12 Trivia Tidbits for Thursday, May 2, 2024

A pocket watch that was recovered from the body of John Jacob Astor IV among the wreckage of the Titanic was just sold at auction for $1.5 million.

By all accounts, there should be magnetized neutron stars, or pulsars, at the center of our galaxy. But there aren’t, and scientists have been struggling to explain why. European astronomers have come up with a rad-sounding explanation involving dark matter, and “primordial black holes” swallowing up those conspicuously missing stars.

Changpeng Zhao, the crypto-billionaire founder of Binance and 38th richest person in the world, was sentenced to four months in jail for not safeguarding his platform from money laundering. The Department of Justice is hoping to send a message to other crypto jagoffs that they legally need to care whether scammers and terrorists use their products and platforms to pull off scams and terrorism.

Weed (“marijuana” was popularized by the Nixon administration to make it sound foreign and scary, so it’s general preferable to avoid using that word) is about to be downgraded from a Schedule I drug (think: heroine) to a Schedule III drug (think: testosterone). The DEA is just waiting on a signature from the White House.

Roman dodecahedrons, intricately crafted 12-sided vessels, are known as “one of archaeology’s great enigmas” because no one can figure out what they were used for. One hundred and thirty of them have been dug up over the last few centuries, including a brand new(ly-discovered) one set to go on display at England’s Lincoln Museum.

Budding photographer and reluctant king of the Beaver State birders Michael Sanchez captured an extremely rare picture of a blue rock thrush. These birds usually live in Europe, Africa and Asia, but Sanchez, who “wouldn’t consider myself a birder at all,” snapped a picture of one in Oregon, sending the regional birding community into a frenzy.

Kansai airport in Japan has been in operation since 1994, and has never once lost a single piece of luggage, including 10 million bags in 2023 alone. The global average is about 7.6 bags lost per 1,000 passengers.

After watching Monsters, Inc., a little girl in North Carolina told her parents she heard monsters in the walls. They eventually started noticing stray bees in and around the house, and an expert came in and discovered a “floor to ceiling” hive in the wall of the girl’s bedroom.

The restaurant Victoria & Albert in Disneyland, featuring a $300 pre-fixe menu, just made Disney the first U.S. theme park to cop a star from the big fat tire man.

An anonymous weirdo put up flyers around Manhattan promising to eat an entire bucket of cheeseballs in Union Square Park on April 27th at 3 p.m. EST. The big man showed up in an orange ski mask and cape, and downed an entire Munch King in front of a big crowd of supporters.

A convenience store in the town Kawaguchiko has prime views of Mount Fuji, but flocks of aspiring influencers have clogged up pedestrian traffic and parking for its neighboring small businesses, forcing the store to black out its otherwise extremely Instagramable windows.

A 65-foot hot dog showed up in Times Square on the back of a hydraulic flatbed, and every day at noon it rises vertically into the air and shoots off some confetti. An official press release explains that it’s meant to draw attention to “the patriarchy of meat-eating.”