Clue used to be spelled "clew". This was due to clew meaning "a ball of twine" which was symbolic of following the string through a maze and helping find "the way" or "an answer". quickanddirtytips.com/edu…
In 1917 when Shackleton found rescue from a doomed expedition he took to the Antarctic in August, 1914, he asked how the war turned out. The answer was "the war isn't over. Millions are dead. Europe is mad. The world is mad." todayinhistory.blog/2017/…
At a traditional Thai wedding, the groom's way to the ceremony is blocked by a series of "gates" (golden necklaces or belts) held up by bridesmaids and family members. Some can be passed with money, others require him to answer questions, and he may even need to yell out his love or sing a song thethailandlife.com/thai-…
Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s wife kept hanging up on his phone calls from the ISS thinking he was a telemarketer. The 3 second delay made her think no one was on the other side of the line when she’d answer. NASA then gave her the ISS’s phone number so her phone read “SPACE” each time he called. youtu.be/t93UCj1hzu8
Diogenes used to stroll about in full daylight with a lamp; when asked what he was doing, he would answer, "I am just looking for an honest man." Diogenes looked for a human being but reputedly found nothing but rascals and scoundrels. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dio…
The answer to a very commonly asked question: Why Is Caillou Bald? It is as simple as the fact the the tv show is based off of a children's book where he started off as a baby and as he grew up the publishers decided to keep him bald so that he would stay recognizable. distractify.com/p/why-is-…
King George had a reply to the Declaration of Independence sent back called An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress. It picked apart the Declaration at length, including pointing out that one cannot claim "all men are created equal" when the Colonies still allowed slavery. study.com/academy/lesson/…
Originally Mister Rogers answered every letter sent to him by hand. As the letters increased in volume he hired staff member and producer Hedda Sharapan to answer them, but he still read, edited, and signed each one. wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_R…
Today I learned about The Human Library, an international organization/movement started in 2000 and active in more than 80 countries where, instead of books you 'borrow' people. People with interesting and unique life stories volunteer to be the 'books' and share their experience and answer questions. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The…
Research suggests that a future Martian colony should grow and develop completely independently from Earth. Its members would relinquish their Earthly citizenship, have no nation on Earth to answer to, and only establish diplomatic and economic relations with new crews that land on the planet. bbc.com/future/article/20…
ELO's self-titled 1971 debut album released in the US as "No Answer", after a telephone message from United Artists went unanswered and someone mistook the scribbled "no answer" as the album's title. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The…
Around 4% of people do not take surveys seriously and provide silly answers. Around 7% of Americans were 'not sure' if lizardmen were running Earth. Around 13% of Americans claimed a former president was anti-Christ. The Lizardman constant (around 4%) explains some of strange results in surveys. slatestarcodex.com/2013/0…
[] A "Who wants to be a millionaire" contestant, Charles Ingram cheated his way to the 1 Million British Pound question by using a trick. The production team discovered that whenever Ingram read out an answer that was correct, an accomplice from the audience would make a coughing sound. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cha…
Disney traded ABC sportscaster Al Michaels from ESPN to NBC in exchange for the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, so the latter could appear in the game Epic Mickey. In an interview, Michaels commented "I'm going to be a trivia answer someday." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_…
Today I learned about GhostTunes. It was Garth Brooks' answer to not being able to carve out a satisfactory deal with the streaming platforms to showcase his music. Lasted less than 3 years and was eventually sold to Amazon where Brooks' entire catalog is exclusively available now. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gho…
If the song “Empty Spaces” from Pink Floyd's, “The Wall” is played backwards, you can hear the phrase “Hello looker. Congratulations. You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont." As well as, "Roger! Carolyne's on the phone" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emp…
Archimedes's cattle problem, a 2 millenium-old poem containing an arithmetical problem which involves computing the number of cattle the sun god's herd, was discovered in 1773. It took 107 years for it to be solved. The answer was 7.76x10^206544, more cattle than could fit in the universe. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc…
In 1972 Canadian radio station CBC held a poll to find a national simile (an answer to 'As American as apple pie'). The winning response was "As Canadian as possible under the circumstances." dougdyment.com/hscott.htm…
‘Ahoy-Hoy’ was once the preferred way to answer the phone, as it was Alexander Graham Bell’s preferred way to answer the phone. However Edison popularized 'Hello' because he thought it was easily heard and distinguished from other words. npr.org/sections/krulwich…
In Canada the winner of a sweepstakes is required by law to correctly answer a skill testing question, usually math related, in order to receive the prize. mentalfloss.com/article/5…
: There are problems which can't be solved even if we have plenty of resources. These are called as undecidable problems. For such a problem, a computer might give a wrong answer or it will run forever without a solution. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis…
