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).