September is here. It’s the time of the year when students return to school, which is a shame, because the only education they truly need is a selection of seemingly unconnected trivia facts. They can learn about bats, birds and brains. They might even learn a little something about the history of education itself.
Mono Tones
Muzak — that simplified style of background music used in elevators and stores — wasn’t designed like that to sound good or sound calming. It was designed to be simple enough to transmit over electrical lines, for the sake of people who couldn’t access radio tech.
Cheese, Pepperoni, Rescue
A Colorado pizza delivery guy found himself performing CPR on a customer in 2015, on just his second day on the job. Most agree that he earned that $25 tip.
Free Pee
Pay toilets used to be much more common in America. There were 50,000 in 1970 but almost none 10 years later. The shift came thanks to lobbying by an Ohio group called the Committee to End Pay Toilets in America.
Seeing Double
The left side of your brain processes the right side of your vision, and vice versa. So, each eye connects to the opposite side of the brain, right? Bizarrely, no. Instead, the left side of your left eye goes to the right side of your brain and the right side of your left eye goes to the left side of your brain. The right eye is split similarly.
Vampire Tower
In 1929, Florida built a 30-foot tower that they hoped would house 100,000 bats. These bats would greatly reduce the area’s mosquito population. But the builders had no method for obtaining bats other than placing bait, and no bats ever showed up.
Final Exam
An interloper landed a helicopter on the White House lawn in 1974. Security fired 300 rounds at him, then took him in alive. He laughed and said he’d popped by to show how good of a pilot he was.
The Word Committee
In 1833, two men — William Whewell and Samuel Coleridge — held a debate on what we should call people who study science. Whewell suggested “scientists,” and most people in the room thought that was a bad idea, but that’s the word the world went with.
Drink and Drive
The Michelin Man (the mascot for Michelin tires) has a name. It’s Bibendum. It means “to drink” and comes from a Latin phrase that means, “Now is the time to drink.”
Background Check
A man applied to work at a nursing home in 2019, and as part of the application, he had to submit his fingerprints. These were the same prints he’d left at a murder scene 20 years earlier, and he was now arrested and was sentenced to life.
Size Matters
Male bowerbirds build structures out of twigs to impress mates. They appear to use these for trickery. By arranging rocks in order of size, they force a perspective making the structure look deeper than it really is, and therefore making the male in the middle appear bigger as well.
The Cave of Death
Don’t stick your head in the Cueva de la Muerte in Costa Rica. It releases 30 kilograms of carbon dioxide every hour, so any little critter that wanders in there quickly dies.
Let’s All Unplug
Every June, Algeria periodically shuts down the internet nationwide, to stop students from using it to cheat on exams. But they don’t just shut off access to schools — they shut off internet access to everyone for three hours a day.
Shocking Conclusion
Ernest Hemingway’s last days were quite miserable. He underwent dozens of electroshock treatments (which were painful and damaging in those days, unlike now). Toward the end, he was crying and begging his wife for the treatments to stop.
The Worst System
We could raise the number of representatives states have in Congress. But if we raise it just a little, it’s possible that some states will actually lose representatives, even if their share of the population remains unchanged. We call this the Alabama Paradox, after one time this happened to Alabama.
Second Life
In 1848, Britain sentenced Thomas Francis Meagher to be “hanged, drawn and quartered.” Fortunately, he got away, and he went on to become the acting governor of Montana.