15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, August 10, 2024
The 2024 Olympics ends this weekend. Most of the games’ excitement this year involved summer events, of course, but there was also a medal ceremony for the U.S. figure skating team. The team placed second at the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Then when a Russian skater was disqualified for doping, America retroactively was switched to first place, and they received their gold medals this week.
Figure skating used to be a very different sport from what it is today, by the way. Find out what changed below, along with some information about the truth of your own brain.
Booze in the Blender
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Jimmy Buffett opened a chain of restaurants called Margaritaville, named for his song “Margaritaville.” He ran into some issues early on. He was initially blocked by the restaurant Chi-Chi’s, which had already copyrighted the word “Margaritaville” in the context of restaurants — for a drink they’d named after his song.
Idle Hands
Lesbianism was described as a disease in the 1890s, and to explain the apparent recent rise, doctors pointed to sewing. As one textbook said, “This vice is, of late, quite the fashion, through the excitement of the genitalia as a result of excessive work on sewing-machines.”
The Other Woman
A wife in Mexico in 2021 spotted a photo on her husband’s phone of him with a thinner woman. She got angry, but it turned out the photo was actually of herself, from years earlier. It would have been a funny misunderstanding, but she stabbed him before she figured out the truth.
Fun. Do!
Almost no one in Switzerland had heard of fondue till the 1940s. The government then created a Swiss Cheese Union to promote cheese eating, and they decided fondue would be an easy dish to push, because the process of melting the cheese felt manly, like you’re doing industrial work.
Lost Art
Figure skating used to be all about “figures,” which were patterns skaters traced on the ice. But spectators found jumps more interesting than the patterns, and the sport slowly phased the patterns out.
Aussie Jesus
An Australian was kicked out of a British darts tournament in 2012 because people started chanting, thinking he looked like Jesus. He came back the following year, and organizers remembered him from last time and didn’t let him in.
Seat Mystery
According to the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials, public toilet seats are U-shaped specifically for women, to make it easier to reach from the front and wipe. Many who hear this then dispute whether it makes things easier at all.
Mandatory Grossness
The British had to eat stale bread during World War I. Bakeries were able to provide fresh bread, but a new law banned them from selling any until it had gone stale. By reducing bread’s tastiness, this reduced consumption and helped with scarcity.
Mandatory Closeness
Early movies and TV shows bounced between close-ups on different characters — out of necessity. Microphones were stationary, so actors couldn’t move while talking. Switching between close-ups created the illusion of action.
Shell Shocked
People regularly release loved ones’ bodies into the Ganges River, and in the 1980s, India came up with a plan to clean the river of some of these bodies. They bred tens of thousands of flesh-eating turtles to eat the corpses.
Red-Yellow
Oranges aren’t called oranges because they’re orange. The word comes from the Sanskrit word for the fruit, naranj. The color orange was then named after the fruit. Before this, English didn’t have a name for the color at all.
Merry Retirement
Franklin Pierce wasn’t very ambitious about what he might do after he was no longer president. “After the White House, what is there to do but drink?” he said. A decade after leaving office, he died of cirrhosis of the liver.
Higher, Faster, Stronger
The higher the elevation of an airport, the longer its runways must be. Air is less dense at high elevations, reducing atmospheric pressure, so planes need to reach a greater speed to generate the same amount of lift.
Think of the Smell
In 2002, a milkman in Cornwall spotted that a gift shop was on fire. He extinguished the flames with 320 pints of milk.
A Mind Forever Voyaging
You might have heard that brain development doesn’t complete until you’re 25. That’s a misleading stat. Yes, scientists studied adolescent brains and saw brain development continued into subjects’ 20s, but there’s nothing special about the year 25. In fact, it’s possible the brain goes on developing for another seven decades after that.