12 Trivia Tidbits for Tuesday, March 26, 2024

In 1914, Parisians started a yearly competition where waiters would deliver trays of coffee, water and croissants over somewhat long distances, as fast as possible, without spilling. It was put on hiatus in 2011, but was revived to begin hyping up the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Researches have quantified optimism and pessimism, and found that people who lean more optimistic have better cardiovascular, pulmonary, immunological and metabolic performance, and tend to avoid age-related illnesses. Good, optimists can have this planet, we hate it here.

A five-decade study in the U.K. found that adults with higher paying jobs started out as aggressive kids, and adults who make less were much more reserved or emotionally unstable.

Multiple studies over the past couple of decades have shown that native speakers of Japanese are able to pronounce the most syllables per second. One study had Japanese at 7.84, Spanish at 7.82 and English further down the list at 6.19.

Pliny the Elder told an anecdote about Cleopatra, one of the wealthiest people in history, having in her collection a couple of the largest natural pearls ever found. The story goes that, on a dare, she either had them crushed or dissolved in vinegar, and ate them. It was kind of the gold leaf-covered wagyu steak of its day.

As is their wont, intelligent weirdos who hate the current state of the world and humanity have revived a theory from a dumber age, and restated it in more modern language. An Ancient Greek school of thought, panpsychism, more or less said that we’re just a bunch of random molecules that achieved consciousness, and therefore, consciousness is possible in any random group of molecules. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake has taken that a step further: “The link between minds and physical systems seems to be through rhythmic electromagnetic fields, which of course are present in our brains. They are also present in and around the Sun…”

The Letters of Utrecht is an art project where a poet carves a poem into the cobblestones of the city’s streets, one letter per week, indefinitely. The project began in 2012, and the current poet in charge has it all mapped out through 2350.

A startup called “Loyal” has raised $125 million to develop an FDA-approved drug that will keep dogs alive and healthy for longer.

Wiarton Willie is an albino groundhog who also predicts the weather based on the cloudiness of the sky when he leaves his burrow. In 1996, he wrongly predicted an early spring, and when it stayed chilly and grey in Britain, of all places, a few people threatened to murder Willie and his handler.

The three counties with the longest average commutes are Monroe County, PA (70 miles), Coconino County, AZ (68 miles) and Parker County, TX (66 miles). The three counties with the shortest commute are all in New York City: Manhattan (12 miles), Brooklyn (15 miles) and the Bronx (16 miles).

A set of 7,000-year-old wooden canoes were discovered at the bottom of a lake near Rome, and were likely used by people in the Neolithic era for fishing and transportation.

Czech archaeologists were sifting through some dirt in an old basement when they found the lone, extremely metal ice skate among some pottery fragments that date it back to around the 10th century.