From
the time I graduated HS until about 15 years ago it was my habit each year to
buy and read an almanac full of obscure facts about the world: national GDPs, petroleum
production, demographics, and so on. Some of the info actually stuck. Pocket World in Figures published by The Economist was a frequent pick, but I
also often opted for others. I just liked knowing random trivia and being known
for knowing random trivia. I don’t bother to do that anymore because all of that
information is just taps away on the screen of any smart phone. Besides, data
from a printed almanac are bound to be at least a year out of date. So, if
someone at the dinner table wonders aloud what country mines the most bauxite
(I have strange guests at my dinner table who are apt to wonder aloud about odd
things) the almanac-reader will find that he impresses no one by immediately
responding, “Australia produces 102.4 million metric tonnes annually.” Instead he surely
will be smugly corrected by someone else who quickly taps his phone and says,
“The latest figures are 104.8 million tonnes.” People are as proud of their
phone’s knowledge as of their own. I don’t know why. It is a human quirk.
Nonetheless,
just for my own personal entertainment, I still buy books that offer weird
information, such as What If? Serious
Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
Houghton, Et Tu Brute: The Deaths of the
Roman Emperors by Jason Novak, and Who
Knew? Things You Didn’t Know about Things You Know Well by David Hoffman. I
keep them scattered here and there: the bed stand, the coffee table, the powder
room, etc. Sometimes the moment is best served by reading material that comes
in snippets.
Thanksgiving
is coming up, and perhaps the reader would like a few samples of factoids from
Hoffman’s book that can be used to divert attention from whatever political
argument is poisoning the meal: Chocolate
chip cookies are not as old as one might think. Ruth Wakefield at Toll House
Restaurant in Whitman, Massachusetts, improvised them when she ran out of
powdered cocoa. She broke up solid chocolate into bits instead. The chocolate
chip cookies were a hit, so she included the recipe for the first time in her
1938 cookbook. If
you factor options such as syrups, size, blends, and so on, there are 87,000
possible drink combinations on a standard Starbuck’s menu. The
word “nerd” is a coinage of Dr. Seuss from his book If I Ran to the Zoo. Before
becoming a noted chef, Julia Child worked intelligence for the OSS in India and
China. Socialite
Josephine Cochrane invented and patented the mechanical dishwasher in 1886
because her servants kept breaking her dishes. The machines became a hit with
restaurants and hotels in the 1890s. Her company was eventually bought out by
KitchenAid. Bond
author Ian Fleming in the early 1950s commuted from Kent to London. The bus he
took was 007. Paul
Simon’s first version of Mrs Robinson
was titled Mrs Roosevelt and was
about Eleanor. He reworked the song when director Mike Nichols called on him
for the soundtrack of the upcoming movie The
Graduate. Houseflies
hum in the key of F. Irish
coffee dates to 1945. Joe Sheridan at the restaurant at Foynes Airport had
closed the kitchen but decided to keep the counter open when he heard that a
transatlantic flight had turned back to Ireland because of bad weather. He
served the tired passengers mugs of coffee with whipped cream, sugar, and
whiskey. Asked what it was, he called it Irish coffee. It caught on. Lincoln
Logs were invented by John Lloyd Wright, son of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The
arrangement of stars on the 50 star US flag was designed by Robert Heft for a
high school class project. His teacher gave him a B-. Congress chose his
design. That
should get you started. Be prepared for the taps on phone screens as your
fellow diners check to see if you are peddling disinformation from whatever
news source they prefer to hate.
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