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Miscellaneous Trivia 5 (Gotta be Joking?!)

Have you ever wanted superhuman strength? In early 2004 in Oklahoma, a man was attempting to change the tire on his large van, when suddenly it slipped down on him and he became trapped underneath the vehicle. Mr Sinnett’s family were with him, but they despaired of rescuing him as the glass and metal unrelentingly continued to crush his body. The man’s three sons aged 13, 11 and 10 decided to try and lift the large van. The two oldest boys grabbed the vehicle and attempted to lift it up, as Matthew, the ten year old, grasped his father by the legs to pull him out. Somehow, miraculously, the two boys raised the vehicle high enough for their dad to be pulled free. Mr Sinnett recovered after sustaining bruised ribs, but did not have a single broken bone!

Sharks scare the living daylights out of me, no matter what size they are. In 2004 a snorkeler was attacked by a small, but very stubborn shark. After the wobbegong shark bit Luke Tresoglavic on the leg, it simply refused to let go! Calmly, Luke swam to shore but even when he got out of the water, the shark continued to hold onto his leg. Luke jumped into his car, and drove to a nearby lifesaving club for help. After he got out of the car and went inside, with the shark still firmly attached to his leg, the lifesavers hosed the wobbegong shark with fresh water until finally, it let go. The shark eventually perished, but fortunately Luke survived, although the toothy little sea creature left around 70 bite marks on his leg.

A businessman from Ukraine, purchased a pager for each of his staff members as a gift in 2004. After purchasing the pagers, he placed them all in the rear of his vehicle and began driving back to work. When he was just 100 metres away from his office, the 50 pagers suddenly burst out screeching. The racket gave the businessman such a fright that he drove his car straight into a lamp post. After getting out and checking the vehicle for damage, he went to check on the pagers and found the same message on each one of them. The message read "Congratulations on a successful purchase!"

Mr and Mrs Gould of Newmarket in England received a voter registration form addressed to an occupied building on their farm, which they ignored. Then a government representative came to hem demanding that they explain why the voting form hadn’t been completed and returned. Annoyed, Brenda Gould finally completed the form and registered the occupants: Henry and Sophie Bull, and Jake Woofles. In 2004, Mrs Gould was convicted and fined $190 and ordered to pay over $200 in court costs for providing false information on a voting form. “We didn't tell any lies,” she said, “We just put down the names of the animals." Henry and Sophie Bull were cattle, and Jake Woofles was their dog. You see, the British government had been demanding that Mr and Mrs Gould complete a voting registration form for the occupants of their barn! The farmers stated that they will not be repeating the practical joke.

On the way to a jam factory in Berlin in 2004, a truck carrying raspberry sryup sprang a leak. The truck left a 40km long sticky trail along the highway. By the time the truck had reached the jam factory, it had leaked around 1 ton of raspberry syrup. Police stopped the truck and plugged the leak in the container before allowing it continue on its way. The sticky slick on the road, caused some disruption to traffic and resulted in a literal traffic jam.

How would you feel about living in a town called “Slaughterville”? Would it worry you? A group who support the ethical treatment of animals in the US in early 2004, wanted a small Oklahoma town called Slaughterville to change its name to something that doesn’t suggest the killing of animals. The animal protection group even put forward the suggestion of the name “Veggieville”, and offered $20,000 worth of veggie burgers to a school if the name change went forward. "Even if the people of Slaughterville are not looking at the cruelty to farmed animals as an issue, it is a fact that anyone, including the residents of Slaughterville, who is eating meat, is supporting the felony level of abuse of animals," he said. Slaughterville was originally named after a family that helped settle the area in the 19th century.

What do you imagine is more dangerous: operating a bulldozer or working at a desk? You probably can guess what the answer is. It is in fact twice as dangerous to work at a desk than it is to operate a bulldozer, according to a study undertaken in Paris on 2004. So what makes a desk more dangerous than a bulldozer? Statistics suggest that there is an abnormally high amount of knee injures as a result of pushing chairs too close to desks.

Did you know that the thumb is such an important part of your body, that is uses an exclusive part of the brain, which is quite separate from the area that controls the fingers.

There was a village in Scotland that possessed a very interesting name – it was called “Lost”! Only a little town, the residents of Lost struggled over the years to continue paying to replace the village sign which was repeatedly stolen by souvenir hunters. The thieves thought that the sign was hilarious, and visiting tourists loved to get photos of themselves standing under the sign. At a cost of around $400 for each sign, the residents could ill-afford to continually replace it. Even deliveries to the village could be nightmarish at times, especially when the sign had been stolen. The delivery people would get lost trying to find Lost. So the residents eventually decided to change the village’s name to Lost Farm.

