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The most valuable American autograph doesn’t belong to a pop star or a sports hero, but to Button Gwinnett, one of Georgia’s representatives to the Continental Congress and the second signer of the Declaration of Independence. This is due mainly to the rarity of his signature, as Gwinnett had a relatively brief political career prior to signing the Declaration of Independence and died soon after from wounds sustained in a duel fought May 16, 1777.

Gwinnett, who was less than three months into his tenure as Governor of Georgia, had ordered an invasion of British East Florida but found himself unable to lead the invasion due to his gubernatorial responsibilities. Instead, he was forced to rely on Lachlan MacIntosh, a fellow political figure and military leader and Gwinnett’s bitter rival.

The invasion was an utter disaster. MacIntosh publicly blamed Gwinnett in a speech to the Georgia assembly, denouncing him as a “scoundrel and a lying rascal.” The humiliated Gwinnett demanded an apology and, when MacIntosh refused, challenged him to a duel.

MacIntosh accepted the challenge and the men agreed to duel with pistols at 12 paces in a field a few miles east of Savannah. Gwinnett and MacIntosh fired at the same time and each wounded the other, with MacIntosh being shot in the hip and and Gwinnett in the leg.

MacIntosh recovered from his injury, but Gwinnett’s wound quickly developed gangrene. He died three days later on May 19, 1777, less than a year after signing the Declaration of Independence, at the age of 41 or 42.

His relatively short life and even shorter political career has made his signature the most valuable autograph in the United States, especially among historically-inclined collectors looking to own the signatures of all 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.

There are only 51 known examples of Gwinnett’s signature in existence, with an individual signature being sold for as much as $150,000. In comparison, the autograph of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, only fetches up to $7,500.

– Teresa Santoski

www.teresasantoski.com

Originally published May 16, 2011.

Here at Daily TWiP, we are overjoyed to celebrate the most exciting confluence of holidays since the International Day of Awesomeness and Chuck Norris’ birthday. Today (May 25) is both Towel Day and Geek Pride Day.

Towel Day was instituted in 2001, two weeks after the death of Douglas Adams, author of the wildly successful novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and the other four books that round out the Hitchhiker trilogy. Adams had quite a sense of humor when it came to numbers, as evidenced by the answer his books provided to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything: 42.

The key ingredient to successful hitchhiking is the common, everyday towel. Adams describes a few of the towel’s myriad uses in this excerpt from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”:

“You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”

Towel Day is best celebrated by carrying a towel wherever you go today. You probably won’t need to outsmart the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, but you may need to combat a messy hamburger or lasso an errant pencil. A good hitchhiker always knows where their towel is. To learn more about Towel Day, visit www.towelday.org.

If you knew what Towel Day was before we explained it, you are a prime candidate to celebrate today’s second holiday, Geek Pride Day.

Originally, the word “geek” denoted a sideshow performer whose act consisted of particularly unsettling feats, such as biting the head off a live chicken. In that sense of the word, Ozzy Osbourne may just be the ultimate modern geek.

Today, however, a geek is broadly defined as anyone with a passionate interest in one specific area. You can have history geeks, cinema geeks, computer geeks and so forth, but geeks are often associated with more unconventional areas of interest, such as science fiction, comic books, role-playing games or anime.

Being labeled a geek used to be a social stigma, but as the digital revolution has expanded our world and provided us with more areas in which to be geeky, geekiness has become increasingly accepted.

And because there are so many different things to be geeky about, no one type of geekiness will ever be completely mainstream. Even with something as ubiquitously loved as Star Wars, different people will be drawn to different aspects, resulting in different areas of expertise.

We encourage you to celebrate Geek Pride Day by sharing your unique brand of geekiness with those around you and enjoying theirs in return. Enlighten them as to the batting averages for the 1914 Red Sox team and listen in amazement as they give you a detailed explanation of the function of the flying buttress in sacred medieval architecture. Embracing one another’s geekiness not only makes the world a happier place, but a smarter one as well.

– Teresa Santoski

www.teresasantoski.com

Originally published May 25, 2010.

Believe it or not, ice cream sodas were once considered a sinful indulgence, and not just because of the calories. Today (June 30) on National Ice Cream Soda Day, we celebrate this soda fountain favorite that was initially believed to be on par with alcohol.

