Futility Closet

Cap’n Crunch’s full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch.

You can start fights among copyeditors by asking them how to punctuate Harry Truman’s name.

The 34th president had no middle name — just the letter S. So the question is, do you add a period afterward? Purists say no, it’s not an abbreviation. Pragmatists say yes, if you omit the period then some readers will stop at the “error.”

Truman himself usually signed his name with a period, but he once remarked that it should be omitted. That’s why, to this day, some newspapers refer to him as Harry S Truman.

Michael Jordan has appeared on a Wheaties box 18 times.

There’s a snack bar in the courtyard of the Pentagon.

It’s called the Ground Zero Cafe.

The longest word in the English language is FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION.

It means “the act of estimating (something) as worthless.”

Disneyland would fit in Disney World’s parking lot.

There have been only three periods when five former American presidents were alive at the same time:

• March 4, 1861-Jan. 18, 1862: Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan
• Jan. 20, 1993-April 22, 1994: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush
• Jan. 20, 2001-June 5, 2004: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton

Herbert Hoover lived for 31 years after leaving office; James Polk lasted only three months.

A monkey has one chance in 19,928,148,895,209,409,152,340,197,376 of correctly typing the first 20 letters of Hamlet (ignoring punctuation, spacing, and capitalization).

And Hamlet contains more than 130,000 letters.

Twelve percent of American 20-year-olds are left-handed, but only 5 percent of 50-year-olds and fewer than 1 percent of people over 80.

Does this mean that more lefties are being born today? Or that older generations were forced to switch hands? Or that southpaws die sooner? No one knows.

Color values of Crayola’s most popular crayons:

• Black: #000000
• Blue: #0066FF
• Brown: #AF593E
• Green: #01A368
• Orange: #FF681F
• Red: #ED0A3F
• Violet: #8359A3
• Yellow: #FBE870