Pulling the Pin on an Idiotic Idiom

 

I’ve never understood the saying ‘Let’s put a pin in it’ as a way of suggesting putting something on hold.

Pins do anything but put things on hold. Put one in a balloon, it pops. Put one in humans, they bleed. Pull one from a grenade…you get the idea.

Just had to vent a moment. Now for a few less mysterious things, facts:

  • In 1923, the sheet music for ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’ sold 1,000 copies a day.
  • Since 1875, the exact weight of a kilogram has been defined by the International Prototype of the Kilogram, a cylinder that sits locked in an environmentally regulated vault outside Paris. Every 40 years, it’s removed and compared to a half-dozen copies around the world.
  • Flamingos can sleep in ponds that freeze around their legs at night, drink boiling water, and survive conditions that expose them to arsenic and poisonous gases.
  • Nutella has very few hazelnuts. It is 58% sugar and is 32% fat, most of which is palm oil.
  • Prostitute in the Netherlands pay taxes.
  • Under apartheid in South Africa, Filipinos were classified as black while Chinese were considered”non-white” and Japanese, Taiwanese and Koreans were “honorary whites.”
  • In the European Union you are not allowed to skip your break if you are working more than 6 hours a day.
  • While 71% of Americans believe in hell, only 0.5% think that they are likely to end up there, a survey found.