Category: Trivia

In-depth trivia about everyday things!

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A Helluva Bet!

This is Thomas Edward Fitzpatrick. On September 30, 1956 he was completely hammered in a bar on St. Nicholas Ave. in Manhattan. He made a drunken bet that he could make it from New Jersey to New York City in 15 minutes.

Thomas Edward Fitzpatrick

Fitzpatrick thus drove his car to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, stole a small plane from the Teterboro School of Aeronautics and flew it, drunk and without lights or radio, and landed on St. Nicholas Avenue, stopping directly in front of the bar in which he’d made the bet. Long story short, because the airplane wasn’t damaged, the school refused to press charges, and just wanted it to go away. So Fitzpatrick was fined $100 for the stunt. Which is just around  $1,100 in 2025 dollars. It’s a fair amount of money, but all things considered it’s still a slap on the wrist.

The best part of the story is, a couple years later Fitzpatrick was once again drunk in a Manhattan bar, and someone refused to believe that he was the one who’d pulled off the original stunt.

Guess what Fitzpatrick did?

He drove back to Teterboro Airport and stole another plane from the school and landed this one in front of a Yeshiva University building at Amsterdam Ave. and 187th Street. This time the court decided the prank had gone too far, and sentenced him to six months in prison. For his part, Fitzpatrick blamed it all on “the lousy drink”.

Although that was the end of his aerial adventures, that wasn’t the end of his fame: before any of this, Fitzpatrick was known as “the first New York City resident to be wounded in the Korean War”.

He also had a drink named after him for his late night stunts: the Late Night Flight:

Ingredients:

½ ounce Kahlua
1½ ounces vodka
½ ounce Chambord
5 blackberries
1 egg white
Dash simple syrup

The idea here is to create a layered representation of NYC’s night-time sky.

Pour Kahlua into the base of a cocktail glass.

In a separate mixing glass, muddle the blackberries, add Chambord and one ounce of vodka, and shake with ice. Strain carefully into a layer over the Kahlua.

In another mixing glass, shake egg white, syrup, and remaining half ounce of vodka — without ice — to create an emulsion. Layer this fluffy white foam on top – like the clouds through which Fitzpatrick piloted.

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Rubber Duckies!

If you’ve ever been to an IT trade show, convention or seminar, you may have noticed that rubber ducks seem to be an oddly popular giveaway. Why?

So the story goes, one day a programmer ran into a brick wall while coding something. He went over to a co-worker’s desk to ask for help. The co-worker asked him to explain what he was trying to do generally, then explain how he was trying to accomplish this in code. While explaining the problem, the first coder figured out what the problem was.

A few days later the coder hit a brick wall again, explained the issue to his co-worker, and once again figured out the problem while explaining it.

A few days after that, the coder had ANOTHER problem, but this time when he approached his office buddy, the co-worker handed him a rubber duck: “Look, I’m busy. You don’t need me to help you; just explain it to the duck instead”. He felt like a fool, but did it anyway, and once again by explaining the problem and how he was trying to code it, he figured out what the issue was.

And thus, “rubber duck debugging” was born. Coders all over the planet explain their problems to inanimate objects as a means of troubleshooting, although the rubber duck remains the unofficial symbol and namesake of the process:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

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Gone With The Wind

Hollywood superstar Rudolph Valentino (center) talks to Atlanta Georgian reporter Bert Collier (left) and Atlanta Journal reporter Peggy Mitchell (right) on the roof of the Georgian Terrace Hotel, 1923.

Accessing the roof meant ducking through a low window with a four foot drop on the other side. When Mitchell had problems getting back inside, Valentino gently picked her up and carried her back into the hotel, which Mitchell called “the thrill of a lifetime”. She would later write a hugely popular novel under her given name, Margaret Mitchell.

Valentino-Mitchell

Speaking of Gone with the Wind… contrary to popular belief, the world premiere of the film wasn’t at the Fox Theatre. It was at the nearby Loew’s Grand, where 300,000 people showed up hoping to catch a glimpse of Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh. A special, temporary “Tara” façade was even built on the front of the cinema:

Loew's Grand

Loew’s was built as “DeGive’s Grand Opera House” in 1893, and burned down in a “mysterious” fire in 1978 (wink-wink). The Georgia-Pacific Tower now stands on the site.

Georgia-Pacific Tower

Some of the bricks from the Loew’s were salvaged to build the Houston’s restaurant at 2166 Peachtree Rd.;

Houston's Restaurant

The lobby chandelier from the Loew’s now hangs in The Tabernacle, a music venue inside a former Baptist church:

The Tabernacle Atlanta

The Fox Theater was the site of the world premiere of Disney’s Song of the South. Walt Disney himself attended the event. But poor Walt just couldn’t bear the thought of criticism, so he quietly left just before the movie started, walking across Peachtree Street to his room at the Georgian Terrace… where he chain-smoked and paced for the next two hours.

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Check vs. Cheque

There are many words in American English which were once commonplace in British English before the American Revolution. Folks on both sides of the Atlantic regularly used words like “fall”, “diaper” and “faucet”. The British moved on to “autumn”, “nappy” and “tap” decades later, while American English stubbornly kept the older words.

