Trivia

The bombardier beetle, when disturbed, defends itself by emitting a series of explosions, sometimes setting off four or five in succession. The noises sound like miniature popgun blasts and are followed by a cloud of reddish-colored, vile-smelling fluid.

The bombardier beetle produces two harmless chemicals in its body that when mixed react together to form a boiling hot spray of chemicals. The beetle shoots the burning mixture at attackers with an explosive sound, and rarely misses its mark.

It can take a deep-sea clam up to 100 years to reach 0.3 inches (8 millimeters) in length. The clam is among the slowest growing, yet longest living species on the planet.

A "fulgerite" is fossilized lightning. It forms when a powerful lightning bolt melts the soil into a glass-like state.

An angstrom is a unit of length equal to one ten-millionth of a millimeter, primarily used to express electromagnetic wavelengths. It was named after Swedish astronomer and physicist Anders Jonas Ångström (1814-1874).

"Hot cockles" was a popular game at Christmas in medieval times. It was a game in which the other players took turns striking the blindfolded player, who had to guess the name of the person delivering each blow. "Hot cockles" was still a Christmas pastime until the Victorian era.

According to the rules of Gaelic football, players may punch the ball, but the punching motion must be clearly visible to the referee. Players may not pick up the ball off the ground unless they first get their toe under the ball.

According to manufacturer Spalding, the average lifespan of an NBA basketball is 10,000 bounces.

There are 3 main groups/shapes of pathogenic bacteria: cocci (round), bacilli (rod-shaped), and spirilla (coil-like).

Animation artists love inside jokes. In the Disney film Beauty and the Beast (1991), the road signs that Belle’s father encounters in the forest show the names of two California cities: one points to Anaheim, while the other points down a dark, sinister-looking path to Valencia. In truth, Anaheim is the site of Disneyland, while the rival Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement theme park is in the city of Valencia.

A boar's head is a traditional Christmas dish. According to a popular story, the unlucky boar whose head began the custom in the Middle Ages was killed by choking to death on a book of Greek philosophy. The story claims that a university student saved himself from a charging boar by ramming a book of Aristotle's writings down its throat. He then cut off the boar's head and brought it back to his college.

Koalas and humans are the only animals with unique prints. Koala prints cannot be distinguished from human fingerprints.

When directing films, Clint Eastwood dislikes over lighting, which he associates with television. He prefers a film noir effect, especially in his thrillers. During a 1993 interview, Eastwood related a story about his suspenseful 1982 film Firefox. There was a shot that was so dark only Eastwood's elbow was visible. The cameraman wanted to do another take. Eastwood asked, "Am I in the frame?" "Yeah." "Can you hear my voice?" "Yeah." "They know who I am. Let's print it and move on."

Bulls do NOT charge because a Matador's cape is red. They charge because of the movement of the cape.

In Spain, a Matador will don his "Montera" (small black hat), bow to the Presidents Box, and then dedicate the bull to a spectator in the stands.

The Matador will start the fight with a series of passes, first from side to side to bring the bull close to his body, then high with the cape traveling directly over the bull's horns. After the bull is trained to charge the cape and it has reduced its area of protection to just a few feet, a Matador will show you his individual personality by the combination and variations on these passes. Some of the better Matadors in Spain will fight the bull from their knees or even kneel with their backs exposed to the bull.

Celery has negative calories — it takes more calories to eat and digest a piece of celery than the celery has in it initially.

According to historical accounts, the first Christmas in the Philippines was celebrated 200 years before Ferdinand Magellan discovered the country for the western world, likely between the years 1280 and 1320 AD.

At lavish Christmas feasts in the Middle Ages, swans and peacocks were sometimes served "endored." This meant the flesh was painted with saffron dissolved in melted butter. In addition to their painted flesh, endored birds were served wrapped in their own skin and feathers, which had been removed and set aside prior to roasting.

