I’m not feeling terribly inspired today in terms of blogging, so here I go with:
Random Weird Things I’ve Learned Recently
- The new Cats movie adaptation is getting clawed by critics (no big surprise)
- Wombats are quite large (can weigh up to 77 pounds)
- Pirates used their jewelry (earrings) to cover their burial expenses
- The Canadian province of Alberta has been waging a war against rats since 1950 and still has a “rat hotline”
- There’s a scary disease you can get from ingesting slugs (Angiostrongylus cantonensis).
- There are two elements on the Periodic Table named for a father (Tantalum/Tantalus) and daughter (Niobium/Niobe)
- Vikings drank beverages made of pine needles to help ward off scurvy
- You can get talking Clapper devices that look like Darth Vader and C-3PO
- There is a technique involving heated powdered sulfur for obtaining shoe print impressions from snow
- If the Union army had been unsuccessful in obtaining saltpetre from Great Britain the North probably would have lost the Civil War
- They made a 12-inch “prop” ring to use for closeup shots in the Lord of the Rings films
- Dwayne Johnson bought a truck for the man whom is his stunt double. He and his stunt double also like the same “cheat day” foods (pizza and doughnuts)
- The Kingsman movies are made by same writer/director as the Kick-Ass films – and there could be a crossover between the two universes in the future
- Aaron Johnson (who played Kick-Ass) also played a young Charlie Chaplin in Shanghai Knights, alongside the film’s stars Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan
- The Carvana car vending machine is real (there is one in Washington, D.C.)
- There are two Oscar winners from the 1980s in the HBO series Watchmen (Jeremy Irons, Reversal of Fortune – and Lou Gossett Jr., An Officer and a Gentleman).