15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, December 21, 2024
It’s the first day of winter. If you’ve been thinking of winter sports, you might like to know that snowboarding was invented on Christmas Day in 1965. The inventor, Sherman Poppen, came up with it because he wanted something that would get the kids out of the house so he could be alone with his wife.
Facts like that are bound to brighten up your day. But that’s nothing compared to the next facts we have lined up for you, covering itchy diseases, huge explosions and information about something all of us are doing wrong.
Talkies Ruined Everything
Emerson Romero was a successful actor in the 1920s. Then, he lost work after movies introduced sound, since he was deaf. That wasn’t the end of his contributions to the film industry, though. His deafness pushed him to create closed captioning.
Girl’s Best Friend
In the movie The Apprentice, Donald Trump gifts his lawyer a pair of diamond cufflinks, whose gems turn out to be fake. This really happened — though, in real life, Ivana Trump didn’t tell Roy Cohn the truth like in the movie, and it’s possible that Cohn died without ever learning the truth.
No Substitutions
The first modern alarm clock was invented in 1787. Its alarm rang at 4 a.m. There was no way to choose a different time — it just rang at the time that seemed most appropriate to inventor Levi Hutchins.
Bulletproof
In 1933, someone tried assassinating FDR. He failed and hit Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak instead. Cermak was convinced he was going to recover, and his last words were him telling doctors, “Take that tent thing off me and give me something to drink. Quit shooting that stuff into my arm and leave me alone. I’m going to get well.”
Pass the Heinz
You might assume that the most important condiment for hotdogs is ketchup, followed by mustard and relish. You would be wrong, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. This formal trade association suggests various toppings but says that no one should use ketchup on a hotdog once they reach adulthood.
Loosen Up My Buttons
Edward VII came up with the tuxedo because he found the tails of traditional coats inconvenient. Because people followed his example, they also followed his example of leaving the bottom button undone — which he adopted because his belly was too big to fully button his jacket.
The Crows Have Eyes
In 2008, the city of Kagoshima in Japan created a squad to destroy crow’s nests, to keep the birds from messing with electric lines. This led to the crows creating even more nests — including special decoy nests they had no plans of using but apparently built solely to trick the humans pursuing them.
The Art of Trolling
An art piece called “Peterfid Tomcat” won a medal of merit at a 1959 California exhibition. Then the museum’s janitors came forward and revealed that they’d made it and put it there without permission. It was just a piece of scrap metal they’d found.
Stranger Danger
In the 1980s, parents were cautioned that 1.5 million children in the United States disappear every year. That stat was never quite accurate. In 1984, for example, the FBI recorded the number of children nationwide who had been abducted by strangers at 67.
Deep Impact
A comet struck Jupiter in 1994, giving us a look at what happens when a moving body hits a planet. It landed with the impact of 300 million atomic bombs. This created temperatures of 60,000 degrees Fahrenheit and left dark spots on the surface so big that they were visible from Earth.
Final Destination
A plane crash in 1977 killed every member of an Indiana college basketball team — every member but one, who'd skipped the trip thanks to an ankle injury. That lucky player died in a car crash two weeks later.
Prime Monocrat
The British called their head of government the “prime minister” originally as an insult. In 1721, Robert Walpole assumed several leadership roles, and people called him the “prime minister” to mock him as a tyrant. The title, however, stuck.
Single-Use Only
An MLB game may go through around 100 baseballs. That means each one is probably pitched just once, after which it will never be used in a major league game again.
Solid Guarantee
In 1798, a town called Neversink formed in New York. It was named for an Algonquian phrase meaning “mad river.” In 1954, New York sank the town, flooding it to form a new reservoir.
Couldn’t Have Happened to a Nicer Guy
King Herod is best known for the Biblical story of how he ordered all the babies in Bethlehem killed, to target the prophesied King of the Jews. Historians do not have records of that. However, historians do say that Herod died at the age of 69 due to maggots and gangrene eating away at his penis.
