12 Trivia Tidbits for Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Built in 1905, El Tovar Hotel on the Grand Canyon’s South Rim has amassed a whole roster of ghosts. There’s a caped figure often seen visiting the nearby grave of Pirl A. Ward, a well-dressed older gentleman on the third floor who invites guests to the hotel’s annual holiday ball and workers who appear to be performing the same labor they did in life. 

Yupik is a catch-all for a group of languages spoken in Siberia and Alaska. Some of their words are actually entire sentences. For example, “tuntussuqatarniksaitengqiggtuq” means ”he had not yet said again that he was going to hunt reindeer.” “Tuntu” means “reindeer,” but beyond that, none of those syllables make sense in any other context in the language.

In Bram Stoker’s personal notes, he once indicated that he was enchanted with the name because “DRACULA in Wallachian language means DEVIL.” Before he stumbled upon that tidbit, he wanted to call the guy Count Wampyr.

Bacteriophage therapy is the practice of unleashing certain viruses into the body to consume harmful bacteria that they have specifically evolved to eat. The practice was developed at the same time as antibiotics, and when penicillin took off, researchers largely ignored phage therapy for decades.

Russia still maintains several “closed cities,” municipalities that were dedicated to developing war technology under the USSR. They were originally completely removed from all maps, and the ones that remain closed are still off-limits to foreigners, often even non-resident Russians citizens. Zarechny, for example, is almost entirely employed by Russia’s state nuclear research corporation.

During quarantine, while the Singer Laren Museum was closed to the public, thieves broke in with a sledgehammer and stole Van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen. In 2023, an art detective was able to track it down, and they handed it over wrapped in an IKEA bag.

A woman allegedly kicked a hole in her boyfriend’s door after catching him cheating, and crawled through it to confront him. Despite evidence and a witness, she successfully argued that her breasts wouldn’t allow her to fit through that hole. She was quoted as saying, “It was definitely my breasts that won for me today.”

Brass, iron and lead knuckles became popular weapons during the American Civil War. No one knows when they were invented, but they were huge in India by the 12th century. An early version, the bagh nakh, was easily concealed and basically turned you into Wolverine. Assassins would dip their metal claws in poison and get down to business.

A Russian guy got in an argument with his girlfriend, and decided to win her back by riding a horse to her front door at 3 a.m. It sounds like they’re still together.

Edison’s 12-minute film was one of the longest in the world when it came out in 1910. As was his custom, he circulated a few reels of it, but then collected and destroyed them for their silver content. Everyone forgot the film even existed until a picture of it was found in an old magazine. Eventually, collector Alois F. Dettlaff revealed that he had the last remaining copy (and tried to get himself an honorary Oscar for sharing it with the world).

A stroke forced Curly out of the Three Stooges, and he was replaced by his brother Shemp, before dying six years later. But in 1947’s Hold That Lion!, he appears briefly and unrecognizably hairy as a sleeping train passenger.

While Akon was giving a heartfelt speech about emigrating from Africa, a fan hurled a watch at his head. Akon had other fans point the guy out, then crowdsurf him all the way to the stage. He was there to greet the fan, at which point he picked him up and bodied him back into the crowd. The guy later sued Akon for $350.