It was just over one year ago today that we first shared some quotes and facts. In honor of our 939 million mile journey around the sun at 66,000 mph, we’re taking some time off to implement some major site changes, and sharing some peculiar facts we picked up about the solar system on this last trip around the sun. We’ll be back in the next few weeks.

Contrary to what you learned in school, there are eight planets.

Because its axial tilt is more or less perpendicular to the other planets, each pole of Uranus gets around 42 years of continuous sunlight, followed by 42 years of darkness.

Saturn’s moon Titan is larger than the planet Mercury .

Venus rotates “backwards” compared to other planets.

Venus’s day is longer than its year. It takes 243 Earth days to rotate once, and 225 days to circle the sun.

It takes 30,000 years for the sunlight you see to today to make its way from the sun’s core.

Saturn’s density is so low that it would float on water.

Jupiter has 318 times the mass of the Earth, but spins so fast its “day” is only ten hours long.

Nancy Astor: “Sir, if you were my husband, I would give you poison.”
Churchill: “If I were your husband I would take it.”

Bessie Braddock: “Winston, you are drunk.”
Winston Churchill: “Indeed madam, and you are ugly -  but tomorrow, I shall be sober.”

Earl Wilson: “Have you ever been mistaken for a man?”
Tallulah Bankhead: “No, have you?”

Earl of Sandwich: “I am convinced, Mr. Wilkes, that you will die either of a pox or on the gallows.”
John Wilkes: “That depends, my lord, on whether I embrace your mistress or your principles.”

Robert Benchley (to a uniformed man he distractedly assumed was the doorman):
“My good man, would you please get me a taxi?”
Uniformed Man:
“I’m not a doorman. I happen to be a rear admiral in the United States Navy.”
Robert Benchley:
“All right then, get me a battleship.”

Western Reporter: What do you think of Western civilization?”
Gandhi: “I think it would be a good idea.”

Actress Mary Anderson: “What is my best side, Mr. Hitchcock?”
Alfred Hitchcock: “My dear, you’re sitting on it.”

How many husbands have I had? You mean apart from my own?
- Zsa Zsa Gabor

Husbands are like fires – they go out when unattended.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor

A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.
- Helen Rowland

The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous; the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.
- H.L. Mencken

I think every woman’s entitled to a middle husband she can forget.
- Adela Rogers St. Johns

In society it is etiquette for ladies to have the best chairs and get handed things. In the home the reverse is the case. This is why ladies are more sociable than gentlemen.
- Virginia Graham

A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners.
- Mignon McLaughlin

Many who would not take the last cookie would take the last lifeboat.
- Mignon McLaughlin

Hospitality is making your guests feel at home, even if you wish they were.
- Unknown

I don’t think you want too much sincerity in society.  It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.
- W. Somerset Maugham

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

The test of good manners is to be patient with bad ones.
- Gabirol

Friends and good manners will carry you where money won’t go.
- Margaret Walker

The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.
- Fred Astaire

If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.
- J.M. Power

Don’t stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.
- George Burns

Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise.
- Laurence J. Peter

I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.
- Linda Evangelista

Bad habits are like a comfortable bed, easy to get into, but hard to get out of.
- Unknown

We could have left the sinistrals well enough alone, but that wouldn’t be right…

Left-handed men are 15% richer than right-handed men for those who attended college, and 26% richer if they graduated.

4 of the 5 original designers of the Macintosh computer were left-handed

1 in 4 Apollo astronauts were left-handed – 250% more than the normal level.

According to Scientific American, 15% of people are left-handed.

Men are twice as likely as women to be left-handed.

20% of all MENSA members report being left-handed.

50% of left-handed people report using a computer mouse with their left hands.

68% of left-handed people use their right hand for scissors, and 74% for their dinner knife.

In heraldry, the side of a coat of arms that is to the left of the bearer is called the sinister (opposed to the dexter).

Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.
- Nido Qubein

A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.
- Joyce A. Myers

So many fail because they don’t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin.
- W. Clement Stone

I had as many doubts as anyone else. Standing on the starting line, we’re all cowards.
- Alberto Salazar

There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on.
- Robert Byrne

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth…not going all the way, and not starting.
- Buddha

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
- Lao Tzu

The beginning is the most important part of the work.
- Plato

You’re searching, Joe, for things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings — there are no such things. There are only middles.
- Robert Frost

Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.
- Lazurus Long

It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Someone I know* says she has used this as her New Year’s resolution for a while, and will continue to do so. It’s not exactly a quote, but I thought it would be a great way to start the new year.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

~ Rudyard Kipling

The “someone” is Violist Christen Lien