You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

The "Harley Sprague" station is famous -- it's one of only two surviving examples of the pagoda-style stations that were trademarks of the Wadhams Oil Company, which built them in and around the Milwaukee area in the 1910s and 1920s. The design was inspired by the popularity of pagodas at various World's Fairs of the early 20th Century, but there was no further Japanese connection to the company, which eventually became a subsidiary of Socony-Vacuum. This particular station was the last of the Pagoda design to remain in operation as a gas station, continuing into the 1980s.

[Lee Stewart]

The word “pounds” does not have the letter L in it. Nor does it have a B. Yet if you see the three letters “lbs” written out, you almost certainly read it as “pounds.” Where did this seemingly random abbreviation come from?

Well, it has to do with where the word “pounds,” itself, comes from. “Pounds” derives from the name of an ancient Roman unit of measurement: Libra pondo.

[Lee Stewart]

In 1974, Wegmans became the third store in North America to introduce UPCs (Universal Product Codes) or barcodes onto its items. This laser technology, now commonplace the world over, was groundbreaking in the 1970s.

I was friends with one of the men who was on a design team for UPCs. There were two competing designs: the "picket fence" which we use today and the "bullseye" which lost. My friend was on the losing team.

[Lee Stewart]

Naples, Fla

[Lee Stewart]

Jacksonville, Fla.

[Lee Stewart]

Legend puts the 105-carat Koh-i-Noor diamond at more than 5,000 years old. It is believed to have been mined in India in the 1300s and once weighed 793 carats. It was presented to Queen Victoria, then Empress of India, in 1850, whose husband Prince Albert had the gem recut and polished, which reduced its size by about half. The gem is now in the Tower of London as part of the British Crown Jewels despite the fact that India has demanded its return since independence in 1947. Its exact value is unknown but the Graff Pink diamond, a quarter of its size, was sold in 2010 for $46 million.

[Lee Stewart]

The Ishtar Gate (575 BC) was built by King Nebuchadnezzar II as an impressive entrance to ancient Babylon (in modern-day Iraq), fashioned from enameled blue and green bricks and decorated with hundreds of reliefs of dragons and bulls. In 1902 German archaeologists started to unearth it. In 1928 the front part of the gate was rebuilt over a period of two years in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, where it remains today.

[Lee Stewart]

Fall River, MA

[Lee Stewart]

Soneva Jani-a luxury resort, in the Maldives.