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What Useless or Strange Trivia do you know?

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Bixyboo

Skilled Investigator
Hey again:

I have soooo much useless/strange trivia/knowledge about things.
(Isn't the Net great for ANY question your mind can dig up? lol).

THIS I stumbled onto by accident one time while searching how to request another SS card a few years ago....

For instance....I can tell where people were born (or at least were issued their card) by glancing at their SS#'s.

Did you know you can tell what state they're from by the first three digits of it?

State Of Issue By Social Security Number

Now, this is just one example of interesting trivia, as I don't use this much in my life (no need to, really, but guess it can be helpful in some situations).

Tons of other stuff I know, too...of which are of little use or importance (for me, anyways).

But Please! DO share YOUR info! :)
 
My mind operates like a siv, seperating important information from useless trivia and retaining only the latter.
 
Did you know that Stonehenge was a reconstruction built in 1901?

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicstonehenge.htm

Did you know that female marsupials have two vaginas, and the male has a forked penis with the testicles in the front?

Marsupial - MSN Encarta

Did you know George Bush's grand-pappy was a financial backer of the Nazis?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

Did you know that J[SIZE=-1]ohan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor with a degree in electronics, science and mathematics, invented the paperclip in 1899?

The History of the Paperclip

My brain is so full of data it has become virtually useless.

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Well, if you pick a subject, I probably have the Dewey Decimal Number for it memorized; Cookbooks: 641.59; Gardening: 635; Poetry: 811; Astrology: 133.5, etc.
 
Apple pie, longstanding symbol of Americana is actually a Canadian idea whereas the ubiquitous British beverage component the tea bag was invented by a doctor in New York.
 
Hubby says the first baseball game was played in Canada

Jackie Brown, first black man to play major league baseball, played his first game in Montreal, Quebec.

basketball was invented by a Canadian, and the first basket was a peach basket, and they got tired of taking the basket down, so they wound up cutting enough of the bottom out so a broom handle could pop the ball out.

whales used to be able to hear whales on the other side of the world, now, the noise pollution in the oceans has cut that down a bit...

and none of these were looked up, just bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam that floated to the surface when my competitive instinct kicked in...

oh yeah, the Inuit have more words to describe snow, than you can shake a stick at... anybody know how many? cause I forgot. :( :D
 
Skunk, calling Stonehenge a reconstruction is a little misleading.

While they did reassemble it, they only used pieces that were found at the site. And put the pieces into the positions they clearly were supposed to be in.

(that what I gather from the article anyway.)

Dont get me wrong though... I think this is something that should absolutely be told when the history of the site is discussed. For me personally, knowing what state of disrepair the site and stones were originally in is just about as interesting as the site itself.
 
King Henry the Eighth (who liked apple pies!) banned Christmas pudding. The law was never revoked, so technically we in the UK are breaking the law every Christmas by eating them.
 
here's one: Washington State; a big chunk of it originally belonged to Canada; however, when the war of 1812 occurred, one of the British generals was a bit miffed to be so far out of the action, that he hoisted a US flag above one of the British forts just so he could pull it down and claim he "captured" a US territory. When truce/peace was declared, it was agreed that all territories captured would revert to their parent countries. Somebody figured that meant that part of Washington state, too, so we lost a nice-sized chunk of property because somebody had to be funny...

also, the British burned the original white house in 1814.

a border skirmish between Canada and the States resulted in the death of a pig and a cow...

yup, some of the dumbest stuff sticks in one's mind from junior high, doesn't it? :D
 
Schuyler said:
Not very long. Only about 35 years.
Click to expand...
I spent over 200 hours transcribing Dewey decimal system info from card-stock to computer in the early 90's...community service for getting in trouble with the law. I did a lot of shelving, too. I'm sure you got me topped with 35 years of experience, but I know where practically every book is in the Angleton Library.
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I found this...
<!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="answer" -->

Can you tell the temperature by listening to the chirping of a cricket?

Yes!<!-- InstanceEndEditable -->

<!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="full_answer" --> The frequency of chirping varies according to temperature. To get a rough estimate of the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit, count the number of chirps in 15 seconds and then add 37. The number you get will be an approximation of the outside temperature.


