15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, February 1, 2025
This week, a Black Hawk helicopter crashed into a passenger plane over Washington, D.C. That would surely be among the craziest cashes of a military aircraft in an American city. However, it might not be the craziest crash of a military aircraft in an American city. For example, in 1945, a bomber was flying into New York City from Massachusetts, and rather than landing at LaGuardia, it crashed into the Empire State Building.
We’ll have an interesting detail about this crash below, along with some facts about law and the power of fate.
Method to the Madness
Keith Richards’ pirate character in the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie walks unsteadily, as befits Jack Sparrow’s father. Richards accomplished this through the obvious technique of getting drunk beforehand, to the point that the director had to support him physically on the way to set.
This Bill Shall Pass
In the early 1990s, Britain had a special age-of-consent law for gay men, setting the age at 21. It took Ian McKellen meeting the Prime Minister — a meeting not disclosed till years later — to convince them to lower it to 18.
Against the Music
The Madonna song “Papa Don’t Preach” ends on the line, “I know I’m keeping my baby.” In the last few years, to transform the song into a reproductive rights anthem, Madonna has changed the line in performances to: “I’m not keeping my baby.”
Hollywood Choice Awards
For the Oscars, nominations come from members of the Academy related to each award’s specific branch. Actors vote on nominations for acting awards, and directors vote on nominations for Best Director. If someone is snubbed, it may simply be because they aren’t popular.
Pushing Them Underground
Manhattan used have an elevated railway, much like Chicago’s “L” train. Real estate investors successfully convinced the city to demolish it, reasoning that these trains were too loud.
Imagine a Land
Disney wanted to set their movie Aladdin in Iraq, making Jasmine’s father the vizier of Baghdad. Then the Gulf War began, and they figured they’d be better off creating a fictional kingdom instead.
Automatic Grammatizator
The books of Roald Dahl received recent edits. Many of these edits cater to a sensitive new generation of readers, but others remove ambiguity. One line from James and the Giant Peach had James flying into a character’s “horny lap.” The character wasn’t actually sexually aroused, so the new edition just calls it his “lap.”
Caveat Emptor
Before recorded music, people bought sheet music, and buying a score could sometimes be a gamble. If you hadn’t heard it before, you might not be able to judge how it sounded just by reading the notes. Stores solved this by employing song pluggers — onsite pianists who’d play the tune for you.
Second Choice
Kevin Costner came up with the idea for Whitney Houston to sing “I Will Always Love You.” She was supposed to cover “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” for The Bodyguard, but then it turned out a different movie from that time was already including that song.
Too Spicy
When you say the word “habanero,” you might be tempted to pronounce the third syllable as nya, similar to jalapeño. The word really just uses a standard “neh” sound. The temptation to make the word sound a little more Spanish is known as hyperforeignism.
Night to Remember
The song “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)” was originally titled after a different year. It was about December 5, 1933, the day that Prohibition was repealed.
Drink Tims
The chain Tim Hortons is so famous that many people don’t remember it’s named for Canadian hockey star Tim Horton. Even fewer people remember that Horton died 10 years after founding the chain, when he flipped his car over driving at twice the legal alcohol limit.
Spring Break Forever
The film Spring Breakers cost just $5 million. One factor that helped was, rather than cast actors for every single part, they filmed actual spring breakers. This included actual spring breakers getting naked, and signing their rights over afterward.
Going Down
An Air Force pilot accidentally crashed a plane into the Empire State Building in 1945. Along with killing a dozen people, this injured an elevator operator, who was moved for transport to a hospital to a different elevator — whose cables snapped, sending her falling 80 floors. She survived, and she lived another 54 years.
Steer the Stars
In 1968, Billy Davis from the group The Fifth Dimension mistakenly left his wallet behind in a cab. A producer of the musical Hair found it and invited him to come see the play. This was the only chance Davis had to see the song “Age of Aquarius” performed. His group now covered that song, and their version went to number one for six weeks.
