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Humor #83

Thanks to Dave Lankford 

Only In America! 
A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to a parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the lawyer three months to track down. After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply (actual letter):  

"Upon review of your letter adjoining your client's loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title.  While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral property back to 1803.  
Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin."  Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows (actual letter):

"Your letter regarding title in Case No. 189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 194 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased by the  
U.S. from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application. For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the then reigning monarch, Isabella.  

The good queen, being a pious woman and careful about titles, almost as much as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to fund Columbus' expedition. Now the Pope, as I'm sure you know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that He also made that part of the world called Louisiana. He, therefore, would be the owner of origin. I hope you find His original claim to be satisfactory. Now, may we have our loan?"   They got it.

Thank to Jenny Andrews

  Where Do You Live?  
You live in California when . . .  

You make over $250,000 and you still can't afford to buy a house.

The high school quarterback calls a timeout to answer his cell phone.

The fastest part of your commute is going down your driveway.

You know how to eat an artichoke.

You drive to your neighborhood block party.

When someone asks you how far something is, you tell them how long it

will take to get there rather than how many miles away it is.

You live in New York when . . .

You say "the city" and expect everyone to know you mean Manhattan.

You have never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building.

You can get into a four hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park, but can't find Wisconsin on a map.

You think Central Park is "nature."

You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multilingual.

You've worn out a car horn.

You think eye contact is an act of aggression.

  You live in Alaska when . . .

You only have four spices: salt, pepper, ketchup and Tabasco.

Halloween costumes fit over parkas.

You have more than one recipe for moose.

Sexy lingerie is anything flannel with less than eight buttons.

The four seasons are: winter, still winter, almost winter, and construction.

You live in the South when . . .

You get a movie and bait in the same store.

"Ya'll" is singular and "all ya'll" is plural.

After a year you still hear, "You ain't from round here, are ya?"

"He needed killin' " is a valid defense.

Everyone has 2 first names: Billy Bob, Jimmy Bob, Mary Sue, Fay Ann

 You live in Colorado when . . .

You carry your $3,000 mountain bike atop your $500 car.

You tell your husband to pick up Granola on his way home and he stops at the day care center to get her.

A pass does not involve a football or dating.

The top of your head is bald, but you still have a pony tail.

 You live in the Midwest when . . .

You've never met any celebrities, but the mayor knows your name.

Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor.

You have had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" on the same day.

You end sentences with a preposition: "Where's my coat at?"

When asked how your trip was to any exotic place, you say, "It was different."

The World Trade Center

1. The WTC opened in 1970 after 8 years of construction.

2. The WTC was the dream of David Rockefeller, chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and Nelson Rockefeller, former Governor of New York.

3. The Rockefellers wanted to name the towers after themselves, but the mayor of NY, John Lindsay, insisted
     on the World Trade Center.

4. The City chose to build the WTC instead of building a new tunnel and large bridge over the Hudson River.

5. The World Trade Center was designed by architect Minoura Yamasaki.

6. According to Yamasaki, downtown Manhattan was the perfect place to erect the towers because there
     wasn't "a single building worth saving in the neighborhood."

7. Owners of nearby buildings disagreed, and delayed demolition by three weeks with their protests.

8. Sixteen blocks were cleared to house the completed WTC.

9. More than 10,000 workers involved in building the complex.

10. More than 60 of them died during construction.

11. The excavation work displaced enough soil to create Liberty Park, where four 60-floor towers and four
        apartment buildings were constructed.

12. The WTC's foundations were laid at 60 feet below ground level.

13. The complex covered 16 acres when finished.

14. In addition to the towers, five other office buildings made up the WTC complex.

15. The WTC had 12 million square feet of space.

16. Each floor was 50,000 square feet.

17. The buildings had their own ZIP codes - 10047 and 10048.

18. The towers were designed to look like a futuristic sculpture.

19. The structure was revolutionary. Its main supports were external, lining the four corners of each tower.

20. Critics condemned the completed buildings as "boring."

21 Completed, the buildings were 100 feet taller then the Empire State building.

22. Until the construction of Chicago's Sears Tower and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the
       twin towers were the world's tallest buildings.

23. The North Tower's 347 foot radio tower technically allowed the WTC to still call itself the world's tallest
        building.

24. The towers were different heights. The South tower was 1,362 feet tall, and big brother North tower was
       1,368.

25. Sixty-eight miles of steel were used in the construction of the buildings.

26 .The concrete poured was enough to build a road from New York to Washington, D .C.

27. The steel inside the WTC could have made three more Brooklyn Bridges.

28. The Twin Towers had more than 16 miles of staircases.

29. There were 43,600 windows.

30. The windows were small to reduce the of heat or cold entering the building. Regular size windows would
       have made the heat unbearable in the summertime.

31. The WTC's 600,000 square feet of glass was cleaned by an automatic machine.

32. The building had 20,000 elevator doors.

33. Of the WTC's 239 banks of elevators, one was known as the fastest in the U.S.

34. The main elevators at 27 feet a second reached the top in less than a minute.

35. There were 828 emergency exit doors.

36. 23,000 fluorescent light bulbs lit the interior.

