15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, October 12, 2024
This week, Florida again learned the danger posed by enormous quantities of water. But water doesn’t need to flood your home to mess with you. You can also die while traveling over water. You can die while exploring underwater. You can die when someone murders you, after failing to be cured by holy water.
Find out about all these dangers below, along with some crucial information about chicken and the history of butts.
The Anacreontic Song
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“The Star-Spangled Banner” is set to the tune of a song that’s about Greek gods. Apollo and Jupiter argue with each other about whether the mortals are having too much fun.
Shadow Killer
The bobtail squid emits light from its underside. That sounds like it might make it more noticeable, but it does the complete opposite. Usually, prey underwater notice a predator overhead because the body blocks light from above, casting a shadow. By casting no shadow, the squid stays cloaked.
The Moon Pose
Bodybuilding competitions ban entrants from one pose and one pose only: They can’t point their butt at the judges and bend over. They used to be able to, but the community decided this was too salacious, fearing that competitors were using this to seduce judges.
Spud Missile
When the Germans invented the V2 rocket, they didn’t distill the fuel from petroleum. The rocket used ethanol, and they made this from potatoes. It took 30 tons of potatoes to fuel one rocket launch.
The Coldness Scale
Anders Celsius invented the Celsius scale, and he came up with the idea of pegging a 100-point scale to the freezing and boiling points of water. But he didn’t say 0 should be the freezing point. He said that should be 100, while the boiling point should be 0. People waited till he was dead to reverse it.
Dad Reflexes
In 2010, Ian Turnbull heard a newborn crying from a dumpster as he returned home from work. He turned the child over to authorities. Later, police tracked down the mother, and it turned out to be Turnbull’s girlfriend, who he hadn’t known was pregnant. He was the baby’s father.
Novel Job Opportunity
The word “freelance” comes from the idea of a warrior from the Middle Ages, who was free to use his lance to fight for whoever paid him. But the word was never used back then. It was invented for the novel Ivanhoe, in which a lord calls his soldiers Free Lances.
The Sky Is Falling
The scientific community took surprisingly long to figure out that meteorites exist. People have observed meteorites since prehistoric times, but scientists called those people kooks, until one notable shower in the 19th century.
Free to Go
In 1974, two priests performed an exorcism on a British man and believed that they cast out 40 demons from him. However, they thought three demons remained, including the demon of murder. The man then went home and murdered his wife.
Whoa, Dude
A plasma globe sends sparkling tendrils of light to whatever part of a glass ball that you touch with your fingertips. You might have seen it in kids’ science museums, and the primary purpose appears to be to look cool. Indeed, when the inventor first stumbled into creating it, he took it from the lab to his girlfriend’s place, so he could use it to liven up a house party.
Gourmet Garbage
Chicken tenders, chicken nuggets and boneless wings are all very different from each other. The tender is a specific cut, the pectoralis minor muscle. Boneless wings are pieces of breast meat. Nuggets are reconstituted meat, made from tiny scraps.
Immersive Experience
The murder of a woman on a cruise ship in 2017 went initially unnoticed, due to organized activities aboard. Passengers were taking part in a murder mystery game nearby, and when they heard the sounds of violence, they thought this was part of the game.
Fountain of Youth
Thousands of feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico is a brine lake dubbed the Hot Tub of Despair. It’s excessively salty and full of naturally occurring lethal chemicals, which kill anyone who ventures in. It also preserves the dead creature’s body, seemingly forever.
Oh, the Inhumanity
The Hindenburg had swastikas on its tail fins, as it was meant to be a symbol of Nazi power. We don’t know this based on the famous crash photo because the aft end of the airship was the part that blew up.
Root of All Evil
Wisconsin police had a memorable incident where they arrived at a teen kegger and performed 90 breathalyzer tests on kids. The kids all showed no blood alcohol at all, because it turned out they’d been drinking from a keg full of root beer. “It was a tremendous waste of time and manpower,” said the police chief.