Weekend Open Thread

Time for you to invest in a lottery ticket(s)!

… second-born children have a tendency to go in the opposite direction from the first born? (True. My younger brother is very much an outdoorsy kind of guy, while I … am not.)

… you may have seen a peebeegeebee? You may have seen it, but unless you’re a bird watcher, you wouldn’t have called it that. A peebeegeebee is a bird, specifically a pied-billed grebe. (But it’s more fun to say peebeegeebee.)

… a professional wrestler insisted on paying for every meal he ate, whether he was the host or the guest? André the Giant (born André Roussimoff, 1946-1993) insisted that he take care of his own meal bills, since he was a very large man and ate a great deal of food. At one meal with actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger (born 1947), the actor was getting up to pay the bill for the meal when he found himself being lifted off the floor, carried back to his table, and deposited in his chair by the wrestler. André then said emphatically, “I pay.” (If you’re seven feet five inches tall, you can get away with that.)

… the number 37 will divide wholly into 111, 222, 333, 444, 555, 666, 777, 888 and 999? No decimals are left over when you divide 37 into any of those numbers. Additional trivia note: Before you do the ciphering, the answers are: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, and 27. (I don’t speak math.)

… a television commercial helped bring Earth Day to reality? In 1970, the Ad Council aired a commercial showing a Native American warrior walking along and being saddened by all the pollution he saw, and when a passing car tossed a bag of trash against his leg, the camera caught a tear coming from his eye. The ad helped usher in Earth Day, and it also helped bring about the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. The ad motivated more than 100,000 people in the first four months after its release to write in and ask for the booklet about reducing pollution. The ad is listed as one of the 50 greatest of all time. Additional trivia note: the Native American seen in the ad, Iron Eyes Cody (1904-1999), was not a Native American at all. Cody, who was born Espera Oscar de Corti in Louisiana, was of Italian descent. But his rugged looks made him a natural to be cast as a Native American throughout his movie and television career.

… an attempt to get into the Guinness Book of World Records failed before it started? Yeah, that happens to a lot of them, but this one caught my eye. In 2008, event organizers in Iran tried to make the world’s largest sandwich to get into the record book. But before it could be officially measured, onlookers rushed forward to begin eating it – and the record was never certified. Guinness officials say the Iranians used 700 kilograms of ostrich meat and 700 kilograms of chicken in the 1,500-meter-long sandwich, which was never officially measured and confirmed. (There are any number of good lines I can throw out here …)

… ignoring bullies does not usually make them go away? In fact, research shows that just the opposite is true – ignoring a bully gives that person the feeling that they can do what they want without consequences. (A solid punch in the nose, on the other hand …)

… paintballs are made from food-grade quality ingredients? The paint inside the capsule is made from water, corn starch, food coloring, and polyethylene glycol. You could eat them if you really wanted to. (Why you would want to is, of course, a different matter entirely.)

Now … you know!