Wednesday’s Trivia Blast

– The San Diego Wild Animal Park (part of the world-famous San Diego Zoo) has a monorail line. Its name is WGASA, and that moniker was chosen by a park employee. Management loved the name, since they were seeking something with an “African feel”. What they didn’t know until later was that WGASA was a crude acronym for “Who gives a shit anyhow?”. Even after finding out the awful truth, management decided to keep the name. Read more here.

– The TV show Benson was the first television show to mention the Internet by name. In an episode called “Scenario”, which aired on February 22, 1985, the characters discussed ARPANET, the forerunner of the modern Internet.

– Phyllis Smith, who plays the character of the same first name on the US version of The Office, was once a cheerleader for the St. Louis Rams and a burlesque dancer. A knee injury in the 1980s forced her to stop dancing, so she moved to Hollywood and worked as an actress and in casting.

– Have you ever seen a picture which contains a picture of itself? This called a recursive picture, and the specific effect is called the Droste effect, after a brand of Dutch cocoa which features a picture of the box on the packaging:

Droste

Other famous images featuring the Droste effect include the cover of Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma album, Land O’Lakes butter, The Laughing Cow cheese, and the movie poster for Memento. Read more about it here.

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