12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Living in Australia is a crapshoot: you might chance upon a grove of ancient trees that knew the dinosaurs, or you might get lightning shot out your butt.
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A Girl Shot Lightning Out of Her Butt
An Australian girl recounted getting struck by lightning (via her phone), with the charge exiting out her “leg,” before her dad corrected her: “out your butt.” She then added, “I want superpowers, and if I don’t get them, that’s going to be sad.”
A Tree From the Time of the T. Rex Just Bore Fruit for the First Time
Wollemi pines, or “dinosaur trees,” were thought to have died out in the Cretaceous period until live specimens were found in Australia in 1994. Saplings were sent around the world to help repopulate the species, and a tree planted in 2010 has just dropped its weird spiky fruit for the first time.
Mark Zuckerberg Is Doing His Best To Give You an AI Waifu
Meta is developing "digital companions," and Zuckerberg himself is pushing for a "loosening of boundaries" that will allow "explicit content for romantic role-play," even when a user has identified themself as a minor.
Speaking of Kids, Zuckerberg Pulled a Scott’s Tots
Zuckerberg and his wife opened a tuition-free primary school in the Bay Area in 2016, aiming to provide education and healthcare “from birth through high school.” Nine years later, they’re shuttering it, and there are presumably zero nine-year-olds who received the promised 18 years of education and healthcare.
The Navy’s $70 Million Oopsie
An F/A-18 fighter jet worth $70 million just kind of accidentally rolled off the USS Harry S. Truman and sank to the bottom of the Red Sea (a crew member inside the craft was able to escape with minor injuries). If DOGE cuts another quarter-mil of the federal workforce, we’ll make our money back in no time.
The Oldest Ant on the Planet
A newly-discovered ant fossil is the oldest ever found, at 113 million years old. The specimen is a “hell-ant,” a horrifying but thankfully extinct ancestor of the modern fire ant.
The Oldest Rock in the United States
Michigan’s Watersmeet Gneiss is a metamorphic formation that’s been declared the oldest-known rock in America, at 3.6 billion years old.
What’s the Biggest Rogue Wave on Record?
In November 2020, a terrifyingly huge and random wave off the coast of British Columbia lifted a buoy 58 feet into the air — three times higher than any other wave around it. Waves that big are expected to occur only once every 1,300 years.
Rogue Waves Were Considered Mythical Until 1995
Some indigenous oral traditions tell of huge waves coming out of nowhere and wreaking havoc, and there was a spate of random sinkings in the 1970s thought to have been victims of rogue waves. But until an oil rig off the coast of Norway was battered by one, it had never been confirmed by modern scientific equipment.
America Is About to Get Back Into the Tiny Truck Game
After decades of bizarre tariffs keeping small pickup trucks out of the country, American company Slate Auto is offering a $20,000 EV whose base model has no touchscreen, stereo or even paint.
California Is Officially the World’s Fourth-Largest Economy
With a GDP of $4.1 trillion, California just edged out Japan to take the number four spot.
What’s the Most Unusual Baby Name That’s Unique to Your State?
A nationwide study of baby names sorted the most unique names by each state’s percentage of the national rate. So between 2000 and 2023, all five of America’s “Kendly”s have come from Florida, 83 percent of our “Pater”s have come from Pennsylvania and 62 percent of our “Tradd” population is from South Carolina.
