Fact Extractor: News You’ll Never Need to Know
Animal IQs

In this issue of Fact Extractor:

1. Hucksters, Humbugs, Hoodwinks & Hogwash: Harebrained Hoaxes & Hullabaloo
2. Fact or Fable?
3. The Quick Quirk Quiz Question
4. Shameless Self-Promotion & Flagrant Advertising
5. Two Cents About Advertising Endorsements

Hucksters, Humbugs, Hoodwinks & Hogwash: Harebrained Hoaxes & Hullabaloo

Sportswriter Bill Hanna was walking down the streets of New York when he ran into a fellow sports reporter, Bill Phelon. Bill remarked on how nice it was to run into his old friend, but mentioned he was looking quite ill. They parted company. Hanna had only walked a half a block farther when Phelon once again approached him with happiness and surprise, saying how long it had been since they'd seen each other and how ill Hanna was looking. "But I just ran into you a moment ago," cried Hanna. "Impossible!" replied Phelon and wandered off. A block further, here came Phelon again, rushing up to Hanna to pump his hand and mention how ill he was looking. "Please tell me you just saw me a few minutes ago!" hollered Hanna, which of course was denied by Phelon. Hanna hailed a taxi and took himself to the hospital.

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Fact or Fable?

A typical fingernail on the Statue of Liberty weighs 50 pounds. FACT OR FABLE? Answer below.

Quick Quirk Quiz Question:

An Organized Protest

Charles was an Englishman who moved to County Mayo in Ireland where he became a rent collector for a landlord named Lord Erne. In 1880 there was widespread crop failure and economic depression. The tenants asked Lord Erne to lower rents until they had a chance to recover. Erne’s agent, Charles, responded by handing out eviction notices. Subsequently, one morning Charles awoke to find that he was apparently invisible to the townfolk. His servants abandoned him, shops in town would not wait on him, the blacksmith could not see his horse, the mailman didn’t bring his mail (except for bills) and most important, he could get no one to come harvest his crops. He contacted the British government and asked for 50 laborers and an escort of 1,000 soldiers to help. When this army arrived at the train depot, they found there wasn’t any transportation to be found and the shops and pubs were suddenly sold out of everything. They had to walk 15 miles to his farm, where they ate him out of house and home while harvesting his crops. No one would buy his crops once they were cut. Other than these petty annoyances, the man never came to any harm and lived to a ripe old age. He lived long enough, in fact, to see his last name become a household word in not one but two languages— English and Russian. It now means organized ostracism as social protest. What was his last name?

To find out, go to http://www.triviaqueen.com/enewsletters.htm and scroll all the way to the bottom of the page for the answer. While you’re scrolling, be sure to take a look at the trivia you could be reading while you’re there! Read our current issues of the Two Bit News for free, or check out our back issues for only 25 cents each! We’ve got trivial trifles, treasures, and treats for every appetite so cough up your quarters and learn a lot of news you never needed to know!

Answer to Last Week’s Quick Quirk Quiz Question:

The sauce is now called WORCESTERSHIRE.

Nothing You Need to Know about ANIMAL I.Q.

• Playing Beatles songs underwater frightens sharks; jazz appeals to cheetahs but not to monkeys; and in a 1984 breakthrough, Porter & Neuringer successfully taught pigeons to correctly identify whether they were listening to Bach flute music or Hindemith viola music. The pigeons were correct 80% of the time.

• In an ESP experiment, a dachshund was rewarded with treats whenever a human subject made a correct guess in an ESP test. The dog was supposed to psychically influence the man's performance. The man did improve his score, but it was unclear whether the dog had anything to do with it.

• A rat, after witnessing a goody being buried, will remember the spot only for a few seconds. A chimp, however, will go directly to the spot and retrieve the reward after 16 hours.

• Exhaustive studies have shown that one-eyed goldfish swim just as fast as two-eyed goldfish, but blind goldfish swim slower.

• Fish can learn to run mazes about as quickly as ants.

• When blindfolded college students were pitted against rats in a maze-running contest, the rats clearly outdid the students. They consistently learned the pattern of the maze in one-third the number of trips as the humans.

• When it comes to running mazes, scientists rank the following animals in order of intelligence: kitten, rat, guppy, Guinea pig, chick, turtle.

• Tropical lizards have been observed following army ants, outside the range of their stinging but close enough to snatch the prey they flush from undercover.

• Penguins spend their lives eating live fish, but when presented with a dead fish on the ground, they do not recognize it as food.

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Fact or Fable:

FABLE. They actually weigh about 100 pounds!!

DID WE MAKE YOU LAUGH? DID WE MAKE YOU LEARN? Then please forward this to someone else who could use a little trivial drivel in their life!

Remember our motto, stated in the immortal words of Max Beerbohm, “Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.”

Janet Spencer, Trivia Queen of the Universe
Royal Ruler of Useless Information
Master of Arcane Knowledge and Extraneous Lore
Keeper of Forgotten Facts and Startling Statistics
Freelance Hysterics - Creative Profanities - Quantum Perplexities

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