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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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Trivia Bits Wednesday, July 1Happy Canada Day: Our Canadian readers are celebrating Canada Day and probably not reading this column in their papers. Originally, it was called Dominion Day, because Britain promoted some of its colonies to a semi-independent status called "dominion." Now that Canada is fully independent, the July 1 holiday is called Canada Day, but many older, grumpier Canadians insist on calling it Dominion Day, with all its anglocentric connotations. Thank You for Mary and Her Lamb: It'd be enough that Sarah Josepha Hale badgered Lincoln into creating Thanksgiving. That alone would earn her a footnote place in American cultural history.
What rat-catching flautist was stiffed on a bill by a German town? A) Goldilocks B) Pied Piper C) Rapunzel D) Rumpelstiltskin Previous answer: The Ugly Duckling was actually an Ugly Cygnet. 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.
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