Live and Learn-Toss and Turn: Feb 14, 2014

Friday, February 14, 2014

Here, There, and Everywhere

Do you ever wander around on the Internet? Start with a specific question, but wander around here, there, and everywhere and never quite reach the place your looking for. I had one of those times last night.

It all started a couple of weeks ago when Theo picked up some flatware from a garage sale that he needed. After he got his spoons and forks home, he noticed that his flatware was stamped as coming from many different places--Montana, Utah, USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Germany, and Korea. I checked all of our flatware and all I could find was the word, STAINLESS. I found the variety of place names on Theo's purchase fascinating. I wondered if it had something to do with the fact that all of the recently purchased pieces were pretty old. So I set out to see if I could find out some of the manufacturing history on any of them.

I did a lot of Googling and found out nothing about when they were actually made or the company they were made by. However, during my wanderings, I did find a few things that I thought were interesting. Here are some of them.

--Utah has a state cooking pot. It's the Dutch oven.

--Montana had the greatest temperature change to ever occur on earth in a 24 hour period. It happened on January 15, 1972, when the temperature went from -54°F to 49°F. That's 103° change.

--Indonesia is comprised of 17000 islands of which only 6000 are inhabited. It's the fourth most populated country in the world.

--By custom, Korea counts birthdays and ages differently than we do. When someone is born, they are considered to be one year old. They count the time in the womb as the first year. Also, everyone "gets a year older" on New Year's Day regardless of when they were born. The western method, however, is often used for legal purposes.

--Brazil silver, German silver, Utah silver, and Montana silver are all alloys of different metals and contain no silver. However, they are silver in color.

Even though I didn't exactly stay focused, I did enjoy my wanderings of here, there, and everywhere both around the globe and on the Internet. Next time I want to kill some time, I may do it again. (Or next time I start to do this, I should check to see if I really have time to kill.)