Trivia

The Loudest Frog In The World Is The?

Mexican Spadefoot                                               American Bullfrog

Coquí Frog                                                      Southern Chorus Frog

Answer: Coquí Frog

Frog calls, by their very nature, tend to be loud. Frogs use their calls primarily to attract mates, and if you’re too quiet to notify potential mates that you’re available, then you’ll die childless and the loudest of your cohorts will populate the Earth in your absence.

But even among the deep and loud twang of the American bullfrog’s call and the shrill and repetitive call of the spring peeper, there’s a frog that stands out as exceptionally loud: the coquí frog, native to Puerto Rico. There are several species of coquí frogs, but the group is onomatopoeically named after the loud call made by the common coquí and the mountain coquí, which sounds like “ko-kee”!

Very loud might be something of an understatement, in fact. The coquí can fire off a call that is capable of peaking at 85-100 decibels from three feet (one meter) away. While the locals in Puerto Rico seem to be relatively used to hearing the loud calls, the species is an invasive one in Hawaii and the locals are not particularly happy about it. They describe the experience of trying to sleep with the coquí frogs nearby being comparable to a lawnmower running outside their bedroom window all night.

Trivia

Eccentric Billionaire Howard Hughes Once Bought An Entire Casino In Order To?

Live On The Top Floor                    Convert It To A Bowling Arena

Shutter Its Rooftop Bar                    Disable Its Sign

Answer: Disable Its Sign

Howard Hughes is one of the characters in the history of America that looms larger than life for more than a few reasons. He was a businessman at heart, a maverick film director, and then, not content at making a name for himself in one industry, he founded an aircraft company and made a name for himself all over again (setting multiple air speed records in the process).

But, as is often the case, it’s not things like founding companies or amassing wealth that people like Hughes are remembered for, but the eccentricities. Hughes is remembered for being particularly eccentric, even among the ranks of his ultra-wealthy peers, because he suffered from an obsessive-compulsive disorder. In ways that a regular OCD-stricken Joe with a regular Joe budget could never afford to indulge his compulsions, Hughes effectively had an unlimited budget. The combination of billions of dollars in the bank with unorthodox attitudes towards the world around him led Hughes to often spend money in ways that seems absurd to the rest of us.

One of the more notable (and certainly most visible) ways in which Hughes would use his money to cultivate his immediate environment to his liking was the 1968 purchase of the Silver Slipper casino in Las Vegas. Hughes had previously purchased other Las Vegas hotels and casinos (he had a strong desire to glamorize Las Vegas and invested heavily in it), but the purchase of the Silver Slipper for 5.4 million dollars (~38.5 million dollars, adjusted for inflation) had nothing to do with business. The motivation for his purchase was to gain control of the Silver Slipper’s giant iconic slipper sign.

The reason given was that the brightly lit slipper shined in Hughes’ bedroom window (he was living at the nearby Desert Inn) but, given the sheer number of very bright lights in Las Vegas, that reason seems a bit flimsy. It was later revealed that Hughes’ primary motivation was a paranoia that someone could access the slipper and use it as a roost to spy on (and photograph) him from across the way. After purchasing the casino, Hughes had the lights turned off, the sign’s rotation motor dismantled, and had the entire casino sealed up so nobody could get inside it.

The sign remained in that state until the demise of the hotel (it was purchased in 1988, demolished, and turned into a parking lot for the Frontier next door). The slipper went into storage and was, only recently (2009), restored and displayed as part of a collection of vintage signs along the median of Las Vegas Boulevard North.

Trivia

The Experience Of Transitioning Between Wakefulness And Sleep Is Called?

Lucidity                                                                         Hypnagogia

Estivation                                                                          Cataplexy

Answer: Hypnagogia

Though it may seem so at first glance, sleep isn’t a simple binary affair of the period we spend awake and the period we spend asleep. At the end of the day, when you lay your head on a pillow and prepare to drift off to sleep, there is a distinct period, a transitional state, called “hypnagogia”.

