15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, May 31, 2025
This week offered some challenges, but it all worked out in the end. Much like things worked out for Poon Lim, who found himself adrift in the ocean for 133 days on a flimsy raft before finally reaching land. Plus, at the end of his ordeal, his genitals had grown in size, which made for some marvelous photos.
Unfortunately, we can’t say everything worked out for a man named John Brinkley or for the parents of Nikita Casap. Find out about their fates below, along with some info on the war against smells.
Every Time U Flow
In 2005, the world was fascinated by the Panamanian song “Chacarron Macarron,” whose lyrics were unintelligible to English listeners. It took a few more years to confirm that they were equally unintelligible to Panamanian listeners, because they’re gibberish.
The People’s Choice
A man running for election in Canada changed his name to “Above Znoneofthe.” He figured it would appear at the end of the ballot as “Znoneofthe Above,” attracting votes from everyone who ed none of the above.
Babies, the Easy Way
Be thankful that you aren’t currently infected with the Sacculina parasite. Sacculina will enter a body, make the host’s genitals fall off and then trick the host into caring for the parasite’s own hanging organs, thinking they’re their own eggs.
He Guessed Right
Three days before wrapping up filming on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, Spencer Tracy told Katharine Hepburn, “I looked at the script last night, and I figured out that even if anything happened to me tonight, you can still release the picture.” He died two weeks after filming ended, and they went and released it, as instructed.
Fart Defense
England still has a few lamps that are fueled by sewer gas. The lamplight is just a fun side effect of the flame. The main purpose is to destroy the sewer gas, which would otherwise escape and give off a foul odor.
Boys Will Be Boys
Police charged a Wisconsin teen with “operating a motor vehicle without the owner’s consent” this past March. After investigating more closely, they increased the charges to “two counts of first-degree intentional homicide, two counts of hiding a corpse, theft of property over $10,000 and two counts of misappropriating ID to obtain money.”
Mandatory Fun
People who got to know Evanescence through their song “Bring Me to Life” assumed this band mixed melodic vocals with rock/rap. However, the rock/rap portion of the song was done by a different artist and was added by the label, against the band’s wishes.
This Movie Is Ass
There’s been a new Hellraiser movie every few years for the past several decades. By 2011’s Hellraiser: Revelations, Clive Barker, who wrote the original source material, said, “I have NOTHING to do with the fuckin’ thing. If they claim it’s from the mind of Clive Barker, it's a lie. It's not even from my butthole.”
Banned Band
A Stanford marching band performed a halftime show in Oregon in 1990. Their march referenced a local battle between loggers and owls. This was controversial enough that the governor now banned them from the state, something he didn’t actually have the legal authority to do.
Vindication
The NBC show Smash, which had Jeremy Jordan in a lead role, ended with the characters planning to make a musical based on The Great Gatsby. A decade later, there was a new musical based on The Great Gatsby, made by people unconnected with the team who wrote Smash but starring Jeremy Jordan.
NBC
On the Other Foot
Over 100 songs have sampled the 1982 reggae single “Bam Bam” by Sister Nancy. Sister Nancy received no royalties for her song for 32 years, until she heard it in a Reebok commercial and sued, successfully.
Killing Time
Isaac Newton found himself with some unexpected free time in 1666, because Cambridge University closed down, thanks to the bubonic plague. He made decent use of his time off, inventing calculus and discovering that gravity controls the Moon’s orbit. He was 23.
Juggling Balls
In the 1920s, John R. Brinkley gained great fame for implanting goat testicles into humans, for supposed medical benefits. Unfortunately, he went too far when he started a radio station promoting his beliefs, because that attracted attention from regulators who eventually cracked down on him.
Rated G
Movie theaters used to often have cry rooms, or specialized soundproof areas where parents could take loud children, sparing the rest of us from hearing them. Cry rooms became less common with the rise of multiplexes, where every bit of spare space can potentially be put toward a new screen.
Fart Offense
During World War II, the French resistance developed a compound that they could spray on German officers, to make them smell of fecal matter. The problem with this weapon was that it made whoever fired it also smell of fecal matter, so they eventually concluded the costs outweighed the benefits.
