Sam Houston is the only person to have served in the U. S. Senate after having served as the Chief Executive of a foreign nation.
Robert Lincoln was invited to be present at the assassination of three presidents. His father invited him to join him at Ford’s Theater, but he declined. He was present when his father died. Robert was at the side of James Garfield when he was shot, at Garfield’s invitation. And when William McKinley was shot at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, Robert was present at McKinley’s invitation.
Of course, he was long dead when JFK was shot. But the ever present Robert Lincoln managed to be buried within sight of JFK’s grave.
Read **Vet in a Spin[/b}.
It was claimed on the Biography Channel that Paul Lynde once got drunk and threw a whiskey bottle at Dick Van Dyke’s head. I don’t care if this is true or not, I really don’t, but this really seems like something it’s important I should know. And I love to repeat this factoid at every possible opportunity.
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Steve Garvey was a player in the field for what were arguably the two most famous regular season hits of the last half of the 20th Century: Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record and Pete Rose breaking Ty Cobb’s hit record.
Haj
One of the founding members, baby, Miss Roz McClure at your service. 
Only be virtue of folks ignorant in anatomy, upon first seeing an elephant, probably claiming that the “joint between the foot and the leg” on the foreleg looked like a knee, and therefore named it as such. That joint is really just the wrist, as in all other mammals (and tetrapods in general).
Similarly birds “knees” do not bend backwards - what you are seeing is really the ankle. The knee is tucked up against the body, and bends like knees everywhere do (well, except for maybe in that “agony of defeat” skier…).
All thread long I’ve been trying to think of one that I love to pull out, but there are just to many. I love random factoids, and am That Kind of Guy at parties and such. Anyway, I’ll just post one that I happen to like.
The sound energy produced by a 75 piece orchestra is enough to power a 75 watt light bulb, but it would take over 2 million humans conversing to produce enough energy to power a 50 watt light bulb.
Whose name is Vinko Bogataj.
(I consider that to be the gold standard of trivia. Everybody has seen that clip. Everybody knows he’s the “agony of defeat” guy. Nobody knows his name.
And for a couple of Euros, you can climb almost to the top. If you’ve got a fear of heights, you’ll probably want to pass on that.
It doesn’t seem much, but I always liked the fact that if you allowed a few heart cells to grow in a petri dish, eventually they will start beating on their own.
Oh, and Aldous Huxley was once the Math teacher of one Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) at Eton.
Which nation?
Texas!
Australia is the least wooded continent besides Antarctica, but is the world’s leading exporter of wood chips.
I have Bill Bryson to thank for that bit of information.
I was gonna say, it’s nice to see the P.A. finally getting their shit together, but you’d think they could find something more constructive to do, construction-wise.
Ah, the subtle use of Diplomacy! 
But it only works if your opponent fails to whip out his copy of the Rules of Chess and draw your attention to rule 12.5: It is forbidden to distract or annoy the opponent in any manner whatsoever.
I’m amazed no one has yet mentioned one of my favorites, which is not at all obscure:
The elephant is the only animal that’s ever been taught to stand on it’s head.
You mean the only *other * animal, right? 
Robot Arm
You stated that you consider the Agony of Defeat guy to be “the gold standard of trivia. Everybody has seen that clip. Everybody knows he’s the “agony of defeat” guy. Nobody knows his name.”
Here’s one I think that would be a close rival. Everybody has seen and remembers the infamous Rodney King video. Who “took” it?
(or “videographed” it for the semantic purists out there.)
The answer can be found here (among many other places):
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/lapd/kingvideo.html
Now don’t go spreading this around. Otherwise George Holliday and Vinko Bogataj are going to become household names and we’ll have to figure out more “gold standard trivia”.
Hawaii is the only state to have once been a sovereign nation, recognized as such by other sovereign nations. It has it’s own palace and everything. The two nations that it was closest to politically are reflected in the state flag.
Yeah, I got my Dutch mixed in with my English. In Dutch it’s called “De Gaza Strook” and in English it’s “The Gaza Strip”. Makes for some nice double-entendre’s doesn’t it?