Fact Extractor: News You’ll Never Need to Know

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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 Bees

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

A shopping center in Provo, Utah, offered a $5,000 reward for the most outrageous stunt. Evan Hansen cut the roof off a station wagon and filled it with a thousand pounds of raspberry Jello and 16 gallons of whipped cream. After winning the contest, he simply opened the doors and let the Jello melt and down the storm drain. State Health Department officials fined him $500 for violating the clean water act, but he still came out $4,500 ahead.

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Shameless Self-Promotion

Need any fascinating filler for your company newsletter or your next advertising flyer? We’ve got trivia on any topic you can name. Here’s a list you can order from: http://www.triviaqueen.com/typical_topics.htm If you see anything you like there, give us a call at 866-TriviaQ

Fact or Fable?

Humans are the only animals that get sunburned. FACT OR FABLE? Answer below.

Quick Quirk Quiz Question:

 In the late 1860s, a scale insect - a type of sap-sucking bug - was accidentally imported into California, apparently on some acacia trees that had been shipped from Australia. Within 20 years the scale appeared on citrus trees in California in epidemic numbers. Millions of trees died and the citrus industry was in jeopardy. Although Australia had the same kind of scale, their citrus trees weren’t affected by the scale. An entomologist for the Department of Agriculture went to Australia to find out why. He noticed an Australian beetle eating the scale. Since these beetles did not live in America, he shipped 129 of them to the United States. They were placed on an infected tree under a tent and allowed to feed and reproduce. Soon the tree showed no signs of scale. The tent was removed and the beetles were allowed to spread, becoming the first insect species to be deliberately introduced to North America for the purpose of biological control. More shipments of the insect followed, and it took only two years and $1,500 worth of the beetle to control the scale infestation. Soon the bug had spread nationwide, becoming America’s most beloved insect. What is the name of the beetle that saved the citrus groves?

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 sticky waste by-product that gummed up the oil rig drills is now called Vaseline Petroleum Jelly.

Nothing You Need to Know about BEES

Bee Intelligence

• Princeton University ethologist James Gould, one of the world’s foremost authorities on bee behavior, performed an experiment in which he placed a source of food next to a beehive. Once the bees discovered it, he moved it 50 meters away to see how long it would take the bees to relocate the supply. After only one minute, they found the food. Gould then moved it another 50 meters, and again the bees tracked it down again in less than a minute. Every time Gould moved the food another 50 meters, the bees found it without delay. Then he noticed that above him the bees flying on to the next station before he had even moved the food. Gould concluded, "It is clear that the bees anticipated the shift. They behaved more intelligently than we expected."

• Next Gould tested some bees by placing a bowl of sugar water near a beehive. After it had been discovered, he started moving it. Every few minutes he moved the dish, but each move was four times longer than the previous move. Thus, he moved it one inch, then four inches, then 16 inches and so on. Soon he was moving the dish more than 100 feet in a single jump. The bees caught on and were waiting for him when he arrived.

• Gould devised another experiment in which he brought two groups of bees from their home hive to nearby Carnegie Lake in Princeton, New Jersey. He took one group of bees to a bunch of pollen-laden flowers in a rowboat that was anchored close to shore; the other group was taken to a bunch of flowers in a rowboat way out in the middle of the lake. After sampling the flowers, the bees flew home to their hive and both groups did a waggling dance indicating a source of pollen had been found. Whereas lots of bees returned to harvest pollen from the flowers close to shore, almost none came to the boat in the middle of the lake. Gould concluded the bees in the hive suspected they were being handed a bum steer and refused to believe there could be flowers in the middle of a lake.

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Fact or Fable:

FABLE. Pigs also get sunburned. That’s one reason they roll in the mud.

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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