15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, April 12, 2025
Has World War III begun? We haven’t checked the headlines in nearly 20 minutes, so we aren’t sure. But we do know that we’ve lived in uncertain times before. In 1958, people thought China and the United States were on the edge of nuclear war. Today, most people haven’t even heard of that particular conflict.
In fact, that conflict’s failure to escalate might be a cause for laughter. Find out exactly why below, along with some info about a truly unfortunate boat ride.
A Star Is Born
Cher’s first song was titled, “Ringo I Love You.” The song performed poorly. It didn’t help that listeners believed that this low-pitched person apparently singing a love song to Ringo Starr was a man.
Killer Story
Brazilian audiences were impressed with the show Canal Livre, whose host Wallace Souza always seemed to be first on the scene when someone got murdered. In 2009, police charged him with arranging five of these murders himself, hiring assassins to kill people for the sake of making exciting news segments.
Elasticity of Demand
Spandex was invented as a type of textile used to make girdles. It only became associated with athleticwear when warehouses started filling with unwanted spandex, thanks to girdles plummeting in popularity in the 1970s.
DUI Failure
The fifth James Bond film, License to Kill, was originally titled License Revoked. They changed the title because they judged that too many people in America associated the title with losing their driver’s licenses.
OCD Failure
A ship took off from a Belgian port in 1987, without anyone remembering to shut the bow doors. The ship capsized in 90 seconds, killing 193 people.
via Wiki Commons
Punch Up Your Writing
Writer Harlan Ellison was a student at Ohio State University in the 1950s. A professor criticized his work, so Ellison punched the guy and wound up expelled.
Mens Sana in Corpore Sano
Gilbert Paul Jordan, nicknamed the Boozing Barber, claimed to drink nearly a handle of vodka every single day. We aren’t sure if he was telling the truth about that. But we are sure that he also encouraged partners to drink fatal quantities of alcohol, to the point that police linked him to at least eight deaths.
The Joy of Copy Editing
The line “I’ll be back,” in the original Terminator, was scripted as, “I’ll come back.” Then when the line before Schwarzenegger was “I’ll be back,” he suggested changing it to “I will be back,” to sound robotic, but James Cameron said no. This was a lot of debate over a line that surely would soon be forgotten.
Gentle Tinkling
The bestselling album of piano music in history was played on a broken piano. It was a recording of a 1975 German concert, and they couldn’t replace the faulty piano with a preferred one because it was raining outside.
Gem of a Phrase
When ad writer Frances Gerety came up with the slogan “a diamond is forever” in 1948, other people in the agency had two objections. One: It didn’t mean anything. Two: It didn’t obey basic grammar. People went on to overlook the second point, and as for the first, the slogan proved great at keeping people from selling their diamonds, killing the secondhand market.
Yeah, see how weird that sounds?
3,000 Episodes
A British talk show called The Jeremy Kyle Show ran a lie detector test on a guest, seemingly revealing that he had been cheating on his fiancée. The network canceled the show when the guy killed himself a week later.
The Impostor Impersonation
For years, Steven Spielberg told a story about just how he broke into show business. He sneaked into Universal Studios while wearing a suit and sat in an empty office, pretending that someone had hired him for a job. This wasn’t true at all: In reality, his successful father arranged a visit for him.
What a Show
In certain parts of Colombia, you might run into comeburras, which translates as “donkey eaters.” These men don’t eat donkeys but instead engage in a different sort of physical act with them, with the justification that the practice makes their (the men’s) penises larger.
Emergency Steak
Back when meat was more expensive. people cooking at home used to make imitation steaks out of ground beef. One version of this combined beef, milk and Wheaties.
The Final Countdown
In 1958, China and Taiwan clashed, and the U.S. stepped in, in the form of military flights zooming through the area. China demanded that America halt these flights, in what a spokesperson called their “final warning.” When the flights continued, China issued a second final warning. By 1964, they had issued over 900 final warnings.
