12 Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Tuesday, September 24, 2024

The competitive Scrabble scene was shaken to its core when two mid-tier players broke three world records in one game: most points by a player (830), most combined points in a game (1,320) and most points in one turn (365 for “Quixotry”). Michael Cresta and Wayne Yorra are American heroes.

A.I. is such an energy suck that Microsoft has signed a 20-year contract to resurrect the nuclear power plant that almost wiped the East Coast of the United States off the map in 1979.

WNBA rookie phenomenon Caitlin Clark has helped the league set all kinds of records. No WNBA game had topped one million viewers since 2008; 24 games broke that number this season, with Clark playing in 21 of them. The Indiana Fever’s average attendance last year was 4,000; this year it jumped to 17,000 (a league record). Several teams have moved their games against the Fever to NBA arenas, including a record-breaking 20,000-fan game in Washington, D.C.

Friends premiered 30 years ago, airing from 1994 to 2004. The cast’s salary went from $20,000 to $2 million per episode in that time. In 2018, Netflix paid $100 million to stream it for a single year. In 2023, it was the eighth-most streamed show in the world, at 25 billion minutes.

The FDA just approved the first at-home flu vaccine. It’s a nasal spray, so you won’t have to crouch on a toilet and inject it between your toes, like I initially imagined.

The viral card game crowdsourced the purchase of a piece of land at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017, promising to thwart Trump’s dumb-shit border wall. In the intervening years, SpaceX has used the property without permission, so they’re suing for $15 million.

A particularly nasty raccoon parasite is picking up steam in California, and while it’s only infected two humans so far, this is a disease you don’t want to get. If you have a lot raccoon poop in or around your house, the CDC says chemicals may not be enough, and the parasite eggs can only be effectively destroyed with fire.

There's a crop of fungus called Armillaria ostoyae (known colloquially as the humongous fungus) in Oregon that may be around 8,000 years old, and takes up about three square miles of forest. Since it can just keep growing and replicating, given infinite resources, it would technically be immortal.

Billionaire Mike Lynch died in a freak storm at sea in August, and the mysterious incident has been the subject of wild conspiracy theories and legitimate investigations. CNN has reported that there may be locked safes on board the wreckage that contain sensitive information that foreign governments want to get their hands on.

Spring Grove, Illinois’ Richardson Adventure Farm features a 24-acre corn maze. This year’s extremely un-spooky theme is the life and works of John Deere.

Thousands of animals can change their sex spontaneously. For example, slipper limpets stack permanently on top of each other and change their sex based on where in the sequence they are, while many turtle species’ sexes are determined by the water temperature.

Sri Lanka tops the list of youngest retirement age, at 55, followed by Indonesia (58) and Bangladesh (59).