12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Sunday, January 5, 2025

Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s tomb is famously surrounded by thousands of buried statues that are both figuratively and literally keeping people out. Every once in a while, one is found with special armor and a unique hand position, marking it as a general. Only 10 generals have been found, the last one uncovered in 1994.

Rural school transportation was standardized in 1939 thanks to Columbia professor Frank Cyr. He held a conference with representatives from all 48 states to, among other things, lock in 44 distinct characteristics of the American school bus. They selected the classic yellow hue from among 50 different color swatches, and named it “National School Bus Chrome.”

A California motorist was arrested for drunk driving and transporting a baby spider monkey in a tiny pink onesie.

The carnian pluvial episode was a stretch of one to two million years during the late Triassic period where it just kind of rained everywhere, all the time. Fossil records indicate a whole lot of death in that time period, but it also sparked a lot of evolution and diversification of dinosaurs, coral reefs and the li’l freaks that would eventually become mammals.

PopSci released its list of the 10 most chaotic space mishaps of 2024. It includes the two astronauts who have been stranded for months, of course, but other lesser disasters that went somewhat under the radar too: the guy in Florida whose house was hit by ISS debris and the Japanese moon lander that touched down like a turtle stuck on its back.

Basic physics tells us that a beam of light is straight. But we know the fabric of space-time is warped when you zoom way out, so even the path from the sun to your eyeball isn’t perfectly straight. Crystals are another candidate for perfect straightness, as they develop in set geometric patterns. But zoom way in, and you’ll never find a perfectly straight stack of atoms.

Data indicates that Utah, Utah is the driest county in America, with just nine percent excessive drinkers, while Gallatin, Montana clocks in at 27 percent drunkards.

Someone was caught smuggling $84 million in gold through Hong Kong International Airport by molding it into mechanical parts, spray painting them silver and assembling them into a mimic of an air compression machine.

Reeves presented the John Wick: Chapter 4 stunt team with matching $9,000 Rolexes. But his was stolen from his home, along with three other watches. Police just recovered them all in a raid on a 21-year-old Chilean man.

Animals who closely resemble their extremely ancient ancestors were referred to by Darwin as “living fossils”: think horseshoe crabs and the duck-billed platypus. The elephant shark was long thought to take the cake, but scientists now believe that the gar fish has the slowest rate of molecular evolution (at least among jawed vertebrates).

Returns of retail goods in the 2024 holiday season are estimated at $890 billion. That’s a large chunk of the industry’s revenue, but most companies recognize it as an investment in customer loyalty, so they can continue raking in record purchases year after year.

The Eurasian common shrew is able to drop 18 percent of its body weight during the peak of winter, specifically shaving off body parts that burn the most energy. It’ll cleave off over a quarter of its own brain, then regrow it again in the spring. They only live for a year, though, so they can only pull off this trick once.