Genealogy Humor

Hello Volodya, I hate to tell you but several years ago a woman in New York state offered $5 an hour to pick up stones out of her field. When I was a girl on the farm that was my job. No matter how many you pick up there are more the next year.Do they breed or is it a vast conspiracy from the dark side. Who you going to call? STONE BUSTERS! Happy Halloween to all.

I have a new job that is no longer around...maybe. Felmonger. My husband had an ancestor that was a felmonger. Ok,I'll tell you. A felmonger iis a dealer in sheepskins, He removes the wool from the pelt. Sounds...good.

I just sent those in my email address book a message about the end of Daylight Savings time & to not forget to set their clocks back an hour. This is true for most of the USA... As I was looking for more info (humor mostly) I found in Wikipedia that we aren't the only country that uses Daylight Savings Time... Many other countries do also, although I think many changed on Oct 25th... Sooooo, if you have already changed your clock (fall back) I hope you utilized that hour productively (extra sleep???) and if you don't set the clock back an hour until Sunday (11/1/15) then don't forget to do so & enjoy an extra hour of sleep!!!

I live in a part of Arizona that doesn't change time!!! I can still remember when I first moved here from Missouri & experienced my first Daylight Savings change -- I had changed all of my clocks & thought "Yipeee, I get an extra hour of sleep!" -- was working 16 hrs shifts on Sat/Sun, so an extra hr of sleep was appreciated!!! But I was an hour late for work because I didn't realize that most of AZ didn't change time!!! Boy was I embarrassed even thought we all had a good laugh!!! Played catch-up all day!!! Just so you know, some areas in AZ do change from/to Daylight Savings time.

I work as a private tutor over the internet, and i did have one person who has come online an hour later that usual due to the simple fact that Russia stopped daylight savings and Ukraine is doing it.

Since this is a humour thread, then i can draw attention that while debating the question in Duma the arguments from both sides often included calculations how winter days would be longer or shorter. Honestly, not whether the Sun would rise and set earlier or later, but they actually thought they could legislate the *length* of the day by changing clocks.

Before the state of Indiana standardized their daylight savings time some counties were on one and the next may be on the other. In Switzerland County they referred to it as "fast" time and "slow" time. If time goes slower in the next county over, I'm moving.

I found this & thought it was real appropriate to the Daylight Savings issue:

When told the reason for daylight saving time, the Old Indian said, "Only the Government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket."

In Norway it's traditional to ring churchbells around 10AM on Sunday to call people to services.

One morning a friend of mine was wakened by the churchbells pealing at 8 in the morning. Greatly irritated, he picked up the phone to complain about it.
Then he realized: Not only was it the week of daylight savings time end - he had set his clock the *wrong way*.....

In Sweden we call it "sommartid" and "Vintertid", but because Sweden have very long and light summer days we don't have any positive effects at all under that summer period, so why we do it at all is questionable. We do not save energy, contrary, we use more, peoples health do not benefit from this, contrary, more people die just because of this, and a third problem concern negative effects on livestock.

"Life in the 1500's"

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and were still smelling pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the b.o. Baths equaled a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying...
"Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."

Houses had thatched roofs. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the pets ... dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying...
"It's raining cats and dogs.

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed. So, they found if they made beds with big posts and hung a sheet over the top, it addressed that problem.
Hence those beautiful big 4 poster beds with canopies.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying ..."dirt poor."

The wealthy had slate floors which would get slippery in the winter when wet. So they spread thresh on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed at the entry way, hence... a "thresh hold."

They cooked in the kitchen in a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They mostly ate vegetables and didn't get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been in there for weeks. Hence the rhyme: peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

Sometimes they could obtain pork and would feel really special when that happened. When company came over, they would bring out some bacon and hang it to show it off. It was a sign of wealth and that a man "could really bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food. This happened most often with tomatoes, so they stopped eating tomatoes ... for 400 years!

Most people didn't have pewter plates, but had trenchers -- a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Trenchers were never washed and a lot of times worms got into the wood. After eating off wormy trenchers, they would get "trench mouth."

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the "upper crust."

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake."

England is old and small, and they started running out of places to bury people. So, they would dig up coffins and would take their bones to a house and reuse the grave. In reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. Hence on the "graveyard shift" they would know that someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer."

Some of these I had to look up because I didn't know if they were true or not... those that I looked up, I put a site that you can check for additional info (if interested!) Some are really hard to believe!!!

[25 Strange Facts from History you Probably Didn’t Learn in School
http://list25.com/25-strange-facts-from-history-you-probably-didnt-... 25 Strange Facts from History you Probably Didn’t Learn in School]

1. Officially, the longest war in history was between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly, which lasted from 1651 to 1986. There were no casualties.

2. The Anglo-Zanzibar war of 1896 is the shortest war on record lasting an exhausting 38 minutes.

3. Albert Einstein was offered the role of Israel’s second President in 1952, but declined.

4. John F. Kennedy, Anthony Burgess, Aldous Huxley, and C.S. Lewis all died on the same day. [All died on 11/22/63 except Anthony Burgess who died on 11/22/93.]

