12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Thursday, May 1, 2025

Somehow, the United States is only the 62nd least-exercised country on the planet, with 34 percent of the population not getting enough physical activity. The worst offenders are Cuba (61 percent), Kuwait (63 percent) and the UAE (66 percent).

This handy chart orders 100 different minerals and gems based on their Mohs number. Minerals like talc and sulphur are the softest at 1, while heavy hitters like diamond and ruby sit atop the pile at 10.

Humans will do anything to get our hands on the right dust, from training seaweed to collect very specific particles to one day mining asteroids (the only way to make mining truly pollution-free).

A genomic study of 205 rose specimens found that they all evolved from a flower with a single yellow petal and seven leaflets.

While you should avoid them if you’re using a condom, you can use things like CBD oil, olive oil or aloe vera as lube. But you should never use other household items like honey, butter, soap or vaseline.

A study found that consuming alcohol boosted pheromones in male flies, making them more attractive to females. Before you start anthropomorphizing, it doesn’t work that way in humans, no matter what your freshman year roommate said.

Global wine sales dwindled to 214 million hectoliters in 2024, the least in more than 60 years.

A neighborhood in Rockport, Massachusetts was enduring a spate of car-mirror smashings, and locals finally witnessed an 18-inch woodpecker headbutting them to death.

A two-year-old Arizona boy went missing in 40-degree weather, and while humans were out searching for him the following day, not necessarily expecting to find him alive, an Anatolian Pyrenees named Buford had discovered him.

A 1960 Mark Rothko painting called Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8 got all banged up because a little kid ran over and went to town on it, making “a number of visible scratches in the unvarnished paint layer.”

A little girl is about to scoop up two diplomas in various sciences and mathematics from Crafton Hills College. She says she likes school almost as much as playing outside, but it’s clear the secret ingredient is home school: “We were working from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, and we did that six days a week.”

The first rich dork to hitchhike to space was businessman Dennis Tito, who shelled out $20 million in 2001 to cling to a Russian rocket. He spent literally 1,000 times longer up there than Katy Perry did, floating around the International Space Station for almost eight days.