One word in particular – check, as in “a financial instrument” – seems to really set off Brits. Many Brits assume American English switched from “cheque” to “check” because of Noah Webster. But that’s not how this story works: for around 125 years, “check” was the dominant form. Although “cheque” was used in Britain, it was used almost exclusively by goldsmiths. “Check” was by far the most popular spelling in Britain and the only spelling used in America.

In 1827, an English banker named James William Gilbart (below) published a book called Practical Treatise on Banking. Universities widely adopted it as a textbook and banks used it as an instruction manual. While writing the book, Gilbart decided to standardize on “cheque” to eliminate any confusion with other uses of “check”… and within 20 years “check” was completely gone from the British banking system, and British English generally.

James William Gilbart

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A Record-Breaking Game

On December 9, 1973, the Atlanta Falcons played the St. Louis Cardinals in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Falcons quarterback Bob Lee and Cardinals quarterback Gary Keithley ended the game with 0.00 passer ratings. This is the only NFL game in history where BOTH quarterbacks ended with a “perfectly bad” rating. Lee went 3 of 16 for 27 yards with two interceptions; Keithley went 2 of 10 for 9 yards with one pick. Both teams had five fumbles, although St. Louis only lost 1 while the Falcons lost 3.

The Cardinals won 32-10.

UPDATE: For those of you who don’t follow NFL football, quarterbacks are the “field generals” of the game. They read the defense and arrange players like chess pieces, then decide whether to: hand the ball off to a running back, who tries to carry the ball downfield before getting tackled; or to throw it to a receiver, who can be as far downfield as the quarterback can throw; or keep the ball and run himself. Or, he can chose to simply “throw the ball away” if there’s no one to throw it to.

So here’s the thing: quarterbacks are given a rating based on several factors: pass attempts, completions, passing yards, touchdowns passes and interceptions.

A perfect score is 158.3 (weird, I know).

If either team’s quarterback had simply thrown every football at the closest beer vendor in the stands every single time the entire game, they would have ended up with a 39.9 rating (I think – someone please check my math). To get all the way to a zero rating, you have to throw the ball to the other team almost as much as your own team. That is, to be especially awful.

For two professional quarterbacks to end up with zero ratings – when playing each other! – is extremely rare. Which is why I wrote this!

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Random Fact #1604

As you probably know, the Internet works because of something called DNS. Computers only communicate via a numerical IP address, like 64.233.177.113. People are, of course, terrible with numbers. DNS acts as the Internet’s phone book, translating human-friendly domain names like “google.com” into the IP address your computer needs to connect to a site.

While domain names have been around longer than you might think, the idea really isn’t new, though. When telegraphs were the thing, a company, person or organization could set up a telegraphic address. Like a domain name, people could address telegraphs to FORD or STDOIL and they’d be passed down the telegraph lines until someone who knew the actual address sent it to its final destination. Just like domain names and trademarks, telegraphic addresses were a valuable property, and were fought over when companies split up. Competitors even bought addresses similar to legit ones, like COKECOLA or COCOCOLA.

A few companies and organizations are named for the previous telegraphic address.

Interflora rose to fame by using telegraphic (later, telephone) lines to send flower arrangements anywhere in the country. In the pre-Internet days, if your uncle on the other side of the country died, it was difficult to find a florist on in that area on your own. Instead you’d send the order from a local florist via Interflora, who’d telegraph an in-network florist near your uncle’s funeral home… for a cut of the money, of course. Which is kind of a good example of how this whole system worked.

Interpol, the international crime-fighting agency founded in Vienna in 1923, was originally known as the International Criminal Police Commission. It later changed its name to its telegraphic address. So if you wanted to squeal on someone, you just send a telegram to INTERPOL.

Oxfam, a charity founded at Oxford University, but with independent branches all over the world, was founded as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief in 1942, initially to help fight the famine in Greece due to its Axis occupation and the Allies’ retaliatory blockade during the war. OXFAM was, of course, it’s telegraphic address.

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These Chiefs and Those Chiefs

The Atlanta Chiefs were a professional soccer team that existed from 1967 to 1973, and again from 1979 to 1981. They were originally owned by the Atlanta Braves baseball team, hence the “Chiefs” name. They played the 1967 season in the National Professional Soccer League, but in 1968 the NPSL merged with the United Soccer Association to form the North American Soccer League (or NASL, which was occasionally pronounced “nasal”, for obvious reasons).

atlanta_chiefs

Depending on how you look at it, the Chiefs brought Atlanta the city’s first professional, major league sports title:

– Georgia Tech won college football national championships in 1917, 1928 and 1952 (and, later, 1990). But college sports are strictly amateur, and were especially so 50 years ago.

– The Atlanta Crackers were a minor league baseball team that existed from 1901 to 1961. They played in the Southern Association and were league champs 17 times. In fact, the Crackers were the winningest team in Southern Association history, and were sometimes called the “Yankees of the Minors”. However, while they were “professional” (in the sense that they were paid to play, unlike college teams), they were only a minor league team.

