15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, May 17, 2025
We bet you’re feeling happy right now. Maybe it’s because you’re still thinking about that cookie you ate. It was a salted chocolate chip cookie, and it tasted so good that you weren’t even angry that they charged you $4 for the glass of milk.
Other cookies fall short. Fortune cookies aren’t so tasty, and they don’t even seem to have interesting fortunes inside of them anymore. That’s because one guy wrote all the fortunes for decades, and then he stopped.
But even if the world has run out of fortunes, it will never run out of facts. We have a bunch more for you, including facts about killers, alcohol and the French.
Passive Income
Michael Jordan made nearly $100 million as a player in the NBA, including $33 million just for his final season with the Bulls. However, he currently makes $330 million annually, from royalties from Nike alone.
Speed Freaks
A fungus infects cicadas, injecting them with amphetamines, which makes them stop eating and switch to having sex all the time. This spreads the fungus but doesn’t lead to successful fertilization because the fungus also makes the insects’ genitals fall off.
In the Classroom
Pink Floyd didn’t come up with the idea for having a children’s choir sing the chorus on “Another Brick in the Wall.” Instead, it was a producer, Bob Ezrin, who sought out and recorded the children on his own, initially without the band’s knowledge.
All Equally Dead
Louis Philippe II, who had royal blood, thought it was wise during the French Revolution to change his name to Philippe Égalité, to make clear that he was on the side of the revolutionaries. This didn’t help. They guillotined him anyway.
Truth in Advertising
Deviled eggs and deviled ham get their names because of how spicy they are. This will baffle everyone not from 1700s England, where that adjective originated, because these dishes aren’t very spicy at all.
More Speed Freaks
In 1984, Sammy Hagar released “I Can’t Drive 55,” a song protesting the 55 MPH speed limit. This complaint was justified. The limit wasn’t chosen for safety reasons but to reduce gas consumption during the Energy Crisis.
Prophet in His Hometown
The city of Seattle is named for Chief Seattle, the leader of the Duwamish and Suquamish peoples, who died in 1866. They year before he died, Seattle (the city) expelled Seattle (the man), based on a new ordinance banning Native Americans from living there.
Not Self-Defense
A fan tried to get Nicolas Cage’s autograph in 2016. Vince Neil, nearby, sought to protect Cage by grabbing the woman by the hair and pulling her to the ground. This resulted in Neil pleading guilty to misdemeanor assault, partly because Cage sided with the woman.
Microphones Never Lie
Several male singers, such as Charlie Puth, speak in a lower pitch than you’d expect from their songs. Several female singers, such as Ava Max, speak in a higher pitch than you’d expect from their songs. Pop music might be forcing everyone to sing in a narrow range.
Brainless Beauty
For years, fans have puzzled over one line from The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy singling out Scarecrow in the end, telling him, “I think I’ll miss you most of all.” This is a holdover from an earlier version of the script, where Scarecrow’s counterpart in Kansas was in a relationship with Dorothy.
MGM
Likely Story
In 1996, a woman got away after being kidnapped by David Parker Ray, a man suspected of killing 60 victims. No one believed her account of the time she was missing, and her husband divorced her.
Does Not Compute
2010s Mazdas came with “infotainment” systems that kept crashing, occasionally shutting down permanently. Sometimes, the problem was people listening to the podcast 99% Invisible. The system didn’t understand the percent symbol and bricked itself permanently.
Late Payment
In 2002, James Carter received a check for singing “Po’ Lazarus,” a song on the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou? This surprised him because the recording captured his voice from 40 years earlier, when he was a prisoner, and he now didn’t even remember singing it.
Seeing Double
One startling stat says that the top 10 percent of American drinkers each have 10 drinks of alcohol every day. It turned out that the source of this data was a survey that found these people have five drinks per day, and then the analysts multiplied the findings by two.
The Soul of Wit
The Prince movie Purple Rain got remade in 2015 in Niger, where they speak the language Tamajeq. Tamajeq does not have a word for the color purple, so the movie’s name there is Rain the Color of Blue with a Little Red in It.