During this period where the body is transitioning between complete wakefulness and sleep, there is a significantly increased chance of experiencing a wide array of sensory experiences. Some people see rainbow-like light shows (appearing as light across their closed eyelids, but actually just a phenomenon known as “phosphenes” where your visual nerves are stimulated in the absence of actual light). People who play a lot of video games or perform repetitive actions at work may experience the “Tetris effect”, wherein scenes from the video game or their workplace play out as they drift off to sleep. Other sensations include hearing things—an experience which ranges from something as simple and calming as hearing a fan-like white noise to, for those with “exploding head syndrome”, hearing incredibly startling noises—smelling things, feeling hot or cold, or any number of sensations the human body can perceive.

The state is also said to be a highly creative one and many people prize the period of semi-lucidity that occurrs between wakefulness and sleep. There is an apocryphal tale about Thomas Edison that states he would often fall asleep holding steel ball bearings so that as he finally drifted off into deeper sleep and relaxed his hand, the clatter of the dropped bearings would wake him and he would record all his ideas. But Edison is hardly alone in giving credit to the insights the twilight of the day provides; Nikola Tesla, Isaac Newton, Beethoven, Salvador Dali, and other prominent inventors and artists over the years all stated that the period was a highly productive and valuable one.

Trivia

The Phone Books On Which Of These Islands Include Nicknames For Citizens?

Christmas Island                                                 Nantucket Island

Tangier Island                                                          Norfolk Island

Answer: Norfolk Island

If you take a peek in your local phone book (if you didn’t throw it in the recycle bin shortly after you got it), you’ll find full proper names with no exceptions. John Smith, if he has any flourishes, might be John R. Smith, but that’s that. If you live on Norfolk Island, however, it’s a different story.

The citizens of Norfolk Island are few in number and name (the 2011 census listed only 1,796 people). The majority of people on the island are descended from the same families and about half of the people on the island can trace their heritage back to distant immigrants from nearby Pitcairn Island. As of result of the intersection of common first names and very few surnames, the phone book for the island has an unusual addition: nicknames.

As such, you’ll find entries like John “Tarzan” Smith, Jennifer “Giggles” Black, and other variations of common first and last names coupled with an identifying nickname.

Trivia

The Largest Free Concert In History, Based On Attendance, Was A Performance By?

The Grateful Dead                                            The Rolling Stones

Guns N' Roses                                                              Rod Stewart

Answer: Rod Stewart

If nothing else, let it be known that Sir Rod Stewart, chart-topping British songwriter and singer, knows how to throw a party. Active for over half a century, Stewart would be hard-pressed to top the blowout party/performance he threw in 1994.

In 1994, Rod Stewart was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, then later that year he threw a free rock concert to celebrate his achievements (and the incoming year) on New Year’s Eve on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. If it had been a cozy affair, well, we wouldn’t be talking about it in this context. Over the top, fun, and packed wall to wall, certainly, but definitely not cozy. Around 3.5 million people packed the beautiful tropical beach and surrounding areas to hear Stewart play and ring in the new year.

Not only was it the single largest free concert ever attended, but depending on who you ask, it might just be the largest concert ever—the only performer who even comes close to rivaling Stewart’s jam-packed audience is the French performer Jean-Michel Jarrer who, three years later in Moscow, performed for an estimated 3.5 million people. Given how neck and neck the tallying on both the concerts is, however, and how getting a couple million people to show up to party with you is no small feat, we’re happy to declare Stewart the king of the free concerts and Jarre the king of the paid ones.

Trivia

The Iconic Opening Music In 2001: A Space Odyssey Is From Which Of These Classical Compositions?

