A to Z Historic Trivia - M

M

A “Month of Sundays” sounds like an awfully long time. The phrase has been in use hyperbolically since about 1759, with the underlying connotation being a long, dreary time, since fun and games on a Sunday were frowned upon back then. 

Mathematically, it’s only 30 weeks or so, but it can seem like an eternity when you’re waiting for the rain to stop so you can go out and mingle again. Rather than brood, I prefer to keep busy working, watching movies, or – and herein lies the method to my madness - pondering such things as the absence of monkeys and apes on the island of Madagascar. For some reason, when Madagascar broke away from the continent of India and became the fourth largest island in the world, the aforementioned primates were not on board. Lemurs (Latin for “ghosts”), however, did make the shift – likely by rafting over on clumps of vegetation – to perhaps a hundred million years of isolation. Without competition from monkeys and such, lemurs evolved into seventy different species that, in addition to flora and fauna, are not found anywhere else on earth.

∞

When I heard of a 29-story building without any windows in Manhattan, I had to know why. I didn’t have to dig too deep to find out that AT&T built it to accommodate telephone switching equipment in 1974. But that was then. Reputable sources now report the National Security Agency as the current occupant.   Manhattan is also the location of the world’s wealthiest individual church parish, which established in 1696, encompasses 14 acres, and is valued at 2 billion. What I found even more astonishing is that a humble hot-dog vendor, working just outside Central Park Zoo, pays $289,500 annually for space rent. I wonder how much those hot-dogs cost?

I admit to being mystified at how in one of the most densely populated places on earth (72K per square mile), nearly half of the people live alone.

Happy blogging!