15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, September 14, 2024
The MTV Video Music Awards were this week. If you watched them and saw a performance featuring an astronaut kissing an alien, you surely thought about the time that Neil Armstrong flew to Ecuador and found himself searching for ancient aliens. And if you saw the performance of knights fighting in front of a flaming castle, you surely thought about the time Charles VI threw a costume party and caught on fire.
Clearly, we assume you spend all your time thinking about trivia facts. So, here are a few more for you…
Stupid Cupid
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In 1596, Cardinal Raffaele Riario bought a sculpture of Cupid that had supposedly been made in ancient times. He later discovered that it was a forgery, made just a year before by some insignificant artist named Michelangelo.
The Atlantic Anomaly
There’s a spot above South America where the Earth’s magnetic field is only one-third as strong as elsewhere. When spacecraft travel through it, onboard computers crash.
Legitimate Protest
A man tried to hijack a plane using six sticks of dynamite in 1987. He said his motive in all this was to take hostages and force the release of Fiji’s old prime minister. This was a fine start to the career of this hijacker, who went on to be elected to Fiji’s parliament.
Second Sight
If the brain’s visual cortex is damaged, you’re blind. But patients who are blind that way are still able to respond to photographs of smiling people. That’s because the eyes send signals to other parts of the brain, letting you see what’s happening even though you don’t consciously perceive anything.
Red Scare
For 10 years, starting in 1976, there were no red M&M’s. People were scared about the health effects of Red Dye No. 2, so the company thought it best to phase reds out. Red M&M’s never used Red Dye No. 2, but people panicked over them all the same.
Mars
Mandatory Fun
Stalin held dinner parties, and turning down the invite wasn’t an option. One party involved a drinking game, where everyone guessed the room’s temperature, and for each degree they were off by, they had to drink one shot of vodka. Some guests hid in the bathroom out of fear, and the secret police entered to force them out.
Fist of the Sender
Back when people communicated using Morse Code, you’d learn to recognize who you were talking to on the telegraph by the unique pace they’d use to tap out dots and dashes. It was like a voiceprint, and people referred to it as the person’s “fist.”
Easy Living
Billie Holiday wore handcuffs on her deathbed. DEA agents arrested her for heroin possession while she was in the hospital being treated for (among other things) her heroin addiction.
Ad Block
The mute button was one of the first features included on remote controls, before they even got around to adding numbers. The idea came from a supervisor at Zenith who really hated commercials and wanted a way to block them.
White Glove Treatment
Despite what you’ve seen in movies, experts don’t wear gloves when handling delicate books or art. They instead protect the treasures from their skin’s grease by washing their hands. Wearing cotton gloves would increase the chance of damaging the paper.
Litter Menace
In Japan, you might have trouble finding garbage cans outdoors, even though convenience stores and vending machines sell lots of stuff with disposable packaging. This is a lingering response to a 1995 terrorist attack, in which sarin gas in the subways convinced everyone that trash bins are a security threat.
Balance to the Force
When you close your eyes, or when you’re in total darkness, you don’t see black. You see a shade of gray called eigengrau. In the absence of light, you cannot see total black, because we perceive black as a contrast to other light that we currently see.
Not-So-Secret Service
In 1994, someone passing by the White House stuck a rifle through the fence and fired, trying to kill President Bill Clinton. The man he saw turned out not to be Clinton, just a lookalike, and the shooter was taken down by random pedestrians.
Tectonic Shift
The idea that the continents drift over time isn’t so old. No one formally theorized this until the 20th century. Scientists didn’t agree the theory was valid until the end of the 1960s.
Final Request
Jesters were traditionally allowed to mock the king, but the jester to Francis I of France got a mandatory death sentence for one joke, which was interpreted as mocking the Queen. Francis now gave the jester the chance to choose how he’d like to die. The jester answered, “Old age.” The king spared him.