TRIVIA TODAY - Friday, November 28, 2014

Greetings Infomaniacs,

Congratulations to "Peggy Wear" who won this week's "Mind Scrambler". Here was the scrambler:

What has only two words, but thousands of letters?

ANSWER: Post office.

Enjoy!
Melissa

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Questions? Comments? Email Melissa


WHO SAID IT?
QUOTE: "You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need."

HINT: (1918-1992), was an American spiritual teacher, author, and philosopher.


RANDOM TIDBITS
Although it is now known as the biggest shopping day in the US, the term "Black Friday" originally referred to very different events. In the US, the first time the term was used was on 24 September 1869, when two speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk, tried to corner the gold market on the New York Stock Exchange. When the government stepped in to correct the distortion by flooding the market with gold, prices plummeted and many investors lost sizable fortunes.

Going shopping?: Not if you're a plumber. Black Friday is the busiest day of the year for them, according to Roto-Rooter, the nation's largest plumbing service. After all, someone has to clean up after household guests who "overwhelm the system."

Canadian department store Eaton's held the first "Santa Claus parade" on December 2, 1905. Once Santa appeared at the end of the parade, the signal was that the holiday season - and thus, holiday shopping, had begun. US department stores such as Macy's took inspiration from the parade, and started sponsoring similar efforts across the country. In 1924, New York saw the first Macy's parade featuring animals from Central Park Zoo and run by the store's employees.

The city that first popularized the term was Philadelphia. Police officers, frustrated by the congestion caused by shoppers on the day, started referring to it derisively as "Black Friday". Unsurprisingly, retailers weren't happy 'to be associated with traffic and smog. So they tried to re-brand the day "Big Friday", according to a 1961 local Philadelphia paper.

The phrase 'Black Friday' remained a Philadelphia quirk for a surprisingly long time. "You see it spreading a little bit to Trenton, New Jersey, which is close by, but it doesn't really start getting mentioned outside of Philadelphia until the 1980s," says linguist Benjamin Zimmer, executive editor of Vocabulary.com. "It didn't become widespread until the mid-90s."

Beyond North America, as online shopping has grown, retailers like Amazon have looked to Cyber Monday, first heard of in 2005, to promote deals for shoppers across the globe. While in China, the recently launched 'Singles Day' prompted sales of two million bras in one hour, making a pile that would be three times higher than Mount Everest.

(www.bbc.com)


*** Weekly Mind-Scrambler ***
Look for a new mind scrambler in Monday's issue of Trivia Today!

Submit your answer by clicking: HERE

Answer will be posted in Friday's Trivia Today. Good Luck!

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WHO SAID IT?
QUOTE: "You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need."

ANSWER: Vernon Howard.

***
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