15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, January 25, 2025
The United States inaugurated a new president this week, so we know what’s on everyone’s mind right now. It’s the time that Andrew Jackson took office, and he opened the White House to the public, resulting in 20,000 people showing up. Jackson had to flee by jumping out the window, and staff only got people to leave by placing tubs of whiskey outside on the lawn.
If you want to think about some more interesting stuff with no specific relevance to your current circumstances, we have some facts for you about cheese, spiders and falling from the sky.
O.G.’s
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On the Bee Gees’ Greatest Hits album, they sing their hit “Islands in the Stream.” In the last chorus, they suddenly change the words to say, “Ghetto superstar. That is what you are.” This is baffling if you don’t know the 1998 R&B song “Ghetto Superstar,” which samples “Islands in the Stream” — and is also pretty baffling if you do.
Congestion Pricing
New York skyscrapers haven’t had helipads since 1977. They used to. Then one helicopter fell over on the Pan Am building, and its rotors went flying, fatally slicing up five nearby onlookers, so the city banned rooftop pads going forward.
Use As You Please
The 1802 book A Pickle for the Knowing Ones confused a lot of people because it contained no punctuation. Three years later, the author released a new version that did contain punctuation — a stream of unbroken punctuation marks isolated in an appendix.
Furry Little Cuties
All fears of tarantulas just come from how big they are. No one has ever died from a tarantula bite, as their venom is around as dangerous as bee venom.
Little White Lies
Cheese is naturally white. It’s not deeply yellow, and it’s certainly not orange. Orange cheese has been purposely colored, which was an expensive process until we discovered cheaper ingredients that managed the same thing.
Theme Park Rides
Superhero fans have been complaining for half a decade about Martin Scorsese saying superhero movies “aren’t cinema.” His full quote was that they aren’t “the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”
Hopelessly Decrepit
1978’s Grease has received a lot of mockery for a cast too old to play teenagers. But this is in line with the play, in which the students were played by adults — who open the play by playing the adult versions of the characters at their high school reunion.
This System Blows
The home vacuum cleaner was invented by a janitor. Devices already existed for blowing dust around, but James Spangler had asthma and conceived of sucking the dust into a cloth bag. He sold the idea to William Hoover, whose name later became synonymous with vacuums.
One Night Only
Sam Cooke performed his song “A Change Is Going to Come” on The Tonight Show in 1964. NBC then lost the tape, and he never performed the song again, saying it was too complicated.
Young Prodigy
An Argentinian man named Robledo Puch has been in prison for over 50 years. This is because, you see, when he was 20 years old, he was convicted of murdering 11 different people in a series of incidents in 1971.
Christmas for the Brokenhearted
Roxette’s song “It Must Have Been Love” was originally a Christmas song. The band then rereleased the song, stripping out all the Christmas references, and that was the version that became famous.
Minimum Wage
In the movie The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke works a deli counter, and rather than hiring actors for the scene, they had him work a deli for real and filmed real customers interacting with him. This wasn’t so much for authenticity but simply because they lacked the budget to script that scene.
Happy Landing
A skydiver in 2005 ran into a bit of trouble when her chute failed to open, sending her crashing into an asphalt parking lot at 50 miles per hour. Doctors later determined that she had unknowingly been pregnant at the start of the jump. She recovered just fine and later successfully gave birth to the boy.
Idea Won’t Fly
In 1936, the founder of Penguin Books was at the book stall of a train station when he heard a woman request “one of those pelican books.” No brand existed by that name, but he realized people seemed to think one did, so he launched a new division called Pelican Books.
Eye-Opening
Malcolm McDowell scratched his eye during the scene in A Clockwork Orange that held his eyes forcibly open. Director Stanley Kubrick was very understanding about this. He said, while they continued filming without a pause, “I’ll favor your other eye.”