named Henri Breault, from Windsor, Ontario, was determined to find a better solution.

While Poison Control did their part by launching a campaign to remind parents to keep medicines stored out of reach of children, Breault went to the root of the problem. After several experiments, he introduced the “palm-and-turn” type child-resistant cap in 1967.  After several Ontario manufacturers adopted the new cap for their medications, the U.S. government took note that pediatric poison cases in the province had dropped an amazing 91 percent as a result. The Poison Prevention Packaging Act was adopted in the United States in 1970, and took effect in 1972; the first aspirin bottles with the new caps found their way to store shelves in August that year.

Before you make a mad dash for the telephone, let us clue you in: that’s a fake number we gave you. Just as most of the telephone numbers given in movies and on TV shows which use the “555” prefix are. How did 555 come to be the magic number?

From the 1920s until the 1950s, telephony in the U.S. used local exchange telephone numbers consisting of between two and five digits. Eventually, these grew to a more standardized seven digits nationwide. Since phone calls always originated locally, they were identified by an exchange name based on the first two digits of the number. Likewise, because geographic areas were grouped together by the first digits of their phone numbers, locals knew approximately where you lived when you gave out your number as TUxedo X-XXXX, OLive X-XXXX or MUrray Hill X-XXXX, and so on.

Even back when people got their entertainment via the radio, the telephone company noticed that a problem often occurred if a fictional telephone number was mentioned during the course of a broadcast – folks out in the listening audience felt compelled to dial it. Such nonsense calls to Fibber McGee only added to the workload of already overtaxed operators, so the telephone company set aside the little-used prefix of KL5, or 555. Most telephone exchanges utilized at least one vowel (JEfferson, BEnson Hurst), so the theory was that the KL combo was less likely to be used for real numbers, because of the difficulty of constructing words from it, and it became the standard prefix for fictitious phone numbers.

As telephone usage increased, unused numbers became increasingly scarce, some enterprising person did indeed come up with KLondike as a use for the 55 prefix. As a result, only the numbers 555-0100 through 555-0199 are now “officially” reserved for use in fictional works.

According to a study done by the American Medical Association, the average wait to see a physician in the United States in 2003 was twenty minutes. In the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t seem so long, but when you’re feeling poorly, or you’re sitting in a waiting room filled with screaming children, those 20 minutes can seem like two hours.

Most doctors book their patients in 15 minute intervals. That, of course, is the ideal amount of time that a standard, one-symptom appointment should take. Naturally, it doesn’t always work out that way. Some patients are elderly or handicapped, and take more time to disrobe and to make their way from the examining room to X-ray to the blood drawing area. They might also have more health complaints, and it takes that much more time for them to describe them and for the doctor to investigate them. Why doesn’t the doctor make allowances for these patients when scheduling appointments? Well, just like the airlines, he also has overbook every day in order to compensate for the no-shows. Of course, when emergencies come up – the man with chest pains or the child with a spiking fever – the doctor squeezes them in ahead of everyone else, delaying us even further.

It’s something of a vicious circle, actually; once we finally get in at 4:30 to see the doctor for a 3:15 appointment, we’re determined to get our money’s worth. So we make sure to have the doctor investigate everything from our irregularity to our periodic bouts of depression to that darned jagged bone protruding from our lower leg.

We were watching COPS the other day, and happened to have the closed-captioning on (which we sometimes do when we have to keep the volume down). The show’s distinctive theme song was recorded by Inner Circle. As it turns out, producers wanted to change the theme early in the show’s run, but by that time, the show had garnered such a cult following that they decided it was best to leave well enough alone. Good thing they did.

Anyway, the opening of the show appeared, and that’s when we noticed the theme song’s lyrics:

Nobody naw give you no break
Police naw give you no break
Soldier mon naw give you no break
Not even your idren naw give you no breaks, hey hey

Not surprisingly, this brought about a question: What the heck is an idren? We’ve seen plenty of misspellings and glitches in closed captioning before, so we almost expected it to be just some gibberish. But lo and behold, it’s a legit word after all! Quite simply, it’s a Rastafarian word that means “brothers.”

And they’re absolutely right. They give you no break. Hey hey.