3 "Like Ripley said..."
Robert LeRoy Ripley (December 25, 1893 - May 27, 1949) was a cartoonist, entrepreneur,
and amateur anthropologist who created the world famous Ripley's Believe It or Not!
newspaper panel series, featuring odd but true facts from around the world. Subjects
covered in Ripley's cartoons and text ranged from sports feats to little known facts about
unusual and exotic sites, but what ensured the concept's popularity may have been that
Ripley also included items submitted by readers, who supplied photographs of a wide variety
of small town American trivia, ranging from unusually shaped vegetables to oddly marked
domestic animals, all documented by photographs and then engagingly depicted by Ripley's
prolific pen."
-- Reference: Wikipedia.org
4 "...Voltaire..."
"François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), better known by the pen
name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, deist and philosopher known
for his wit, philosophical sport, and defense of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and
the right to a fair trial. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform despite strict
censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them. A satirical polemicist, he
frequently made use of his works to criticize Christian Church dogma and the French
institutions of his day. Many of Voltaire's works and ideas would influence important thinkers
of both the American and French Revolutions."
-- Reference: Wikipedia.org
5 "... old Underwood typewriter..."
The Underwood Typewriter Company was a manufacturer of typewriters headquartered in
New York City, New York. Underwood produced what is considered the first widely
successful, modern typewriter. By 1939, Underwood had produced five million
machines.
From 1874 the Underwood family made typewriter ribbons and carbon paper, and were
among a number of firms who produced these goods for Remington. When Remington
decided to start producing ribbons themselves, the Underwoods apparently decided to get
into the business of manufacturing typewriters.
The original Underwood typewriter was invented by German-American Franz X. Wagner,
who showed it to entrepreneur John T. Underwood. Underwood supported Wagner and
bought the company, recognizing the importance of the machine. Underwood No. 1 and No.
2s, made between 1896 and 1900, had "Wagner Typewriter Co." printed on the back.
Underwood started adding addition and subtraction devices to their typewriters in about
1910. During World War II Underwood produced M1 carbines for the war effort. Olivetti
bought a controlling interest in Underwood in 1959, and completed the merger in October
1963, becoming known in the US as Olivetti-Underwood with headquarters in New York City,
and entering the electromechanical calculator business. The Underwood name last
appeared on Olivetti portable typewriters produced in Spain in the 1980s.
-- Reference: Wikipedia.org
6 "...personal Hell..."
"The modern English word Hell is derived from Old English hel, helle (about 725 AD) and
ultimately from Proto-Germanic halja, meaning "one who covers up or hides something".
-- Reference: Wikipedia.org
7 "...Top Secret"...
"Top Secret is the highest acknowledged level of classified information in many countries,
where it is defined as material that would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national
security if disclosed. The term top secret can be applied to information, actions,
organizations, projects, etc. of which any knowledge is highly restricted."
-- Reference: Wikipedia.org
8 "... self-administered euthanasia...."
"The term euthanasia comes from the greek words "eu" and "thanatos" which combined
means “well-death” or "dying well". Hippocrates mentions euthanasia in the Hippocratic
Oath, which was written between 400 and 300 B.C. The ancient Greeks and Romans
generally did not believe that life needed to be preserved at any cost and were, in
consequence, tolerant of suicide in cases where no relief could be offered to the dying or, in
the case of the Stoics and Epicureans, where a person no longer cared for his life."
-- Reference: Wikipedia.org