– The Atlanta Knights hockey team won the International Hockey League’s Turner Cup – no relation to Ted – in 1993, their second year of existence. But they, like the Crackers, were a minor league team, in this case, an affiliate for the Tampa Bay Lightning. Sadly, the arrival of the Atlanta Trashers caused the team to move to Quebec, where they were known as the “Rafales” from 1996 to 1998, after which the team was shut down for losing too much money.

– The Atlanta Braves didn’t win a World Series until 1995. However, they won two previous World Series, in 1957 (as the Milwaukee Braves) and in 1914 (as the Boston Braves). Thus, not only are the Braves the oldest continually-operating sports franchise in North America, they’re the only team to have won a World Series in every city they’ve called home.

– The Atlanta Hawks basketball team was originally founded as the National Basketball League’s Buffalo Bisons in 1946. However, just 13 games in to their first season the team moved to Moline, Illinois. There they became known as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, and were led by legendary coach Red Auerbach. But it soon became obvious that the “Tri-Cities” area (Moline and Rock Island, Illinois and Davenport, Iowa) was too small to support a team in the new NBA. So in 1951 they moved to Milwaukee. And in 1955 they moved to St. Louis, where they won their only league title in 1958. They moved again to Atlanta in 1968. The Hawks’ 55 year championship drought is the second-longest in the NBA after the Sacramento Kings, and the Hawks haven’t even advanced past the second round of the playoffs since moving to Atlanta.

– The Flames NHL hockey team – which played in Atlanta from 1972 to 1980, when they moved to Calgary – has never won a Stanley Cup. In fact, neither the Atlanta Flames nor the Calgary Flames have ever even won their division. And the Atlanta Trashers – now the Winnipeg Jets – won their division exactly once, in the 2006-2007 season. And this also makes Atlanta the only city to lose not one, but TWO NHL franchises.

– The Atlanta Falcons have been to, but have never won, a Super Bowl. Which puts them in the same boat as the Arizona Cardinals, Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers, Cincinnati Bengals, Minnesota Vikings, Philadelphia Eagles, San Diego Chargers, Seattle Seahawks and Tennessee Titans. It also puts them ahead of the Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Houston Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars, none of which have ever even been to a Super Bowl.

But this post is about the Atlanta Chiefs.

Continue reading “These Chiefs and Those Chiefs”

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Random Facts

So I started doing a “Random Facts” series of posts on my Facebook page. Here are some of the best of them:

– Libertarian economist and radio personality Walter E. Williams grew up in Philadelphia and was a childhood friend of Bill Cosby. Williams knows all the real people the Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids characters are based on, including Weird Harold and “Fat” Albert Robinson. (source)

– Conservative economist and radio personality Thomas Sowell was born in Gastonia, North Carolina and had so few encounters with white people as a child that he did not believe blonde was a real hair color until he was 10 years old. (source)

– Canaries (the birds) were named after the Canary Islands where they were first found. However, the original name of the islands was from Latin: Canariae Insulae, meaning “Island of the Dogs”. So the birds are named after islands which were named after dogs. And although “canary”: can also refer to a shade of yellow, most canary birds are actually green and\or brown.  (source)

– Supermodel Karolina Kurkova has no belly button! She was born with a congenital umbilical hernia, which doctors repaired when she was an infant. The operation left her with no belly button, so in most photo shoots one is added via Photoshop. (source)

– Although This Mortal Coil’s cover of “Song to the Siren” only reached #66 on the UK charts, it remained on the UK indie charts for 101 weeks. This makes it #4 on the list of longest charting UK singles of the 1980s, behind only “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” (131 weeks), “Blue Monday” (186 weeks) and “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (195 weeks). (source)

– In 2009, a retired policeman named Geraint Woolford was admitted to Abergale Hospital in north Wales. He ended up in a bed next to another man named Geraint Woolford. The men weren’t related, had never met, were both retired policemen, and were the only two people in the UK named “Geraint Woolford”. (source)

Continue reading “Random Facts”

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Random Atlanta\Georgia Trivia

So the other day I was looking for some info about a Braves game, so I went to my former hometown newspaper’s site: ajc.com. While there I discovered that my favorite section of the paper – “Q&A on the News”, where people can write in any marginally newsworthy question in hopes of getting an answer – not only still exists… but that there’s an extensive archive of old topics, too!

Here’s some of the fun stuff I found:

Georgia is the only state to be admitted to the Union three times. (link)

Of course, Georgia was the fourth state, ratifying the U.S. Constitution on January 2, 1788. And, like most Confederate states, Georgia was readmitted after the Civil War on June 26, 1868. However, widespread violence led Congress to re-impose Reconstruction on the state (another dubious honor, this being the only state to have this happen). Georgia was readmitted for the third and final time in July 1870.

Atlanta’s Northside Hospital delivers more babies than any other hospital in the United States. (link)

Over 18,000 babies are born there every year… including me (although that was a looooonng time ago!).

St. Mary’s, Georgia is the second oldest continually-inhabited city in the United States (link)

The city was founded “sometime in the mid 1500s” by the Spanish. It became an incorporated city in 1792. Only St. Augustine, Florida is older.