Things I learned lately - 25 Jul

• 77% of Canadians think physician-assisted euthanasia should be legal.
• Fast food workers will earn a minimum of $15 per hour by 2018 in New York City.
• IKEA in Germany has a "Parking Lot for Dogs", to encourage customers not to leave their dogs in hot cars while shopping.
• Researchers from MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe developed an algorithm that can extract audio from silent videos by analyzing the tiny vibrations of the objects as captured by an ordinary camera.
• You can use potato chips as tinder to start a fire.
• There is now a state-wide ban on non-compostable plastic bags in Hawaii.
• The only mother / step-son / son trio to each have a #1 hit record: Shirley Jones / David Cassidy / Shaun Cassidy.
• Loons are unable to take off from land.
• There are people who can't recognize faces. The condition is known as prosopagnosia or face blindness. I knew someone with this condition and he never knew it was me until I started to talk.
• Mel Brooks is one of just 11 performers who have won an Emmy, an Oscar, a Grammy, and a Tony Award, the so called “Grand Slam” of show business.
• In 1895, the first volleyball game, originally called Mintonette was played in Holyoke Massachusetts at a YMCA. The inventor was the YMCA athletic director there, William G. Morgan. He set out to create a game with similar goals as basketball (can be played indoors, not a terribly rough game, requires some athletic skill), but for people who weren’t in great shape, such as middle-aged businessmen.
• Greek for 'turn', the Gyro derived its name from the method used to cook the meat, which revolves on a vertical spit.