12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Good news! The adult body makes new stem cells! Bad news: They’re evolutionarily designed to make you fat.
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A Guy Had to Be Rescued Off a Mountain, Then Went Back to Get His Phone
A 27-year-old hiking Mount Fuji outside of climbing season had to be rescued when he lost his crampons and got stranded. He went back four days later to find his phone, at which point he succumbed to altitude sickness and had to be rescued again.
Why the Stock Market Is a Lousy Indicator of American Wealth
We collectively watch the stock market like a horse race, but it has vanishingly little to do with everyday Americans — the wealthiest top 10 percent of Americans own 93 percent of stocks, while the bottom half of the country are all splitting one percent.
Why Are Porch Ceilings in the American South Painted Blue?
The Gullah Geechee people are the descendants of enslaved Africans, and they have a tradition of painting their porches sky blue. Legend says that evil spirits called “haints” can be kept at bay by mimicking water (they won’t cross bodies of water) or the sky (they’ll float right on by if they don’t see a ceiling).
A Small Island in North Carolina Speaks a Rare Dialect That Barely Resembles Modern English
Ocracoke Island is home to a dialect of American English that dates back to the 1600s, making its Elizabethan-era accent extremely hard to parse for most other Americans. They walk around throwing out words like “dingbatter" and “mommucked.”
Pope Francis’ Humble Burial
Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, will be the first Pope since 1903 to be buried outside of the Vatican. His will dictated that he be buried “in the ground; simple, without particular decoration, and with the sole inscription: Franciscus.”
A Secret Message Was Found Inside a Violin Built in a Concentration Camp
After over 80 years, people found a note hidden inside of a violin from Dachau: “Trial instrument, made under difficult conditions with no tools and materials. Dachau. Anno 1941, Franciszek Kempa.”
Your Body Creates New Stem Cells When You Get Older — And They’re Making You Fat)
A study of age-related obesity found that “aging triggers the arrival of a new type of adult stem cell and enhances the body’s massive production of new fat cells, especially around the belly.”
Online Scammers Gave Themselves a 33-Percent Raise in 2024
The FBI says that online scammers helped themselves to $16.6 billion in 2024, a 33-percent increase from the year before.
A Guy Accidentally Re-Purchased His Own Stolen Car
After a British man got his black 2016 Honda Civic stolen, he was, naturally, in the market for another black 2016 Honda Civic. After spending $26,000 on a replacement, he noticed some familiar details, like candy wrappers and pine needles exactly where they had been in his car.
An Energy Drink Start-up Is Going Broke Trying to Create the Mythical Clear Can
After going viral on TikTok for a clear can-shaped bottle with an aluminum pop-top, Orka Beverage Co. spent over $300,000 — most of what they had in the bank — trying to engineer a way to mass-produce them.
Someone Sold a World War I Relic for $400 on Facebook
Someone purchased the wreck of the SS Almond Branch in the 1970s, and just flipped it to an amateur scuba enthusiast on Facebook Marketplace for $400. The ship was torpedoed off the coast of Cornwall in 1917, and has been rusting away underwater ever since.
How Many Penises Are in This Tapestry? Experts Can’t Reach a Consensus
The Bayeux Tapestry is an 11th-century work of art that’s 230 feet long and depicts the 1066 Norman conquest of England. Most scholars were in agreement that there were 93 penises in the tapestry, but there’s, um, growing support for the hypothesis that what was once considered a dagger is actually the 94th penis.
