15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, September 28, 2024
This week, New Yorkers delighted in the news that their mayor had been indicted on fraud charges. This brought to mind many illustrious mayors from history. There was Quito’s Delfin Quishpe, who parlayed YouTube fame into a career in politics before getting sentenced to five years for corruption. There was Greenbrier’s Billy Watson, who raided the children’s Christmas fund. There was South Bend’s Pete Buttigieg, who was revealed to be Jeffrey Dahmer in disguise.
Wait, hold on — that last one was just a ludicrous conspiracy theory. You have to be careful about falling for such rumors. Especially because they distract you from far more interesting true facts, such as the following ones about hockey, teeth and Viagra.
A Gory Tale
The first cloned bull was born in 1999. The owner felt a deep sentimental attachment to the original bull, who was famous locally for being docile. The cloned bull looked much like the original but was not docile and gored the owner’s scrotum.
Cigarettes? Dangerous?
In 2000, Philip-Morris introduced a special “fire-safe” cigarette, the thick paper of whichi resisted burning. Since the paper didn’t burn away as easily, half-burned paper kept falling off, setting more fires than moist cigarettes.
Shocked Expression
When a medical examiner needs to determine the time of a corpse’s death, one method involves electrocuting the muscles to see how strongly they respond. The muscles that respond best happen to be in the face.
Military Accords
The Air Force’s stealth bomber was still classified in 1988. And yet, Honda unveiled a car ad that also featured a model of the bomber. They’d figured out what it looked like by finding an employment brochure published by bomber manufacturer Northrop.
Skin Deep
Red Delicious apples used to be genuinely delicious. Then breeders decided to select apples for the best-looking skin instead of the tastiest flesh, and the apples evolved, losing most of their flavor.
Inside the House
In 1941, a drifter nicknamed the Denver Spiderman slipped into a house and secretly moved into the attic. When the owner later caught him, Spiderman bludgeoned him to death. Then he moved back into the attic for the next nine months, while the dead man’s wife also went on living in the house, oblivious.
5-Minute Energy
Many flowers have caffeinated nectar. They appear to have evolved this way because bees on caffeine have stronger memories of the flowers they’ve tasted.
Undone by Hubris
Some political scandals drag on for a long time until the politician’s finally defeated. Not so with California Assemblyman Michael Duvall. He was caught on a hot mic bragging about having affairs with two different women, and with no way of denying it, he resigned within hours.
Your Biggest Fan
“Paparazzi” isn’t, as a lot of people think, an Italian word. It instead started out as the name of a movie character in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. The character Paparazzo was what we’d call a paparazzo, but the word didn’t exist until the movie.
May the Road Rise
Almost all the Viagra in the world is manufactured at one Pfizer plant at an Irish village named Ringaskiddy. Local men make it a point to breathe in smoke from the plant to fortify themselves, which provides a placebo effect, if nothing else.
Hate Shack
AutoZone used to be called “Auto Shack,” until Radio Shack sued them for trademark infringement. The newly named AutoZone then sued Radio Shack, for labeling a part of its stores “Power Zone.”
Colorado Brown Stain
We first realized fluoride is good for teeth when it accidentally leaked into the water supply in Colorado and made people’s teeth worse. It was staining people’s teeth brown. We had to tinker with it some more to figure out the correct dosage.
Sunrise, Sunset
A decade after writing the famous “Here Comes the Sun,” George Harrison wrote a sequel song called “Here Comes the Moon.” He was on drugs at the time, though he later couldn’t remember which drugs.
Coward, Ice
At the start of the 20th century, hockey refs would bring large cowbells to the rink, using them both to stop the game when necessary and to physically fight off attacks from spectators. They switched to whistles because cowbells were such an everyday item at the time that fans often brought their own and rang them to interrupt the game.
The Curse
Spare a thought for Virginia resident Jennifer Null. Every time she fills out a form online and enters her surname, the site returns an error and says she left the field blank. It thinks that it has received a null value.
