Jack Nicholson’s contract stipulates that he does not film movies during Lakers games.
Trivia
Groundhog Day
The residents of Punxsutawney, Pa., have consulted “groundhog weatherman” Punxsutawney Phil each Feb. 2 since 1887 to see whether the nation must endure six more weeks of winter.
He’s said yes 88 percent of the time, predicting an early spring only 13 times in 110 years.
Cooped Up
Mike Tyson collects pigeons.
High-Rent Districts
World’s most expensive cities, according to a worldwide 2006 cost of living survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting:
- Moscow
- Seoul
- Tokyo
- Hong Kong
- London
- Osaka
- Geneva
- Copenhagen
- Zurich
- Oslo
New York was number 11.
Brain Food
Tom’s Restaurant, famous as the diner in Seinfeld, shares a building with the Goddard Institute of Space Studies in Manhattan.
Think Again
Chocolate is toxic to cats, dogs, parrots, and horses.
Good Company
Oprah Winfrey is the world’s only black billionaire.
Pencils Down
Bill Gates scored 1590 on his SATs.
Fallout
Actors who appeared in The Conqueror (1956) and subsequently died of cancer:
- John Wayne
- Susan Hayward
- Agnes Moorehead
- Pedro Armendáriz
- John Hoyt
Director Dick Powell died of cancer in 1963. The movie, in which Wayne played Genghis Khan, was shot in St. George, Utah, downwind of Nevada open-air nuclear testing, and producer Howard Hughes had 60 tons of dirt shipped back to Hollywood for use in reshoots.
By 1981, 91 of the 220 cast and crew had developed some form of cancer, and more than half of them were already dead.
“With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic,” said University of Utah biologist Robert Pendleton. “In a group this size you’d expect only 30-some cancers to develop. … I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would hold up in a court of law.”
Trivium
The longest English word of one syllable is squirreled.