Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 26, 1995 TAG: 9502240052
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A: No one can say for sure who invented them, but it is believed they were first developed in the 1960s for ski patrol members who needed to carry medical supplies. They also have been used in the military for carrying small supplies. They quickly became popular with bicyclists, whose tight- fitting shorts have no pockets, and by the early 1980s European tourists were sporting them all over America. In Norway, they're called rumptaske. Also known as waist bags, they were voted the hottest product of 1988 by Adweek magazine.
Q: Is a sardine a species of fish or a minnow?
A: Neither. It's a size of fish. At least 21 different kinds of fish can be sardines. Minnows are members of the carp family, and not all of them are small.
Q: Who will succeed Boris Yeltsin?
A: ``If he resigns or is otherwise unable to perform his duties, he will be succeeded by the prime minister, Victor Chernomyrdin,'' said a spokesman at the Russian Embassy in Washington.
Q: How much money did Joe Rosenthal receive for his photo of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima?
A: Shortly after taking the photo of the Iwo flag-raising, Rosenthal received a raise from his employer, The Associated Press, a bonus of a year's salary and $1,500 in award money. That was the last money he made off the picture. Rights to the flag- raising photo are held by AP. If anything, Rosenthal said the photo has cost him money. Each day, he is deluged with mail and he tries to respond to each letter or request for an autograph. Postage alone, he said, probably has amounted to hundreds of dollars. With Rosenthal's consent, the AP decided in 1945 to turn over all future proceeds from the photo to the Navy Relief Society.
Q: How does red wine reduce the risk of heart attack?
A: It keeps your coronary arteries unclogged. Studies for the past 30 years show that alcohol increases levels of good cholesterol and reduces levels of bad cholesterol. But researchers found clot-fighting in red wine was significantly better than in other alcoholic beverages, even white wine. They believe it's the flavonoids - hundreds of naturally occurring compounds found in the skins, stems and seeds - in red grapes that give red wine its ability to reduce the ``stickiness'' of blood-clotting cells, called platelets. If you don't want to imbibe the wine, six glasses of grape juice will do for two glasses of wine.
Q: Two new aircraft carriers will be named after Ronald Reagan and Harry S. Truman. What other presidents have had carriers named after them?
A: Carriers named for George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy are on active duty. The carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt was scrapped May 1, 1978, ``and sold for razor blades,'' as a spokeswoman for the Navy Historical Society in Washington put it.
Q: The tragedy of the four soldiers in Ranger school in Florida has me wondering about the Rangers' history. Did they exist in both world wars?
A: No, not until World War II. In early 1942, an elite all-volunteer unit called Darby's Rangers was formed to be the American equivalent of a British commando outfit. It had fewer than 700 soldiers and was officially designated the 1st Ranger Battalion. Commanded by Col. William Darby, the Rangers were the first troops to wade ashore in landings in North Africa, Sicily, mainland Italy and Normandy, under cover of darkness. They are the predecessors of today's Army special operations soldiers, which include the Special Forces.
Four battalions were added to the Rangers during World War II and two of them, the 2nd and the 5th, participated in the D-Day landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944. It was there that the Rangers found their motto: ``Rangers lead the way.'' Rangers today follow the traditions of their World War II predecessors - first into Grenada and Panama. Rangers candidates are required to complete a grueling 9 1/2-week school before they can join. Candidates spend about 3 1/2weeks at Fort Benning, Ga., for general Ranger training; two weeks in Dahlonega, Ga., for mountain training; two weeks in Florida for jungle training; and two weeks in Texas for desert training. .
Q: Where does the name Iditarod come from, as in the famous dog sled race in Alaska?
A: It's an Athabascan Indian word, which roughly translates to ``place of clear water'' or ``distant place.'' The name was given to a river and an Indian village, which became a town during the gold rush.
Q: How many time zones are there?
A: Twenty-four, one for each hour of the day: 12 west of Greenwich and 12 to the east. But there are many nonstandard zones carved out of the standard zones, some with differences of as little as 15 minutes, and it can get confusing.
Q: How many professional baseball players are involved in the strike?
A: When the strike began Aug. 12, the 763 players who were on major league rosters stopped working, uh, playing. Since then, the Players' Association has asked all players on 40-man rosters (major leaguers and top minor league prospects) to stay out of spring training camps. That has pushed the total of potential strikers to nearly 1,100.
Q: By what authority could President Clinton skirt Congress and make the decision to help Mexico with its debt? Aren't foreign matters for Congress to decide?
A: When Clinton signed the executive order granting Mexico a $20 billion line of credit, he was exercising an authority all presidents have had since George Washington. Congress could have decided to help or not to help Mexico, but when it could make no decision, the president stepped in. Until the turn of the century, executive orders were called proclamations. They can have both foreign and domestic implications, ranging from routine administrative delegations of authority to imposing sanctions on another country. They are recorded in the Federal Register, and a list is published every year. They are legal and enforceable. They can be challenged, but challenges meet with little success. A president can revoke an order, including that of a former president.
Q: Does Court TV show any of the Supreme Court's hearings?
A: No. Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, ban all electronic coverage of their proceedings. A three-year limited experiment with televised coverage ended last year, and the policy-making U.S. Judicial Conference chose to return to the flat ban.
by CNB