15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, December 7, 2024
This week was full of crazy news — from governments falling, to countries suffering coups, to CEOs shot dead in the street. But you know what else is crazy? In 1930, a director wanting to shoot a movie about an Arctic voyage actually sailed to the Arctic, and the ship exploded, killing 27 people. Then the film was released anyway, with the director’s death being a major selling point.
That’s the sort of knowledge you have if you immerse yourself in a constant stream of facts. We have some more facts for you, involving cats, surfers and the manipulation of time.
Friends and Family
A woman in Britain spent eight years tracking down her birth parents. Her search ended this year, when it turned out that her biological father was one of her Facebook friends. They’d never met, but he’d heard about her genealogical research and added her, without knowing she was his daughter.
True Love
When a female Adactylidium is born, it already contains fertilized eggs. These mites hatch within it, producing one male and several males. They mate within the mother. Then the mites eat their way out, and the lone male immediately dies.
Siren Song
The town of Siren in Wisconsin takes its name from the Swedish word for lilac. Its most newsworthy day was June 18, 2001, when much of it was destroyed by a tornado. Residents didn’t receive a warning in time because the town’s siren was broken.
Meat Market
We raise so much livestock for meat that these animals outweigh all other mammals, easily. Domestic cows and pigs together weigh 10 times as much as all wild mammals combined.
Moses and the Promised Land
Jørn Utzon, the architect who designed the Sydney Opera House, never saw the completed building. He turned down the invitation to come to the opening and then just never got around to visiting it before he died in 2008.
Death Box
If you plan of taking your microwave apart, you obviously should unplug it first. But this will not save you: Its capacitors store enough residual current to kill you anyway.
From the Mouths of Waves
In the 1960s, NASA was experimenting with new lightweight materials for rockets. North American Aviation happened to have a factory right next to California’s Seal Beach, so they recruited a bunch of surfers, who advised them on how to use honeycomb insulation.
Don’t Cry for Her
Eva Perón died of cancer in 1952. It took another 60 years for historians to get a look at X-rays of her brain and discover that, shortly before her death, doctors gave her a prefrontal lobotomy.
Case Closed
In 2012, Jack McCullough was convicted of murder, 55 years after the murder occurred. It was celebrated as the oldest cold case to be solved. But it turned out that the reason it took them so to convict him was he didn’t do it, so he was declared innocent five years later.
Cute Pussy Resuscitation
CPR was first performed on cats back in 1878. It took 81 more years for anyone to try doing the same thing on human subjects.
One Last Drink
The last recorded words of Bill W., the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, were repeated requests to his nurse for a glass of whiskey. She refused these requests, so the man died sober.
Public Domain Theft
“Somewhere,” the song that closes West Side Story, steals its melody from two classical pieces. One is Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No. 5.” The other is the famous theme from Swan Lake.
Do Not Do This Cool Thing
In the 1970s, American ships sailed to the USSR to lay wiretaps on communications cables. Finding the secret cables proved to be quite easy. They just had to look for physical signs that the Soviets had erected, warning ships to stay away from the communications cables nearby.
Slow Jams
When you yawn while listening to a song, the music will briefly appear to slow down. It’s not just you — it’s called auditory chronostasis, and it may be related to your mind shifting concentration between different ears.
Postmature Birth
In 1992, a man in his 50s and a 34-year-old woman used in vitro fertilization to make an embryo. They put off implanting it and eventually decided they didn’t want it. But the clinic held onto the frozen embryo, and a different client later received it. This client gave birth as a result — in 2022.