Also Sprach Zerathustra                                    The Blue Danube

Atmosphères                                                                Lux Aeterna

Answer: Also Sprach Zerathustra

Even if you don’t know the name of the piece and have not watched Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film 2001: A Space Odyssey, we feel pretty comfortable in betting that you’ve heard the even more iconic opening to the film. The powerful brass, framed by the introduction of stringed instruments and then driven forward by a powerful and thumping percussion section is, without doubt, one of the most identifiable classical music pieces in history.

That’s because the opening music for 2001: A Space Odyssey is also the opening music to the Richard Strauss symphony, Also sprach Zerathustra, composed in 1896. The full composition was an instant success and has been part of the repertoire of classical music performances ever since—cementing the initial fanfare, noted as “Sunrise” in Strauss’s composition notes, in the public mind.

The opening of Kubrick’s film, which coupled “Sunrise” fanfare with an actual sunrise and the rise of civilization, further cemented the composition into the public’s mind and, over a century after it was first showcased, it remains as memorable as ever.

Trivia

The First Sunday Newspaper In The World Was?

The Sunday Times                                                     The Observer

The Guardian                                                         The Weekender

Answer: The Observer

Today, it’s tough to imagine a world without a Sunday edition of the paper. The arrival of the thick edition of the paper with a wide range of news, Sunday comics, sales circulars, and, come the holidays, giant glossy Christmas toy advertisements, has been a staple experience for people throughout most of the 20th century and into the present.

Yet once upon a time, the idea of a Sunday paper was entirely unheard of. Papers published the news during the week, large papers might have a Saturday edition, and nobody published on Sundays. Nobody, that is, until W.S. Bourne launched The Observer in December of 1791. Not only was The Observer the very first Sunday edition paper ever printed, it remains the longest running Sunday newspaper since it has been in continual print since its launch date over two centuries ago.

While other newspapers later followed suit, Britain, to this day, maintains a curious distinction with its newspapers. In the United States and many other countries, the Sunday editions of newspapers are simply prepared by the same companies that prepare the daily or weekly papers (the Sunday edition of the New York Times is simply an extra “weekly” edition of the regular Times, for example), but in Britain, there is a long running tradition of Sunday papers being prepared by totally separate companies. The Observer, for example, has existed solely as a Sunday paper all these centuries.

Trivia

The Medical Term For The Numbness You Experience When A Limb “Falls Asleep” Is?

Paresthesia                                                                  Parasynapsia


Necrothesia                                                                Nocturnaquet

Answer: Paresthesia

It happens to the best of us: you spend too long sitting in the same position, perhaps with a foot tucked under your leg at your desk, or asleep in bed with your arm bent at an odd angle beneath your head, and suddenly it feels like the limb in question is being pricked thousands of times. This “pins and needles” effect, as it is colloquially called, or your limb “falling asleep”, is clinically referred to as “paresthesia”.

The word, derived from the Greek roots para(“beside”, i.e. abnormal) and aisthesia (“sensation”), is a broad term used to describe any abnormal sensation in the skin. The most common example is the aforementioned “pins and needles” tingling we experience when we pinch a nerve by sitting in a way that puts pressure on our legs or sleeping/laying in a way that puts pressure on our arms, but is totally harmless. Once your body sends the signal that things are amiss and you rearrange your body to relieve pressure on the nerve, everything returns to normal shortly thereafter (once we’ve endured, of course, the “pins and needles” effect).

Less common forms of paresthesia include a burning sensation on a person’s skin and, in extreme and unpleasant cases, “formication”, the sensation that insects are crawling under your skin. For most people, however, the experience is limited to the “pins and needles” variety, and it is very transient.

If, however, you find yourself experiencing any form of paresthesia without a clear physical trigger (such as sitting cross legged for a long time or sleeping with your arm under your head), it would be wise to seek medical attention. Common causes of paresthesia not triggered by physical pressure on the nerves include disorders which cause poor circulation (such as peripheral vascular disease), vitamin deficiency and malnutrition, various forms of poisoning (such as mercury and lidocaine poisoning), hyper and hypoglycemia, and hypothyroidism, among other medical problems.

Trivia

Which U.S. State Has The Largest Amount Of Land Set Aside For Native Americans?

Minnesota                                                                           California

Idaho                                                                                      Arizona

Answer: Arizona

No U.S. state has more land set aside for Native American tribes than the state of Arizona. The state has 21 individual reservations, established as early as 1859 (the Gila River Indian Community created for the Pima and Maricopa tribes) to as late as 1984 (the Zuni Heaven Reservation, created for the Zuni tribe).

All told, over a quarter of the land in the state, 27.1 percent, is federally protected reservation land, with several of the numerous reservations overlapping slightly into the neighboring states of California, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico.

Not only does Arizona have the most reserved land, but it also contains the largest single reservation in the United States, the Navajo Nation reserve. The reserve, established in 1868 and found in the northeast corner of the state and extending slightly into New Mexico and Utah, covers 27,413 square miles and has a population of 173,667 people.

Trivia

In The Song Bohemian Rhapsody, “Scaramouche” Is A?

Clown                                                                                 Musician

Politician                                                                            God

Answer: Clown

Queen’s iconic masterpiece “Bohemian Rhapsody”, composed by lead singer Freddie Mercury and released in the autumn of 1975, is just shy of six minutes long but has several distinct musical segments. The song starts with an intro, moves into a ballad, shifts to an operatic passage, then to a hard rock riff, and finally shifts the tempo down to a sad and reflective coda (a musical passage that brings the piece to an end, often called an “outro”).

Of all the passages in the song, the operatic passage is perhaps the most enigmatic when compared to the ballad and rock sections since it includes numerous references that aren’t well known among modern listeners. At the beginning of the energetic operatic passage, for example, Mercury belt outs (soon to be joined by the rest of the band) “I see a little silhouetto of a man / Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?”

While we’ll leave extensive interpretation of the complex lyrics up to you, we can provide a little additional information that may make your next listen of the song more interesting. Scaramouche isn’t just a silly name, but the name of a specific stock clown character found in “commedia dell’arte”, an early form of professional theater found in Italy starting back in the 16th century. The fandango, for the curious, is a high-energy flamenco dance, usually performed in triple meter.

Though Scaramouche’s character has evolved over the centuries of theater, as a general rule, he is a boastful fool who is quite skilled at getting himself out of trouble—perhaps, since the narrator in the song begins the first verse by lamenting that he’s killed a man, so he could use a little of that get-out-of-trouble magic. The fandango, while literally a dance, is also used colloquially in countries where it is popular (such as Spain and Portugal), due to the intensity of the dance, to also mean “a quarrel”, “a big fuss”, or a “brilliant exploit”. The kind of brilliant exploit, perhaps, that gets one out of a murder charge.

Trivia

The Most Expensive Typo In History Was Created By A?

Japanese Stock Trader                                         NASA Programmer

Auctioneer's Assistant                        German Automotive Engineer

Answer: NASA Programmer

When it comes to typos, there’s no shortage of costly examples in history. Sometimes it takes the form of errors in advertising. A car dealership in New Mexico once sent out scratch-off tickets to 50,000 potential customers where one of them should have won a thousand dollars. Instead, every ticket was, erroneously, a thousand dollar winner (for a grand total of 50 million dollars)—the dealership cleaned up the mess by issuing a total of 250,000 dollars worth of prize money to all the ticket holders. Other times, there are bookkeeping errors. An extra letter entered into New York City’s accounting software cost the city 1.4 million dollars one year when it doubled the Department of Education’s transportation budget.

If you really want to hit the grand slam though, that’s all chump change compared to the power wielded by NASA programmers. When it comes to the space race and the continued exploration of the final frontier, the stakes are high, the rockets are huge, and the explosions that result from errors are as costly as they are enormous.

When it comes to the most costly of these typo errors (in a strictly dollar-for-dollar sense and, respectfully, leaving the cost of human lives lost in the pursuit of space travel out of the equation), there’s no error that can hold a candle to the single typo that brought down the Mariner 1 launch, a missing “hyphen” in the onboard guidance system software.

