Dale's Daily Data

What were people most interested in during 2012? Google will give you an idea. Here is their year-ending list of the Top 10 most-searched items for the past 12 months.

It started as a special treat in New York City on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.

Channel 11 in New York, began the tradition of a televised Yule Log back in 1966. The station's general manager loved Christmas. Because he grew up in a home that had a fireplace, he always associated its warmth with Christmas

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There are many traditions and superstitions surrounding Christmas around the world.  From Europe to Asia and South America, let's take a look at some of them.In Italy, instead of Christmas trees, they decorate small wooden pyramids with fruit.

Ukranians decorate their trees with an artificial spider and matching web. A spider web found on Christmas morning is believed to bring good luck.

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Here we are counting down the days until the end of the world this Friday. We’re not exactly sure when it’s going to happen – at the stroke of midnight or at noon or during morning rush hour – the Mayan calendar doesn’t specify. Are you worried? I’m not because we’ve survived the end of the world many times before.

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It’s some local history that most people don’t know about. People who even live near where it happened may have heard about it, but probably don’t know the details. It was the worst railroad disaster to that point in American history and it happened just outside the Village of Angola when the last car of the Buffalo-bound Lake Shore Express derailed while crossing Big Sister Creek.

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Ohio calls itself the "Birthplace of Aviation."  North Carolina proclaims itself "First In Flight."  Both take credit for the Wright brothers and their inventions.  Which one has the most convincing bragging rights?  Actually both states do. 

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It was all because Arthur Fry lost his temper in church back in 1980.

He always knew there had to be a simple solution to every problem if you just thought about it long enough. He loved to sing with his church choir. And he liked to keep track of all of the songs in his hymnal because the choir director would skip back and forth from the back of the book to the front.

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It was and still is the most unpopular coin in U-S history. Other than the depiction of Lady Liberty on many coins, it was the first U-S coin to feature a woman.

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You might have some annual Christmas traditions in your house. Maybe it’s the way you hand out gifts or the foods you eat or when you eat. Many Americans continue traditions passed down to them from their European ancestors. One you’re probably familiar with is the Christmas pickle. It was a mainly German tradition of hiding a glass pickle ornament on the tree and the first kid to find it would get an extra gift and good luck for the coming year.

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I’ve always stressed myself over Christmas shopping. I’m always way too concerned over whether the person I’m giving a gift to will actually like it. The better you know someone the easier it is to buy them a gift, or just be a careful listener. They’ll give you clues and they won’t even know it.

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If you mention the name Leonardo da Vinci – you’d think of him first as an artist. The Mona Lisa and the Last Supper are his two most famous paintings. There’s evidence he did over a hundred paintings, but only 18 of them survive.

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He starred as Tarzan in 12 movies between 1932 and 1948 and then 16 Jungle Jim movies after that. Today is the date in history when Johnny Wiesmuller set the then record for the 150-yard freestyle swim in 1925. Weismuller was a world class athlete who won a gold medal at the 1924 Olympics, then five more at the 1928 Olympics. In 1931, MGM cast him to play Tarzan the Ape Man and he kept himself in shape right thru the end of the series in 1948. The film series moved to TV in 1966.

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