According to gastronomic legend, the ice cream soda was invented by Robert M. Green at the Franklin Institute’s sesquicentennial celebration in Philadelphia in 1874. Green was a vendor at this event and found himself competing for customers against a larger, better-equipped soda fountain. He decided to create a new soda offering to give his business an edge.

After a fair amount of experimenting with the ingredients at hand, Green hit on a winning combination: soda water, vanilla ice cream and flavored syrup. With 16 different flavors of syrup to choose from, Green’s concoction quickly became a sensation. It wasn’t long before other soda fountains were offering “ice cream soda.”

Ice cream sodas were especially popular with teenagers and children, which caused concern for many adults. At the time, soda was being touted as a medicine or health tonic rather than as a refreshing beverage. Coca-Cola, for example, had its start in the 1880s as a patent medicine. Parents were less than pleased that ice cream was being added to medicine and doled out to their children.

Soda was therefore considered a substance on par with alcohol in that its consumption needed to be regulated. In some locales, soda, like alcohol, could not be sold on Sundays. The ice cream soda ban is said to have led to the creation of the ice cream sundae, so named because it didn’t contain soda and could be sold on Sundays.

We suggest celebrating National Ice Cream Soda Day with (what else?) an ice cream soda. Even though soda is no longer a controlled substance, we still encourage you to celebrate responsibly. There’s nothing like an ice cream headache to take all the fun out of the holiday.

– Teresa Santoski

www.teresasantoski.com

Originally published June 30, 2010.

Some academics are remembered for making great contributions to their fields of study or for their impressive oratorical style. The Rev. William Archibald Spooner, on the other hand, is remembered for wuddling his mords.

Born today (July 22) in 1844, Spooner was an ordained priest and a don at Oxford University whose brilliant mind regularly outpaced his tongue. He mixed up bits and pieces of his words so regularly that these little misspeaks were dubbed “spoonerisms” in his honor.

Students would attend his lectures and churchgoers his sermons hoping to hear one of his famous slip-ups. They were not disappointed. Spooner once berated a student who “hissed my mystery lecture,” adding that the lazy student had “tasted two worms,” and politely reseated a non-regular churchgoer before the sermon, telling him, “I believe you’re occupewing my pie. May I sew you to another sheet?”

Spooner was overall a good-humored man, but it was said that he didn’t appreciate being defined by his verbal eccentricities. “You haven’t come for my lecture,” he said to one group of eager attendees, “you just want to hear one of those … things.”

If you’d like to hear more spoonerisms, check out a few spoonerism fairy tales by Colonel Stoopnagle (the plom de nume of F. Chase Taylor), courtesy of  FunWithWords.com. “Beeping Sleuty” and “Prinderella and the Cince” will gave you higgling in no time.

– Teresa Santoski

www.teresasantoski.com

Originally published July 22, 2009.

Today (Aug. 13), we would like to remind you that there are two ways to do things – not a right way and a wrong way, but a right way and a left way. On International Left-Handers’ Day, we celebrate those who determinedly fumble their way through a world in which nothing is where it should be.

Approximately seven to ten percent of the population is left-handed, with more left-handed men than women. Younger people are more likely to be left-handed than their older counterparts, as left-handedness was strongly discouraged in schools up until a few decades ago, a combination of the tendency of lefties to smudge their writing and a misplaced cultural belief that left-handedness was evil.

In Western culture, this belief has been traced back to ancient Mesopotamia, where the hand was considered a symbol of power. The left hand was associated with the power to shame society and represented misfortune, divine punishment and natural evil, associations which later carried over into modern Judeo-Christian culture.

Granted, there are several notorious left-handed criminals, (Billy the Kid, Jack the Ripper, John Dillinger, and the Boston Strangler all come to mind), but there are far more right-handed criminals than left-handed ones. Given how many lefties there are in the world, if it was true that all left-handed individuals are evil and villainous, the term “prison overcrowding” would never have found its way into our vocabulary.

Other famous lefties include Napoleon Bonaparte (and his wife, Josephine), Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Ramses II, Aristotle, Prince William, Benjamin Franklin, Norman Schwarzkopf, Mahatma Gandhi, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Joan of Arc and M.C. Escher.

Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy, is also left-handed. So lefties, you may have a tough time finding a pair of scissors you can use, but when it comes to Jedi lightsabers, you’d be right (or left) at home.

For more information on International Left-Handers’ Day, visit www.lefthandersday.com.

– Teresa Santoski

www.teresasantoski.com

Originally published Aug. 13, 2009.

Declaring independence is apparently contagious. Not long after the Revolutionary War officially ended in 1783, part of North Carolina decided it wanted to be independent from the rest of the state. Made up of what was then the westernmost portion of North Carolina, the state of Franklin formally declared its autonomy today (Aug. 23) in 1784.

The land that would become Franklin was given by North Carolina to Congress to help pay off the debts the country had incurred during the Revolutionary War. Before Congress could take possession of the land, North Carolina changed its mind and rescinded the offer out of concern that the land wouldn’t be used for repaying war debts.

The inhabitants of this area were less than pleased with North Carolina’s decision to make a gift of them to the federal government, as they worried that the land they had worked so hard to settle would be given to a foreign country that had aided the United States in the war as payment for military expenses.

Even after North Carolina changed its mind, the citizens in this part of the state still harbored resentment toward their state government, feeling they weren’t being given the support they needed against Native American resistance in an area that was still very much frontier.

The inhabitants decided to form their own state, which would enable them to look out for their own interests. The secessionist state of Frankland (which means “Land of the Free”) was born.

The name was soon changed to Franklin, in what has been viewed as an attempt to gain Benjamin Franklin’s support for their cause. Although Franklin graciously declined to assist, the state’s inhabitants decided to retain the name.

Popular military man John Sevier was elected governor of Franklin and the rest of the state government was quickly installed. Franklin petitioned for statehood on May 16, 1785, but did not receive the two-thirds majority vote required to be admitted to the United States. The wannabe state’s status was further complicated by North Carolina’s insistence that Franklin was still part of North Carolina.

In March of 1788, Franklin finally agreed to submit to North Carolina’s governance. Attacks by Native Americans had increased to such a degree that the inhabitants of Franklin were unable to defend themselves on their own. Since they weren’t officially a state, they couldn’t receive assistance from the national army. As part of North Carolina, however, they could receive protection from the state militia.

A few years later, North Carolina ceded Franklin yet again, this time relinquishing the land to be incorporated into the Southwest Territory, which became Tennessee in 1796. The inhabitants of Franklin appears to have taken this cession more in stride, perhaps due to their recent experience of the difficulties that can arise when you declare independence.

– Teresa Santoski

www.teresasantoski.com

Originally published. Aug. 23, 2010.

You’d think that since pi is by definition a mathematical constant, it would be left alone to go about its business of representing the value of the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Today (Feb. 5) in 1897, however, Indiana’s General Assembly found itself faced with a confusing bit of legislation courtesy of a crank mathematician looking to make a quick buck by essentially redefining the value of pi.

House Bill 246 was introduced Jan. 18, 1897, by Representative Taylor I. Record at the behest of one of his constituents, a physician by the name of Edwin J. Goodwin. Goodwin believed he had succeeded in squaring the circle, which would result in pi having a new, easier-to-work-with value of 3.2.

Being a good Hoosier, Goodwin offered his home state the opportunity to use his revolutionary mathematical concepts in the educational system free of charge, providing they passed these concepts into law. Everyone else in the world would be required to pay him a royalty.

You can read the full text of the bill here. None of the legislators (including Record) fully understood the bill, which was loaded with jargon-heavy statements that contradicted one another as well as the basic laws of geometry.

After the bill had been reviewed by the House Committee on Canals (apparently the legislators thought it had something to do with land surveyance) and the House Education Committee, the House passed the bill 67 to 0 on Feb. 5, 1897, by the recommendation of the Education Committee.

Had it not been for mathematics professor Clarence A. Waldo of Purdue University, the bill might have passed the Senate as well. He was at the statehouse to lobby for the university’s budget appropriation and fortuitously overheard the mathematical back-and-forth in the House, where one representative advocated passing the bill on the basis that the state would save money by not having to pay royalties on the new value of pi.

Waldo lost no time in approaching the Senate and carefully explaining the bill to them in painstaking detail. When the bill went before the Senate about a week later, the senators were in a much better position to handle it.

