by Will Pearson
THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER
(and the beer it should make you want to chug)
USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, ball games, and barroom banter
KEYWORDS: will you please stand for…
THE FACT: Believe it or not, the American national anthem, and the source of a lot of pregame pride, was actually nicked from a drinking song written by John Stafford Smith.
Every third-grader knows the story of Francis Scott Key penning the great poem while watching the siege of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. But that’s just a poem. So where exactly did all this music hoo-ha come from? When Key wrote the anthem, he had a song in his head as a reference for the poem’s meter (a song from England, ironically enough). The tune, notoriously difficult to sing, is from a drinking song written by John Stafford Smith. Original title: “To Anacreon in Heaven.” It was the theme song of a club of rich London men who got together to eat, drink, and then for good measure drink some more. The Anacreontic Club took its name from Anacreon, a Greek poet who wrote about such things. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that the song is usually sung before sporting events, after fans have been tailgating (translation: drinking) for several hours.
STELLA (THE FELLA?)
USEFUL FOR: Olympic banter, half-time conversation, and awkward pauses at drag shows and high school track competitions
KEYWORDS: Olympics, track-and-field, or hermaphrodites
THE FACT: In one of the most unusual cases ever, Olympic superstar Stella Walsh was unmasked after her death as being a little more than just woman.
In 1980, a 69-year-old member of the U.S. Track and Field Hall of Fame was shot and killed outside a Cleveland shopping mall. Police immediately ascertained that the victim was Stella Walsh, the greatest female track-and-field athlete of her day. Stella, born Stanislawa Walasiewiczowna in Poland, won a gold medal for Poland at the 1932 Olympics and a silver in 1936, and set 20 world records. But when the police took the body to be autopsied, they found something very unusual on the 69-year-old woman: male genitals! Further studies showed that she had both male and female chromosomes, a condition known as mosaicism. When the shocking news got out, it took approximately 2.7 seconds for the great runner to get a new nickname: Stella the Fella.
SUDDEN DEATH
(leading to sudden death)
USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, barroom banter, and irritating the sports fans at the retirement home
KEYWORDS: this one’s going to go into overtime
THE FACT: If Grandpa’s got a heart condition, maybe he shouldn’t be watching the big game this week.
Scientists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands analyzed the incidence of death on the five days prior to, the day of, and the five days after semifinal between the Netherlands and France in soccer. The game was particularly exciting, going into overtime before being decided by penalty kicks. (France ultimately won.) The average number of male deaths in the Netherlands by heart attack or stroke on the days surrounding the match: 150; on the day of the match: 173. It isn’t known what the French death rate was during and after the match. Guess that means they’ll have to do more research.
TELEGRAPH
(the thing Morse didn’t invent)
USEFUL FOR: impressing history buffs, irritating anyone related to Sam Morse, and chatting with anyone who still sends telegraphs (if you can find ’em)
KEYWORDS: Morse code, SOS, or how do you type SOS in Morse code?
THE FACT: Forget what you learned in grade school: Samuel F.B. Morse was at the least a second placer when it came to the telegraph.
Instead, set your sights on the true champ, Sir Charles Wheatstone. The British inventor built the first practical electric telegraph in 1837 or 1838—at the very least four years before Morse received his U.S. patent. Even in America, though, Morse’s “invention” of the telegraph is fraught with controversy: a friend, Dr. Charles Jackson, accused the inventor of stealing his idea (which could move Morse from second into third place). Also in dispute is the extent to which Morse’s assistant, Alfred Vail, contributed to both the design of his telegraph machine and the development of the “Morse code,” which was originally called the “Morse-Vail code.” (Does that even leave Sammy in the running anymore?) Well, whatever the case, you can always trust that the telegraph system will forever bear the good old Morse name.
TELEPROMPTERS
(and the guy behind it)
USEFUL FOR: making small talk with speechwriters, chatting up politicians, and anytime you see someone squinting at the camera
KEYWORDS: please stay tuned for a message from the president
THE FACT: Talk about an unsung hero: newscasters and politicians everywhere should be on their hands and knees thanking Irving B. Kahn, the inventor of the teleprompter.
Kahn stumbled into the idea while working on a projection system for the U.S. Army (not as a piece of military equipment, but simply to make presentations to Congressmen). Ridding newscasters of the need to read cue cards, the teleprompter was a huge success, leading Kahn to start the TelePrompTer Corporation, and leaving us to forever wonder both why newscasters still insist on shuffling papers and why he felt the need to capitalize the P and T in the company name. But those eternal questions aren’t the only annoying legacies Kahn left the world. In 1961, Kahn and fellow TelePrompTer exec Hub Schlafley developed the first pay-per-view television system, called Key TV, by showing (and charging for) the second Patterson – Johansson heavyweight fight.
TELEVISION
(and the kid responsible for must-see TV)
USEFUL FOR: chatting with nerds, scientists, disgruntled inventors, and anyone who used to hang out with the A/V kids
KEYWORDS: television, genius, or unsung hero
THE FACT: Who knew the idea for a TV set came from a 21-year-old Idaho farm boy?
