12 Completely Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Tuesday, July 9, 2024
I found them in the bottom of my shoe. Can we stop for a second so I can shake them out?
Pocahontas Is the Only Real Person Disney Has Made An Animated Movie About
Pocahontas holds the well-intentioned honor of being the first and only actual person Disney has based an animated feature on. Fairly loosely, of course.
The St. Patrick’s Day Parade Started in the U.S.
The first ever St. Patrick's Day Parade was held in 1601, in… modern-day Florida.
Homo Sapiens Is A Pretty Smart Name
The literal meaning of the term Homo sapiens is “wise man.” We’d sure like to think so!
The Winner of the First Nobel Prize for Medicine
Emil Adolf von Behring received the award in 1901 for his work on serum therapy, or the transference of antibodies for fighting disease from one patient to another.
The First Black Female Millionaire
Her name was Madam C.J. Walker, and she made her fortune on beauty products.
Kobe Bryant’s Babe Ruth-Like Record
It’s an often-parroted fact that Babe Ruth has the most strikeouts in baseball history. In that same vein, Kobe Bryant holds the NBA record for most career missed shots, with 14,481.
The Only Marsupial in the U.S. or Canada
The Monkeys Churchill Protected Because of A Prophecy
There was once a legend that when monkeys, specifically the Barbary macaques, left the island of Gibraltar, the British empire would fall. A bit of superstition to be sure, but a bit of superstition that Winston Churchill took seriously enough to specifically order the macaque population be reinforced in the 1940s.
X-Rays Are Older Than You Think
You probably wouldn’t peg the discovery of X-rays as coming before the turn of the 20th century, but they were indeed discovered in 1895 by a man named Wilhelm Roentgen. He discovered the rays themselves, but their medical uses were recognized almost immediately as well.
Thank Thailand for Red Bull
Red Bull started as an energy drink known as Krating Daeng, which was popular in Thailand among manual laborers.
Rocky Was Remarkably Cheap
If I was a studio executive, every time James Cameron asked for money to make more blue guys, I’d point to Rocky, which was made for only a million bucks.
What Japanese Newspapers Printed Once A Month During World War II
The Japanese declaration of war against the U.S. and Britain was printed on the front page of Japanese newspapers on the 8th of every month.
