15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, November 2, 2024
Casual Friday is a bit of an odd tradition. If you have to dress formally in the office, what’s so different about Fridays, which have just as many meetings as any other day? On the other hand, if everyone realized formalwear is totally unnecessary for everyday activities, why not dispense with it altogether instead of just on one single day?
It turns out that Casual Friday is really a conspiracy to sell you stuff. Find out what they’re trying to sell below, along with some information about flying metal and scary beavers.
Public Domain Plagiarism
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The music at the start of the Rocky theme (“Gonna Fly Now”) wasn’t written specifically for the film. Instead, it was written in the 17th century for the Habsburg emperors who ruled Italy.
Snoutless
You aren’t allowed to bring a bulldog on a plane. No, it’s not because bulldogs behave badly. It’s for the dog’s sake. Unlike other dogs, a bulldog is likely to suffocate in those conditions.
Charged With Awesomeness
A New Orleans priest was caught in 2020 having a threesome with two women on the church altar. He and the women were all charged with obscenity, while the archbishop ordered that the altar be burned.
Cold Hard Truth
You might have heard that people lose almost half the heat in their bodies through their head. This idea originates from a military study where subjects wore Arctic survival suits on their bodies but wore no hats. It said nothing about heads being especially vulnerable to heat loss, just that they happened to be uncovered during that experiment.
The Love Bug
Be thankful that you’re not a female bean beetle. If you were, you’d have to deal with the male bean beetle’s spiked penis, pictured here:
Spatter Master
One popular bit of movie trivia says that powerful spurts of blood in action movies started with a special-effects mistake from a Kurosawa movie. It’s not true. Kurosawa planned that shot, as did every director after him who tried it, because that sort of setup takes some effort.
A Promise Kept
The Mongol conqueror Timur invaded Anatolia in the year 1400. He promised the army defending the peninsula that their blood wouldn’t be shed if they surrendered. They did surrender, and he kept his word by ordering them buried alive, without anyone shedding their blood.
Bird’s-Eye View
Crows are able to distinguish between different humans and hold grudges against ones who have wronged them. This puts us and crows on uneven territory, as we’re usually unable to distinguish different crows at all.
You Can’t Hide
A Chicago man died in 1937 when an explosion blasted into the air a manhole cover, which landed on his head. The really surprising part was he is indoors at the time. In fact, he was in an elevator.
Casual Conspiracy
Casual Fridays were invented by Hawaii to sell more Hawaiian shirts. It was originally called Aloha Friday and was thought up by the Hawaiian Fashion Guild. Then it jumped to California and spread across the country — now promoted by Levi’s to sell more jeans.
Independent Research
In 1785, the French mathematician Marquis de Condorcet proved that if voters rank politicians in order of preference, all their rankings might cancel each other out, leaving us with no clear winner. We dubbed this “Condorcet’s paradox.” Then, in 2001, we discovered a lost manuscript that showed a missionary from Spain came up with the same proof 400 years earlier.
Still No Cyborgs
Doctors implanted the first artificial heart in a patient in 1982. Forty years later, we still haven’t invented a permanent artificial heart. These devices work only temporarily, and the only permanent solution is transplanting a living heart from a donor.
Buzzworthy Star
Howard Shore is famous for composing film scores, most notably The Lord of the Rings. He also appeared on Saturday Night Live as a beekeeper — not because he was a known celeb but because he was the show’s music director at the time.
Holy Ground
Golf courses have 18 holes because of the length of one random course in Scotland. The Old Course at St. Andrews had 11 holes because of how long it was. Then they filled in two of the 11 holes because they were too close to neighboring holes, and if you doubled back after doing nine holes, that added up to 18.
Never Go Unarmed
In 2012, an 83-year-old woman went swimming in Washington and was attacked by a 35-pound rabid beaver. The beaver bit a chunk out of her leg, but she managed to gain the upper hand in the fight by beating the animal with her walking stick.