DAVY, HUMPHRY Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was an English scientist who invented the first electric light in 1800. He experimented with electricity and invented an electric battery. When he connected wires from his battery to two pieces of carbon, electricity arced between the carbon pieces, producing an intense, hot, and short-lived light. This is called an electric arc. Davy also invented a miner's safety helmet and a process to desalinate sea water. Davy discovered the elements boron, sodium, aluminum (whose name he later changed to aluminium), and potassium.
EDISON, THOMAS ALVA lightbulbEdison Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) was an American inventor (also known as the Wizard of Menlo Park) whose many inventions revolutionized the world. His work includes improving the incandescent electric light bulb and inventing the phonograph, the phonograph record, the carbon telephone transmitter, and the motion-picture projector. Edison's first job was as a telegraph operator, and in the course of his duties, he redesigned the stock-ticker machine. The Edison Universal Stock Printer gave him the capital ($40,000) to set up a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, to invent full-time (with many employees). Edison experimented with thousands of different light bulb filaments to find just the right materials to glow well, be long-lasting, and be inexpensive. In 1879, Edison discovered that a carbon filament in an oxygen-free bulb glowed but did not burn up for quite a while. This incandescent bulb revolutionized the world.
"The best mirror is an old friend." -- George Herbert
"What is a friend? A single soul in two bodies." -- Aristotle
"The friendship that can cease has never been real." -- Saint Jerome
"I count myselt in nothing else so happy As in a soul rememb'ring my good friends." -- William Shakespeare
"I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Sir, more than kisses, letters, mingle souls; For, thus friends absent speak." -- John Donne
"Too late we learn, a man must hold his friend Unjudged, accepted, trusted to the end." -- John Boyle O'Reilly
"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way." --Doris Lessing
"Courage is the power to let go of the familiar." --Raymond Linquist
"To change and to improve are two different things." --German proverb
"Never play leapfrog with a unicorn." --Benny Hill
"It is important to our friends that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to our friendship that we are not." --Mignon McLaughlin
"Don't tell friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you." --Logan Pearsall Smith
"If we all told what we know of one another, there would not be four friends in the world." --Blaise Pascal
CHUCKLES AND BELLY LAUGHS From Just for Grins The service area was located on a main highway leading to the beach. The pump attendant was accustomed to seeing tired and sunburned occupants in the cars that pulled in to tank up. When a rusty old van containing a very tired looking couple and six screaming children pulled into his station, the attendant tried small talk to cheer the occupants. "Hope you had a good day at the beach! Nice looking kids there. Are they all yours or is this a picnic?" Wearily, the driver replied, "Yes they are all mine and it's NO picnic!"
Gotta have the right paper. From Just For Grins Jane walked into a pharmacy, strolled over to the counter, and caught the pharmacist's attention. "Can I please get some arsenic?" she asked. "Arsenic? What do you want arsenic for?" asked the pharmacist. "It's for my husband," she replied. "Your husband?" exclaimed the pharmacist, "I hope you don't mean what I think you mean!" She just nodded. "Well, lady," he replied, "I'm an honest man. I can't sell you arsenic, I wouldn't if I could, and I don't know what made you think you could just stroll into a respectable store and expect me me to sell you arsenic.!" She didn't say a word. She just reached into her purse, fished out a photograph, and handed it across the counter. It was a picture of her husband, captured in an amorous position with the pharmacist's wife. Slowly the pharmacist looks up, over the counter, and then straight at her. "Lady," he said, "why didn't you tell me you had a prescription?"
Today is my daughter's 18th birthday.......Whooa! Touche', etc. This one from Wayne C. Smith I'm so glad that this is my last child support payment. Month after month, year after year, those payments! So I called my baby girl, Kareesha, to come over to my house, and when she got there, I said to her, "Baby girl, I want you to take this last check over to your mother's house and tell her that this is the last check she's ever going to get from me, and I want you to come back and tell me the expression that's on her face." So my baby girl took the check over to her. I was really anxious to hear what she had to say and what she looked like. As my baby girl walked through the door, I said, "Now what did she have to say?" "She told me to tell you that you ain't my daddy... and watch the expression on your face".
Sue Clements sent this one. Three men were sitting together bragging about how they had given their new wives duties. The first man had married a woman from Alabama, and bragged that he had told his wife she was going to do all the dishes and house cleaning that needed done at their house. He said that it took a couple days but on the third day he came home to a clean house and the dishes were all washed and put away. The second man had married a woman from Florida. He bragged that he had given his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes, and the cooking. He told them that the first day he didn't see any results, but the next day it was better. By the third day, his house was clean, the dishes were done, and he had a huge dinner on the table. The third man had married a Pennsylvania girl. He boasted that he told her that her duties were to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn't see anything, the second day he didn't see anything, but by the third day most of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye... Enough to fix himself a bite to eat, load the dishwasher, and telephone a landscaper.
Mortality Bud And Good Clean Fun for this one. I began thinking about my own mortality after I became a widow. One day my daughter called home from college, and I announced to her, "I think it's time for us to talk about where I would like to be buried." "It's way too soon to even think of anything like that," she snapped indignantly. Then there was a brief silence. "Wait a minute, did you say married or buried?" When I repeated buried, she said, "Oh, okay, sure."
The blind date Guys, you can't get ahead of 'em. This one from Dr Bill Hamm. After being with his blind date all evening, the man couldn't take another minute with her. Earlier, he had secretly arranged to have a friend call him to the phone so he would have an excuse to leave if something like this happened. When he returned to the table, he lowered his eyes, put on a grim expression and said, "I have some bad news. My grandfather just died." "Thank heavens," his date replied. "If yours hadn't, mine would have had to!"
THE GROANERS: Bud Casselberry gets the Groaners going this week, the first two from him. A blonde went to an eye doctor to have her eyes checked for glasses. The doctor directed her to read various letters with the left eye while covering the right eye. The blonde was so mixed up on which eye was which that the eye doctor, in disgust, took a paper lunch bag with a hole to see through, covered up the appropriate eye and asked her to read the letters. As he did so, he noticed the blonde had tears streaming down her face. "Look," said the doctor, "there's no need to get emotional about getting glasses." "I know," agreed the blonde, "but I kind of had my heart set on wire frames."
A blonde was shopping at a Target Store and came across a silver thermos. She was quite fascinated by it, so she picked it up and brought it over to the clerk to ask what it was. The clerk said, "Why, that's a thermos.....it keeps some things hot and some things cold." "Wow, said the blonde, 'that's amazing....I'm going to buy it!" So she bought the thermos and took it to work the next day. Her boss saw it on her desk. "What's that?" he asked? "Why, that's a thermos.....it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold," she replied. Her boss inquired, "What do you have in it?" The blond replied, "Two popsicles, and some coffee."
Bill Myers found this one. Zebediah was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers, called pullets, and eight or ten roosters, whose job was to fertilize the eggs. Zeb kept records, and any rooster that didn't perform well went into the soup pot and was replaced. Record keeping took an awful lot of Zeb's time. So, Zeb got a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so that Zeb could tell, from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells. Zeb's favorite rooster was old Brewster. A very fine specimen he was, too. But on this particular morning, Zeb noticed that Brewster's bell had not rung at all! Zeb went to investigate. The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells a-ringing! The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover. But to Zeb's amazement, Brewster had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. Zeb was so proud of Brewster that he entered him in the county fair. Brewster was an overnight sensation. The judges not only awarded him the No Bell Piece Prize but also the......... Pulletsurprise. Oh stop your groaning...you laughed... I know you did.
Bud Casselberry found this one. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused his dentist's Novocain during root canal work? He wanted to transcend dental medication.