I acquired a joke book from an online thrift bookstore recently. It was a book titled “The Official Country & Western Joke Book”. I was looking forward to reading it and when it arrived I immediately dove right into it. It became painfully obvious within a few pages that the book was freaking awful. I searched through another eighty pages and couldn’t find one joke that made me even grin a little. That book was immediately removed from my archives and relegated to a paper bag located next to the trashcan. Todays post is PLAN B. Enjoy this mish/mosh of trivia.
The iconic theme song of the X-Files was created by accident when a producer accidentally hit the “echo” button on the control panel.
James Earl Jones was offered the lead in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which eventually went to Avery Brooks.
Samuel L. Jackson once held Martin Luther King Sr. hostage during a college demonstration at Morehead College.
Shaquille O’Neal made just one three point shot in his entire career. He only attempted 22 three-pointers for a 4.5% shooting percentage.
For 43 years the NFL’s record for the longest field goal was held by Tom Dempsey who was born with no toes on his kicking foot. His record setting 63 yard field goal in 1970 wasn’t broken until 2013.
At the height of his power, Pablo Escobar, spent $2500.00 a week on rubber bands that were needed to band the money he was bringing in.
At one time, the United States Rock-Paper-Scissors League was a real thing. The winning prize was $50,000.00.
It’s been a hectic week with life once again getting in the way. I thought a few tidbits of unusual trivia would keep everyone interested and entertained for a few minutes. Now I can return to my life such as it is.
The original name of Scrabble was “Lexico“. It was later called “Criss-Cross” before eventually becoming Scrabble.
During WWI sauerkraut was called “Liberty Cabbage” by the Americans. Hamburgers were called “Liberty Steaks“.
“Meetinghouse” was the WWII Allied codename for Tokyo.
The spacecraft Gemini 3 was nicknamed the “Molly Brown” by the astronauts Grissom and Young because in 1961 it sank upon reentry.
Alvin Karpus AKA “Old Creepy” was arrested by J. Edgar Hoover and sentenced to serve time in Alcatraz. He spent 26 years there from 1936-1952, more than any other inmate.
“Professor Tigwissel’s Burglar Alarm” was the first comic strip to appear in a newspaper, the New York Graphic, on September 11, 1875.
Betty Boop’s pet dog was named “Pudgy“.
The 1948 tune by Muddy Waters, “Rollin” Stone“, inspired the name of the rock group, the Rolling Stones.
Steve Trachsel was the Chicago pitcher who gave up Mark McGwire’s 62nd homerun in 1998 in Busch Stadium.
“A Wild Hare” was the 1940 Warner Brothers cartoon in which Bugs Bunny first said, “What’s Up Doc?”
👮🏻♂️👮🏻♂️👮🏻♂️
One of My Fav’s
“Manhattan Melodrama” was last movie watched by John Dillinger at the Biograph
Theatre in Chicago in 1934 just minutes before being gunned down by FBI agents.
As you’re probably aware I collect weird and odd trivia. I stumbled upon a book by a Mr. Russ Kick titled “50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know”. It’s a collection of somewhat obscure facts collected by Kick. I’ll list ten of the facts from the book without the accompanying lengthy explanations provided to prove his points. Some facts appear outrageous, but it seems his research was well done. If you want to check his facts, then you’ll need to find and buy the book or do some lengthy research online.
Barbie is based on a German sex doll
Fetuses masturbate
George Washington embezzled government funds
Scientists are re-creating the highly lethal 1918 Spanish Flu virus
Several thousand Americans were held in Nazi concentration camps during WW2
Well over 300,000 tons of chemical weapons have been dumped into the sea
Men have clitorises
Native Americans were once kept as slaves
James Audubon killed all the birds he painted
The Environmental Protection Agency lied about New York’s air quality after the 9/11 disaster.
I am constantly amazed as I do my research for this blog. So many facts exist that are different and sometimes strange. It seems that the stranger facts regularly turn out to be true. Here are ten interesting facts you might enjoy.
The Puritans brought beer to America. According to Mourt’s Relation (1622), the Mayflower Pilgrims settled at Plymouth because supplies, especially beer, were running low. Beer was a dietary mainstay on long voyages because, having been boiled, it was purer than water.
Despite being made famous by Dutch paintings and Spain’s Don Quixote, windmills originated in Persia before the 10th century.
At -90°F, your breath will freeze in midair and fall to the ground.
The word “deadline” originated in Civil War prisons, where lines were drawn that prisoners passed only at the risk of being shot.
On March 15, 1985, Symbolic.com became the first registered Internet domain. Science-fiction writer William Gibson had coined the term “cyberspace” in his novel Neuromancer only the year before.
The first film version of Frankenstein was a 15-minute silent film produced by Thomas Edison.
Inventions that changed how we shop: the cash register (1884), the shopping cart (1936), and the scannable barcode (1952).
Warren Buffett, legendary investor and self-made multibillionaire, filed his first income tax return at age 13, reporting revenue from a newspaper delivery job. He claimed a $35 deduction for his bicycle.
