Tell us an interesting random fact you stumbled across (Part 1)

My wife used to live in a two-story house (with full basement) in CT. After her first husband passed away, her house was burglarized twice. The first time, the burglars used a ladder that was lying next to the garage to enter through a second-story window. She then put the ladder in the garage. A few months later, the burglars brought their own ladder and left it behind when they left. The result was two burglaries in four months and both through the second story windows.

To my surprise, the investigating officer did not take the second ladder in as evidence.

Scientific American stopped the presses for the first time in their history to announce the demonstration of the phonograph.

The original of this appears to have been Ogden Nash t some date I haven’t been able to find

But the Richard Armour fleshed this out in 1949:

Nash generally gets the credit, although people quote something like the Armour version.

edited to add:
Apparently the Nash poem was from 1930

On June 26, 1944, the three New York-based baseball teams (Dodgers, Giants, Yankees) played a three-way exhibition game at the Polo Grounds to sell War Bonds. Two teams would play two half-innings (one at bat, and one in the field) while the third team rested.

Final score: Dodgers 5; Yankees 1; Giants 0.

Details and box score: June 26, 1944: The Tri-Cornered War Bond Baseball Game – Society for American Baseball Research

In the National Hockey League, a player earns a point with a goal or an assist. Wayne Gretzky is the career leader in points scored with 2,857 points, via 894 goals and 1,963 assists.

If he had not scored any goals during his career, leaving him with 1,963 points via his assists, he would still be the NHL career leader in points scored.

That’s impressive! Who’s the second bets NHL scorer and what is his score?

Second on the list is Jaromír Jágr. He has 766 goals and 1,155 assists, for a total of 1,921 points.

Thanks! Makes it even more impressive.

He was the guy handcuffed to Mac in the middle of Death Valley at the end of Greed.

Gretzky also played in fewer than 1,500 games in his career. The next 4 guys on the lifetime Points list played in over 1,700.

In the UK and Australia, people tend to turn left when entering a building. In the US, they turn right. This is because of the side of the road driven in those countries. Very useful if you’re booking a trade show.

Car safety laws in the US make it more expensive to have three children — women in states with mandated car seats are 0.7% less likely to have a third child. The safety measures may have saved 57 car crash fatalities each year, but caused 145,000 fewer births since 1980.

Interesting. I think that might be a good thing when I look at the overall balance of types of life on the planet. But I suspect that the cost involved in raising a child would have more to do with the decrease in births.

Yeah, I can think of a lot if reasons why one thing didn’t necessarily lead to the other. Correlation doesn’t equal causation. The types of states that pass car seat laws might tend to be more liberal, higher income level, or higher education level, which means lower birth rates.

At 11:59 pm on July 24, 1953, Sam Begley of Manhattan was the last person to pay a 10c fare (and with coins) on the New York subway. Seconds after midnight, on July 25, 1953, Judy Reed of Brooklyn was the first to pay the new 15c fare with the new token system.

175 mechanics spent close to 24 hours converting all 2,703 turnstiles to accept the tokens, and to reject (most) coins and slugs. They would convert half at a time in a station before midnight, and convert the other half later.

But another car seat would be part of the cost, and a mostly immediately obvious one (important because we know the average human sucks at long-term consequences): “Crap, if we have another kid we’ll need another car seat and a vehicle (or two) that will let us have three of them at the same time”.

It might require a new car depending on the size of the current one.

I got my current car because my sister couldn’t fit three carseats in the back. She had to get a minivan

There’s a Wikipedia entry on John Lennon’s father Alf Lennon. Sad and interesting story, in equal parts: