Trivium
Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro are the only actors to win Oscars playing the same character. Brando won Best Actor for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather in 1972, and De Niro won Best Supporting Actor for the same role in The Godfather Part II in 1974.
See Too Much Talent.
Nothing in Common
SOUTH DAKOTA shares no letters with its capital, PIERRE. It’s the only such state.
Phone Sects
WELL-EXPRESSED is dialed using only the odd numbers on a telephone keypad.
NONCOMMUNICATING uses only even numbers.
Surely this means something.
Misc
- EPISCOPAL is an anagram of PEPSI COLA.
- Theodore Roosevelt’s wife and mother died in the same house on the same day.
- Only a perfect square has an odd number of divisors.
- “Makes no sense makes no sense” makes no sense.
- The grounds of the Oklahoma state capitol include working oil rigs.
- “Time is the only critic without ambition.” — John Steinbeck
Misc
- Georgia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut didn’t ratify the Bill of Rights until 1939.
- Wilt Chamberlain never fouled out of a game.
- 3864 = 3 × (-8 + 64)
- What’s the opposite of “not in”?
- Alaska has a longer coastline than all other U.S. states combined.
- “To do nothing is also a good remedy.” — Hippocrates
Stork Fatigue
When Silvia Morello de Palma was seven months pregnant, she flew to Antarctica to join her husband, the commander of Argentina’s Esperanza research base.
When their son, Emilio Marcos Palma, was born safely on Jan. 7, 1978, he became the world’s southernmost birth — and the only person in recorded history to be the firstborn on a continent.
Trivium
The highest point in the contiguous United States is less than 80 miles from the lowest point.
Mount Whitney, in California’s Sequoia National Park, rises 14,505 feet above sea level.
It’s 76 miles west of Badwater, in Death Valley National Park, which is 282 feet below sea level.
The Adam Bomb
On Aug. 10, 2004, Cincinnati Reds first baseman Adam Dunn hit a ball entirely out of Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park. It landed on Mehring Way, 535 feet from home plate, hopped another 200 feet or so, and came to rest on a piece of driftwood on the edge of the Ohio River.
That part of the river belongs to Kentucky. This makes Dunn the only player in major league history to hit the ball into another state.
See Pop Fly and Four-Dimensional Basketball.
Misc
- Douglas Adams claimed that the funniest three-digit number is 359.
- Romeo has more lines than Juliet, Iago than Othello, and Portia than Shylock.
- Friday the 13th occurs at least once a year.
- “By nature, men love newfangledness.” — Chaucer
- John was the only apostle to die a natural death.
Feature Set
Short film titles, from Patrick Robertson’s Film Facts (2001):
- A (Japanese, 1999)
- E (British, 1993)
- F (Japanese, 1998)
- G (British/German, 1974)
- H (Spanish, 1997)
- I (Swedish, 1966)
- K (Hungarian, 1989)
- M (German, 1931)
- Q (French/Italian/Belgian, 1974)
- W (Filipino, 1985)
- X (Korean, 1982)
- Y (Colombian, 1992)
- Z (French/Italian, 1968)
- $ (U.S., 1972)
Darren Aronofsky’s 1998 film π concerns a mathematician who seeks patterns in strings of numbers.
Its running time is 1:23:45.
Misc
- Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president born in a hospital.
- Hamlet has 1506 lines, fully 39 percent of the play.
- 736 = 7 + 36
- NOOK combines two antonyms.
- “Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.” — Plato
Misc
- Q is the only letter that does not appear in any U.S. state name.
- 6455 = (64 – 5) × 5
- North Dakota’s record high temperature (121°F) is higher than Florida’s (109°F).
- UNNOTICEABLY contains the vowels A, E, I, O, and U in reverse order.
- “An odd thought strikes me: We shall receive no letters in the grave.” — Samuel Johnson
Offside
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Only 23 U.S. states are entirely south of Canada’s southernmost point, Middle Island in Lake Erie.
Misc
- SCINTILLESCENT contains 7 pairs of letters.
- Rub two pennies together and you’ll see a third between them.
- Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day.
- 1285 = (1 + 28) × 5
- Squeeze an orange peel into a candle flame and you’ll produce a burst of fire.
Free Parking
Longest game of Monopoly:
- played upside down: 36 hours
- played in a bathtub: 99 hours
- played underground: 100 hours
- played in a treehouse: 286 hours
- ever played: 1,680 hours
Parker Brothers rejected the game in 1933, citing “52 fundamental playing flaws.”
No Man’s Land
On the border between Egypt and Sudan is a small trapezoid of landlocked desert, about 2,000 square kilometers.
Egypt says it belongs to Sudan. Sudan says it belongs to Egypt.
That makes Bir Tawil the only land area in the world (outside of Antarctica) that’s not claimed by any state.
Pieces of Pi
In the decimal expansion of π:
- the digits 27182818 — the first eight digits of e — appear at position 1,526,800.
- the digits 14142135 — the first eight digits of the square root of 2 — appear at position 52,638.
- the first eight digits of π itself — 31415926 — reappear at position 50,366,472.
- 16470 appears at position 16470.
- there are seven 7s at position 3,346,228, eight 8s at position 46,663,520, and six 9s at position 762.
- The White House switchboard number (456-1414) is at position 3,193,808, the population of France (65,073,482) is at position 98,709,092, and Disneyland’s zip code (92802) is at position 41,112.
Write out the alphabet starting with J:
JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHI
Erase all letters that have left-right symmetry (such as A) and count the letters in each of the five groups that remain. (James Davis)
Left and Right
Three of our last four presidents have been left-handed:
Bush I: Left-handed
Clinton: Left-handed
Bush II: Right-handed
Obama: Left-handed
The same would be true if John McCain had won the last election — he’s a leftie too. Indeed, fully half of American presidents since Truman have been southpaws, though only 10 percent of the general population is left-handed.
What accounts for this? Who knows? But UCLA geneticist Daniel Geschwind says, “Six out of the past 12 presidents is statistically significant, and probably means something.”
(Image: Wikimedia Commons)
