Today's Dippit!

Quote

"If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere." 

Frank A. Clark

Joke

I couldn't figure out why the baseball kept getting larger. Then it hit me.

Fun Fact

The famed "Typhoid Mary" infected more than 50 people by cooking for them.

"Typhoid Mary" was a real historical person who became notorious in the early 1900s. She was an Irish woman named Mary Mallon who immigrated to the United States in the 1880s. Though she had no symptoms of typhoid fever, she carried the bacteria in her blood and could pass it on to other people. Because no doctor could convince her that this was true and she didn't feel sick, she insisted on working as a cook. During her career, she infected at least 51 people, three of whom died, before she was isolated in enforced quarantine for the last decades of her life.

Reading Fact

Reading fiction has been linked to increased empathy and understanding of others' emotions and experiences.

History Fact

Calvin Coolidge Owned a Pair of Lions

Former U.S. president Calvin Coolidge had many a pets, ranging from a donkey to a bobcat. Oh, and a pair of lions. They were gifted as cubs from the government of South Africa. Their names? Tax Reduction and Budget Bureau.

Movie/TV Trivia

The real Frank Abagnale Jr. appears in Catch Me If You Can as the French policeman who arrests Leo.

Movie/TV Quote

"Do you know what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else."

X-Men (2000)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator and Avengers director Joss Whedon worked on a draft of the first X-Men script that was almost entirely scrapped, but in interviews over the years, the writer has taken credit for two distinct comedic lines that made it into the movie. First, there's the Wolverine "You're a dick" quip to Cyclops, which is a perfectly fine piece of comic-book banter. The other one, which Halle Berry's Storm delivers right as she electrocutes the villain Toad in front of the Statue of Liberty, is more controversial. In a 2013 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Whedon called it "terrible" and criticized Berry's delivery, saying, "she did it like she was King Lear." (He also told the A.V. Club in 2001 that she "said it like she was Desdemona," proving the guy really does love his Shakespeare references.) I'd argue that Berry's performance -- in a series that rarely gave her much to do -- is actually what makes it so memorable. She goes for it! Despite the box office and critical success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you won't find many quotes from those movies on this list because the sitcom-like sheen to the dialogue and the slightly irreverent house style renders much of it completely disposable. Unafraid to play with cheesiness, Berry elevated a corny gag to camp poetry.

Conversation Starter

What is your favourite place in the entire world?

Writing Prompt

 What Are the Best Ways to Learn About History?