Apparently January 4 is National Trivia Day.
In honor of such a momentous occasion, the web site Mental Floss compiled 60 amazing pieces of trivia, and I thought I would share a dozen of my favorites from that list. I also added one item to the end of the list – something that I should have known, but as you will see, I was completely clueless about.
- Mr. Rogers always mentioned out loud that he was feeding his fish because a young blind viewer once asked him to do so. She wanted to know the fish were OK.
- In 1897, Indiana state legislators tried to pass a bill that would have legally redefined the value of pi as 3.2 (what would have happened to all of those memory challenges reciting pi to 100 places?)
- Reed Hastings has said that he was inspired to start Netflix after a $40 late fee on a VHS copy of Apollo 13 (and to think that another person’s reaction might have been to burn the building down).
- the average cumulus could weighs roughly 1.1 million pounds (I would have guessed less than 5 pounds!)
- Guinness estimates that 93,000 liters of beer are lost in facial hair each year in the UK alone (I wonder what kind of reaction I would get if I announced such a fact in one of the British pubs I’ll be sure to be visiting.)
- The mobile phone throwing world championships are held in Finland. A recent winner said he prepared for the event by “mainly drinking beer.”
- A new born blue whale gains about 200 pounds a day during its first year.
- There are 293 ways to make change for a U.S. dollar.
- The boiling point of water at the top of Mt. Everest is 162 degrees, 50 below the boiling point at sea level.
- Humans are the only animals that blush (how well I know this…)
- Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr was given a perpetual supply of beer piped into his house.
- There was a third Apple founder. Ronald Wayne sold his 10% stake for $800 in 1976. (If he owned 10% of Apple today, he’d be worth close to $80 billion).
And now for showing off my amazing lack of knowledge.
Now that we are in London, I thought it would be helpful to know a few things about the city. One of the first things I thought would be useful would be knowing the population of the city.
I knew that London is a major city, but I thought its population was on the relatively small side, certainly well below the population of New York City. I estimated it population to be between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people,
I decided to look it up on my phone, and London’s population is 8.8 million people!
And New York City’s is 8.5 million people.
London is not only not a small city, its got more people than NYC!
I’m just glad I did not share my ignorance with any Londoner.
I wonder how many of them are aware of this piece of trivia.
Perhaps I can take a survey at a local pub, at the same time I’m telling them that they are wasting beer in their beards.
Borden's Blather 