While reading War As They Knew It: Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, and America in a Time of Unrest ,Link, the other day, I learned that Woody Hayes was a diabetic. I’ve been a football fan and lived in Ohio most of my life and I never knew that. The author speculated that Hayes’ famous temper tantrums were due his not taking sufficient care of his insulin level.
I don’t know if that’s true, but I thought was interesting. What mundane pointless things have you learned recently?
Today I learned that there was a ‘Bourne Identity’ film made in the late eighties.
Caddyshack was the ONLY time that Chevy Chase and Bill Murray have ever acted together in a movie.
Apple pie isn’t American. It dates back to the 14th century.
Only three films have had the entire credited casts nominated for Academy Awards: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Sleuth, and Give 'Em Hell Harry.
I forget 67% of interesting statistics before finding anyone to tell them to.
A tablespoon is 15ml in most countries, 20ml in Australia. A dessertspoon is 10ml.
By studying the genetic divergence between clothing lice and head lice, an assistant curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History determined that humans started wearing garments 170,000 years ago. -Harper’s, 3/11.
Oh please…next you’ll be telling me that Abner Doubleday didn’t invent baseball.
Redheads require more anesthesia, apparently.
Just yesterday, watching some WWII History Channel program, the point was made that the M-4 Sherman tanks were the fastest tanks on the Western European battlefield (which I already knew) at 25 to 30 mph…but I was surprised to learn that the more heavily armed M-18 Hellcat tank destroyers, which weren’t “true” tanks but could be used similarly, had a top speed of 60 mph.
That’s blazingly fast for an armored vehicle even today.
A couple days before his sound barrier-breaking flight, Chuck Yeager broke two ribs when he fell off a horse. He was afraid of getting pulled from the flight due to his injuries. Instead of being treated by military doctors, he sought treatment from a local veterinarian.
PBR is so named because it won the top prize in the beer tastings at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Pabst was so proud he promptly changed the beer’s name. (No idea what it was named earlier.)
Pabst Horse Piss.
“Maytag” means May Day in German.
Knowing this makes the washers sound like some strange Eastern Bloc import from the Cold War.
I just learned a few hours ago that Dame Judi Dench plays Dungeons & Dragons.
nerdgasm