# Tell us an interesting random fact you stumbled across (Part 2) **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 25, 2024, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785 "2024-07-25T15:06:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 192
**Author:** ![Mark\_Finn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Mark\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2025, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3821 "2025-12-15T12:32:41Z")
There are only two Presidents buried in Arlington cemetery - JFK and Taft. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2025, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3822 "2025-12-15T13:03:32Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > From the country’s beginning to 1898, all the Presidents combined, in all their public addresses captured in print, referred to the country as America - as distinct from The United States of America - exactly 11 times. > > That changed overnight after the U.S.A. took Porto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines, and Hawaii [1898 spellings] as territories, or, as the Attorney General claimed in court, colonies. By 1899 [Greater America was the phrase used everywhere](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Greater+America&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3) and textbooks included all the ex-Spanish territories in maps the way Alaska and Hawai’i are today. > > Teddy Roosevelt, the great imperialist, used America in his first annual address to Congress and everybody has copied him since. America! America! America! If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend Daniel Immelwahr’s **How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States** , which discourses on the Greater United States as an empire, and its origins. Covers a huge amount of ground, with lots of details I’d never heard (or read) before. > **[How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States: Immerwahr,...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Hide-Empire-History-Greater/dp/0374172145)** > > How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States \[Immerwahr, Daniel\] on Amazon.com. \*FREE\* shipping on qualifying offers. How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2025, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3823 "2025-12-15T16:47:25Z")
That was my source for the cite. I agree with your positive assessment of it. I turned to it after just reading [The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War](https://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Cruise-Secret-History-Empire/dp/0316014001/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1401YLLW5QIRD&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.xJ6cxexsPD77vQoJur0ZfWB2KeD_EsFrGR_thxYNnKyZOJQpHQzZTZ2QNfj-SAWC.P0FbWa_xSPqR-dyl0djq1Y9VC8nQALqEV_CxyU63XyU&dib_tag=se&keywords=imperial+cruise+bradley&qid=1765816777&sprefix=imperial+cruise%252Caps%252C2349&sr=8-1), by James Bradley, which deals with the conquest of the Spanish possessions, the selling out of Korea to Japan because the Japanese had the most frontier aryan-warrior spirit, the simultaneous accompanying of white supremacy and anti-Asian racism, and a detailed account of a million atrocities that will make anyone not MAGA sick to their stomachs. ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Finn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Mark\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3824 "2025-12-16T20:21:09Z")
Remember the “Beverly Hillbillies”? The NHL Philadelphia Flyers have a forward named Garnet Hathaway, and a defenseman named Jamie Drysdale. A “Brett Clampett” played junior hockey in Kitchener for a couple of years. Four “Bodines” (Dmitri, Justin, Kyle. and Will) also played in the minors, but never made the big leagues. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3825 "2025-12-17T04:48:30Z")
TIL [Eisenhower’s vegetable soup recipe](https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/file/vegetable_soup.pdf) (pdf) as he himself described it. Added ingredient: [nasturtium](https://www.foodforest.garden/2016/09/13/eating-nasturtiums/). ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3826 "2025-12-17T14:43:27Z")
Knock, knock. Who’s there? _ **Not a corpse!** _ > **[Woman found alive, moving in coffin after she was taken to Buddhist temple...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woman-coffin-found-alive-cremation-buddhist-temple-thailand/)** > > After the woman's brother drove her to be cremated, a faint knock was heard coming from the coffin, an official at the temple said. > According to Pairat [Soodthoop, the temple’s general and financial affairs manager,] the woman’s brother said she had been bedridden for about two years and had become unresponsive, appearing to stop breathing two days ago. > > The brother placed her in a coffin and journeyed about 300 miles to a hospital in Bangkok, to which the woman had previously expressed a wish to donate her organs. > > Pairat said the hospital refused to accept the woman’s body because her brother didn’t have an official death certificate. When the brother approached the temple for a cremation, he was also refused due to the missing document. > > The temple manager said that while he was explaining how to obtain a death certificate, that is when they heard the knocking. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3827 "2025-12-17T14:56:14Z")
“Oh, I can’t take her like that. It’s against regulations.” “I don’t want to go in the fire” “Oh, don’t be such a baby.” ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3828 "2025-12-17T20:37:47Z")
Dr. Joyce Brothers won a ton of money on the 1950s game show “64000 Dollar Question” on the subject of. . . boxing. That’s rather well known; however. . . What’s less well known is that the question writer for the program was a friend of her family, which the show’s producers didn’t find out until afterwards. Coincidence??? ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3829 "2025-12-17T23:42:15Z")
