USELESS INFO TUESDAY

~ Wisconsin produces more than half of the U.S.'s cranberry crop.  Massachusetts is second, followed by New Jersey and then Oregon.  The rest of the nation's crop is grown in Washington, Maine, Michigan and Minnesota.

~  Korea was once known as the Hermit Kingdom because of its strict isolationism in the late 19th century, before it signed trade agreements with the U.S. and other Western nations.

~  Before the collapsible metal tube was invented, artists commonly used small pouches made from a pig's bladder to hold their oil paints.  The metal tube was invented in 1841 by South Carolina portrait artist John G. Rand. (I was tempted to find a picture of a pig's bladder)

~  The width of a cut made by a saw is called the kerf.

~  When computer scientist Scott Fahlman introduced the smiley face emoticon in 1982 it was called the joke marker.  Fahlman, who is known as the father of the emoticon, created the :-) symbol so people would know when an e-mail was not intended to be taken seriously.