The Senate voted to table the bill indefinitely, not because they disagreed with Goodwin’s findings – even after Waldo’s coaching, most of them admitted they still didn’t understand the bill – but because they didn’t believe mathematical constants were an appropriate subject for legislation.

Senator Hubbell was quoted in the Indianapolis Journal as saying, “The Senate might as well try to legislate water to run up hill as to establish mathematical truth by law.”

And that, pretty much, was that. The bill hasn’t come up on the Senate agenda since.

– Teresa Santoski

www.teresasantoski.com

Originally published Feb. 5, 2010

Every once in a while, we here at Daily TWiP stumble upon a holiday that is so wonderfully TWiPpable that we practically weep tears of joy. The International Day of Awesomeness, which the creator decided should coincide with the birthday of the incredibly awesome and near-mythic action hero Chuck Norris, is one of these holidays.

The International Day of Awesomeness is a relatively recent holiday (it was created in 2007) and began, as many fun things do, with bantering between coworkers.

Freddie Maneiro, an intern, suggested that a celebration be held in honor of the awesomeness of his coworker, Kevin Lawver. Lawver’s awesomeness was a running joke amongst his coworkers, and Lawver decided that there should be a holiday to celebrate awesomeness in all its various forms.

The official tagline of the International Day of Awesomeness is that, while no one is perfect, everyone can be awesome. And today, you are encouraged to do exactly that. Be awesome, do awesome things, and appreciate the awesomeness of others.

If you’re uncertain as to what true awesomeness is, we invite you to explore the mythology of Chuck Norris. Norris himself is thoroughly human (in spite of his amazing roundhouse kicks), but thanks to the mysterious powers of the Internet, he has been credited with all kinds of legendary accomplishments, many of which have been collected at www.ChuckNorrisFacts.com.

Here are a few of our favorites, which we hope will inspire you to pursue your own unique feats of awesomeness:

• Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water AND make it drink.

• Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door.

• Chuck Norris counted to infinity – twice.

• Chuck Norris’ hand is the only hand that can beat a Royal Flush.

• Chuck Norris can divide by zero.

• Chuck Norris once kicked a horse in the chin. Its descendants are known today as giraffes.

Feeling pumped to get out there and be awesome? We certainly are. Prepare yourself, pi – today is the day we finally make you into a rational number.

– Teresa Santoski

www.teresasantoski.com

Originally published March 10, 2010.

After a cold and tiring evening of shoveling and sanding, there’s nothing like warming up with something hot to drink. Today on National Irish Coffee Day, we encourage you to enjoy this seasonally suitable beverage and the amusing tale behind it.

Irish coffee was the creation of Joe Sheridan, head chef at the airport at Foynes, Ireland. During the winter of 1943, a flight bound for Newfoundland was forced to turn back to Foynes due to inclement weather. It was late at night when the passengers finally arrived, and they were badly in need of something to warm them.

Sheridan poured coffee into mugs, added a generous amount of Irish whiskey to each, and served it to the grateful passengers. One gentleman, curious to know more about this wonderful concoction, asked Sheridan if he had used Brazilian coffee. Sheridan jokingly replied that this was Irish coffee.

The name stuck, and Irish coffee quickly became the airport’s specialty. When Foynes Airport closed in 1946, Irish coffee moved to the newly constructed Shannon Airport, where it is served to arriving dignitaries to this day.

Here is the recipe Sheridan perfected, courtesy of the Foynes Flying Boat Museum:

• Place a spoon inside a stemmed whiskey glass. Heat both by filling the glass with boiling water for five seconds, leaving the heated spoon in the glass.
• Pour a shot of Irish whiskey into the glass. Add a teaspoon of brown sugar.
• Fill the glass to about a half inch below the rim with very hot, strong black coffee. Mix with the heated spoon to ensure the sugar melts completely.
• Now comes the tricky part. Carefully pour fresh cream over the back of the heated spoon so that it floats on top of the coffee. Pouring the cream over the back of the spoon adds a bit of fluffiness.
• Do not mix. Enjoy the beverage by sipping it through the layer of cream.

– Teresa Santoski

www.teresasantoski.com

Originally published Jan. 25, 2011.