Shakespeare coined thousands of new words, or “neologisms” in his plays and sonnets. Among these are: amaze, bedroom, excellent, fitful, majestic, radiance, and summit.
Dolly the sheep – the first cloned mammal – was named after country singer Dolly Parton. Stockmen dubbed the sheep “Dolly “because she was cloned from a mammary cell.
How many of the ten were you aware of before reading this post? I’m just a little curious. I’ll just bet the real Dolly was so proud she was popping her buttons off. LOL
The truth is sometimes strange and at other times ridiculous. These factoids are a little of both. They’re good for making a few bucks at bar bets on trivia night.
The term ” soap opera” comes from the fact that shows used to work advertisements for soap powder into the plot lines.
A champagne cork flying out of a bottle can travel as fast as 100 miles per hour.
People who fear the number 666 suffer from hexakaosioihexekontahexaphobia.
On November 21, 1980, 83 million Americans tuned in to watch the finale of the Dallas cliffhanger “Who Shot J.R.?” A few weeks earlier, 85.1 million Americans voted in the Reagan-Carter presidential election.
During a 60-year life span, an average tree will produce nearly 2 tons of leaves to be raked.
Dancing the tango was considered a sin in Paris during the early 1900s.
Those roped off areas where boxing matches take place actually used to be round, hence the term “boxing ring”.
Pope John XXI (1276-01277) had been in office less than a year before the ceiling on a new wing of his palace collapsed on him while he slept. He died six days later.
Nearly 4% of American women claim that they never wear underwear.
The Pentagon goes through more than 600 rolls of toilet paper every day.
TOO WEIRD TO BELIEVE? . . . WELL, BELIVE IT ANYWAY
I realize that most people have no real use for statistics and suspect they can be manipulated easily by politicians and others to suit whatever point they’re trying to make. I believe that as well but nonetheless I’m about to supply you with a few statistics and facts you may never have heard before. Here they are.
The number of atoms in a pound of iron is nearly 5 trillion trillion: 4,891, 500, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.
Manhattan Island from end to end is less than 1,000,000 inches long.
Three pairs of common English rabbits were let loose in Australia, in the middle of the 19th century. Within a decade, the six rabbits multiplied into millions, menacing the country’s agriculture.
Coffee is the world’s second largest item of international commerce. Petroleum is first.
The abacus was used in the West in medieval times, and then forgotten. Interest in the accounting tool was revived when the abacus was brought to France by Lieut. Jean Victor Poncelet, when he was freed by the Russians after the Napoleons fall.
Drilling an oil well 5 miles deep require drilling night and day, seven days a week, for as long as 500 days.
In terms of the resources he will use in his lifetime and the pollution he will cause. One citizen of the United States is the equivalent of about 80 citizens of India.
During the next minute, 100 people will die in 240 will be born. The world’s population increases by 140 people per minute.
There are 2,500,000 rivets in the Eiffel Tower.
There are 11.5 psychiatrists per 100,000 population in the United States. In the nation’s capital, however, there are 56.1 per 100,000.
There you have. More totally useless information for you to clog your brain with. The more I find the more I continue to find.
Trivia . . . more trivia . . . Here’s some interesting retro trivia from those good old days that we’ve always heard so much about. You can decide if they were as good as we’ve always been told.
Two hundred years ago: For kissing his wife in public on a Sunday after just returning from a three-year voyage, a Boston ship captain was made to sit two hours in the stocks for “lewd and seemly behavior”.
The first Cadillac, which was produced in 1903, cost less than the original model T Ford. Their prices, respectively, were $750 and $875.
The bathhouse in the late medieval town became the habitat for loose women and lecherous man as family life deteriorated. The medieval word for bathhouse, “stew,” has come down in English as a synonym for brothel.
The average married woman in 17th century America gave birth to 13 children.
One-third of all automobiles in New York City, Boston, and Chicago in 1900 were electric cars, with batteries rather than gasoline engines.
In 1909, Annette Kellerman, the Australian swimming star, appeared on a Boston beach wearing a figure- fitting jersey bathing suit with sleeves shortened almost to her shoulders and trousers ending 2 inches above her knees. She was arrested for indecent exposure.
Life expectancy at birth for Americans was 34.5 years for males and 36.5 years for females when George Washington became president in 1789.
As late as 1890, nearly 75% of Americans had to fetch their mail from a post office. A community had to have at least 10,000 people to be eligible for home delivery, and most people then lived in towns or on farms.
The Puritans, considering buttons a vanity and used only hooks and eyes.
In colonial days it was legal to smoke tobacco in Massachusetts only when the smoker was traveling and had reached a location that was 5 miles away from any town. In 1647 Connecticut passed a law forbidding social smoking and limiting the use of tobacco to once a day, and then only when the smoker was alone in his own house.
These are 10 items that are truly miscellaneous. As I gather all of my trivia together there are always a few things that can’t be categorized, and I thought I’d share some of them with you today. Here they are . . .