There are several reasons why crickets chirp. They may be:
  • Calling to attract a female with a a loud and monotonous sound​
  • Courting a nearby female with a quick, softer chirp​
  • Behaving aggressively during the encounter of two males​
 
From Wikipedia


In the cartoon Pinky and the Brain, episode 22, "The Maze", the Brain centered his plan to take over the world around the Harmonic Convergence. Brain states that the Harmonic Convergence will cause an inner ear imbalance in all of mankind for approximately 15 seconds, rendering them susceptible to the power of suggestion.

During that time, Brain plans to use a dilithium matrix chip to send a subliminal message to the weakened masses. Pinky's response to Brain's plan: "But where are we going to get all those harmonicas?"
 
I got thrown in jail on trumped up drug charges in '91 when I was 17...just legal enough to prosecute. I had not had a hair-cut in about 10 years and had a full head of dreads. The cops in Brazoria county beat my ass until I was unconscious. I woke up shaved bald.
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skunkape said:
I got thrown in jail on trumped up drug charges in '91 when I was 17...just legal enough to prosecute. I had not had a hair-cut in about 10 years and had a full head of dreads. The cops in Brazoria county beat my ass until I was unconscious. I woke up shaved bald.
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Click to expand...


I can so believe it, but man, that sucks!
 
Off the top of my head, here are three strange little factoids. I have lots more. :)

Ted Lyons went to Baylor University on a trombone scholarship. During a brawl at a football game with Texas A&M, his trombone was smashed, so he switched to baseball. He pitched twenty seasons with the Chicago White Sox and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955. (Thanks to Bill James for this one)

During the Cold War period, the US Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force all had blue, white, and khaki service dress uniforms. The Army, Marines, and Navy aviators also had a green service dress uniform during the same period. None of these count as full dress or mess dress either -- those are different.

Now that there's all this talk of General Motors downsizing and reducing brands and dealers, here's an interesting bit of trivia from the beginning of the last Great Depression: for the 1929 model year, GM decided they needed a few more intermediate "steps" on their brand ladder. They added three more "companion" brands: Pontiac, Marquette, and Viking. The lineup looked like this:

Chevrolet
Pontiac (cheaper Oakland)
Oakland
Oldsmobile
Viking (upscale Oldsmobile)
Marquette (cheaper Buick)
Buick
LaSalle (cheaper Cadillac, introduced 1927)
Cadillac

Viking, and Marquette were gone after 1930, having failed to gain any real name recognition. LaSalle was fairly successful but was gone by WWII. Pontiac was the only companion brand to survive; it's senior brand Oakland was discontinued in 1931.

Ford tried the same thing in the late thirties, creating De Luxe Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln-Zephyr as brands to fill the gap between Ford and Lincoln. The coming war put an end to that, with De Luxe becoming a trim line for Ford and Lincoln discontinuing everything except the Zephyr.

Chrysler flirted with this brand strategy in the 50s and early 60s, spinning off the low-end Valiant and high-end Imperial brands to make their lineup:

Valiant, Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler, Imperial
 
I know that the conversion factor between the obsolete Irish punt and the euro is .787564. I know this because I spent considerable time writing triangulation code, during the interval between the introduction of the euro and the withdrawal from circulation of the national currencies.
This definitely fits the definition of useless trivia, both because I've been back in NZ since the end of July 2001 and because the punt no longer exists, hence no more triangulation.
But that bloody number is still stuck in my head (it's lucky I believe in the non-locality of memory, or I'd be really pissed off about the waste of space).
 
skunkape said:
Did you know that Stonehenge was a reconstruction built in 1901?

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicstonehenge.htm

Did you know that female marsupials have two vaginas, and the male has a forked penis with the testicles in the front?

Marsupial - MSN Encarta

Did you know George Bush's grand-pappy was a financial backer of the Nazis?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

Did you know that J[SIZE=-1]ohan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor with a degree in electronics, science and mathematics, invented the paperclip in 1899?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=-1]The History of the Paperclip[/SIZE]

[SIZE=-1]My brain is so full of data it has become virtually useless.[/SIZE]

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Click to expand...

Did you know that evidence is surfacing that George Bush was a geniune asshole. For so many years it was denied, but straight up, it's true:)
John.
 
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