The answer to 'how fat do you need to be to stop a bullet?' depends on the gun. A 9mm bullet from a handgun will penetrate 60cm of human fat tissue. A bullet from an AK47 can shoot through a brick wall. A morbidly obese 125kg person can have around 60cm of fat at the thickest point. sciencefocus.com/the-huma…
The "Never argue with a fool" quote lacks proof crediting it to Mark Twain. The oldest suspected source is biblical proverbs 26:4 and 26:5: "Do not answer a fool according to his folly, Or you will also be like him. Answer a fool as his folly deserves, That he not be wise in his own eyes." checkyourfact.com/2019/08…
Shakuntala Devi, also known as the human computer, gave the 23rd root of a 201 digit number in 50 seconds. The answer(546,372,891) was verified at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sha…
The Looney Tunes were originally WB's answer to Disney's "Silly Symphony" and was much more musically-focused. Over time it became more focused on the characters and less about the music but kept the name. ssnpodcast.com/2016/07/01…
The trial for the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire cheating scandal (where the winner was accused of hearing answers from a series of coughs) had to be suspended due to a cough outbreak in the courtroom independent.co.uk/news/uk…
That the average golf ball has 300 to 500 divots in it. For one manufacturer, the answer to how many dimples on a golf ball was a whopping 1,070, which happens to be the record for the most dimples on a golf ball. golf.com/gear/golf-balls/…
, There is a center in the NIH called National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health and that some of their projects include whether magnets can cure migraines and whether lavender scents improve wound healing and more. Answer: both do not. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat…
Today I learned about an Indian art called Shatavadhana, where a person has to remember and answer questions on a stage from 100 people simultaneously while dealing with distractions in a round robin manner. The tasks vary from making up a poem spontaneously to keeping a count of a bell ringing at random. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ava…
The Irish as well as other Celtic languages don’t have words that translate directly as “yes” and “no”. They rely instead on echo responses such as “I am not” to answer questions affirmatively or negatively. mentalfloss.com/article/8…
Today I learned of Arthur Chu, a Jeopardy! contestant who won 11 games by picking a new category after every correct answer to throw off his opponents en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art…
Today I learned about the theory of "the wisdom of crowds", where the median will be close, but the mean answer of a crowd of people will be closer to the correct answer. all-about-psychology.com/…
A driver (in the US) does not have the right to refuse an order to exit the vehicle during an ordinary traffic stop. "The answer here is an unequivocal “no,” straight from the Supreme Court. pdf.textfiles.com/academi…
A bank robber successfully robbed an armoured truck by hiring decoys on craigslist and then escaping down the nearby river in an inner tube. At least 12 people showed up to answer his advert. The robber pepper sprayed a guard, stole the money, and fled. cnet.com/news/bank-robber…
Stephen Hawking was still working on "Brief Answers to the Big Questions" with questions like "Is there a God?" when he died. To fill the gaps, the publishers used Hawking’s “enormous personal archive” and completed the book with his academic colleagues, his family, and personal estate physicsworld.com/a/stephe…
The makers of Trivial Pursuit fell for a joke stating that the creator of the bra was Otto Titzling ("a two-tit sling"). They included this hoax in the game, naming Titzling as the correct answer. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ott…
A sitting US President was once arrested: Ulysses Grant was forced to go with his arresting officer to the police station to answer for the charge of speeding his horses through town. ghostsofdc.org/2014/03/04…
The "razor" in Ockham's razor refers to distinguishing between two hypotheses either by "shaving away" unnecessary assumptions or cutting apart two similar conclusions. This means a solution with the fewest assumptions, not the simplest answer, is usually correct. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occ…
Today I learned of "Gish Gallop", a fallacious debate tactic of drowning your opponent in a flood of individually-weak arguments, that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood in real time. It was named after "Duane Gish", a prominent member of the creationist movement. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dua…
Cunningham's law states: "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cun…
In an episode of the Batman series from the 60’s, The Riddler asks Commissioner Gordon the riddle "When is a jet stream like a daffodil?". The answer to this riddle is never given in the series. The answer that was written in the script and never aired is: “They can both be yellow.” batman.fandom.com/wiki/Th…
The United States Postal Service began Operation Santa in 1912 when local postmasters were authorized to open and respond to letters to Santa. In the 1940's the program was open to the public and now every year anyone can adopt a letter and answer a holiday wish. uspsoperationsanta.com/ab…
The Miss South Carolina teen who became an internet meme for her incomprehensible answer contemplated suicide after her pageant flub usmagazine.com/celebrity-…
Today I learned about Marguerite Roberts, one of the highest paid Hollywood screenwriters of the 1930s, who was blacklisted in 1951 for refusing to answer to the House Un-American Activities Committee. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar…
The Milgram Experiment, where participants 'shocked' a learner for wrong answers, was replicated in virtual reality. Despite the learner being a computer-program, participants treated them as if they were real. journals.plos.org/plosone…
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