12 Trivia Tidbits for Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Someone went viral on TikTok for showing off his process for making Mountain Dew wine, using a mead kit, honey, baking soda and the Dew. It resulted in a 13.9 percent ABV “smooth, citrus mead with maybe a slight chemical aftertaste.”

There are implants and devices that have been able to use slight movements and vocalizations to produce words on a screen, but now the prototype of a device that uses only brain waves has seen success in plucking words out of brain signals alone.

NASA sent up the Parker Solar Probe to do repeated drive-bys of the sun, collecting a bunch of data from the solar corona and painting a much clearer picture of what’s going on in that gaseous cloud that’s only visible during a total solar eclipse. Specifically, there’s a crazy amount of magnetic activity taking place on in the outer layers of the sun, which makes it, paradoxically, way hotter than its core.

Photographer Josh Aitchison shacked up with millions of straw-colored fruit bats in Zambia, to get footage for BBC’s Mammals. These bats’ annual trek from all over Africa is the largest mammal migration in the world.

Mansa Musa was the leader of the Mali Empire in the early 14th century, and very likely the richest person in history. He ruled over West Africa, claiming the wealth of the region’s many gold mines and taxing the entire salt trade. It was a long time ago, and historians don’t even know how old he was, so it’s impossible to put a number to his wealth. We’ll try anyway: a friggin' bajillion.

I’d bet that the majority of coin collections on the planet are those U.S. maps with the state quarters that you stopped collecting in 2002. Every once in a while, though, a cool coin collection emerges; such is the case with Lars Emil Bruun’s trove. Bruun was a butter magnate who died a century ago and whose coin collection is expected to go for about $70 million.

Web developer Victor Ahuwanya programmed a “reverse dictionary,” in case you’ve got a word on the tip of your tongue and need help exorcising it. Now that Google is poised to become an echo chamber of A.I. nonsense, it’s nice to know a safe haven still exists for those of us who struggle with... what’s it called... Oh, that’s right: words.

Following brands like Aldi and Lidl, Eggo is dropping some pretty dope “waffle-inspired” shoes. They cost $150, but all proceeds go to a charity that feeds hungry kids, which is much more dope.

A 1981 patent by inventor William O. Holmes shows a design for a tube you can shove down your toilet, allowing you to access the fart air that’s trapped in the pipes, in case your home is rapidly filling with smoke.

Germany holds an annual finger wrestling championship, Fingerhakeln, where 150 men get drunk and try to break each others’ fingers with a leather loop.

Scientists have created an edible gel that can break down alcohol into acetic acid, a less harmful, but also less fun compound, to keep booze and its harmful byproducts from getting all up in your guts.

A guy in California was forced by his local government to get a six-foot fence installed on his driveway, to hide his boat. He built the fence, then had a photorealistic mural of his boat painted on the fence to spite them. He’s pretty sure he’s protected under the First Amendment.