Trivia Thread!

According to Star Trek canon (notably First Contact), World War III begins in 2026. It is portrayed as a devastating 27-year conflict involving nuclear weapons, genetic enhancements (Eugenics War fallout), and major factional fighting, lasting until a ceasefire in 2053, ultimately killing 600 million people

Berzelmayr said:

According to Star Trek canon (notably First Contact), World War III begins in 2026. It is portrayed as a devastating 27-year conflict involving nuclear weapons, genetic enhancements (Eugenics War fallout), and major factional fighting, lasting until a ceasefire in 2053, ultimately killing 600 million people

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They were probably referring to the fact that Starfleet Academy came out in 2026.

Vultures will feed on any dead animal... except another vulture. In fact, they will avoid a vulture carcass. I haven't found a reason for it, but it's an empirical observation.

They may be carrion-eaters, but they draw the line at cannibalism!

Found a picture of us all!

Each man on the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804 -1806 across the future western United States) ate 9 pounds of meat a day.

Starbrow said:

Each man on the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804 -1806 across the future western United States) ate 9 pounds of meat a day.

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Wow! Really? That is so interesting. I gets me thinking about a lot of things. I wonder about how many miles they traveled a day on average? @Starbrow , did you learn this anywhere in particular? Just curious.

Erurávennë said:

Wow! Really? That is so interesting. I gets me thinking about a lot of things. I wonder about how many miles they traveled a day on average? @Starbrow , did you learn this anywhere in particular? Just curious.

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I was reading Lewis and Clark for Dummies over the weekend. It has lots of fascinating information about the trek. The fact about their diet really struck me as I considered how different their life was then. It was not as much like a camping trip as I imagined.

Jimi Hendrix joined the band Joey Dee and the Starliters in the early 1960s, replacing their previous guitarist who had quit to try acting. That guitarist was Joe Pesci.

Napoleon's great-nephew, Prince Louis-Napoléon, was the heir to the French imperial throne. Seeking military glory, he volunteered to fight with the British in the Anglo-Zulu War. Tragically, he was killed on June 1, 1879.

Ice cream for sale in a Russian shop.

Squint-eyed Southerner said:

Ice cream for sale in a Russian shop.
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My students would go crazy for this. I am so sick of "6 - 7".

In 1866, Liechtenstein sent its entire army of 80 men to fight in the Austro-Prussian War. They returned home with 81, having made a friend along the way.

In 1911, a Louvre handyman named Vincenzo Peruggia hid in a supply closet after hours, lifted the Mona Lisa off the wall, and walked out with it under his smock. He kept it in a trunk in his Paris apartment for two years before trying to sell it to a gallery in Florence. The dealer agreed to the price, took possession, and immediately called the police. The worldwide media frenzy caused by the theft is the reason the Mona Lisa became the most famous painting in the world.

By the way, I get these in my email every day and sometimes they’re very interesting and I usually show them here if they are. You can sign up for them at this link

In 1998, a Pixar employee ran a routine Unix command on the Toy Story 2 production server and accidentally deleted 90 percent of the film. The backup tapes had silently failed a month earlier. The film was effectively gone. Then technical director Galyn Susman, on maternity leave and working from home once a week, remembered she had a copy on her house computer. The machine was wrapped in a blanket, driven back to Pixar, and the film was recovered from her hard drive.

I guess I was 9-10 years old when Lost in Space debuted (CBS) ...
I was never enamoured of it but it had its moments.
And of course the ongoing friction between Dr Smith and The Robot was always entertaining, and (imo) became the high point of the the series.

Most people especially now are unaware that Jonathan Harris was an accomplished actor long before his role as Dr. Smith.
He was born in the Bronx , but "detested his Bronx accent, and by high school, had cultivated an English one in its place by watching British B-movies at the arts theater. He also developed interests in archaeology, Latin, romantic poetry and Shakespeare." (wikipedia).
He acted first on stage beginning in 1934 and later on television. He appeared in two of the original [Rod Serling] TZ episodes.

Anyway the "Trivia" about him that I found most amusing concerned his ongoing feud with The Robot (which actually had a "name": B-9, and was also called "Blinky" by its designer/builder).
(Courtesy of various online sources) : Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith) famously despised the fact that a mechanical prop was pulling focus from his theatrical performances. To cope, he began ad-libbing and intentionally writing an endless string of highly insulting, colorful put-downs for the Robot into the scripts.
Instead of calling it "B-9," Dr. Smith regularly degraded the machine on camera (while simultaneously displaying his talent for alliterative expression), calling it a:

• "Bubble-headed booby"
• "Cackling clod"
• "Tin-plated traitor"
• "Mechanical misfit"
• "Ludicrous lump"

These insults became so popular with the crew and the audience that they became a staple of the show's dialogue.

Lee van Cleef's last appearance in front of a camera was in a commercial of the beer brand Bavaria.

Berzelmayr said:

Lee van Cleef's last appearance in front of a camera was in a commercial of the beer brand Bavaria.

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Shades of Sergio Leone!... They even got the music right 🙂

During the Great Depression, five men in New York took out life insurance on a homeless alcoholic named Michael Malloy, then tried to kill him to collect. They gave him unlimited free drinks. He kept drinking. They switched to antifreeze. He kept drinking. Turpentine, horse liniment, rat poison. He drank it all. They fed him a sandwich of spoiled sardines, metal shavings, and carpet tacks. He came back the next day. They left him unconscious in the snow and poured water on his bare chest. He walked into the bar the next morning. They hit him with a taxi at 45 mph. He was hospitalized for three weeks, then recovered. They finally succeeded with coal gas. Four of the five were executed.

About the British architect Ernő Goldfinger:

A discussion on a golf course about Ernő with Goldfinger's cousin prompted Ian Fleming to name the James Bond adversary and villain Auric Goldfinger after Ernő—Fleming had been among the objectors to the pre-war demolition of the cottages in Hampstead that were removed to make way for Goldfinger's house at 2 Willow Road. Goldfinger consulted his lawyers when Goldfinger was published in 1959, which prompted Fleming to threaten to rename the character 'Goldprick', but eventually decided not to sue; Fleming's publishers agreed to pay his costs and gave him six free copies of the book.

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Erestor Arcamen said:

During the Great Depression, five men in New York took out life insurance on a homeless alcoholic named Michael Malloy, then tried to kill him to collect. They gave him unlimited free drinks. He kept drinking. They switched to antifreeze. He kept drinking. Turpentine, horse liniment, rat poison. He drank it all. They fed him a sandwich of spoiled sardines, metal shavings, and carpet tacks. He came back the next day. They left him unconscious in the snow and poured water on his bare chest. He walked into the bar the next morning. They hit him with a taxi at 45 mph. He was hospitalized for three weeks, then recovered. They finally succeeded with coal gas. Four of the five were executed.

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What happened to the 5th?