15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, March 8, 2025
We heard a rumor that this weekend is going to be amazing, and you’re going to drink so much, that you’ll be useless come Monday. We just hope you don’t drink changaa, a special type of homebrewed alcohol that may contain formaldehyde or battery acid.
Similarly, read on to learn a little about the wrong way to interact with famous people as well as the wrong way to store bread.
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In the 1920s, Germany proposed lowering the Mediterranean Sea by 600 feet, exposing new land where people could live. This project would have taken an estimated hundred years to complete but never took off, partly because no actual Mediterranean countries approved of it.
Robbin’
Burt Ward spoke at Harvard while Conan O’Brien was a student there. O’Brien and his friends successfully stole the man’s Robin costume — though they returned it afterward, marking this as a prank rather than a crime.
Spoiler Alert
Lamborghini learned that customers were sticking rear wings on Countachs, inspired by Cannonball Run, so the company catered to this idea by now adding wings themselves. The funny part is that due to the car’s design, wings had no chance of improving the car’s performance and actually knocked 15 miles per hour off the top speed.
One More Thing
Romanians received a special message from Peter Falk when their country ran out of Columbo episodes, because without this message, they might have thought their government had canceled the show, for censorship reasons. The Romanian government actually feared riots and got the State Department to make Falk do this message.
Un-thick-able
Most photos you’ve seen of the Titanic show it from an angle. Pictured straight-on, it looks awkwardly long and not tall enough compared to similar ships you’ve seen.
Food Fight
The Barenaked Ladies song “If I Had a Million Dollars” promises that the singer would keep eating Kraft Dinner, even after getting rich. Fans soon took to pelting the band with the boxed food when they performed the song, one time hitting the lead singer in the balls.
Hell Spawn
News spread in 2020 that someone had managed to get the video game Doom running on a pregnancy test. It turned out that he’d actually just built a built a tiny screen and computer and placed a pregnancy test around it as a casing — but that’s still kind of cool, right?
Bloody Foolishness
The George Washington Hotel in Washington, Pennsylvania, caught fire in 2010. Firefighters were surprised to find one room covered in blood and featuring a severed body part on the floor. It turned out that these were props from a movie that had filmed there two years prior, and the owner hadn’t touched the room in case the crew ever wanted to return for reshoots.
Pound Store Version
In England, a tight ponytail is sometimes known as a “council house facelift.” If you live in public housing, you presumably cannot afford actual plastic surgery, so pulling your face back using a hair tie is a cheap substitute.
The Great Game
When the settlers at Jamestown encountered the indigenous Powhatan people, they got their first sight of the sport of lacrosse. Only, lacrosse was a little different back then. Hundreds of players took part at once, and the opposing goals could be a mile apart.
Some Very Mid Inspiration
The Oasis song “Wonderwall” takes its title from a relatively obscure 1968 movie of the same name. It has nothing to do with that movie, but Noel Gallagher happened to be listening to its soundtrack when the band were composing the song.
Tastes Like Baker
Early in the 20th century, stores sold unwrapped loaves of bread, and buyers who wanted to keep bread fresh had to wrap it in waxed paper at home. Once bakers got around to placing bread in packaging before buying, this was advertised as a revolutionary step in hygiene.
Oh, Bother
Christopher Robin from Winnie the Pooh was named after A.A. Milne’s real son, Christopher Robin Milne. Christopher Milne didn’t appreciate this and went on to become estranged from his parents — both because of the book character and because he married his first cousin.
Entitled Public
A fan once asked for Ian McKellen’s autograph. Instead of his name, McKellen wrote down, “Fuck off! I’m gay.” The fan was a politician responsible for a law banning local governments from “promoting homosexuality.”
Two Stars
At the tomb of Ramesses VI in Egypt, archaeologists have found ancient messages — left not by Egyptians but by Roman tourists thousands of years later. “I cannot read the hieroglyphics,” complained one fourth-century tourist. “Why do you care that you cannot read the hieroglyphs,” wrote another commenter below that message. “I do not understand your concern.”