Trivia


Animals
  • Reindeer: Caribou
  • Dinosaurs used to be grouped as reptiles; now birds are grouped as dinosaurs
  • Mosquitos have 47 teeth, in addition to the straw-like extension
  • Mosquitoes are attracted to a number of things: heat, carbon dioxide, smell, and taste
  • An Ecuadorian frog secretes a painkiller about 200 times as potent as morphine
  • Most dangerous sharks (to people): Great white shark, tiger shark, bull shark, oceanic whitetip shark
  • Other dangerous sharks (to people): Gray shark, blue shark, hammerhead shark, mako shark, nurse shark, lemon shark, blacktip reef shark, wobbegongs, sandtiger, spitting sharks, and porbeagle
  • Maneating sharks (?): Tiger shark, great white shark, hammerhead shark, blue shark, mako shark, ...
Plants
  • Poppy seeds can contain enough opiates - morphine and codeine - to register on urine tests designed to identify drug users.
  • Among the fruits and vegetables that are more nutritious frozen than fresh (9-day delivery to grocery store) are blueberries, raspberries, green beans and broccoli.
  • Cucumber, pumpkins and squash are fruit
  • There is now evidence that if you eat two stalks of celery every day for a week, you will lower your high blood pressure into the normal range.
  • Douglas Firs are pine trees, not firs
People
  • Frank Lloyd Wright (architect)
  • Frank Gehry (architect)
  • Ansel Adams (photographer)
  • Audubon (artist, "Birds of America")
  • John Wooden (basketball coach, UCLA Bruins)
  • Dean Smith (basketball coach, North Carolina Tarheels)
  • Red Auerbach (basketball coach, Boston Celtics)
  • Jack Kerouac (author, "On the Road", beatnik)
  • Lily Langtry (singer, "Jersey Lily")
  • Punxsutawney Phil (weather predictor, Pennsylvania)
Movies
  • "Gort! Klaatu Verata Nikto!" - Famous quote in "The Day the Earth Stood Still", also used in "Army of Darkness"
Measurements
Length
  • 1 mile = 1.609 km
  • 1 km = 0.6214 mile
  • 1 ft = 0.3048 m
  • 1 m = 3.281 ft
  • 1 league = 3 miles
  • 1 furlong = 1/8 mile
  • 1 fathom = 6 feet (a nautical measure of length or depth)
Volume
  • 3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon
  • 4 tablespoons = 1/4 cup
  • 5 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon = 1/3 cup
  • 8 fluid ounces = 1 cup
  • 1 liter = 1.056 quart = 0.264 gallon
  • 1 quart = 0.947 liter
  • 1 gallon = 3.788 liter
Weight
  • 16 ounces = 1 pound
Universities
Ivy League
  • Harvard U.; 1636, oldest university in USA; Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • Yale U.; 1701; private; New Haven, Connecticut
  • Princeton U.; 1746, private; Princeton, New Jersey
  • Columbia U. (King's College); 1754; private; New York City
  • Dartmouth College; 1769; private; Hanover, New Hampshire
  • U. of Pennsylvania; 1740, 1755; private; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  • Cornell U.; 1865; private; Ithaca, New York
  • Brown U. (Rhode Island College); 1764, 1770 (moved), 1804 (renamed); Providence, Rhode Island
Misc
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); 1861 (chartered), 1865 (opened); private; Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • Stanford U.; 1885; private; Palo Alto, California
  • U. of California; 1868; campuses at: Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angelos, Riverside, San Diego at La Jolla, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz
Computers
  • Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) think tank -- 1970's (mostly) -- invented and prototyped the following concepts
  • Personal computer (Alto)
  • Handheld computer
  • Mouse
  • Graphical User Interface (GUI) with icons
  • Laser printer
  • Ethernet
  • Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)
  • Bitmapped color graphics
  • Desktop publishing (WYSIWYG)
  • Wireless connectivity
  • Electronic paper
  • Interpress PDL (the precursor to PostScript)
  • Smalltalk (the first object-oriented programming language)
  • IDE (integrated development environment)
  • Client/server architecture
  • PC networking (distributed computing)
  • Aspect-Oriented Programming (the most-likely successor to OOP)
  • Computer worm
  • IPv6 [in part] (next-generation internet protocol)
  • Ancestry Diagrams
Misc
  • Metropolis: Mother city (national capital)
  • Megalopolis: Big city (cluster of cities)
  • Necropolis: Corpse city (cemetary)
  • You do not toss and turn in your dreams. One does that only when not dreaming.
  • Laughing a hundred times a day provides a cardiovascular workout equivalent to ten minutes of rowing.
  • Most potent biological toxin: Clostridium botulinum (botulism)
  • Only group of people that never get cancer: the Hunza in northwest Kashmir
  • Speed of sound: 742.3 mile/hr (at 0 C / 32 F; slightly faster at hotter temperatures)
  • Escape velocity: 25.000 mile/hr (roughly Mach 33) (ignoring air friction)
  • Theoretical-physics terms: zero point energy (ZPE), superspace (higher dimensional space)
  • Zero point energy (ZPE): The term "zero-point" refers to zero degrees Kelvin which means this energy exists even in the absence of all heat. The energy was interpreted as being inherent to the fabric of space itself.
  • In direct sunlight, the body produces vitamin D (which is a hormone, not a vitamin)
  • Shinto (ancient Japanese religion)
  • Scandinavian: Norway, Sweden, Denmark (the geographic proximity causes cultural similarity) (sometimes includes Finland and Iceland)
  • Nordic: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland
  • Eric the Red: (Norse, Viking) First European to discover and colonize Greenland. Sailed from Iceland in 982 and led a group of colonists to Greenland in 985-986
  • Leif Ericsson (Eriksson) the Lucky: (Norse, Viking) Possibly the first European to sail to North America. Leif sailed north from the southern tip of Greenland to Labrador, and then landed in what is now called Newfoundland (which he called Vinland). Ericsson sailed around the year 1000. Ericsson was born in Iceland and was one of the sons of the explorer Eric the Red.
  • Maya: 15th century BC - 14th century AD; Central America: Mexico (Yucatan Peninsula) and Guatemala
  • Aztec: 12th century AD - 16th century AD; Northern Mexico; Grain: Amaranth
  • Inca: 13th century AD - 16th century AD; Peru; Grain: Quinoa
  • Supercontinent (prior to continental drift): Pangaea
  • Armistice Day: 1918-11-11, 11 am (11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month)


Sources