15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, November 9, 2024
This week something happened that changed everyone’s perception of reality, darkening our outlooks and making it hard to sleep or eat. We’re referring, of course, to the end of Daylight Saving Time.
Daylight Saving Time has a strange history, with a lot of dubious motives behind it. In 1986, it became longer by almost a month, and this had some strange motives of its own. Find out about them below, along with some information about rockets and pee.
And Beyond
A couple were caught having sex in a Bed, Bath & Beyond in 2017, on one of the display beds. Having sex on the display was bad. Worse was the fact that the two had scabies, which meant the police station had to be fumigated afterward.
Six-Ring Circus
Throughout the 1990s, one item of litter was iconic for clogging up the ocean: the six-pack ring for beverage cans. This is surprising, because a 1989 federal law mandated that these rings be redesigned to naturally degrade in water, which took effect in 1990.
Fake Tradition
You might be familiar with a Greek folk dance, in which everyone forms a line with hands on each other’s shoulders then they drag their feet and hop in the air. This isn’t some tradition going back for many generations. It was created for the 1964 film Zorba the Greek.
Losers, All Losers
Think about all your friends. Now pick one at random. Mathematics says that they probably have more friends than you do. That sounds impossible — surely some will have more, and an approximately equal number will have fewer — but it’s true.
But They Look Cool
The fins on the rockets from the Apollo program didn’t actually do anything — so long as the rocket flew properly. They were only there for if the launch went wrong, in which case they’d stabilize the rocket just long enough for the astronaut to abort.
Nutty Origin
The Brazil nut comes from a tree, a tree that’s also called the Brazil nut. It’s named after the country Brazil, of course. But Brazil was itself named after a tree: the Brazilwood tree.
Came for Nothing
The Greenwich Meridian has a longitude of zero. But if you go the Greenwich Observatory and to the monument that marks the Meridian at that location, you can pull out your phone’s GPS and see the longitude isn’t zero. They calculated wrong, and they stuck the monument 100 meters too far west.
A Big Treat
A dachshund bit off and ate its owner’s big toe in 2008. The owner was asleep, and thanks to her diabetes, she didn’t notice anything until she woke up and looked at her foot.
Waste Water
A drunk Oregon man in 2014 needed to pee, so he pointed himself through a fence and urinated into Portland’s Mount Tabor Reservoir No. 5. The city responded by dumping all 38 million gallons of the reservoir’s water into the sewers.
The Time Conspiracy
Congress extended Daylight Saving Time in 1986 by one month, and the primary lobbying for the change came from 7-Eleven and Clorox. 7-Eleven thought they’d get more customers under DST, while Clorox figured people would buy more charcoal briquettes for barbecues, earning Clorox an extra $100 million annually.
Lost Luggage
A shipment of 440 squirrels arrived in Amsterdam in 1999 that lacked proper customs paperwork. So, an airline employee ordered that they all be destroyed — by dropping them into a shredder. Confronted later, the airline admitted that they’d erred, and they fired the employee.
Stealing from Edison
The word “bug,” when we’re talking about software, goes back to literal insects that got caught in a Harvard computer. At least, that’s what one popular story says. In reality, Thomas Edison had referred to “bugs” in telegraph codes long before computers existed.
Just a Prank, Bro
In 1894, Cornell students thought it would be funny to pump chlorine gas into the banquet hall as a prank. They messed up and sent it to the kitchen instead, which means they gassed no students but did kill a cook.
Stick Season
A single mating session of the Indian stick insect can last for 79 days. This would be impressive for any species, but it’s an especially long length of time for an animal whose entire lifespan is only around a year.
A Shot of Medicine
A man with severe OCD shot himself in the head in 1988. This improved his life quite a bit, as he survived the experience and afterward discovered that his OCD was gone.
