12 Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Tuesday, September 10, 2024

A 10-year-old Japanese girl has become a certified pufferfish sushi chef, a heavily regulated profession where the difference between life and death is how well you carved up those poisonous fish guts.

Scientists have found separate clusters of “sneeze neurons” and “cough neurons” in the nasal cavities of mice that help the brain decide how it wants to expel particles it doesn’t want you inhaling.

In 1977, the one and only time that Carter met Queen Elizabeth II, he planted a big wet one right on her mouth. The Queen recalled, “He is the only man, since my dear husband died, to have had the effrontery to kiss me on the lips.”

Scientists have discovered that even a very small amount of electricity applied to the thalamus, which is largely responsible for your mind-body connection, can cause seizures. So like, don’t do that, then.

In 2018, Bruno Mars gifted wildly expensive custom watches to his bandmates and his manager. Of the eight he gave them, four are currently for sale (for around $200,000 each).

We all know that homo sapiens hooked up with Neanderthals, and many people have some Neanderthal DNA in them today. But science has only recently pinpointed where the two populations overlapped: the Zagros Mountains, in modern-day Iran, Iraq and Turkey.

In 2016, a team of Canadian geologists discovered an underground reservoir containing 2.6-billion-year-old water. One of them dipped her finger in the water and tasted it, to do a little on-site mineral detection. She said it tasted “very salty and bitter — much saltier than seawater.”

A pile of random art in a Maine attic turned out to contain the long-forgotten Rembrandt piece “Portrait of a Girl.” It just sold to some European collector for $1.4 million.

A study of internet search data has found that NSFW (126,800 monthly searches), POV (155,800) and SMH (231,450) are the phrases people need a hint for most often.

The Mexican municipality of Reyes Etla broke the Guinness record for largest ball of string cheese, using 2,641 gallons of milk to make a 1,402-pound wad.

Jordan put his mansion north of Chicago up for sale 12 years ago, for $29 million. He’s lowered the price to just under $15 million, but he still has no takers.

A crowdsourced competition to design the state’s “I Voted” stickers has yielded a bunch of cool results, but has one clear winner: a childish marker drawing of a werewolf tearing off his tattered shirt while bellowing in front of the American flag.