12 Trivia Tidbits for Friday, May 31, 2024

Cheez-It shut down and liquidated their pop-up Cheez-In Diner in Woodstock, New York, and are looking to sell some of the junk they had piled up in there. Among the treasures is a jukebox that takes Cheez-Its instead of coins, which is on eBay for $890.

If and when bacteria evolve to be resistant to penicillin and other antibiotics, treating infections is going to get way more difficult for everyone on the planet. A new so-called “smart” antibiotic seems to be able to target bacteria that are most like to eventually become resistant, without killing the good bacteria in your body.

A group of undergrads at Johns Hopkins University developed a leaf blower that reduces overall noise by 40 percent, specifically targeting the frequencies that most make you want to throw dog turds at your neighbor’s landscapers. Their design is expected to be available for purchase within two years.

The French town of Adge is known as Europe’s largest swinger community. A local fortune teller convinced the mayor that she could channel his deceased father, spurring the mayor to spend a ton of taxpayer money on her services. He also hired the fortune teller’s family members at “his father’s” suggestion. They’re both currently in jail as they’re investigated for embezzlement and corruption. 

The performative applause at Cannes is under a lot of scrutiny lately, but the longest-ever standing O occurred back in 2006 when Pan's Labyrinth finished to 22 straight minutes of applause.

A study by health insurer Cigna found that 58 percent of working Americans describe themselves as “lonely,” which is up from 46 percent in 2018. They estimate this is costing companies $154 billion per year in “absenteeism.” It’s unclear what that means, but it sounds bad for The Man, so keep it up you lonely losers!

A Spanish-speaking man had a stroke at age 20, and lost his ability to speak. He recently underwent a surgery to implant a device that can translate the words in his head onto a screen. He learned English after his stroke, and the device is somehow able to detect and print both Spanish and English words.

Seven Negro Leagues operated between 1920 and 1948, when Black people weren’t allowed in Major League Baseball. More than 2,000 new players recently entered the record books, including Josh Gibson, who now beats out Ty Cobb for career batting average, and topped Babe Ruth in two categories: slugging percentage and on-base plus slugging.

The five most mosquito-ridden cities in the country are Los Angeles at the number one spot, followed by New York, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.

South Korean activists sent large balloons floating over the border to deliver K-pop and anti-Kim leaflets to residents of the reclusive country. In response, the North Korean government floated 260 balloons with payloads of garbage and animal poop in the opposite direction.

China yoinked three pandas they had long ago lent to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. last year, in a symbolic gesture that they were mad at us. In a possible sign of relations normalizing once again, they’ve agreed to send us a new batch of everyone’s favorite weird virgin teddy bears.

In the late 1900s, Guinness was by far the largest brewery in the world. In their attempt to remain at the top of the pack, they hired a team of scientists to analyze their process and ingredients, and calculate the perfect brewing method. This massive effort was the birthplace of the t-test, a concept I won’t pretend to understand, but is normally what modern scientists have done when they declare something “statistically significant.”