Monday Overnight Open Thread - February 17, 2025 [Doof]

Howdy Hordelings! Hope you enjoyed your Presidents' Day holiday. Sorry if you had to work today. The ONT is definitely NOT doing a Muttley laugh at your expense. Day off or not, please step on in to tonight's ONT!

Presidents' Day Content

Check out this 1732-2025 timeline of the lives of all 47 presidents.

How about some stuff you might not know? 45 Odd Facts About U.S. Presidents

2. Herbert Hoover invented his own sport.

Watch out, Calvin Coolidge Ball. To stay fit, Herbert Hoover and his personal physician invented their own sport: Hooverball. The game was a sort of cross between volleyball, tennis, and dodgeball, except much more terrifying, because it was played with a medicine ball.

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12. Richard Nixon proposed to his wife the day they met.

Pro tip: that is not a good idea. Then he obsessively pursued Pat for two years until she finally said yes.

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14. Richard Nixon's favorite snack was cottage cheese with ketchup.

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28. Calvin Coolidge really didn't like talking.

His nickname, Silent Cal, was well-earned. Upon hearing the news of the notoriously quiet Calvin Coolidge's death, Dorothy Parker reportedly asked, "How can they tell?"

Check out the whole thing. It's a fun read!

Remembering the humorous side of Ronaldus Maximus.

President Trump should strongly consider this.

Another interesting read about our presidents. 46 Surprising Facts About 46 Presidents
(Originally from Feb 15, 2022, Updated on Jan 21, 2025)

Here's an informative video from 4 years ago about the band featured in the Mystery Click behind the top photo.

Geography Nerd Content

This is pretty cool. Within this graphic is a visual of every major geography term.

Did you find this helpful? Did you learn anything? Do you even care?

"This map of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean was published in 1968 and is based on ocean depth surveys compiled by Bruce Heezen and Marie Tharp.
The map was painted by Heinrich Berann for the magazine National Geographic."

Florida Man!

Who doesn't love a good "Florida Man" story?

Florida Man Survives Gator Attack After Neighbors Drive Over the Beast With SUV

A pair of Florida residents are set to enjoy a show by former Tonight Show host Jay Leno as a deserved reward for snatching their neighbor from the jaws of death.

Or, perhaps it should read the jaws leased by death, because at the time they belonged to a massive American alligator that ran down Rick Fingeret walking his dogs down their Naples street.

Occurring after dark on Friday, April 19th of last year, Fingeret was passing a pond in which he had seen alligators lounging every so often, when he felt a tug on the leashes of his two dogs. They might have been Labradors, and fit for all kinds of emergency situations when trained, but this was an 11-foot-long gator, sprinting with its mouth open towards them at probably close to 10 miles per hour.

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“I tripped in all the frenzy,” Fingeret remembered. “And the minute I fell—(he claps his hands together to simulate the gator’s jaws closing)… He got me.”

Apparently, the pair lay on the grass for several moments, the gator unsure of what to do next.

“Every so often, you’d feel a lurch,” Fingeret says. “A tug. He wanted to move me, but he couldn’t. I was bigger than he had anticipated. I wanted it to know that I was there. I had a lot of fight left in me. And I was very conscious of not passing out. Because the minute that would happen, I would be done.”

He started hammering at the beast’s scaley armor, poking its eyes, and trying to pry open its jaws without any luck.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the strangest part of the story came in the next part which Fingeret narrated—his dogs lay at his side, silent, and probably frozen in terror. Somehow he managed to keep a hold of their leashes through the entire ordeal.

Next, neighbors Walt Rudder and Paula Keegan were driving by when they saw and heard Fingeret on his side, next to his dogs, screaming for help. They thought he had fallen and broken something, but after the dogs moved a little, they saw that unmistakable shape unchanged for 300 million years.

Mr. Rudder ran over and described a “supernatural” level of calm from which Fingeret instructed his neighbor to gather up his dogs and put them in the car—and then run the lizard over with it.

DJ Doof - Hail to the Chief Version
(Well, at least the words "Hail" and "Chief" are represented)

OK, here's the real Hail to the Chief song. Did you know it has lyrics??

Tonight's ONT brought to you by a reality check.

posted by Open Blogger at 10:00 PM

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