America's official national Christmas tree is located in King's Canyon National Park in California. The tree, a giant sequoia called the "General Grant Tree," is over 90 meters (300 feet) high. It was made the official Christmas tree in 1925.

Rocky Mountain bighorn rams have a double-layer skull. This allows them to absorb the extraordinary impact of head-butting with other rams without suffering brain or head injury. The winner of a head-butting contest gains control of the bighorn herd.

The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging". Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified was to poke someone's eye out.

When Cecil B. De Mille released his silent film The Squaw Man in 1914, it became one of the movie industry's first nationwide box-office successes. It cost only $15,000 to make and earned more than $225,000. It was also the first film that De Mille wrote and directed; prior to The Squaw Man, De Mille worked solely as a screenwriter.

William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols, as Capt. James T. Kirk and Communications Officer Lt. Uhura, shared network television's first interracial kiss in the episode "Plato's Children" on the popular sci-fi series Star Trek. The revolutionary episode aired in 1968.

Helen of Troy was queen of Sparta.

There is an organization in Berkeley, California, whose members gather monthly to discuss and honor the garlic plant. Called "The Lovers of the Stinky Rose," this unusual organization holds and annual garlic festival and publishes a newsletter known as "Garlic Time."

The planet Venus does not tilt as it goes around the Sun, so consequently, it has no seasons. On Mars, however, the seasons are more exaggerated and last much longer than on Earth.

In the 72 years of the Academy Awards existence, only three films have swept all five categories in Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Actor and Actress, and Best Writing. They are 1934’s "It Happened One Night," 1975’s "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest," and 1991’s "The Silence of the Lambs."

When originally conceived, the series Cheers was set in Barstow, California, and the character of Sam Malone was a retired football player. Actor Ted Danson was chosen for the role, necessitating his character be rewritten to be that of a retired Boston Red Sox baseball player, better matching Danson’s body type.

Emmett Kelly's classic tramp clown character "Weary Willie" provided comic relief in the Circus through the end of 1956. When Kelly left his circus career, he became the mascot for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The loop on a belt that holds the loose end is called a "keeper."

The point in a lunar orbit that is farthest from the moon is called an "apolune."

In the biographical film "Man on the Moon" (1999), the role of young Carol Kaufman, Andy Kaufman's sister, was played by Andy’s real-life granddaughter Brittany Colonna.

In the 1931 Rose Bowl game, "Five-Yard" Fogerty carried 25 times and gained exactly 5 yards on each carry. It was in that game that teammates celebrated the oddity of Fogerty's achievement by slapping palms – this practice is now known as exchanging "high fives." The results of that game were Alabama, 24, Washington State, 0. Fogerty played one year of professional football before breaking his leg in a skiing accident. He became a bank president in Wichita, Kansas. Sadly, he died five days before his retirement.

English soldiers were nicknamed "Tommies" during World War I because the example name on the forms soldiers were required to fill out was Thomas Atkins, the U.S. equivalent of John Smith. The name first appeared in 1815 when sample forms for soldiers showed where their signatures should appear. Rudyard Kipling also helped popularize the term “Tommy” in his writings.

The Ptolemic Universe was based on the idea that the Earth was the center of the Universe. This incorrect conclusion was made by Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer, who eventually calculated the correct measurements of planetary movements.

Sidney Poitier became the first black actor to win an Oscar for his leading role in "Lilies of the Field."

The reflecting power of a planet or satellite, expressed as a ratio of reflected light to the total amount falling on the surface, is called the albedo.

"Blackmail," Alfred Hitchcock's 1929 masterpiece, was the first British sound film.

A brown dwarf is a very small, dark object, with a mass less than 1/10 that of the Sun. They are "failed stars" – globules of gas that have shrunk under gravity, but failed to ignite and shine as stars.

"Dr. No" was the first of the James Bond films produced at Eon Productions in Britain in 1962. Joseph Wiseman played the villainous Dr. No.