When I started this blog many years ago it took me a while to come up with a proper name. Once the decision was made to call it “every useless thing” I was hooked into providing as many weird and unusual facts as I could find. I’ve created a rather large library of totally useless information and it’s my pride and joy. If I’ve calculated properly, I have enough facts and trivia to continue this blog for 10 more years and never repeat the same item twice. I get to find them and post them, and unfortunately you get to read them. Here we go . . .

• Reese Witherspoon has two pet donkeys.

• Keanu Reeves was born in Lebanon.

• The iconic mask used in the 1978 horror film Halloween was a plastic Captain Kirk mask from Star Trek, spray-painted white and with its eyeholes enlarged.

• The S. S. Minnow of Gilligan’s Island fame was named after former chairman of the FCC, Newton Minnow, who considered television to be a “vast wasteland.

• The maiden name of Betty rubble from the Flintstones show was Betty Jean McBricker.

• To complete the pair, the maiden name of Wilma Flintstone was Wilma Slaghoopel.

• In the United States, the last year that somebody officially died of “old age” was 1951 That’s the last year “old age” was listed on death certificates. It’s now referred to as death by “natural causes.”

• Robert Williams is the first known person to be killed by a robot. He worked at a Ford automobile factory and was struck in the head by a robot in 1979.

• Amalie Auguste Melitta Benz was the un-famous inventor of the coffee filter.

• The first mechanically sliced loaf of bread was sold under the famous Wonder Bread brand in 1930.

AND THE BEAT GOES ON