I’m sitting here looking out the window and watching our first snowfall of 2025. If their estimate proves accurate we’ll have 7-10 inches by morning. From listening to the experts it does appear this may be the start of one helluva bad winter. I’m well prepared with a full can of gas, a working snowblower, and a desire to go play in the snow a little. If you’re in the same predicament then sit back in your warm and comfy chair to enjoy some interesting and varied trivia facts. Here we go . . .
Leonard Skinner was the name of the gym teacher of the boys who went on to form the band Lynyrd Skynyrd. He once told them “You boys will never amount to nothing.” The band’s front man, Ronnie Van Zant, decided to adopt the name but change the spelling, as a joke on his former teacher.
Richard Gere’s middle name is Tiffany.
Goldie Hawn’s career as an actress-comedienne was launched after she was spotted as a dancer in the chorus line on The Andy Griffith Show in 1966.
Keith Moon of the band, The Who, inspired the Muppet drummer Animal.
Under the Motion Picture censorship code, which was effective from 1934 to 1968, a screen kiss could only last 30 seconds before being labeled “indecent.”
In the early episodes of Start Trek, Dr. McCoy’s medical scanner was just an ordinary saltshaker.
The blood in the famous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was in fact Hershey’s chocolate syrup.
A snake has the best heat-detecting equipment in nature. Using the two organs between its eyes and nostrils it can locate a mouse by its body heat at a distance of 15 miles.
In a survey of 80,000 American women it was found that those who drank moderately had only half the heart-attack risk of those who didn’t drink at all.
When you sneeze, all your bodily functions stop – including the heart.
🏃♂️🏃♀️🏃♂️
Here’s one of my Fav’s. If your a true fan of the Olympics you’ll love it too.
Nudity was considered perfectly acceptable in ancient Greece, but it was declared indecent if a man revealed an erection.
Why is it that everybody seems to love celebrities. It’s something that’s puzzled me for many years and I still don’t understand the fascination. During my lifetime I’ve met a number of celebrities and after short conversations very few of them were interesting. Underneath all the glitz and glamour and the famous roles that they’ve played, it’s still just a regular old human being playing dress up like they did when they were kids. They have the same problems and issues as all the rest of us except for the fact that a few problems they have are exacerbated by their fame and celebrity. Their worst problem is primarily the use and abuse of drugs as reflected by the endless list of OD fatalities. I dug into my archives again today and picked up a few trivia items concerning celebrities from the early Hollywood years. For those of you that love celebrities and can’t live without TMZ and the effing Kardashian clan, you have my sympathies. You should stop reading now and go have a cup of coffee or a stiff drink. That’s what’s I’m going to do.
An old-time actress, Ethel Barrymore, was the first actress to have a theater named after her.
A great actor James Cagney made his first stage appearance as a chorus girl in a show called Every Sailor.
In the famous Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho, the blood in the famous shower scene was actually chocolate syrup.
Child actress Shirley Temple appeared in her first film, The Red-Haired Alibi, at the age of three.
Yule Brenner was famous for his shiny bald head but most people who watched his movies had no idea his real hair was actually a dark brown.
Jimmy Durante of the famous gravelly voice and large nose insured his nose at Lloyd’s of London.
In the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the out-of-control computer HAL, is taught to sing the song, A Bicycle Built for Two.
Dolly Parton and her two wonderfully round and soft friends once had the name, Booby Trap as a CB handle.
Famous leading man Sean Connery represented Scotland in the 1952 Mr. Universe contest.
Elizabeth Taylor’s film career started at the age of 10 in a low-brow comedy called There’s One Born Every Minute, which also featured former Our Gang star, Carl (Alfalfa) Switzer.
As you can see most of the celebrity gossip from the good old days isn’t nearly as juicy as what we’re dealing with today. I just wish I had the power to bundle up all of the Kardashians (including big Daddy/Mommy Jenner), all of their associates and children and lovers and ex-lovers and husbands and ex-husbands, and dump them all back into the 1920’s. If only wishing made it so.
Always wishing to keep this blog interesting I decided that a short review of the “toilet” needs to be told. It’s an important part of our everyday lives but very few people care to hear anything about it. I’ll do the best I can with the information I’ve been able to find.
Before the invention of toilet paper, people use shells or stones, bunches of herbs or, at best, a bit of sponge attached to a stick, which they rinsed with cold water.
A Victorian plumber, Thomas Crapper, perfected the system we all use today. The siphon flush which by drawing water uphill through a sealed cistern is both effective and hygienic.
In Victorian times, toilet seats were always made of wood. The well-to-do set on mahogany or walnut, while the poor put up with untreated white pine.
The idea of separate cubicles for toilets is a relatively modern invention. The Romans, for example, sat down together in large groups.
The first toilet air freshener was a pomegranate stuffed with cloves.
American civil servants’ paychecks are recycled to make toilet rolls.
The most impossible item to flush is a ping-pong ball.
The movie Psycho was the first Hollywood film that showed a toilet flushing – thereby generating many complaints.
Julia Roberts was once asked for an autograph while she was on the john. She said, ” I’m the tiniest bit busy.”
Actor Jack Nicholson has a dead rattlesnake embedded in the clear plastic seat of his toilet.
And one last quote from a member of British royalty. “The biggest waste of water in the country by far. You spend half a pint and flush 2 gallons.”(Prince Philip in a 1965 speech)
All those years ago when I started this blog I had difficulty deciding on the proper name for it. After weeks of overthinking and indecision I decided on everyuselessthing. Initially I did a lot of political ranting but that was a wasted effort. Political discussions are to me as boring and useless as discussions of religion and sports. This blog name gave me the freedom to say whatever I wanted about any subject that tweaked my interest. Occasionally I shift gears and blog about unrelated and quirky information I’ve gathered over the years. Trivia is a favorite topic for me and today I’m going to fill your trivia basket with weird and hopefully interesting facts. Here we go . . .
Sean Connery once worked as a coffin polisher.
Johnny Mathis dubbed Miss Piggy’s singing voice in The Muppet Movie.
Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.
The first TV sitcom couple to share a double bed were the Munster’s in 1964.
The blood in the famous shower scene in Psycho was really Hershey’s chocolate syrup.
A pigs orgasm lasts for thirty minutes.
Twelve or more cows are known as a flink.
There are 450 hairs in an average eyebrow.
The billionth decimal digit of the numerical value pi is nine.
Woman blink twice as often as men.
That completes the first ten items of this post and hopefully the final ten will be even more useless.
The first person to refer to a coward as a “chicken” was William Shakespeare.
The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
Mark Twain failed to graduate from elementary school.
President Andrew Jackson’s pet parrot had to be removed from his funeral in 1845 because it was swearing.
Australia is the only continent without an active volcano.
On November 29, 2000, Pope John Paul II was made an honorary Harlem Globetrotter.
The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.
The colors blue, red, yellow, black, and green were chosen for the Olympic Rings because at least one of them appears on the flag of every nation in the world.
In 1956 the Physical Culture and Sports Commission of communist China recognized the sport of hand-grenade throwing.
Butter was the first food product allowed by law to have artificial coloring. It is totally white in it’s natural state.
That’s it for today. More trivia lists will follow in the future. Now, I’ve got better things to do like cutting grass and then picking ticks off my body. Who doesn’t love Summer.
everyuselessthing.com 