The 2005 Nicolas Cage war movie Lord of War features the most guns ever shown on screen: a stockpile of more than 3,000 AK-47s. Filmmakers planned to use prop guns, but it was cheaper to buy real ones.
The popular Daisy BB gun of the 1940s and 1950s started as a promotional item. Daisy sold outdoor products and gave away the guns with purchase, but the guns proved more popular than any of their actual products.
Silencers are technically called suppressors—they reduce the sound of a gunshot from about 150 decibels… to about 120 decibels.
Weird gun law: The city of Kennesaw, Georgia, requires all households to have a gun.
The reason behind that famous photo of Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley: Presley wanted Nixon to make him an official “narcotics officer,” so he could legally travel with as many guns as he wanted.
State with the lowest gun ownership rate: Hawaii (about 7 percent).
Guns (with concealed-carry permits) are usually allowed at the political party conventions…but squirt guns are banned.
TSA workers at American airports spot an average of six guns in carry-on baggage every day.
Revolver inventor Samuel Colt died in 1862, just at the beginning of the Civil War, in which the United States would buy and use more than 300,000 of his guns.
Real name of a bazooka: the M1 rocket launcher. Soldiers nicknamed it “bazooka” after a homemade musical instrument played (and invented) by a popular radio comedian named Bob Burns.
About one in five American women claim to be gun owners.
Only two actors to receive Oscar nominations in every decade from the 1960s through the 2000s: Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine.
GOOD NEWS
Beer guzzlers, LEGO builders, nervous drivers, architects, and those who are seeking ways to ensure a cleaner, healthier planet should cheer when they see what’s available right now or in the very near future!
BEER BOTTLE SAND
One of New Zealand’s largest beer companies, DB Breweries, has devised a way to help that nation save its sandy beaches, which are being scooped up for use in building homes, roads, and golf courses. The company has a machine that can crush glass beer bottles into a sand substitute for construction companies and let the beautiful sand stay on New Zealand’s beaches, where it belongs. You simply drop a bottle into a slot on the machine and in five seconds the plastic label is vacuumed off and the bottle is pulverized into 200 grams of sand substitute by miniature steel hammers. Beer drinkers take note: you’ll need to drink and crush 5,000 DB Export bottles to create a ton of sand.
NO PLASTIC BRICKS
LEGO is going green with the release of their first plant-based LEGO elements—LEGO trees and bushes made from a sugarcane-based plastic—in 2018. The Danish toy company says its goal is to be totally sustainable by 2030.
I SEE YOU!
Unexpected obstacles that lurk around the corner—a stopped car, a dog running loose, kids playing in the street—can be deadly for a driver. To help solve this problem, researchers at Stanford University are developing a laser-based computer technology that will allow cars, particularly driverless cars, to “see” around corners by emitting laser pulses and then measuring the time it takes for the light to be reflected back.
RELEASE THE WAX WORMS
The wax worm is a caterpillar that eats beeswax. In 2016 scientists at the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria in Spain accidentally discovered that wax worms also eat polyethylene plastic, which they metabolize into degradable ethylene glycol. There aren’t enough wax worms on Earth to consume all the plastic bags that clog our landfills and waterways, but scientists are working to isolate the plastic-digesting bacteria in the wax worms’ gut, and someday…
Two doughnut flavors found at South Korea Dunkin’ Donuts: Kimchi and Glazed Garlic. (In Japan, you can get doughnuts filled with soy.)
SAVING THE WORLD, ONE SMART KID AT A TIME
Gitanjali Rao, an 11-year-old girl from Lone Tree, Colorado, invented a simple product to test for lead in water. Instead of using unreliable test strips or having to send water samples to a testing lab, Rao’s low-cost device uses carbon nanotubes to detect lead and connects to an app on your phone to provide instant results.
THE WONKAVATOR
In Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka has an elevator that can go “up and down, sideways, slant ways, and any other way you can think of,” which readers knew was pure fiction…until now. A German engineering company, Thyssenkrupp, has announced the invention of the MULTI, a magnetic levitation system that enables elevator cars to go up, down, and sideways. Elevators can now have horizontal offshoots to other buildings or even do loop-de-loops. Want to ride the MULTI? Be in Berlin in 2021. That’s when this amazing new system is scheduled to launch.
