15 Geysers of Trivia That Misted Us This Week

“I don't know much,” sang Aaron Neville. “But I know I love you. And that may be all I need to know.”

That’s a very limited way of thinking. He really needs to know much more than that. For example, he needs to know each and every one of the following 15 items.

1. A Self-Starter

A Secret Service agent of Ronald Reagan’s claimed Reagan kept a gun in his briefcase, in hopes of backing up his guards, should the need ever arise. But when the assassination attempt did come, he did not have his gun on him. 

2. So Tasty

We farm shrimp, we farm salmon, but we can’t farm king crab. We try, but they end up killing and eating each other.

3. Farid Fata

A Michigan doctor falsely diagnosed 500 patients with cancer. This let him and a hospice company bilk insurance companies (and also horrifically hurt patients). He got 45 years in prison.

4. Sausage Fest Clam Bake

One species of clam is all-male, and they still manage to reproduce. They fertilize other species, and rather than mixing genes, they expel all of the other species’ DNA.

5. Hiram Maxim

The inventor of the machine gun went deaf. The gun was just so loud, you see. Later, his son invented a suppressor.

6. The Opioid Effect

When you hear that a country’s life expectancy has risen or fallen in recent years, it might say nothing about the health of the elderly. Instead, the number changes based on people who die young. Suicides, homicides and accidental deaths change the number more than medical advances. 

7. Mixing Business and Pleasure

People theorized that electricity could resurrect dead animals. And so, Alexander von Humboldt tested it on himself by inserting an electric probe in his rectum. It’s unclear what he could have proven, but he reported that the experience was very unpleasant. 

8. Ines Ramirez

A woman in a Mexican village performed a Caesarean on herself in 2004. She was five hours from the nearest doctor when she went into premature labor, and she feared delivering vaginally would result in a stillbirth. The operation was successful. 

9. 16 Million Pounds of Poop 

Penguin feces has been accumulating in Antarctica for millennia without decaying. It’s about to warm up and will form the basis of a vast new ecosystem of plants and animals.

10. Rust Buckets

The Ford Motor Company patented rust-proofing, but analysts said adding it to cars would lead to more sales but a lower stock price. So, they didn’t use it. Other companies rust-proofed their cars. Ford became famous for rusting, and the company almost went bust. 

11. Teufelsberge

Entire hills of World War II rubble still stand in Berlin and Munich. They don’t look like rubble, though. They just look like natural hills. 

12. Oakhurst Dairy

Portland left a comma out of a contract and were on the hook for $5 million. A dairy company pointed to the missing comma in 2018, claimed they were owed more wages, and won.

13. Big Eyes

Walter Keane’s paintings were actually done by his wife, as the Tim Burton movie Big Eyes depicts. She proved this in court by painting one for the jury, who awarded her millions. 

14. Constance Gracie

One passenger who survived the Titanic was just getting over the recent death of his daughter. An elevator car fell on her. No, she wasn’t in an elevator that fell — an elevator fell on her. 

15. Lord Gordon Gordon 

A man calling himself Lord Gordon Gordon stole $1 million from railway tycoon Jay Gould then fled to Canada. Gould and associates then tried to kidnap him, so Canada arrested them. Then 1,000 Americans formed a militia to invade Canada, so Canada released them.