Why is the portside of the boat called portside and the starboard side called starboard? In olden days, the navigator would go to the end of the plank, which was usually on the right-hand side of the ship, to get a good clear view of the stars. So that side became starboard. And can you take a guess as to why portside is called that? Give yourself a big pat on the back if you said, because that’s the side of the ship that they used to put in on at the port.

Where does the phrase “in the pink” come from? The most obvious reference is to have a rosy colour in your cheeks which can be an indicator of good health. But “in the pink” probably originated in olden times in English when gentlemen would go fox hunting. The hunters wore red-coloured jackets called “pinks”, so when a huntsman was wearing his “pink”, it meant that he was ready to commence hunting.

Have you ever been stuck in a traffic jam or been involved in road rage? The officials in Bangkok, Thailand came up with a unique way of easing tension. They developed a special singing and dancing police force that performs for stranded motorists. In 2004, the special entertainment force was so successful, that it had reduced road rage by around 42%!

Ouch! How do you think you would fare if you fell from the fourth floor of a building? In 2004, Steven Jehu was in a hotel in Slovenia when a metal bar on a window, against which he was leaning, suddenly broke and he went hurtling out of the window. "Probably my gymnastic knowledge and experience saved me," said Jehu. As he was falling, all of the seventeen year old’s gymnastic instincts switched on, and he performed a somersault whilst falling from the window. Then just before he hit the ground, he braced himself for a normal gymnastic landing. While most of us would have had more serious injuries, the result in this case was that the young Slovenian man suffered only a broken ankle.

Older residents in a Pennsylvanian retirement village were given a very special little friend to help them with their daily activities. Pearl whizzed around the home, chatting with residents about the weather and the current television programs, and reminding the retirees of their appointments. Pearl also told them about their meal times and other social events, sometimes even escorting them to their destination. So what was so special about Pearl? After all, she sounds like a helpful nurse or social director. Pear was in fact a robot, which had been especially built for her task. She displayed messages on a touch screen in very large type so that any persons with failing eyesight, could still read the messages.

Most adults have been to job interviews and know how stressful it can be. There was a very interesting job that opened at the firm of Fortnum and Mason in London a couple of years ago, which offered a salary of over $100,000. The company advertised the position as the “best job in the world”. The position was for a chief chocolate taster. Ok, hands up if you’d force yourself to take on that kind of job if you really had to! As you can imagine, the number of applications for the job was quite staggering. “We…had loads of people writing in saying they have absolutely no experience… but they love chocolate,” Cathy O’Neill, the Personnel Director said. “I don’t expect to have any trouble filling it. My nine-year old daughter Molly has already written to the Managing Director.” The added incentive for the right applicant, is that they were expected to traipse all over the world to seek out the finest chocolate. What a tough job!

The British parliament was request to purchase an unusual item a couple of years ago. A group put forward a motion to tackle an increasing problem they’d been experiencing at Parliament House, namely mice. “It would be…prudent for the Sergeant at Arms’ department to invest in a House of Commons cat, to try to tackle this problem,” the motion said. The group had requested that the House of Commons administration committee investigate the problem, and organise for the purchase of a cat!

Les Horton was an unusual student in Missouri who stayed up late every night, spent three hours at the gym each day, and was often late to class. In the five years he spent at college, Les only spent three hours asleep each night, and even less than that if he had a test the next day. That sounds pretty typical of a student doesn’t it? You’d imagine that Mr Horton was out partying and having fun. In fact, Les was busy studying. “He has an unusual capacity for work,” said Faith Beane, a professor at Truman State. After five years, Mr Horton successfully completed four degrees in five years, and landed in the top percentile of the class.

A twenty month old child in Germany fell from the window of a first-storey apartment and survived! What saved the child was the full nappy that he was wearing at the time he fell. When he landed, the nappy and its contents burst, and protected the boy from the impact. The child was found completely unharmed.

Practical jokes have been around for centuries. In fact, there have been manuscripts dating back even to the fifteenth century about them. A fifteenth century monk by the name of Thomas Betson, who was at Syon Abbey in Middlesex in England, recorded a joke that he played on people. One of his favourites was to hollow out an apple and place a beetle inside. When the apple began to rock backwards and forwards, people thought that the fruit was possessed. The monk must have thought it was a great joke.

It takes a gifted person to carry off a tall tale, and tall tale tellers have been around, probably since the time of Adam and Eve. During the 17th century, after the first Scottish settlers moved to Canada, many wrote back to their families about the profusion of furried animals and fish in the new country. Their Scottish relatives were intrigued, and so came about the story of the fur-bearing trout. The joking new Canadian’s wrote back that the trout that they encountered had developed a thick fur coat to keep itself warm in the colder waters of Canada. The jokesters then claimed that the trout lost their fur coats in spring, and regrew them each winter. The joke became so popular, that trouts with fake fur coats were created and mounted on walls throughout the Great Lakes region of North America, and some can still be found there today.