THE WRITE STUFF
Graviky Labs at MIT has invented a product that turns air pollution into ink. AIRINK collects the unburned carbon soot you see coming out of cars’ exhaust pipes and turns it into high quality black ink. As Buckminster Fuller said, “Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we are ignorant of their value.”
A TON OF FUN
Charles Barkley was one of the heftier players in basketball history—in college, he was listed as weighing 252 pounds, but he was around 300 by the time he started his Hall of Fame NBA career. Along the way, he earned himself a lot of nicknames.
• Sir Charles
• The Bread Truck
• The Love Boat
• Food World
• The Crisco Kid
• Wide Load from Leeds
• Ton of Fun
• Goodtime Blimp
• Round Mound of Rebound
Only continent with parts in the Eastern, Western, Northern, and Southern Hemispheres: Africa.
100 WORDS FOR SNOW
Uncle John loves sharing little-known facts, but here’s a common “fact”…that’s untrue.
Myth: “Eskimos” have 100 words for snow.
Truth: It seems logical. After all, Eskimos have resided in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland for centuries. Those areas are snowy, icy, frozen, and just plain cold, and it makes sense that the inhabitants would have learned to differentiate between all the slightly different varieties of weather. While the different groups that live in Eskimo country do have several different words for snow, they don’t have anywhere near 100.
First of all, there is no single group of people known as “Eskimos.” The name derives from a word Algonquin tribes in Quebec used for the people who lived in the northern areas of Canada. (Some experts think it meant “person who laces snowshoes.”) But no tribe called themselves Eskimos. When referring to an “Eskimo,” most people are thinking of groups native to the Artic and subarctic regions of North America—the Inuit, Iñupiat, or Yup’ik peoples, for example.
Second, there’s no “Eskimo” language. There are several native languages in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, including Inuktitut and Athabaskan, both spoken by tens of thousands of people. So why do so many people think “Eskimos” are a single group of people, with one language and a fixation on describing the nuances of snow?
•In 1986 Cleveland State University language professor Laura Martin traced the origin of the myth back to Franz Boas, a German-American anthropologist who in 1911 wrote about the similarities between some world languages, and casually referenced the fact that there were four words in the “Eskimo” language for snow: aput (snow on the ground), qana (falling snow), piqsirpoq (drifting snow), and qimuqsuq (a snow drift).
•The myth was expanded in the 1950s by another major linguist, Benjamin Lee Whorf, who wrote that the so-called Eskimos had seven words for snow.
•Before long, textbooks were printing the information as fact…and the number kept growing.
•In the hit 1978 Lanford Wilson play The Fifth of July, a character remarks that there are 50 words for snow.
•A New York Ti
mes article not long after said there were 100, and it just took off from there.
Even if any Native American language did have 100 words for snow, it wouldn’t be all that weird or notable. After all, English has snow, frost, powder, blizzards, sleet, flurries, snowdrifts, freezing rain, frozen fog, snow squall, hoarfrost, whiteout…
The fastest animal on two legs: the ostrich, which can run faster than 45 mph.
THE INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE
Football is America’s most popular sport, but outside of the United States its popularity is miniscule. Baseball has a lot of fans outside of the United States, but mostly in Latin America and parts of Asia. So what American sport is the most popular around the world? Thanks in part to the success of the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, it’s basketball. In fact, the 2017–18 NBA season had a record 108 players from 42 other countries or territories. Here are the first players to represent their country in the NBA, and the total number who have played in the league as of 2018.
