12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Sunday, November 17, 2024
If you walked on a treadmill for all of Thanksgiving dinner, you could burn off about a tenth of the calories.
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How Many Uncrustables Do NFL Players Eat in a Year?
Smuckers sells 80,000 Uncrustables to the NFL per year. The New Orleans Saints eat the least, about 50 per week, while the Denver Broncos do the heavy lifting at 700 per week.
One Dude Picks the Rockefeller Christmas Tree Every Year
Rockefeller Center head gardener Erik Pauze started as an intern in 1988 and worked his way to the top. He’s responsible for scouting trees, contacting the owner of the land they’re on and even feeding and watering them throughout the year before they’re harvested.
Hypnagogic Jerks
That weird spasm you experience that wakes you up right as you’re slipping off to sleep has a name: hypnagogic jerks. Science doesn’t know how they happen or what evolutionary purpose they may serve.
Scientists Just Discovered the Largest Known Coral Colony on the Planet, Which Is Apparently Untouched by Global Warming
Scientists just found a patch of coral three times larger than the previous record holder, a 500-year-old organism about 112 feet wide, near the Solomon Islands
Could Social Media Be Regulated Like a Bank?
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering putting Facebook under federal supervision, making them subject to inspections and monitors the way banks are.
‘The Onion’ Bought ‘InfoWars’
Alex Jones’ conspiracy media empire went up for auction, with proceeds going to families of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre that Jones spread disinformation about. Some of those families agreed to take a smaller amount in order to help The Onion take it over, rather than another right-wing POS like Roger Stone. Stone, incidentally, is now calling for the next U.S. Attorney General to look into the deal.
19th-Century AirTags
In 1879, a woman in Boston snuck a pedometer onto her husband when he started regularly leaving after dinner to “go down to the office and balance the books.” She found several extra miles of steps, which she eventually attributed to late-night billiards games.
Military Bosses Used the Same Espionage Tactics
A few years later, an army admiral gifted his reports pocket watches with odometers hidden inside, which revealed they had been sleeping on overnight shifts. Once they caught on, they’d pay younger recruits to shake the watches while they napped.
A Teen Faces 20 Years in Prison for Swatting
A Florida teen responsible for hundreds of bomb and shooting threats designed to make police raid the homes of his perceived enemies has pled guilty to a scant four counts of “making interstate threats to injure the person of another.”
How Long Would It Take to Burn Off Your Thanksgiving Calories?
The expected average caloric intake this year is around 4,500, which would take the average male 10 hours on a treadmill to burn off.
The Diamonds That Killed Marie Antoinette Sold for Almost $5 Million
A crazy-looking diamond necklace just sold at auction for $4.8 million. The high price tag was in part because some of the diamonds were reportedly part of the “affair of the diamond necklace,” a PR disaster from the 1780s that made the French associate Marie Antoinette with their financial crisis.
Insurance Fraud With a Bear Costume
Someone submitted security footage of a bear breaking into a car and rootin’ around in there, in an attempt to get an insurance payout. But the insurance company brought in a team of specialists (including a biologist) who determined it was actually a guy in bear suit.