Some people will do just about anything to get a job. In 1898, a struggling journalist in Dawson, Alaska, by the name of EJ “Stroller” White, was given a job with the Klondike Nugget, only if he could increase sales of the newspaper. White was happy to keep his job and simply made up a story about ice worms. He claimed in his article that the colder weather had caused the ice worms to squirm out of the nearby glaciers to bask in the cold weather. The local townsfolk were fascinated, and many went on special expeditions to the glaciers to look for the worms, and to listen for their special chirping sound. Taking advantage of the story’s popularity, local bartenders created a special drink called “ice-worm cocktails”, in which they placed a piece of frozen spaghetti inside an ice-cube. The search for the ice-worm became a tradition in the town, and inspired the town of Cordova in Alaska, to hold an annual ice-worm festival, which is celebrated to this day. But what makes this story even more interesting, is that eventually scientists actually did find such a creature as ice-worms living in Alaskan glaciers.

Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne disappeared in 1854. A wealthy young aristocrat, Tichborne had disappeared at sea and was thought to be dead. His overwrought mother refused to accept the he had died, and placed advertisements in newspapers throughout the world, asking for information about Roger. Eleven years later, in 1866, Mrs Tichborne was contacted by an Australian man who claimed he was her long lost son Roger. Mrs Tichborne was so overjoyed to reclaim her dead son, that she ignored some interested facts. Her son roger had been of a very slight build, while the Australian man was more than double the weight her son had been. The Australian man spoke only English, although her son had spoken French as well. But the one thing that proved his identity, were the man’s features. He looked remarkably like her long lost son, and when Mrs Tichborne died, she left everything to Roger. The other heirs weren’t happy and took the matter to court. Eventually, Roger was deemed to be a fraud when he couldn’t answer some very simple questions about the man he claimed to be. Sentenced to ten years imprisonment, the man began losing weight, and the thinner and older he grew, the more he looked like Roger. When he died in 1898, the family allowed his gravestone to bear the name “Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne.”

We can be a pretty gullible bunch at times can’t we? Broadcast a scary story and threw in some mass hysteria, and you’ve got the makings of a legend. Such was the case in the USA in 1895, when the New York City newspapers received a story about a hairy, naked man who was terrorising residents in the small town of Winsted, in Connecticut. Journalists soon began flocking to the town, and the stories about the wild-man got crazier and crazier, until the stories were that it was running around everywhere and looked like a fierce gorilla. Winstead residents were terrified, until eventually, the true story came out, that it been made up by a local young journalist by the name of Lou Stone. Over the years, Stone became well-known throughout the district for his hundreds of tall-tales including the dog that talked, the chicken that laid, red, white and blue eggs on the 4th of July, and the tree that grew baked apples. Locals affectionately called him the Winsted Liar. After Lou Stone died, they even named a bridge in his honour. The bridge spanned what is known as Sucker Creek.

Tall-tales have been popular over the years, especially around the turn of the last century when tall-tale postcards were introduced, which included faked photos on them. The postcards were an overnight success in the USA, and photographers joined in the craze of creating fun but phony photos. They included things liked giant animals and oversized farm crops. These were particularly popular in farming communities where the settlers enjoyed the joke at the expense of their naïve city relatives to whom they sent the cards. What made it even funnier to the farmers, was that they were experiencing one of the worst droughts of all time, but they city relatives were none the wiser. These postcards, have now dimmed in popularity, but can still be found in some parts of the midwest in the USA.

A play taken from the stuffing of Egyptian mummies, was organised to be staged in November 2003 in Cyprus. The play, about Achilles and the Trojan War, was written by Aeschylus more than 2,000 years ago, and was thought to have been burnt in the great fire that destroyed the Library of Alexandria in 48BC. Researchers knew that the play had once existed, but thought that it had been lost forever, until pages began turning up in Egyptian mummies. The pages had been used to stuff the bodies. Over the last few decades, archaeologists found many pieces of the play in mummies, until eventually enough fragments were gathered to piece together a large portion of the play. With references from other sources, eventually there was enough for the complete play. Fortunately for the modern-day playwrights, papyrus was a good material for stuffing mummies.

