15 Platters of Trivia We Gobbled Up This Week
If you’re in any of the many countries where cars drive on the right side of the road, left turns can be challenging. You have to work your way around a bunch of cars coming full-speed in the opposite direction. Turning right, on the other hand, means you slide easily into the next road with no opposition. If you vow never to turn left, you can lower your risk of accidents.
There’s another advantage as well. Find out below, along with guidance about how staying vigilant against bears.
Party School
The Louisiana State University campus has a couple of humanmade mounds that are more than 5,000 years old. They predate nearly any building on Earth. Mostly, the university has used these mounds for tailgate parties.
Glitter Bombs
Glitter comes in a thousand unique styles, transfers easily and often escapes the notice of someone it lands on. And so, police use it to track the movements of criminals and vehicles.
Safely Defrosted
A Minnesota woman walked outside one winter night in 1980, fell to her knees and blacked out. Six hours later, neighbors found her body, frozen stiff as a board. But after they trucked her to a hospital, she thawed out and recovered completely.
Who’s Your Daddy?
It’s currently possible for doctors to transplant a penis and scrotum from one man to another. It’s presumably possible to transplant testicles as well, but they refuse to do so, because this would allow the recipient to make children using the donor’s DNA.
The Torsåker Trials
A town in Sweden held a witch trial in 1675, and for evidence, they had two boys point at any suspects whose foreheads bore an invisible mark. The kids pointed at 71 people, and the town beheaded them all in a single day.
Oh, That Alan
Ohio passed a law making it a misdemeanor to take someone’s urine without their consent. They made this law specifically because of Alan, one guy who’d attracted multiple complaints from people after he retrieved their urine from public restrooms.
Friendship With Japan Has Ended
Before World War II, Japan awarded medals of friendship and peace to four American soldiers. In 1942, the Navy attached each of these to a separate 500-pound bomb and then dropped the bombs on Tokyo.
Stealthy Bears
Scientists find it hard to count polar bear populations. Normally, they’d use thermal imaging to quickly spot animals in a region. But polar bears have an adaptation that makes them invisible from infrared vision.
A Most Pedestrian Activity
Before we really figured out professional sports, 19th-century Americans engaged in competitive walking. People would walk on a track for 21 hours a day for several days at a time, while spectators looked on.
So Many Bodies
The town of Marsella in Colombia went broke burying and autopsying bodies of people killed by the Cali Cartel. The people weren’t even killed in town. They were killed elsewhere, but the river brought them all to Marsella.
The Grammarian, Part 1
A law forbade cars from passing school buses, but a lawyer successfully argued that due to the bad placement of commas, the law actually banned cars from stopping school buses, which his client hadn’t done. Expert testimony at this trial came from an English professor.
The Art of Fornication
A fornix is an arch. Something that is fornicated is therefore arched or bent. The word still comes up in botany, when describing leaves.
The Infernal Machine
Some looters in Brazil went through an abandoned hospital and broke up a machine they found there. They brought it back to their community, dousing 249 people with gamma rays.
Not An Ambiturner
UPS tells its drivers to avoid ever turning left. It might sound like never turning left, necessitating a bunch of extra right turns, would waste fuel, but it does the opposite, saving them around 10 million gallons of fuel a year.
The Grammarian, Part 2
During the French Revolution, the people sentenced to death Thomas de Mahy, Marquis de Favras. After Favras read the death warrant, he said, “Permit me to point out that you have made three mistakes in spelling.”
