This is something new for The Akumalian, and it was suggested by Denny Mahan.  The idea is to have a repository for little known facts, observation, and trivia, and you, the reader, can submit your pieces of wisdom.  And, rather than being spread out over many issues of The Akumalian, they will always be here, using the LIFO methodology.  Obviously, Denny had something in mind when he suggested this.

Needless to say, The Staff has editorial control on what gets put in here.

Ads for Watches
Denny Mahan says, “I discovered this year that probably 99 percent of ads for watches in magazines all show the watch set at 10:08 or 10:09.  Check them out, you will be shocked.”

            When asked about this, Denny point us to a web site that reports the reasons.  If you are interested look at Analog Watches at 10:08.

PIN Number Reversal (Good to Know)
Denny Mahan reports on this too.   If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your Pin # in reverse.  For example if your pin number is 1234 then you would put in 4321.  The ATM recognizes that your pin number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine.

 The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to help you.  This information was recently broadcasted on FOX TV and it states that it is seldom used because people don't know it exists.

UPDATED ALERT ON THIS PIN REVERSAL MESSAGE: 
It is now reported to be FALSE.  Go to Snopes PIN Alert to get the full explanation on this one.   Thanks to Lydia Pontius for the update
 

Kirk’s Original Coco Castile Soap
Diane Mahan says, “There is a bar of soap called "Kirk’s Original Coco Castile Soap" that they now sell at a lot of stores in the US, and we brought a bunch of it down here.  It is the most wonderful soap, not full of chemicals, and it suds up like no other.”

 Current national market research ranks Kirk's Original Coco Castile Soap as the top selling all-natural bar soap.

 "Castile" originally referred to the highly-prized vegetable-based soap produced in Castile, Spain.  For centuries this soap was considered "the soap of royalty", because of its luxurious lather and gentleness to the skin.

Newseum - Front Pages
Here’s another very interesting thing from Bud Blatner.  It is something you and your guests can use to “stay in touch” with back home.   It’s the Newseum.  Go to Front Pages and put your mouse over a city and see the front page from the local newspaper, and you can do a mouse click to see a larger image.  Up at the top right corner of each front page is a “Web Site” link that takes you to that newspaper. 

Also, if you look at the European papers, the far left side of Germany will pop up as The Stars & Stripes (European edition, of course).  And, this site changes everyday with the publication of new editions of the paper.

What have you got?