Antigua and Barbuda: Julius Hodge (2005)
1 player in the NBA
Argentina: Pepe Sanchez (2000)
12 players in the NBA
Australia: Luc Longley (1991)
17 players in the NBA
Austria: Jakob Pöltl (2016)
1 player in the NBA
Bahamas: Mychal Thompson (1978)
4 players in the NBA
Belarus: Maalik Wayns (2012)
1 player in the NBA
Belgium: D. J. Mbenga (2004)
2 players in the NBA
Belize: Marlon Garnett (1998)
3 players in the NBA
Bosnia and Herzegovina: Aleksandar Radojević (1999)
6 players in the NBA
Brazil: Rolando Ferreira (1988)
16 players in the NBA
Bulgaria: Georgi Glouchkov (1985)
1 player in the NBA
Cameroon: Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje (2001)
4 players in the NBA
Canada: Hank Biasatti (1946)
36 players in the NBA
Cape Verde: Edy Tavares (2015)
1 player in the NBA
China: Yao Ming (2002)
7 players in the NBA
Croatia: Dražen Petrović (1989)
20 players in the NBA
Cuba: Andrés Guibert (1994)
3 players in the NBA
Czech Republic: George Zidek (1995)
4 players in the NBA
Democratic Republic of the Congo: Dikembe Mutombo (1991)
5 players in the NBA
Dominica: Garth Joseph (2000)
1 player in the NBA
Dominican Republic: Tito Horford (1988)
8 players in the NBA
Egypt: Alaa Abdelnaby (1990)
2 players in the NBA
England: Chris Harris (1955)
11 players in the NBA
Estonia: Martin Müürsepp (1996)
1 player in the NBA
Finland: Hanno Möttölä (2000)
3 players in the NBA
France: Howard Carter (1983)
21 players in the NBA
Gabon: Stephane Lasme (2007)
1 player in the NBA
Georgia: Vladimir Stepania (1999)
5 players in the NBA
Germany: Frido Frey (1946)
22 players in the NBA
Greece: Jake Tsakalidis (2000)
11 players in the NBA
Guyana: Jason Miskiri (1999)
2 players in the NBA
Haiti: Yvon Joseph (1985)
4 players in the NBA
Hungary: Kornél Dávid (1999)
1 player in the NBA
Go with the flow: There are 169 active volcanoes in the U.S.
Iceland: Pétur Guðmundsson (1981)
1 player in the NBA
Iran: Hamed Haddadi (2008)
1 player in the NBA
Ireland: Marty Conlon (1991)
3 players in the NBA
Israel: Omri Casspi (2009)
3 players in the NBA
Italy: Mike D’Antoni (1973)
10 players in the NBA
Jamaica: Wayne Sappleton (1984)
6 players in the NBA
Japan: Yuta Tabuse (2004)
1 player in the NBA
Latvia: Gundars Vētra (1992)
4 players in the NBA
Libya: Hesham Salem (2004)
2 players in the NBA
Lebanon: Rony Seikaly (1988)
3 players in the NBA
Lithuania: Šarūnas Marčiulionis (1989)
11 players in the NBA
Macedonia: Pero Antic (2013)
2 players in the NBA
Mali: Soumaila Samake (2000)
2 players in the NBA
Mexico: Horacio Llamas (1997)
4 players in the NBA
Montenegro: Predrag Drobnjak (2001)
6 players in the NBA
Netherlands: Swen Nater (1976)
6 players in the NBA
New Zealand: Sean Marks (1998)
4 players in the NBA
Nigeria: Hakeem Olajuwon (1984)
17 players in the NBA
Norway: Torgeir Bryn (1989)
1 player in the NBA
Panama: Rolando Blackman (1981)
5 players in the NBA
Philippines: Raymond Townsend (1978)
3 players in the NBA
Poland: Jeff Nordgaard (1997)
5 players in the NBA
Puerto Rico: Butch Lee (1978)
14 players in the NBA
Qatar: Jarvis Hayes (2003)
2 players in the NBA
Romania: Gheorghe Mureşan (1993)
1 player in the NBA
Russia: Sergei Bazarevich (1994)
12 players in the NBA
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines: Adonal Foyle (1997)
1 player in the NBA
Senegal: Makhtar N’Diaye (1999)
11 players in the NBA
Serbia: Vlade Divac (1989)
28 players in the NBA
Scotland: Robert Archibald (2002)
1 player in the NBA
Slovakia: Richard Petruška (1993)
1 player in the NBA
Slovenia: Marko Milič (1997)
10 players in the NBA
South Korea: Ha Seung-Jin (2004)
1 player in the NBA
South Sudan: Luol Deng (2005)
3 players in the NBA
Spain: Fernando Martín (1986)
17 players in the NBA
Sudan: Manute Bol (1985)
1 player in the NBA
Sweden: Jonas Jerebko (2009)
3 players in the NBA
Switzerland: Thabo Sefolosha (2006)
4 players in the NBA
Tanzania: Hasheem Thabeet (2009)
1 player in the NBA
Trinidad and Tobago: Ken Charles (1973)
2 players in the NBA
Tunisia: Salah Mejri (2015)
1 player in the NBA
Turkey: Mirsad Türkcan (1999)
10 players in the NBA
Ukraine: Alexander Volkov (1989)
9 players in the NBA
U.S. Virgin Islands: Charles Claxton (1995)
3 players in the NBA
Uruguay: Esteban Batista (2005)
1 player in the NBA
Venezuela: Harold Keeling (1986)
6 players in the NBA
Do you agree? Studies have shown that Twitter is more addictive than cigarettes.
