Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for August 18, 2020

Don’t fork with the church. It’s none of your forking business.

Hummingbirds are dedicated to the idea that red means flower nectar here.

I’ve seen videos of them hovering near a woman’s brightly lipsticked mouth, unsure of what to do next. Others where they actually inserted their beaks into round vent holes in a red baseball cap on a guy’s head.

And when there’s too much of a crowd at my feeder, some will swoop down to the driveway below and try to figure out how to feed from my car’s tail lights.

The feeder, by the way, became much more popular with them when I festooned it with curls of red ribbon.

The Byzantine Empire adopted the use of forks pretty much as soon as they were offered by traveling traders. Their branch of the Church had no issues with them.

France and Spain were early adopters too.

But in all cases the use was, for obvious reasons, limited to those who could afford them. Those who couldn’t consoled themselves by ridiculing those who used them. Laughing and pointing and yelling “Fork bearer!” followed.

They were considered affectations, silly and pretentious and un-needed. After all, we have hands and fingers, don’t we?

And that’s where and why “the church” (little “c”) offered a justification after the fact by explaining that forks were an insult to God, who had given us hands and fingers. The fork/tines superficial resemblance to hand/fingers was invoked. The implication was that forks were a human invention intended to replace God’s creation and to reject God’s gift.

These were examples of a popular attitude being supported with pious reasoning. Such “reasoning” was itself a pretentious affectation.

I doubt seriously that the “Church” (capital “C”) ever held a convocation to formalize any such rule against forks.

Organic Himalayan farming methods?

Did they field collect yeti patties for fertilizer?

What the fork?

An anagram for Gopals name is Aged Pulpit Tutor. Just saying.

“The church” – I hope you only mean the Catholic church. There were other churches too, no matter how hard the Catholic clergy persecuted them. While the other (persecuted) Christian churches mostly took care about getting to know God better, the Catholic clergy made out stupid religious superstitions like this about the forks…

I’ve had hummers land on the feeder while I’m still hanging it up. I’ve also feared for my eyes when they zip a foot from my face and stare me down!

“Hummingbird, don’t fly away, fly away—” Seals And Crofts.

Anyone who knows about hummingbirds is not surprised in the least bit that this worked.

Is the .1 foot supposed to make this more believable?

Feeders on your glasses? What a birdbrain.

Hummers will feed from your hand if you have the patience to be still.

On this day in history on August 18th 1920 Tennessee becomes the thirty-sixth state to ratify the nineteenth amendment granting women’s suffrage, completing the three-quarters necessary to put the amendment into effect.

Maybe I would be more impressed if I knew what a coriander plant is.

They are sacrilegious. That’s what’s so good about them.

Take care and gesundheit.

There is no documented proof the Church called forks ‘immoral’.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/42159/did-the-catholic-church-forbid-the-use-of-forks-in-medieval-times

I was curious about how tall coriander normally grows and I learned a couple of things. First, coriander is the seed portion of the cilantro plant. Second, the average height for cilantro (coriander) is 2 feet so the fact that Gopal was able to get his plant to grow to slightly over 7 feet is quite impressive!

It worked, but he got hummingbird poop in his beard.

During a sever drought, we put out four large hummingbird feeders and had several hundred birds feeding every day. When I would go out to fill them first thing in the morning, they would land on my head and shoulders as I hung the feeders. There were so many early in the morning that the sound of their wings would wake us up. We called them hummercopters!

That’s a lot of cilantro. (Cilantro is the leaves of the coriander plant, and the seeds are ground for coriander)

Did he eat the hummingbirds?

Too bad the bird enthusiast is anonymous. I’d like to confirm whether I know him.

He’s now blind, but happy to be a part of the pecking order…

Forks got that undeserved reputation in the 13th century when a bishop bent over at a church banquet. (It’s said he could be heard in the next town)…