Winner, Winner, WINesday #3: The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2013 Review + Giveaway

Winner, Winner, WINesday #3: The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2013 Review + Giveaway

UPDATE: CLOSED…and the winner is:

Julie D says I subscribe to your daily emails.

About: The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2013: Get thousands of facts right at your fingertips with this updated resource.

The World Almanac® and Book of Facts is America’s top-selling reference book of all time, with more than 82 million copies sold. Published annually since 1868, this compendium of information is the authoritative source for all your entertainment, reference, and learning needs. Praised as a “treasure trove of political, economic, scientific and educational statistics and information” by The Wall Street Journal, The World Almanac® contains thousands of facts that are unavailable publicly elsewhere—in fact, ithas been featured as a category on Jeopardy! and is routinely used as a go-to, all-encompassing guide for aspiring game show contestants. The 2013 edition of The World Almanac® and Book of Facts will answer all of your trivia questions—from history and sports to geography, pop culture, and much more.

From a hit TV-show cast blowing up someone’s front door to insane weather known as “haboob” storms, 2012 was filled with surprising and captivating news stories.  Inspired by these fascinating events, The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2013 has unveiled the Top “Offbeat News Stories of 2012.” Here is a sampling of stories that were included:

Cannonball Myth: Confirmed. The Discovery Channel’s MythBusters is known for two things: using scientific experiments to check the plausibility of physical phenomena and blowing things up. The cast members frequently note that they’re professionals and that most of their experiments shouldn’t be tried at home. But even profession­als need to exercise caution, especially when explosives are involved. A team from the show Dec. 6, 2011, was setting up an experiment to test whether a stone cannonball could penetrate a stone castle wall. They were firing cannonballs into water bar­rels at a Dublin, CA, police firing range to calibrate a homemade cannon when the muzzle lifted upon firing. The 30-lb cannon­ball banked off a safety berm and launched 700 yds into a sub­urban neighborhood. The runaway projectile hit the sidewalk, bounded through the front door of a house, and crashed through the wall of a second-story bedroom where a woman and her tod­dler were sleeping. The cannonball continued across a busy road and ricocheted off the roof of another house before coming to rest inside a minivan. Luckily, no one was hurt. The MythBusters hosts apologized, promised to take more care in the future, and pledged never to air footage of the incident on the show.

Spot the Pig. In hindsight, having prisoners work on elements of police cruisers might have been asking for trouble. The Vermont State Police logo is a modified version of the state’s seal and coat of arms. It includes a pine tree, some sheaves of grain, and a red Holstein cow. While the cow is supposed to be solid red, the cows on police vehicles have spots. A Vermont state trooper cleaning his patrol car Feb. 1, 2012, noticed that one of the spots on the cow was shaped like a pig. (“Pig” is a derogatory term for a police officer.) Investigations found that the logo decals had been made at a print shop at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in 2009, and that an inmate had modified the computer file with the logo to add the pig. Despite a Facebook petition to “Save the Vermont Pigs” or auction the logo decals for charity, they were destroyed and replaced, at a cost of $780.

How to Live on $30 a Month. Eric Simons lived in AOL’s offices in Palo Alto, CA, rent-free for two months before anyone was the wiser. Simons, a 19-year-old with an educational software startup, participated in a 3½-month incubator program on the AOL campus. Simons didn’t have enough money for rent after the program was over, but he did still have an active AOL security badge. They had everything he needed: free food (cereal, ramen, and trail mix), a gym with showers, and even a laundromat. During the day, he worked on his startup. Workers who saw him in the morning assumed he got there early; those who saw him at the end of the day figured he was working late. He spent only $30 dur­ing the first month of his residence, but eventually, word got out and he was expelled. By then he had made enough prog­ress to get capital to cover the rent on a house in Palo Alto … where he promptly sublet the use of bunk beds to two other programmers.

Knight of the Elm. One might not expect a professional logger to become famous for saving a tree, but logger Frank Knight of Yarmouth, ME, didn’t fit preconceptions. While he made his living felling and selling trees, he also worked to protect trees in his neighbor­hood. He tried hardest to save a 110-ft-tall elm planted in 1793, nicknamed “Herbie.” In 1956, when Herbie and other Yar­mouth elms were first threatened by Dutch elm disease, Knight came to the rescue. He carefully pruned the tree for decades, but by Jan. 2010, Herbie could no longer be saved. Knight, then 101 years old, told the Associated Press that Herbie’s “time has come, and mine is about due, too.” Herbie’s wood was supplied to local artisans, who used it to make tables, ornaments, and even an electric guitar. Some of these items were auctioned off, raising more than $45,000 to pay for the planting of more trees in Yarmouth.  Knight died May 14, 2012, at the age of 103 and was laid to rest in a casket made from Herbie’s wood. His son, Dick Knight, told the Boston Herald, “Frank cared for Herbie for 52 years, and now Herbie will care for Frank forever.”

Ev’rybody Wants to See a Cat. Cat videos are a mainstay of Internet culture, so they seemed to qualify for the Walker Art Center’s Open Field initiative for experimental public programming. The museum, in Minneapo­lis, MN, decided to host the first Internet Cat Video Film Festi­val, for which they winnowed 10,000 video submissions to 79. They wondered if the online community would really turn out for an offline event. But on Aug. 30, 2012, an estimated 10,000 people attended the festival—some in cat costumes, some with cats in tow. There were even a few dogs. The “Golden Kitty,” a people’s choice award, went to “Henri 2, Paw de Deux,” a black-and-white short in which Henri the cat expresses his ennui in French (with English subtitles). The video—one of five starring Henri as of Oct. 2012—has led to sales of Henri-related mer­chandise, and Random House plans to publish a book starring the bored chat in 2013.

My thoughts? I have a son that is a true lover of facts… and he is constantly asking more and more questions all the time. I love that he is curious, and I also love that he seeks answers. We have had a fun time as a family looking through this book at all of the exciting and, to be quite honest, sometimes rather boring facts that it holds! They pack a LOT into each World Almanac, and it’s a great reference to have on hand!

Where to purchase? You can purchase The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2013 right now on Amazon for $10.39!

The Giveaway: ONE lucky SheSaved reader will a copy of the The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2013

Entry #1: Leave a comment answering this question: Who would you like to win the The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2013 for?

Entry #2 ~ Subscribe to my daily email newsletter or RSS Feed (and if you already do, thank you … give yourself this entry as well)

Entry #3 ~ “Like” SheSaved on Facebook (and if you already do, thank you … give yourself this entry as well)

… I will leave this giveaway open until Sunday night at 10pm, February 3rd (mnt time) if you can still comment…you can still win! (that means that if I haven’t closed it yet, and you are still able to comment, you are still entered!) … once closed, I will select one winner who will have 48 hours to contact me to claim their prize! GOOD LUCK!!

*Disclosure: I did receive this product to facilitate my review. These opinions are my own and were in no way influenced by another person.

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