Charles E Weller is best known for a single sentence he created, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.” It was invented for use as a typing exercise.
The original name of the Girl Scouts was the “Girl Guides’.
Robert L. Ripley was the first person inducted into the National Trivia Hall of Fame in 1980.
Did you know that the only two letters that are not on a telephone are the Q & Z.
The initials M. G. On the famous British automobile stand for the Morris Garage.
It was in 153 B.C. the Romans first marked January 1st as the beginning of the new year.
How many of you know that the group motto for the Salvation Army is “Blood & Fire”?
The middle day of a non-leap year year is July 2nd. There’s 182 days before it, and 182 after it.
Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and Gen. George Patton were dyslexic?
In 1871 the rickshaw was invented by American Baptist missionary Jonathan Goble. He had a Japanese carpenter build the original rickshaw for his invalid wife in Yokohama.
I’ve been a history buff for most of my life. I would prefer to sit in a corner and read a book on history than just about any other topic except for science fiction. Unfortunately, many historical facts that were being taught in the school systems weren’t exactly accurate. Here are a few examples.
LIZZIE BORDEN
Lizzie Borden’s verdict was not guilty.
The first shots of the US Civil War were not at Fort Sumter South Carolina. On January 9, 1861, a battery of Confederate soldiers on Morris Island, South Carolina – cadets from the Citadel Military College fired 17 shots at the Star of the West, a civilian union steamship hired by the federal government to transport military supplies and reinforcements to Fort Sumter. Three months later is when the Confederate army fired on the South Carolina Fort.
The feminists did not burn their bras but wore them. The closest thing to bra burning happened at the 1968 Miss America pageant. On September 7, 1968, protesters of the pageant filled a “freedom trashcan” with bras, girdles, false eyelashes, men’s magazines, and other items they considered instruments of torture. Some people wanted to burn the items, but they were unable to obtain a burn permit.
President Lincoln’s first choice to lead the union armies was not General Grant but Robert E Lee, who rejected his offer because of his loyalty to Virginia.
President Andrew Jackson was called Old Hickory because of his walking stick.
George Washington’s false teeth were not made of wood but of hippopotamus and elephant ivory held together with gold springs. Real human teeth and bits of horse and donkey teeth were inserted into an ivory plate. By the way, his dentures are on display in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of History and Technology.
GEORGE’S TEETH
Contrary to the image of Daniel Boone popularized by actor Fess Parker on TV, the real Daniel Boone didn’t wear a coonskin hat, which he thought looked uncivilized. Instead, he wore a beaver felt hunters’ hat, a wide brimmed, Pennsylvania-style hat, which resembled the hat depicted on a box of Quaker Oats.
DANIEL BOONE
Just when I thought I had a good handle on our history I stumbled upon hundreds of items that needed clarification. I’ll send along more in the future because the more I find the more interesting they become.
I am a constant collector of weird and unusual facts and information. During my travels if I see something that even looks a little bit interesting, I collected it. I have many books in my archives that I’ve not read as thoroughly as I’d like and information your see here is from one of those books. Hope you enjoy it.
As the great Chicago fire of 1871 killed 300 people, an even deadlier fire was under way 200 miles to the north. It devastated Peshtigo, Wisconsin, killing 600 people; but somehow it never got the same attention.
All of Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland, is heated by underground hot springs. Reykjavík is probably the cleanest capital city in the world.
The first hydrogen bomb, tested in 1952, was as powerful as the total of all the bombs dropped on Germany and Japan during World War II, including both of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The African climate is not always warm. The Nile River has frozen over at least twice, in 829 A.D. and in 1010.
For amusement, it was agreed by four friends holidaying in Switzerland that each would write a ghost story. Percy B Shelley, George Byron, and Dr. John William Polidori never finished theirs. Only 18-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin did. She published it anonymously two years later, in 1818, with a preface by her husband, Shelley. Mary Shelley’s novel about Dr. Victor Frankenstein and his monstrous creation became a classic.
Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norkay deservedly received much praise when they were the first to climb to the summit of Mount Everest. Less known is the fact that they had a roster of 12 climbers, 40 Sherpa guides, and 700 porters.
Three pairs of common English rabbits were let loose in Australia, in the middle of the 19th century. Within a decade, the six rabbits had multiplied into millions, menacing the country’s agriculture.
Japan did not send an ambassador to another nation until it sent Niimi Masaoki to the US for a few weeks in 1860.
The daughters of a mother who is colorblind and a father who has normal vision will have normal vision. The sons will be colorblind, however.
Up to 150 tons of meteorite fragments slammed into the Earth each year. As far as is known, only seven people have been struck by such rocks from space.
By “deciphering” the Book of Revelations, a minister in Lochau in East Germany proclaimed that the world would end on October 18, 1533. When it didn’t happen, the minister, Michael Stiftel, was given a thorough thrashing by the townspeople.
I certainly hope you enjoy reading these obscure facts. It’s almost as much fun as actually collecting them. More are certain to follow because I barely scratched the surface of books I haven’t thoroughly read yet.
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