Philo T. Farnsworth took his inspiration from the lines in the freshly tilled fields, and single-handedly dreamed up the cathode ray tube, itself leading to the invention of the television. By scanning and transmitting images in horizontal lines, the young eccentric pioneered an entirely new medium. Sadly, though, his claim to fame was quietly usurped. At just 21, Farnsworth presented his research to RCA executive David Sarnoff and Russian scientist Vladimir Zworykin. Zworykin and Sarnoff then replicated the technology and revised it. Using their position and resources at RCA, the two then began to dominate the marketing of this new technology. Farnsworth sued and seemingly won in court, but the power of the corporation proved mightier, and Farnsworth was never able to profit from the industry he helped launch.
THALES OF MILETUS
(the original Baby Jessica)
USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, wishing wells, and consoling anyone who’s just tripped or fallen
KEYWORDS: Jack and Jill, absentminded, or genius
THE FACT: Thales of Miletus, the first Western philosopher, set the standard for absentminded professors to come. After all, lost in thought and gazing at the sky, Thales fell into a well years before Baby Jessica could make the practice famous.
Of course, the whole well incident wasn’t great for PR. Ridiculed as an impractical dreamer, Thales set out to show that philosophers could do anything they set their minds to, including amassing wealth. One winter, using his knowledge of meteorology and astronomy, Thales predicted a bumper olive crop for the coming season. As such, he cornered the market on olive presses in Miletus and made a fortune when the olive harvest met his expectations. Remarkably also, Thales predicted the solar eclipse of 585 BCE. And he measured the height of the Egyptian pyramids using just their shadows. Despite all this, Thales is perhaps best known for arguing that water is the basic source element, that ultimately all things are made of water.
instant personalities
As a practical joke, JACOB HAUGAARD promised voters better weather, used his campaign money to buy them franks and beer, and maintained that every man had the God-given right to impotence. He received 23,211 votes, and became the first independent in Den
mark’s parliament.
In 1820, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN was arrested on vagrancy charges after alarmed residents reported a disheveled man peeping in their windows.
STEPHEN STILLS, of the legendary folk-rock group Crosby, Stills & Nash, originally wanted to be a Monkee. His tryout didn’t last too long, though, because producers quickly gave his thinning hair and bad teeth two opposable thumbs-down.
TOADS
(and why you should just say no)
USEFUL FOR: mainly warning teenagers and Grateful Dead fans
KEYWORDS: tripping, peer pressure, or Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride
THE FACT: No matter what the hype, don’t ever lick a cane toad.
In the 1930s “sugar cane” toads were introduced into Australia from Hawaii with the idea that they would control the gray-backed cane beetle, a sugar cane pest. Somehow, though, they became guests that overstayed their welcome—overpopulating and growing to be a real nuisance. Aside from their talent for consuming gray-backed cane beetles, “cane toads” can secrete a toxic compound known as bufotenin from a couple of glands behind their eyes (when attacked by predators, of course). But the toxic goo is also a hallucinogen, albeit a dangerous one. In their endless quest to get high, Australian teenagers have taken to drinking the slime produced when toads are boiled. Clearly, emulating this behavior isn’t the brightest idea, as two Canadian kids learned. They purchased a couple of toads from an exotic pet store and licked them hoping for euphoria. They got hospital beds instead.
TWINKIES
(and the law)
USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, afternoon snack conversation, and chatting up lawyers fond of vending machines
KEYWORDS: Twinkies, insanity, or the law
THE FACT: What should’ve been an open-and-shut case of murder in the first got a little twisted when a box of Twinkies came to the defense.
There wasn’t much question it was Dan White who climbed through a window at San Francisco City Hall and methodically shot to death Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, one of the nation’s most prominent gay politicians. So lawyers for White, who was an ex-cop and county supervisor, relied on a “diminished capacity” defense. They argued White was too depressed to commit premeditated murder. As proof, they briefly mentioned White’s recent consumption of sugary snack foods. Oddly enough, the “Twinkie defense” worked, and White was convicted of manslaughter instead of murder. The verdict, however, triggered a night of rioting in the city’s gay community. White served five years in prison and then killed himself a few months after his release. In 1982, California voters abolished diminished capacity as a legal defense.
UNENVIABLE PREGNANCIES
(like the spiny dogfish)
USEFUL FOR: barroom banter, making friends at Lamaze, and ensuring you don’t get invited up “for coffee” after a date
KEYWORDS: What could be worse than getting pregnant?
THE FACT: Forget Lamaze! If you want to ease the pain of childbirth, just focus on a spiny dogfish shark.
To conceive, the male spiny dogfish shark grasps the female’s fins with his mouth and uses his two reproductive organs, known as clappers, to inseminate the female. But this is no gentle act of foreplay. The sharp clappers leave deep cuts and gashes behind the females head, which take a week or so to heal. Once that’s over, she’s got a glorious 22 to 24 months of pregnancy to look forward to—the longest gestation period of any vertebrate. And when that magical day finally arrives, you’d better believe she’s wondering where her epidural is. Spiny dogfish mommies give birth to between two and eleven three-foot-long pups, each coming out headfirst. Of course, evolution has equipped the pups with cartilaginous sheaths on their spines to protect the mother from injury. Yeah, like that makes up for it.