5. Napoleon was once attacked by rabbits. [See: http://mentalfloss.com/article/51364/time-napoleon-was-attacked-rab... http://modernnotion.com/rabbits-defeated-napoleon/]

6. Karl Marx was once a correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune.

7. Kim Jong Il wrote six operas.

8. Princeton researchers successfully turned a live cat into a functioning telephone in 1929. [See: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/vlt/summary/v064/64.article01_sub07.html]

9. Ronald Reagan was a lifeguard during high school and saved 77 people’s lives.

10. Lord Byron kept a pet bear in his college dorm room.

11. In 1912, a Paris orphanage held a raffle to raise money—the prizes were live babies. [See: http://mentalfloss.com/article/60992/time-paris-had-baby-lottery]

12. A New Orleans man hired a pirate to rescue Napoleon from his prison on St. Helena.

13. The “D” in D-Day stands for “Day”, in other words, “Day-Day” [See: http://www.army.mil/e2/rv5_downloads/d-day/the-meaning-of-dday-fact... http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/why-was-it-called-d-day]

14. The Constitution of the Confederate States of America banned the slave trade.

15. When the American Civil War started, Confederate Robert E. Lee owned no slaves. Union general U.S. Grant did.

16. England’s King George I was actually German.

17. In 1838, General Antonio López de Santa Anna (President of Mexico) had his leg amputated after his ankle was destroyed by canon-fire. He ordered a full military burial for it.

18. Contrary to popular belief and legend, Daniel Boone not only did not wear a coonskin cap, he detested them. Instead, Boone wore a felt cap.

19. At the start of World War I, the US Air force (then a component of the US army) had only 18 pilots and 5 – 12 airplanes.

20. The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo. [See: http://ncwwii.lostsoulsgenealogy.com/facts.htm

21. Arabic numerals (the ones used in English) were not invented by the Arabs at all – they were actually invented by Indian mathematicians. [See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals]

22. The Parliament of Iceland is the oldest still acting parliament in the world. It was established in 930.

23. Despite the terrible nature of and damage caused by the 1666 Great Fire of London, only 8 people were killed. This is despite the fire destroying at least 13,500 houses. [This may not be true according to Wikipedia… the death toll may have been several hundred to possibly several thousand… See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_London]

24. Soon after building started in 1173, the foundation of the Pisa tower settled unevenly. Construction was stopped, and was continued only a 100 years later. Therefore, the leaning tower was never straight.

25. Ancient Egyptians used slabs of stones as pillows.

Now that we have adjusted to the new time how about those poor people when the calendar changed and they lost all those days, Not to mention if you were doing business with Russia they were on the old schedule.So maybe great-great x many granddad was born on the wrong day after all.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year

"During the Middle Ages in western Europe, while the Julian calendar was still in use, authorities moved New Year's Day variously, depending upon locale, to one of several other days, among them: 1 March, 25 March, Easter, 1 September, and 25 December. These New Year's Day changes generally reverted to using January 1 before or during the various local adoptions of the Gregorian calendar, beginning in 1582. The change from March 25 – Lady Day, one of the four quarter days – to January 1 took place in Scotland in 1600, before the ascension of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England in 1603 and well before the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. In England and Wales (and in all British dominions, including Britain's American colonies), 1751 began on March 25 and lasted 282 days, and 1752 began on January 1.[2] For more information about the changeover from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar and the effect on the dating of historical events etc., see Old Style and New Style dates."

This means that if you have somebody born on 24th of March 1751 in Britain, you've probably got it all wrong.

*******I DID NOT KNOW THIS ABOUT LAS VEGAS ******

This may come as a surprise to those of you not living in Las Vegas but there are more catholic churches than casinos.

Not surprisingly, some worshipers at Sunday services will give casino chips rather than cash when the basket is passed.

Since they get chips from many different casinos, the churches have devised a method to collect the offerings.

The churches send all their collected chips to a nearby Franciscan monastery for sorting and then the chips are taken to the casinos of origin and cashed in.

This is done by..... "the Chip Monks."!!!!!!

You didn't even see it coming did you?

Really Horrible Newz for farmers....

http://biggeekdad.com/2015/11/marshmallow-farming/

Norm, thanks, it was great. It almost looked like something from Brasseye.

Glad you liked it ...Volodya...

Yesterday Someone offered me 60 acres of Marsh(mallow) farm land at a deep discount...He said there was plenty of room for Graham Cracker & Chocolate crops as well!

Amusing photos from Soviet kindergartens.

http://www.geni.com/photo/album/6000000026615887608?album_id=600000...

P.S. If you are not amused, i will be unable to explain it to you.

Funny, Volodya!

I'm still laughing Volodya.

@Voldya Mozhenkov for some reason i keep getting the message "You don't have permission to view this item." How about adding them to the [http://www.geni.com/projects/Picture-Board-for-Genealogy-Humor-Disc... Picture Board for Genealogy Humor] project???

Maybe I have to following you or a curator to be able to open your album???

Patricia: I just checked - you're correct, that Volodya's album is not publicly viewable.

Unfortunately, there are three problems which prevent the immediate fixing of this issue:

1) Project media collections do not support albums. So one can not create a project 'album' titled "Amusing photos from Soviet kindergartens".

2) There is not a means to set a personal photo album as public.

3) There are no pictures available to put in such an album in the project, even if it could be created.

...

(think about #3 for just a moment or two)

Thanks for the response, Dan... How were you & Erica able to view it???

They have that 'C' next to their name... i guess.

Sorry i didn't realise that it was private when posted.

This is what I saw when I clicked Volodya's link:

Add Photos
Soviet Kindergarten photos Created by Volodya Mozhenkov on 11/8/2015
Description:
Amusing and interesting photos from kindergartens in USSR.
No items to show

====

So to me the joke was:

No items to show

Oh, this is even more weird then. So curators can see the album, but not the photos. *That* is funny!

Ok. Because i clearly cannot upload photographs... i will attempt to do a video:
http://www.geni.com/video/play?project_id=25757&video_id=600000...

I can see that video ... and it does not depend on Curator privilege.

I get Error - You don't have permission to view this item.

Grandfather is here! is Funny

The video is tooooooooooo funny!!! Looks like Grandfather was more important to a little girl!