12 Jealously Guarded Bits of Trivia We Surreptitiously Surveilled Using a Vast Network of Undercover Scouts Deployed to Rival Listicles Around the Country

In 2010, scientists figured out how to splice spider genes into goats, allowing them to lactate a spider silk protein. They need that protein for research on an array of applications, from organ repair to bulletproof vests, but the spiders kept killing each other when they tried to farm them in mass quantities. The obvious solution was to turn a goat into Spider-Man.

It’s not just a page on their website; they’ve maintained a bunch of granite headstones outside of their factory in Waterbury, Vermont since 1997, and held an actual funeral for discontinued flavor What a Cluster in 2015.

The New York Times reported in 1990, when caller ID was only available to about 30,000 people in New Jersey, that “lawmakers are taking steps to protect the privacy rights of callers, which they fear the service violates,” and “some civil libertarians argue that (New Jersey Bell) is invading the privacy of callers.” At the time, the technology only showed incoming phone numbers, not even the name of the calling party.

England and Portugal signed the Treaty of Windsor in 1386, after English archers helped end a Portuguese civil war. They agreed never to fight on opposing sides of a war, which has come in pretty handy in the World Wars and other European skirmishes.

Since the mid-1800s, geographically large but sparsely populated swaths of the country have tried to break off into their own state or country, and name themselves the State of Jefferson. It’s happened in Texas, the Kansas Territory and the border between California and Oregon. Reasons have varied from “gold rush” to “Donald Trump,” and it’s not even clear that the proposed territory is even named after Thomas Jefferson. All these proud patriots know for sure is that they have everything they need right in their own hostile patch of wilderness, and they don’t want to share it with their neighbors.

The State of Illinois outlawed the selling of soda on Sundays, because it was too “frilly” to indulge in after church. By some tellings, the “ice cream sundae” was invented because it was illegal to sell “ice cream sodas” on Sundays, so enterprising ice cream peddlers came up with a semantic workaround. New York pharmacist Chester C. Platt copyrighted the word “Sunday” in the context of dessert, prompting others to spell it weirdly.

A Dutch shipmaster tried boiling off excess moisture from a shipment of wine, to make it easier to transport and save money on volume-based taxes. The plan was to reconstitute it upon delivery, but they gave it a taste test first, and decided it was freaking delicious. It became known as “burnt wine” — “brandewijn in Dutch” — and ultimately shortened to “brandy.” 

Tech startup Varda Space Industries has successfully synthesized HIV and Hep C antiviral drugs in an orbiting satellite, in an effort to trailblaze an industry of space-made pharmaceuticals (low gravity is great for the creation of some drugs). That trailblazing includes an impenetrable wall of red tape — the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration have repeatedly delayed the satellite’s scheduled reentry for nebulous bureaucratic reasons, so they’re now looking into landing their drugs in Australia.

It’s not that they suddenly felt uncomfortable having literal “servants” on their ships. It’s that they believe these servants might spy on them for the Chinese government. They’ve already begun firing long-serving employees because they have family in Hong Kong. A former First Sea Lord, which sounds like a rank in the Atlantis chapter of the KKK but is an actual Royal Navy title, said, “If it is a question of security, the navy has no choice. But it’s sad, as Chinese laundrymen have fought wars with us. Some have died for us.”

Spain, San Marino, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo all have national anthems with no official lyrics. Spain redacted their lyrics in the 1980s after dictator Francisco Franco died, then held a contest in 2007 to write new ones, but nobody won.

The Brits keep a detailed record of all the times the clock has ever been damaged. Cold weather and snow accumulation is the number one reason its arms have stopped moving, and there were a couple of bombing raids that messed things up for a little bit. But four instances stick out among the list: 1) a flock of starlings landed on an arm, causing it to run slow; 2) a painter left a ladder in a spot where it got lodged in the gears; 3) same deal with a maintenance guy’s hammer; and 4) people would try to drop coins on its swinging pendulum, and as they accumulated, they caused time to slow down.

Amateur radio enthusiasts like to calculate when the ISS will be overhead, then use homemade antennas to attempt to initiate contact. Some ISS crewmembers love this shit, and will use their breaks to exchange a few brief words with radio nerds on the ground.