Apparently, that got her hauled before a grand jury where she cleared her name by answering a whole slew of really obscure boxing questions. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2025, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3830 "2025-12-18T01:07:42Z")
That doesn’t completely clear her, though. The question-writer could still have cheated on her behalf by deliberately choosing a topic on which he knew she was very knowledgeable. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2025, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3831 "2025-12-18T01:17:24Z")
The contestants in that show chose their own topic. Obviously she didn’t coincidentally get selected for boxing. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2025, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3832 "2025-12-18T02:13:04Z")
In fact one of the crooked producers (after his goose was already cooked) said they tried to find questions that would surely stump Brothers since she was perceived as a dud with the audience. She didn’t know anything about boxing when she first unsuccessfully auditioned for the show. Producers said they were looking for experts “against type” like a woman who knows about boxing. She engaged a former boxing commissioner as a tutor and proceeded to memorize every issue of _The Ring Magazine_ and the _Ring Record Book_ . Brothers was such a good student (with a near photographic memory) and the topic was narrow enough that she couldn’t be stumped no matter how tough the question. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2025, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3833 "2025-12-18T03:03:20Z")
> [@Skywatcher](#): > > Knock, knock. > > Who’s there? Invented. Invented who? Bad English but good question. Some joke styles have an inventor, but not knock, knock jokes. They apparently evolved from similar-style puns. An [old NPR article](https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/03/03/389865887/the-secret-history-of-knock-knock-jokes) has the best history. > Before there were knock-knock jokes — as we know them — there were “Do You Know” jokes. Writing in the _Oakland Tribune_, Merely McEvoy recalled that around 1900, a jokester would walk up to someone and pop a question like: “Do you know Arthur?” And the unsuspecting listener would reply, “Arthur who?” And the jokester would say “Arthurmometer!” and run off laughing. > > “Jokes, like comets have definite orbits,” McEvoy observed on May 26, 1922. “Most of them travel in elipses of 20 years.” The Arthurmometer-type joke, he wrote, had returned — as a new type of jest or a “nifty.” > > Such nifties were popular among the flappers, McEvoy noted, who would ask: “Have you ever heard of Hiawatha?” And you would reply: “Hiawatha who?” And the flapper would say: “Hiawatha a good girl … till I met you.” [_Merely_ McAvoy?!? Nuts. Probably just _J. P._ McAvoy.] They became a national craze in 1936, and this classic doozy appeared. > Cecil have music wherever she goes. Adams. Adams, who? A damn bad pun, that’s who. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2025, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3834 "2025-12-18T03:13:01Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > She engaged a former boxing commissioner as a tutor and proceeded to memorize every issue of _The Ring Magazine_ and the _Ring Record Book_ And the producers used the same sources for their questions. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2025, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3835 "2025-12-18T03:33:38Z")
A _Howard the Duck_ comic strip ran on the Cleveland _Plain Dealer_ comics page in the late 1970s. That’s how I first learned of it. There was a plotline about entropy. “Entropy… entropy… all winds down. Goodnight, Ohio” ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2025, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3836 "2025-12-18T11:51:09Z")
In the original airing of the Rankin-Bass ‘Rudolph’ in 1964, Santa is not shown returning to the Island of Misfit Toys and then later dropping them off. He says that the Island is their first stop, but the Misfits are never seen again. Apparently viewer outrage prompted the additional scenes that are now part of the program ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2025, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3837 "2025-12-18T16:46:25Z")
In 2023, an English historian discovered what appears to be the earliest written instance of the f-word, finding it in, of all things, records of medieval court proceedings, dated in 1310. > **[The earliest use of the F-word - Medievalists.net](https://www.medievalists.net/2023/08/earliest-use-f-word/)** > > An English historian has come across the word 'fuck' in a court case dating to the year 1310, making it the earliest known reference to the swear word. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2025, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3838 "2025-12-18T18:00:28Z")
That fact is interesting enough, but what’s hilarious about it is that the word first came up for a nickname meaning “belly button fucker”. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2025, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3839 "2025-12-18T18:18:01Z")
Somehow one isn’t at all surprised that his first name was Roger. (I suppose most written records would have been in Latin or Norman French, and Anglo-Saxon words would hardly have featured until not long before this document) ---
**Author:** ![Al128](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/al128/32/16541_2.png) [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2025, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785/3840 "2025-12-18T21:14:15Z")
My money was on **GUY** , but Roger Fuckebythenavele also has a decent ring to it [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785.md?page=191) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-2/1004785.md?page=193)