12 Bits of Trivia You Can Sneak Before Dinner If You Promise Not to Tell Mom

New Zealand employers are required to offer employees the opportunity to bring an emotional support companion to particularly ominous HR meetings. In 2019, a guy got an email that he suspected — correctly — was a harbinger of a layoff. He utilized his right to a companion, and hired a clown for $200 to sit in on the meeting.

There’s an extremely rare type of firefly that emits a sustained blue glow, instead of the familiar yellow flash, that’s only found in some parts of the Appalachian mountains. Locals call them ghost fireflies, because according to legend, they’re the ghosts of Confederate soldiers.

In 2010, following a four-year political meltdown, Belgium elected 11 different parties to their Chamber of Representatives — and obviously, none of them could agree on who should be in charge. It took 589 days and several interventions from the King (never a great sign) before they finally installed a working government, making it the longest a country has ever gone (in peacetime) without a government.

The skipper can fly up to 37 miles per hour. One of these could absolutely beat a horse in a race — depending on the size, age and sticktoitiveness of the horse, obviously — as thoroughbreds tend to max out around 44 miles per hour.

The average sweepstakes can break Canada’s laws against for-profit betting. But if you require entrants to solve a simple math problem? Buddy, that constitutes a skill-testing question, and it’s no longer gambling (as far as the law is concerned).

Calvin Graham enlisted at the age of 12, was involved in active combat for a year and was even awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart, before his mother told on him. He was then sent to a military prison, but they let him out after his sister threatened to go to the press with a story about the Navy sending a pre-teen to war.

A flight from Brussels to Vienna was grounded because a “very aggressive” cat escaped its bag, ran into the cockpit when the pilots were being served lunch and started doing cat stuff to all the important switches and contraptions that keep the plane from plummeting out of the sky.

In 2001, people figured out that using a new Sony Nightvision camera during the day, along with a special filter, created an effect that appeared to be straight-up X-ray vision. A Good Morning America segment purported to read a guy’s tattoo under his clothes (it said “Sosa”). 

About his 1995 diagnosis of a rare cancer called T-cell lymphoma, he said, “Can you imagine that? Cancer with my name on it — personalized cancer.” He got a lot more insightful about it, too: “My gold, my money couldn’t stop cancer from appearing on my body. If they can’t save me, then I don’t need them.”

The Mackinac Bridge, which connects the Upper and Lower Peninsulas, offers a free service where a staff member will drive your car for you, if you feel like you can’t handle the snow, the wind or the sheer size of this bad boy.

Rookie forward Stacey King, who scored 1 point the night Jordan scored his career-high 69 points against the Cavs, said, “I’ll always remember this as the night that Michael Jordan and I combined to score 70 points.”

A Chinese woman who had been estranged from her family for 10 years, since she was 14, was ultimately found living — and working — in cyber cafes. Her specialty was the game Crossfire, which other gamers would pay her to play for them.