Trivia Bits for Jun 16, 2015 for 06/16/2015
For some reason, if a band has one female member, she plays bass. And if it's an alt rock band, she's probably named Kim. There's Kim Deal, who played bass for the Pixies and the Breeders. There's also...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jun 17, 2015 for 06/17/2015
In the 1990s, Jocelyn Wildenstein became famous for a series of bizarre plastic surgeries that made her look more like a cat. Whether she was doing this on purpose is actually in some doubt, but she...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jun 18, 2015 for 06/18/2015
South Africa wasn't nice to its black majority. It wasn't very nice to its South Asian minority, either. But there are lots of other races, and South Africa developed ridiculously specific ways of...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jun 19, 2015 for 06/19/2015
If you hate roaches, you'll like a wasp called Ampulex compressa, even though it's super creepy. It stings a cockroach into submission, lays its eggs inside it and turns it into a zombie. Actually,...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jun 20, 2015 for 06/20/2015
There were some stray U-boats off the coast and in the St. Lawrence, and some low-key espionage here and there, and some danger in Alaska, but by and large, continental North America was conflict-free...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jun 22, 2015 for 06/22/2015
Ethiopia gets its name from the Greek word for the inhabitants' "sunburned faces." Ethiopia is one of the few countries to have lost its coastline when it lost Eritrea, which was named for the Red Sea....
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jun 23, 2015 for 06/23/2015
Izola Curry nearly changed world history in 1958, when she stabbed Martin Luther King Jr with a letter opener at a book signing. Curry, who was African-American, had some paranoid delusions about the...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jun 24, 2015 for 06/24/2015
Later a musical, Gregory Maguire's book "Wicked" was a revision on the "Wizard of Oz" stories, from the point of view of the witches. One of them, the Wicked Witch of the West, even gets a name:...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jun 25, 2015 for 06/25/2015
Kal-El lands in Kansas and becomes Clark Kent. But several DC writers have imagined what would have happened if that space capsule had landed somewhere else. In "Red Son," he becomes a defender of the...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jun 26, 2015 for 06/26/2015
"The Big Bang Theory" has had a host of celebrity guest stars, often playing themselves, many of whom are akin to gods in the worlds of science and general nerdom. For example, Sheldon Cooper has been...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jun 27, 2015 for 06/27/2015
American presidents have a long, proud tradition of having embarrassing brothers. Bill Clinton, for example, has a half-brother named Roger, who had been making a semi-decent living in a rock band....
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jun 29, 2015 for 06/29/2015
Kids these days have it so easy when it comes to disseminating paranoia. Put it on the web and away you go. But back in my day, you had to work hard if you had crazy ideas. Take Jack Chick. He became...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jun 30, 2015 for 06/30/2015
We'll bet you've always wanted to visit the Ecuadorian province called the Columbus Archipelago or, in Spanish, the Archipelago de Colon. You know it as the Galapagos. Although some think the Inca had...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jul 01, 2015 for 07/01/2015
A lot of people hate it when you make the bubbles in your synovial fluid either get created or collapse. This is the most likely cause for the sound produced when you crack your knuckles, although...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jul 02, 2015 for 07/02/2015
In 2010, Archie Andrews got his first openly gay friend, when Kevin Keller came to Riverdale. The move was one of many the company took to keep "Archie" fresh and relevant. In fact, his debut in...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jul 03, 2015 for 07/03/2015
Scottish housewife Helen Duncan was arrested in 1944 and appears to be the last person ever convicted in the U.K. of witchcraft. Some think it was to keep her from discovering D-Day secrets with magic....
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jul 04, 2015 for 07/04/2015
Jerry Seinfeld's friend George Costanza had a fairly elaborate imaginary career, most of which revolved around the imaginary Art Vandelay. Sometimes he was an importer/exporter, sometimes the head of a...
View ArticlePAUL'S TRIVIABITS (TM) - DAILY for 07/06/2015
Sam Peckinpah was nicknamed "Bloody Sam" for what was, at the time, a very gory way of filming violence, in such movies as "The Wild Bunch." His very last projects, though, weren't movies but music...
View ArticlePAUL'S TRIVIABITS (TM) - WEEKLY for 07/06/2015
Sam Peckinpah was nicknamed "Bloody Sam" for what was, at the time, a very gory way of filming violence, in such movies as "The Wild Bunch." His very last projects, though, weren't movies but music...
View ArticleTrivia Bits for Jul 07, 2015 for 07/07/2015
Led Zeppelin never released its most popular song as a single: "Stairway to Heaven" was an album-only track. As such, the band only reached the Billboard top-10 once, with a song called "Whole Lotta...
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