12 Wild Bits of Trivia That Appeared in Our Path (And We Were Unable to Flee)

A B-25 bomber crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945, and elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver was burned in the explosion. Rescue workers put her in an elevator — her natural habitat! — but the cables snapped, and she plummeted into the basement. A combination of air currents in the narrow shaft and debris pileup slowed the elevator just enough for her to survive. 

In 1870, a German chemist documenting the content of spinach made a decimal point error when marking down the iron content — 3.5 milligrams of iron per 100 grams of spinach became 35 milligrams. No one thought to double check his findings until 1937, allowing spinach to coast on propaganda for almost 70 years.

Due to metal shortage during World War II, the Academy made their statuettes out of plaster. Anyone who won during that time was invited to trade it in for a classic gilded metal one after the war.

Okay, first of all, this guy’s real name is “Bibendum,” or “Bib” for short. What the hell is going on here? An early poster shows this beefy monstrosity getting drunk with his freak friends, making a toast in Latin, that starts: “Nunc est bibendum.” The full quote translates to “Now is the time to drink!! Which is to say: ‘To your health, the Michelin tire drinks down the obstacle!’” But most people can’t read Latin, so they thought this abomination’s name was “Bibendum” — the part that means “to drink.”

Incubating infant animals in zoos had been common practice for a while, but the first obstetricians who tried to adapt incubators for humans ran into a lot of red tape and condescension. French physician Pierre Budin turned them into a sideshow at the 1896 Berlin World’s Fair, and the practice caught on at other tourist attractions, like Coney Island. It wouldn’t be adopted by hospitals for another three or four decades.

People became obsessed with the “Holy Prepuce” in the Middle Ages, with lots of churches and holy folk claiming they owned the thing. Sadly, most were lost during the French Revolution.

They didn’t invent “scent sampling,” but the East German secret police were probably more committed to it than any other group in history. They collected thousands of samples of butt sweat by swabbing chairs after interrogating supposed dissidents. Whenever they collected evidence of rebellion (flyers, graffiti, etc.), they would have trained dogs sniff it, and see if it matched any of the stink in their collection.

Because the figure ſ  looks so much like the figure f, it’s hard say whether they thought the birds fucked the wind or sucked the wind.

Overtoun Bridge came to be known as “Dog Suicide Bridge” in the 1950s, because dogs keep losing their shit and swan-diving into the ravine below. The most plausible explanation is that the dogs catch the scent of mink or other small mammals, jump up on the railings, which are at kind of a weird angle, and fall off.

Skeletal remains discovered on a remote island in 1940 seemed to fit the bill — the location and size of the skeleton, plus the timing of the discovery, all pointed to Earhart. But someone decided they were man bones, not lady bones, and it was ruled out. Modern forensic analysis has determined that, nope, it’s a woman. Unfortunately, someone lost the bones before DNA testing existed, so we’ll probably never know for sure.

Anyone can actually purchase the naming rights to high-pressure or low-pressure weather events from the German weather service. In 2012, BMW gambled on a storm, and before they knew it, the Cooper Cold Front killed around 150 people.

William J.A. Bailey was a conman who patented lots of pseudo-medical devices in the early 20th century, mostly involving radium. The Radiendocrinator was a slab of gold and radium, meant to be worn like a jockstrap: “This puts the instrument under the scrotum as it should be.” He died at age 64, very rich and very full of radiation.