DUMB CROOKS
Here’s proof that crime doesn’t pay.
HOUSE CALL. An off-duty police officer (name not released) from Brownsville, Texas, was awakened one November night in 2009 at 3:30 a.m. by someone knocking on his apartment door. He got up and groggily answered, and there was 19-year-old Anthony Carrazco, who asked the cop if he wanted to “buy some weed.” “Be right back,” said the cop. He returned a moment later with his badge and handcu
ffs and arrested the inebriated entrepreneur.
BEARING FALSE WITNESS. In October 2017, a 25-year-old Nebraska man named Thomas Hartman went to Omaha Police headquarters to report that his brother had stolen money from him. A quick investigation revealed that his brother had a solid alibi, but Hartman kept insisting that his brother robbed him. Officers smelled something fishy, so they held him for questioning. While Hartman was alone in the interrogation room, he suddenly realized that showing up at police headquarters with crack cocaine in his pocket was probably a bad idea, so he put a chair on the table and climbed up to try to hide the drugs above the ceiling tiles. Several officers (who were watching him via a surveillance camera) rushed in and apprehended him. Remarked one cop, “You’re at the frickin’ police station, man…you just tried to put a chair on the table to get up in the ceiling.”
NO NAPKINS? Our new favorite headline: “Man Accused of Stealing Meatballs Had Red Sauce on His Face.” The meatball robber was Leahman Potter, 48, of Sugarloaf, Pennsylvania. He snatched the meatballs from a neighbor’s garage, where they were being cooled in a pot. The neighbor called police, who later found the empty pot (and a spoon) in the middle of a cul de sac not far from the house. And not far from the pot was Potter, who was arrested with red sauce on his face and clothes.
SISTER ACT. Scott Vosburgh, 50, had way too much to drink one night in February 2018, and crashed his car on the side of a road in Perth, New York. When the highway patrol gave him a breathalyzer test, his blood alcohol level was .29 percent, more than three times the legal limit. After Vosburgh was processed at the station, he called his sister Kim Ledoux, 51, to come and pick him up. A few minutes later, she showed up at the station “visibly intoxicated.” (If you’re keeping score, her blood alcohol level was .22 percent.) Ledoux was immediately charged with DWI, just like her brother. According the police report, “Both were released to a sober third party.”
The WWII-era submarine HMS Trident kept a fully grown reindeer on board for six weeks…
TALES FROM THE CRYPTO. You’d think that a “criminal mastermind” who could plan a digital currency heist worth millions—complete with a fake kidnapping—would be too smart to end up in a Dumb Crooks article. Enter Louis Meza of Passaic, New Jersey. In December 2017, Meza’s multifaceted plan was set into motion when he invited a wealthy business associate to join him at a Ruby Tuesday’s in Times Square. At one point, the conversation turned to the valuable cryptocurrency that the associate had invested in. After the meal, Meza insisted on paying for his friend’s Uber ride home, so he called for a car, and watched as the man got in the front passenger seat and rode away. Moments later, an armed “kidnapper” emerged from the back seat and demanded the associate’s apartment keys, along with the password to his “hardware wallet,” which, according to Fortune magazine, “lets users store digital currency offline and safe from hackers (though not from kidnappers).”
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