Things I Learned in April 2025
Serendipitous Factoids 15: The dog ate my homework, pantsless superheroes, and sprucing things up.
Trivial things I’ve learned while looking for something else…
The first reference to going ‘down the rabbit-hole’ was the title of the first chapter of Lewis Carrol’s 1865 book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The first reference made to the rabbit hole in a metaphorical sense was in 1938 in The Yale Law Journal, where they said, “It is the Rabbit-Hole down which we fell into the Law…”
John Steinbeck’s dog, Toby, ate his homework. Really. One night Toby ate half of the draft manuscript for Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck didn’t punish Toby since he was just a pup and “may have been acting critically.” It took two months to recreate the lost portions of the work. No word, however, if this incident had anything to do with the fate of Candy’s dog in the novel.
Four Presidents of the United States have an interesting commonality in their backgrounds. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush were all cheerleaders.
When The Today Show debuted on NBC in 1952 it wasn’t doing at all well in the ratings. In 1953, NBC decided to bring in a new on-screen talent to boost the show’s ratings. It was a toddler. The toddler was named J. Fred Muggs. He was an 11-month old chimpanzee from what was then called French Cameroon. He was a big hit and co-hosted until 1957. He remained in the entertainment business until 1975. He is, by the way, still alive and kicking at the age of 73.
So there was this one guy who had a ton of executive and leadership skills, along with tremendous popularity. So much so that he was the Governor of two different US states (and a US Senator for one of them and a member of the US House of Representatives for the other). In between those gubernatorial stints he was President…of an entirely different country. Sam Houston was the 6th Governor of Tennessee (1827-1829) and the 7th Governor of Texas (1859-1861). He was President of the Republic of Texas - twice. He was the 1st from 1836-1838 and the 3rd from 1841-1844. He was Representative from Tennessee from 1823-1827 and one of Texas’ US Senators from 1846-1859.
The wood of the spruce tree, specifically the Sitka spruce (picea sitchensis), was critically important to the US war effort in WWI. It was needed to build airplanes. It was so critically important, that, well, I’m failing to find an adjective to describe the critical importance of it so I’ll describe it. The US Army created the Spruce Production Division (SPD) that was comprised of 30,000 soldiers and 100,000 civilians. In its single year of existence, the SPD used $45.5 million in federal funds (around $1 billion today). The civilian/military resource cooperation made the SPD the outdoorsy cousin of the Manhattan Project or the Apollo program.
Which of the following errors did the Hanna-Barbera Super Friends cartoon (1973-1985) have that slipped through the production process and wound up being broadcast? A) Sometimes the Super Friends’ pants would disappear mid-scene; B) Batman’s voice might come out of Superman’s mouth; C) Sometimes Green Lantern had three arms. Well, if you picked any of them, you’re correct since all three happened.
Admiral Horatio Nelson, commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet - the largest naval fleet in the world at the time - and victor of the Battle of Trafalgar, was blind in one eye and missing his right arm. Those war-related injuries are well-known. What has been recently discovered through letters he wrote was that from the time he joined the Royal Navy at the age of 12, Nelson was prone to severe seasickness.
That’s it for now. The Goblins of Minutiae that live in my head are signing off for this month! They’ll be back to enlighten you in bite-sized bits in May!
2W:LYK
I too have Nelson’s problem (seasickness) so try to, you know, not go on boats, even to support anti-Napoleonic activity.