German police were hot on the trail of a robber suspected of breaking into a supermarket in Berlin in November 2003. When the police and the store salesman arrived after the alarm sounded, they could find no evidence of a break-in anywhere in the store. Once they opened up the shop and went inside, it didn’t take them too long to find the culprit who had set off the motion sensor alarm. The alarm had been triggered by a spider dangling from its web in front of the motion sensor! The eight-legged creature was then removed and placed somewhere else where he was unlikely to set off alarms. I can imagine the police trying to explain THAT one in their paperwork.

An innovative policeman in Berlin in 2003, had captured a burglar, but had no handcuffs available to subdue him. Thinking quickly, the policeman used the best thing on hand, which happened to be his teeth! Clamping his molars onto the robber’s thumb, he hauled him to a nearby house, where the resident, realising the policeman’s predicament, phoned the police station - after all, the policeman couldn’t exactly speak at that particular point in time. And what happened to the burglar? He was later treated for his injured finger. What an original idea! I’ll give that one a big thumbs up!

The town of Hibbing in Minnesota, USA completely disappeared. No, it wasn’t struck by a comet! A huge lode of iron ore was discovered right underneath the town, covering an area more than 640 hectares in width and 163m in depth. The town of Hibbing was simply destroyed so that they could access the iron ore.

Real pine trees are very popular at Christmas time in the USA. Unfortunately, naughty people often steal pines from forest and other people’s yards. The Staff at the University of Minnesota became so disheartened by having their evergreen trees cut down every year and stolen, they embarked on a plan that would discourage would be thieves from ever stealing trees again. They went to a specialised sports store, purchased skunk scent, then wrapped it around the tops of the trees. When the thieves chopped down the trees, they would not smell the skunk scent, as the cold temperature masked it. But as soon as the thieves took the trees home and put them inside where it was warm, the overwhelming stench would have filled the house. I’m sure the thieves would NOT have been very popular at home, don’t you? “Henry! That’s the lousiest, stinking Christmas present you’ve ever given me.”

Fingerprints are essential in determining the identity of a criminal aren’t they? They can certainly help, but fingerprints are not the only way the identification of criminals can be determined. Around thirty percent of prints taken from crime scenes, are of the palm, and these palm prints can be taken from guns, windows panes, steering wheels etc. In New York, the police department began taking full hand prints of prisoners on special scanner. In time, it is hoped that these full hand prints will be even more helpful in solving crime.

Can you imagine waking up one day, to discover you’re not who you thought you were? How would you feel if you found out you were somebody important? That’s what happened to Mick Henry, a 59 year old retired builder from Northern England. His dad was a soldier from Canada who met his mother in England during World War II. Mick’s father returned home shortly after his son was born, but never kept in contact with him. It wasn’t until 2003, after his dad had died, that Mr Henry’s Canadian family got in contact with him, and gave him one of the biggest shocks of his life. Mick Henry found out that he was a tribal chief of the Ojibway tribe in Manitoba, and may be eligible to claim thousands of hectares of Canadian land. “I never thought something like this could happen to anyone, certainly not someone like me,” he said. Mr Henry made a trip to Canada and met up with 70 members of his Ojibway tribe.

Being a larger sized person, does not automatically mean that you can eat more than a skinny person. In fact, Sonya Thomas who weighed in at a mere 48kg or 7½ stone won a Thanksgiving Eating contest in 2003, and beat two other rivals who weighed more than 180kg or 28½ stone. After gobbling down huge helpings of green beans, turkey, sausage, chicken, cranberry sauce and yams, Ms Thomas said, “I’m full, but I could eat more.” Sonya won two airline tickets to anywhere in the US, as well as a lovely turkey statuette.

So what do you do if you’re a dairy farmer and you have to cool the milk that comes from the cows, while at the same time heating the offices, dairy and stable? In 2003, three dairy farmers from Austria came up with a unique solution that would save them around $350 a month. The farmers piped the warm milk into an intricate heat-exchange system and used the warmth to heat the buildings in winter, and to supply hot water in summer.

I am a complete nincompoop when it comes to remembering where I put things. My brain is like a sieve, so I’ve trained myself to have a place for everything, and everything in its place. Apparently the average homeowner spends around 25 minutes every day looking for things. When you add that up, that’s almost one week each year we waste, looking for lost items, just in your own house. When I first heard those statistics I thought to myself “How could you possibly waste 25 minutes each and every day looking for things.” Then I remembered how men or teenage boys just stand in front of an open fridge asking, “Where is the butter?” when it’s right there in front of them. It’s been suggested that one of the biggest problems is that we are accumulating more and more things, and have less and less space. This then leads to items becoming more easily lost.

Strange names of musical groups have included: Blodwyn Pig; The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band; Dead Sea Fruit; Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera; The Giant Sun Trolley; Hapsash and the Coloured Coat; Hedgehoppers Anonymous; The Pineapple Chunks; Wynder K. Frog.

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