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Saturday, May 26
Fritz Haber became the "father of chemical warfare" after he developed chlorine gas for the German army during World War I. It was considered a major step forward in military brutality. He also worked on an insecticide called Zyklon B. And …Read more.
Friday, May 25
Many video games have cheat codes. The most famous is the Konami Code, which developer Kazuhisa Hashimoto created because he thought Gradius was impossible to play otherwise. There are variations, but it typically goes like this: up, up, down, down, …Read more.
Thursday, May 24
During WWI, British munitions minister David Lloyd George met Chaim Weizmann in Manchester. Weizmann was working on synthetic rubber, and a byproduct of that process was acetone. The British military needed acetone because its supply from Europe was …Read more.
Wednesday, May 23
You'd think young men have been giving their fiancÇes diamond rings for centuries. Perhaps, but it only became an Ironclad social rule after De Beers hired the ad agency NW Ayer & Son in 1939. They developed the slogan
"A Diamond is …Read more.
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Saturday, May 30Sabotage: Certain words are etymological mysteries that are tantalizingly close to solution. For example, we're pretty sure that the word "sabotage" comes from the French word "sabot." Traditionally, a sabot was a wooden shoe, and as the story goes, French luddites threw their shoes into industrial looms. A sabot can also be a railway track clamp, and we do know that during a 1910 rail strike, these were pulled out to disrupt commuters. But the word might also be slang for rural strikebreakers. Oscars Gone Wild: After Hollywood's Hays Code collapsed, the scandal of on-screen nudity quickly evaporated. Whereas it was once unthinkable for respectable actresses to appear nude, let alone topless, in a film, Glenda Jackson became the first woman to win an Oscar for doing either.
The Lincoln Memorial appears on the $5, and the Jefferson Memorial is on the $10. Based on the bills on which they appear, which of these buildings is "worth" the most? A) Independence Hall B) U.S. Capitol C) U.S. Treasury Building D) White House Previous answer: Your baby teeth are deciduous. TRIVIA FANS: Send the trivia questions you've always wanted answered, or original TriviaBits ideas of your own, with your full name and hometown, to Paul Paquet at paul@triviahalloffame.com or visit him online at www.triviahalloffame.com. Paul Paquet has been writing trivia since the early 1990s, and has written roughly 100,000 questions. For more, visit triviahalloffame.com or e-mail him at paul@triviahalloffame.com. COPYRIGHT 2009 PAUL PAQUET DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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