37. Originally, there were no light switches in the towers, because energy prices were one-third less than they
       are today. In 1982, switches were installed.

38. 12,000 miles of electrical cable snaked through the building, supplying power to 15 trading floors for
       stockbrokers.

39. The 75,000 telephones were maintained by 19,600 miles of cable.

40. There were more than 300 computer mainframes on site.

41. The WTC used more power in one day than most small American cities.

42. Steam supplied by a plant on New York's East River was used to heat the buildings.

43. The buildings housed 49,000 tons of air-conditioning equipment.

44. More than 250,000 cans of paint were needed every year for upkeep of the Towers.

45. The surrounding shopping center complex included 3,250,000 square feet of restaurants and stores.

46. Six banks, five investment firms and three insurance companies called their headquarters there, in the
       building.

47. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had its headquarters in the building.

48. American Express had three floors in the WTC.

49. The WTC was home base for Bank of America.

50. The trade center housed two top restaurants, the Windows on the World and Wild Blue.

51. Windows on the World had one of the best vintage wine collections in the United States.

52. More than 50,000 people worked in the twin towers.

53. By 9 a.m. each weekday morning, the buildings had an average of 35,000 employees at their desks.

54. More than 200,000 people - half of them tourists - moved through the buildings each day.

55. The South Tower had an observation deck that was visited by more than 26,000 people a day.

56. An information sign at the top assured visitors that the buildings had been designed to withstand airplane
      crashes.

57. The towers could be seen from at least 20 miles away.

58. On a clear day, it was possible to see for 45 miles in every direction from the observation deck.

59. The express elevator to the observation deck was the largest in the

U.S. with a 55-person capacity.

60. Every president since 1973 paid a visit to the landmark.

61. President Ronald Reagan watched July 4th fireworks celebrations from the WTC on two occasions.

62. Superstars Frank Sinatra, John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Liza Minelli all sang in WTC restaurants.

63. Two New York TV stations incorporated the twin tower image into their logos.

64. The towers served 10 New York TV stations with 10 antennas on the top.

65. More postcards of the WTC were sent each year than any other building in the world.

66. In 1974, a Frenchman, Phillipe Petit, strung a tightrope between the two towers and walked across.

67. Three men successfully parachuted from the top of the towers.

68. More than a dozen mountain climbers have scaled the building.

69. In 1975 a jobless construction worker parachuted from the South Tower to publicize the plight of the
       unemployed.

70. The most famous man to climb the building was George Willig - who was arrested at the top.

71. Willig was fined one penny for each of the 110 floors he scaled.

72. Last year, a man in a micro-light aircraft crashed into the North Tower.

73. In the concourse beneath the towers, there were more than 75 stores.

74. Each day, over 150,000 commuters passed through the three subway stations there.

75. Eighty seven tons of food was delivered to the building each day.

76. Over 30,000 cups of coffee were poured daily in the basement cafes.

77. Twenty-two doctors had practices there.

78. Seventeen babies were born on the site.

79. Irv Silverstein recently bought the WTC for almost $3.2 billion.

80. The WTC generated $110 million a year in profit.

81. More than three dozen movies have been filmed there.

82. The best known film to use the WTC as a location was the 1976 remake of King Kong.

83. The 1993 bombing of the WTC killed six people and injured 1,000 more.

84. 1,300 pounds of explosives ripped through the garage in the 1993 attack.

85. That bomb created a crater 16 feet deep and badly damaged inner support beams.

86. Before the 1993 attack, there were three closed circuit television networks for security.

87. After the bombing, the cameras were increased to 300 monitored by computers.

88. More than 300 security guards worked there.

89. The WTC featured security centers on 14 different floors and its own police station.

90. The entrance lobbies had 16 concierge desks and 12 X-ray machines.

91. After the first bombing, no one could get inside the buildings without an ID check.

92. It took an average of five minutes for a visitor to pass through security checks.

93. Before the 1993 bombing, there were more than 1,000 parking spaces beneath the buildings; 600
       remained afterward.

94. All vehicles using the parking lot had to show FBI security passes.

95. On Sept. 11, the building was 95 percent full, with over 400 tenants.

96. New York Gov. George Pataki had an office in the WTC, but wasn't there when the disaster struck.

97. Both the Secret Service and the FBI rented office space there.

98. $110.3 million in gold and 120.7 million in silver is buried in the rubble. (Not true, the gold and most of the
       silver has been recovered. JE)

99. The combined weight of the towers was more than 1.5 million tons.

100. Each tower was built to safely sway about three feet during strong wind storms.

101. Blue Cross-Blue Shield, New York's largest health insurance company, moved into the building 3 years
         ago.

102. Nine chapels serving six different faiths called the WTC home.

103. Twenty-nine countries had trade mission offices in the buildings.

104. Every major U.S. airline had ticket offices inside the WTC.