- The Fall has had 66 members.
- Roundly defeated is squarely defeated.
- One pound of U.S. dimes, quarters, and half dollars, in any combination, is worth $20.
- Reverse the digits in any multiple of 11 and you’ll get another multiple of 11.
- Bertrand Russell’s recipe for longevity: “Choose your parents wisely.”
Trivia
You Are Here
The blinking light atop the Capitol Records tower spells out the word HOLLYWOOD in Morse code.
It’s done so ever since the building opened in 1956.
Flip-Floppers
The leaders of Russia have been alternately bald and hairy since 1881.
And monarchs’ profiles on British coins have faced alternately left and right since 1653.
(The exception is Edward VIII, who stares obstinately at the back of George V’s head.)
Misc
- ZZ Top’s first album is called ZZ Top’s First Album.
- Supreme Court justice Byron White was the NFL’s top rusher in 1940.
- LOVE ME TENDER is an anagram of DENVER OMELET.
- Every palindromic number with an even number of digits is divisible by 11.
- “In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.” — Cassius
From English antiquary John Aubrey’s 1696 Miscellanies: “Anno 1670, not far from Cyrencester, was an Apparition; Being demanded, whether a good Spirit or a bad? Returned no answer, but departed with a curious Perfume and a most melodious Twang.”
Misc
- Consecutive U.S. presidents Grant, Hayes, and Garfield were all born in Ohio and served as Civil War generals.
- Travel due south from Buffalo and you’ll reach the Pacific Ocean.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. shook hands with both John Quincy Adams and John F. Kennedy.
- This false statement is not self-referential.
- “When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.” — Cicero
In the 2004 film Shark Tale, the shark Lenny coughs up several items onto a table. Among them is a Louisiana license plate, number 007 0 981. The same plate is retrieved from sharks in both Jaws and Deep Blue Sea.
Skyward
When Orville Wright died, Neil Armstrong was already 17 years old.
Fair Enough
Joseph Grinnell’s Game Birds of California (1918) notes that the avocet is known as the lawyer bird because of “its long bill and its oft-repeated vociferations.”
Trivium
The smallest U.S. state, Rhode Island, has a larger population than the largest U.S. state, Alaska.
Misc
- When written in all caps, the title of John Hiatt’s song “Have a Little Faith in Me” contains no curves.
- Tycho Brahe kept a tame elk.
- It isn’t known whether the sum of π and e is irrational.
- Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant, and James Garfield died without wills.
- “Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne
The medieval Latin riddle In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (“We enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire”) is a palindrome. The answer is “moths.”
Neighborly
Cimarron County, Oklahoma, is the only county in the United States that borders four states (Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, and Texas).
It’s also the only U.S. county to border six counties in five different states (two in Texas and one each in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma).