Scoops and Scrapes is contributed to the Daily Bulletin by Kimberley resident Brian Crowe. All material is courtesy of Brian Crowe and Teck Cominco Ltd.

Back in the day of the Cominco magazines, there were was, in many an issue, a trick page, a puzzle or some words of wisdom or knowledge. Those glossy magazines were special, and they still surface from time to time in many circles.

They were produced from February 1940 to 1971 - 31 years of journals devoted entirely to the interests and entrainment of the Consolidated family.

Here are some topics of wisdom that probably never made it into those trick or puzzle pages of the company magazine.

- The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.

- In 1861, William Fernie and a party of party of white men were the first Europeans to winter in the upper parts of the Columbia River. The Indians they met said they would all freeze to death. It was the coldest winter ever known. The Columbia River was frozen from Astoria up to its source for over two months.

- The first Sullivan pillar blast was fired in 1943 when one ton of explosive broke 10,000 tons of ore. Typically, the N-14-30 pillar blast used 47.5 tons of explosive to break 842,000 tons of ore. P-14-30 called for 57 tons of explosive and broke well over a million tons of ore, 13 times the weight of the liner Queen Mary. The 2-89 pillar blast took 180 tons of powder to break 580,000 tons of powder in 1989.

- Speaking of the Queen Mary, the QE2 moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns. In the Sullivan Mine's heyday, approximately 1,535 litres of diesel fuel was consumed annually underground for its fleet of vehicles.

- would you believe that peanuts are one of the ingredients of yes, dynamite?

- the microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

- The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV was Fred and Wilma Flinstone. The Sullivan had an engineer nicknamed Flinstone. His real name was Robyn Lidstone.

- The percentage of Africa that is wilderness (28 per cent. The percentage of North America that is wilderness (38 per cent). Kimberley, South Africa was the big diamond find, while Kimberley, British Columbia was the big silver/lead/zinc find. They were both gems in their day.

- Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

- The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monuments. They were the first in San Francisco, with overhead electric cables. The year was 1892, the same year the Sullivan Mine here at Kimberley was discovered. The Sullivan had 42 miles of underground haulageway that handled the transportation of men, supplies and ore with waste. Yes, it was run by electric overhead cable cars, 14 levels of them.

- Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David. Hearts - Charlemagne. Clubs - Alexander the Great. Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

Back in the day at the Sullivan Mine we had royalty. The Prince of Wales (Duke of Windsor) and his brother George, the Duke of Kent, visited the mine in 1927. A special stope, known as 39-0-8, had been prepared for the occasion with sidewalks, special stairs and a platform with flood lights for a better view of the operation and work being done. It would be called the Prince of Wales stope. Later, the prince was presented with a prospector's pick which had been forged and machined at the mine shop.

I wonder whatever happened to that pick.

- 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = you guessed it, 12,345, 678,987,654,321. Underground at the Sullivan, when you went into the slusher subs where the men were scraping the ore out, in the production stage, the miners would mark on the hoist 1111, 1111, 1111 and so on to count the scrapes they had taken that shift. They counted in fives and added up the score. Sometimes it looked like the previous equation.

- What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers have in common? All were invented by a woman.

In 1885, application was made by Carrie J. Everson for a patent on the selective action of oil for metallic substances.

Her patent embraced stirring the pulp, bringing the mineral in contact with oil and acid to produce a stiff mass. Some say she washed some ore sacks and noticed the fundamentals of the froth flotation process by likening the process to the washing of ore dusty laundry in soapy water.

This process in the concentration of ore with minerals floating on a bubble of air, used at the Sullivan mill, made the Sullivan Mine a reality back in 1923 to 2001.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Scoops and Scrapes. 1998 to 2011, over 463 weekly columns.