Fact Extractor: News You’ll Never Need to Know

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In this issue of Fact Extractor:

Hucksters, Humbugs, Hoodwinks & Hogwash: Harebrained Hoaxes & Hullabaloo
Fact or Fable?
The Quick Quirk Quiz Question
Shameless Self-Promotion & Flagrant Advertising
Two Cents About Ants

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

Prankster Brian Hughes once took a kit of burglar tools and half a dozen empty picture frames and left them lying on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Panic ensued when the museum opened for business the next day.

Send YOUR schemes & screams to: HHHHHHH@TriviaQueen.com

Fact or Fable?

Gail Borden, the man who invented Borden’s condensed milk, is the person who first coined the phrase, “Remember the Alamo!” FACT OR FABLE? Answer below.

Quick Quirk Quiz Question:

An Ironic Twist

In the year 1600, a young man whose first name was Godfrey was tried in France on a charge of assaulting a woman. He was convicted and sentenced to be hung. But Godfrey was an Englishman who had friends in high places. Robert, Earl of Essex pulled strings and managed to have Godfrey released and returned to England. Back in England, Godfrey ironically got a job as an executioner in the town of Tyburn. Having been saved from the end of the rope, he was now on the opposite end. He liked the job a lot and did it very efficiently. When Robert, Earl of Essex committed some infraction and was sentenced to death, Godfrey strung up his former benefactor without batting an eye. So enthusiastic was Godfrey about his job that he even designed a better scaffold that would allow people to be hung more efficiently. Soon Godfrey’s last name became synonymous with the gallows, and even today any lifting apparatus that uses cranes and pulleys to hoist heavy objects is called by Godfrey’s last name. What was his 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 rent collector’s name was Charles BOYCOTT.

Nothing You Need to Know about ANTS

• One researcher was able to prove conclusively that ants will follow a scent trail to food. The scientist placed food near an anthill and covered the distance between with sheets of paper. After the first ant discovered the food and rushed back to the nest, he replaced the original paper with fresh sheets. When the ants swarmed out to get the food, they were unable to find it.

• A single milligram of the scent a leaf-cutter ant leaves behind to mark its trail would be enough to lead a column of ants three times around the world.

• Scientist O.A. Battista devised an intelligence test for ants. He put some candy on top of a stool. He put the stool in a large tub of water. He painted the edge of the tub with slow-drying glue. Six days later, the candy was covered with ants. Using blades of grass and slivers of wood stuck together with saliva, the ants had built a bridge across the water to the stool.

• Another naturalist devised a test that proved that ants can measure, estimate, and communicate. He chopped a grasshopper into three parts: a small section, a medium section, and a large section. He then gave each section to a different ant scout from the same nest. All of the pieces were too big for a single ant to carry. Each ant measured its section with its antennae and then returned to the nest. Would each ant call out the same size crew? Would too many show up to do the work, or too few? The naturalist was surprised to see that 28 ants returned to fetch the small piece; 44 went for the medium piece; and 89 for the large piece. The second crew was twice as big as the first, just as the medium piece was twice as big as the small; and the large crew was twice as big as the medium crew to move a piece that was twice as large.

• When ants find a puddle of fruit juices or a dollop of jelly, they will chew a leaf into a spongy mass and then place it in the middle of the food. When they return later, the leaf has absorbed the juices and the ants carry it home.

• Scientists studying the intelligence of ants have discovered that ants that have learned to pass through a maze when hungry must relearn the same maze from scratch if they enter it when they are not hungry.

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Fact or Fable:

FACT. Gail Borden, who invented condensed milk, also owned a newspaper and ran the headline, “Remember the Alamo!”

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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