UNSHELLED NUTS
(specifically cashews)
USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, barroom banter, and scaring kids into picking out all the other mixed nuts
KEYWORDS: shell shock, Shell station, or Shelley Long
THE FACT: Cashews aren’t sold in shells…and there’s a darn good reason for it!
While pecans, walnuts, and the oh-so-easy-toeat pistachios can be shelled with relative ease, their brother the cashew is a nut that’s slightly harder to crack. In fact, if you got one in the shell, you’d be struggling to get it out for a good while. Why, exactly? Well, aside from the two layers of shell on the cashew nut, there’s also a slightly trickier toxic oil that contains anacardic acid and cardol that can cause blisters on the hands if touched. Cashews have to be roasted twice to be eaten—once to remove the outer shell, and again to remove the inner shell. So do you want ’em au natural and in their shells or all soft and ready to eat like we do?
USSR
(and its Tower to the People)
USEFUL FOR: mocking Josef Stalin, mainly
KEYWORDS: Stalin, Russia, really big swimming pools
THE FACT: In 1931, Joseph Stalin ordered that the largest Orthodox Christian cathedral in the world be dynamited so he could build an enormous “Palace of the People.” The dynamiting was the easy part.
Wishing to replace the 355-foot-high church—the product of 44 years of backbreaking labor by Russian peasants—with a new structure taller than the Empire State Building, and capped with a gilded statue of Lenin taller than the Statue of Liberty, the “Man of Steel’s” mad scheme never came to fruition. The construction on the tower, meant to celebrate Communism’s strength, never took place because resources were diverted to fighting World War II. Stalin’s successor—Nikita Khrushchev—ordered a large swimming pool built where the cathedral had stood. Old women who remembered the original cathedral could be seen standing at the edge of the swimming pool, praying to forgotten icons. Recently, Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow’s autocratic mayor, tried to make up for Stalin’s mess by ordering the construction of a tacky reproduction of the original cathedral using precast concrete.
VACUUM CLEANERS
USEFUL FOR: impressing inventors and diverting the conversation when you’ve been told to clean the carpets
KEYWORDS: chores, chump, or challenge
THE FACT: Forget Hoover. The real guy you should be thanking for the vacuum cleaner is a genius named Hubert Booth.
Hubert Cecil Booth was an Englishman who was always up for a challenge. In 1900, Booth saw a prototype of a dust-removing machine at London’s Empire Music Hall and suspected that he could improve on the idea. That wasn’t terribly surprising, considering that the machine was designed to force a blast of compressed air down, causing the dust to rise, which might have removed dust from one particular spot on the floor, but not necessarily the room. Predictably, this was somewhat inefficient. When Booth asked the machine’s inventor why it just didn’t suck up the dirt, the man became furious and told him that a machine like that just couldn’t be built. Challenge on! Booth started with a few suction experiments, and one short year later he patented the world’s first mechanical vacuum.
VACUUMS
(you could never afford)
USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties and small talk while ring shopping
KEYWORDS: vacuum cleaner, Hoover, or Dust Buster
THE FACT: What’s the most expensive material, per pound, in common use by physicists. Diamonds? Not even close.
Gem-quality diamonds cost only about $15 million per pound. It’s been estimated that Saddam Hussein was willing to spend $100 million per pound for weapons-grade uranium. But that isn’t it, either. Moon dust? Nope. Russian-retrieved moon dust (they had a robot return some) has been sold on the black market for less than $5 million per pound. Believe it or not, the most expensive substance per pound is an ultrahigh vacuum. Although it’s abundant in space, nobody has figured out a good way to bring them down to earth. The cost of making one is $4 followed by 21 zeros, so nothing else even comes close. And the price will only get more expensive, per gram, as the vacuums get better!
VAN HALEN
(and the whole M&M thing)
USEFUL FOR: cocktail part
ies and chatting up rock and roll fans and entertainment lawyers
KEYWORDS: prima donnas, egotistical contract agreements, or candy-coated shells
THE FACT: Over the years, Van Halen’s gained a lot of notoriety for their demand that at every gig their dressing room had to contain a large bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed. It was for a better reason than you think, though.
While the fact has often been cited as proof of the band members’ towering egos, it was actually included by the tour promoters as an easy way of seeing if the concert venues had read the contract thoroughly (particularly the parts about technical requirements, etc.). But sneaky M&M tactics aside, Van Halen’s riders are also notorious for the sheer volume of alcohol they stipulate. One rider specified that their dressing room was to contain a case of beer, a pint of Jack Daniels, a pint of Absolut, a 750 ml. bottle of Bacardi Añejo rum, three bottles of wine, small bottles of Cointreau and Grand Marnier, and a 750 ml. bottle of one of five specific premium tequilas. Don’t forget six limes, margarita salt, shot glasses, ingredients for Bloody Marys, and a blender.