12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Thursday, December 5, 2024

The Justice Department says that TD Bank allowed drug peddlers to launder $670 million in drug money over six years. One person in particular bribed workers with $57,000 in gift cards to let him move more cash around than is normally allowed. One employee admitted internally that they were “100 percent” involved in money laundering, and their branch manager simply said, “You guys really need to shut this down LOL.”

The elf owl stands at just 4.9 inches tall. They live in Mexico, and hang upside-down from plants to catch and eat wasps and scorpions.

Convicted Vietnamese fraudster Truong My Lan was convicted of a mind-numbing $27 billion fraud scheme, and sentenced to death. A court just upheld the punishment, which includes the possibility of a $9 billion get-out-of-execution card.

The ADI Design Museum in Milan is opening an exhibit dedicated to exploring elaborate dog houses built in classic and modern architectural styles.

A “very compact” pug named Vito won the 2024 National Dog Show based on its “sympathetic eyes” and “muscly stature.”

Looking at data from a major pet insurance website, the most popular names of the year appear to be Milo, Max and Charlie for dude dogs, and Daisy, Bella and Luna for lady dogs.

Alaska pilot Esther Sanderlin has made a tradition of airdropping Thanksgiving turkeys to her neighbors in West Susitna Valley, and hopes to turn the yearly mission into an official nonprofit.

Researchers believe they’ve found evidence for the existence of “primordial black holes,” microscopic black holes that formed right after the Big Bang, which would exist inside of hollowed-out planetoids.

An unnamed person made it through security and onto a plane at JFK airport without a boarding pass, and hung out in the bathroom for the whole flight.

Scientists have pinpointed a gene involved in photosynthesis that can ramp up the biomass of some plants, and in particular, can cause poplar trees to grow to 200 percent of their normal height.

Scientists observed what’s being described as the largest predation event ever witnessed: a population of migrating cod chowed down on a miles-long group of spawning capelin on a huge swath of Norway’s coast.

Wikipedia announced its 50 most-visited pages of the year. Topping the list were “Donald Trump” (25 million visits), “Lyle and Erik Menendez” (26 million), “2024 United States presidential election” (27 million), “Kamala Harris” (28 million) and “Deaths in 2024” (44 million).