Mere moments after launching a hulking Atlas LV-3 Agena-B rocket packed with fuel, it began responding erratically to guidance system commands from Ground Control. Shortly thereafter, the rocket experienced a software-based guidance system failure. At that point, only a few minutes after launch, the rocket was flying out of control at the mercy of physics and fate. With the rocket off course and out of control, the standing Range Safety Officer made the very expensive but necessary call to issue a self destruct command to the rocket over the Atlantic Ocean. Thankfully, it was a probe launch and not a manned launch; the losses were merely time, money, and equipment.

How expensive was the catastrophic failure of the Mariner 1 launch? In 1962 dollars, the cost of the lost mission was 18.5 million dollars. Adjusted for inflation to today’s dollar, that put the cost of the failure at roughly 149 million dollars. While not the most expensive failure in the history of scientific and engineering endeavors by any measure, it’s certainly the most expensive one caused by a single typo.

Trivia

According To The USDA, A Sandwich Is Defined By The Presence Of?

Meat                                                                                    Seasoning

Condiments                                                Gluten-Containing Bread

Answer: Meat

In the broadest sense, a sandwich is simply two slices of bread with just about anything edible in between them. Peanut butter and jelly, ham and cheese, even sliced vegetables with some sort of condiment; all of these things would be seen as sandwiches in the vernacular sense.

With that in mind, it might be, initially at least, a bit surprising to find out that the United States Department of Agriculture has a significantly stricter definition. If you want your product to qualify as a sandwich by their book (and it’s literally by the Food Standards and Labeling Policy Book), then a closed-face sandwich must contain at least 35 percent cooked meat and no more than 50 percent bread; an open-faced sandwich must contain at least 50 percent cooked meat.

The reason there are no rules regarding things like cheese, types of seasoning, or any talk of sandwiches other than the meat-packed variety isn’t because the USDA has a vendetta against the humble grilled cheese sandwich or considers a kale and pesto sandwich to be un-American. The reason behind the USDA’s definition lies in their mission in food labeling. The USDA is only responsible for the labeling of meat, poultry, and egg products, and their Labeling Policy Book reflects that—there’s no need to define the terms for items you’re not in charge of labeling.

So who is in charge of regulating terms like “grilled cheese” to ensure that what you get is cheese and not a waxy substitute scraped off a factory floor? That would be the Food and Drug Administration—see Title 21, Chapter I, Subchapter B, Part 133 for details on what makes cheese, well, cheese in the eyes of the law. There are 12 sections alone devoted to pasteurized cheese, so rest easy knowing that they’ve hammered out all the finer points of what constitutes cheese of all sorts.

Trivia

A Character In Serialized Fiction Who Meets Or Exceeds The Popularity Of The Main Character Is Called A?

Breakout                                                                        Show Stealer

Ladder Climber                                                               Spot Lighter

Answer: Breakout

Every once in a while, there’s a character in a work of fiction that becomes the darling of fans, “breaking out” of their original role as a minor player. Some of these breakouts go on to star in their own works while other breakouts remain where they originated, simply becoming focal points of the series.

There are notable examples of this phenomenon in film, animation, television, and even video games. Although it’s hard to believe it now, the role of Captain Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise, was originally intended to be a supporting role. Depp’s over-the-top portrayal was a fan favorite, however, and it’s impossible to imagine the films without him. The popular animated series South Park has also had its fair share of breakout characters too, most notably those of Randy Marsh and Butters—both were very minor characters until fan adoration and attention pushed them into the limelight.

Perhaps one of the highest profile breakout characters of the late 20th century, however, is that of Elmo. Originally a minor character on the PBS production Sesame Street, Elmo’s meteoric rise in popularity with young fans during the 1990s led to his character getting a distinct segment on the show called Elmo’s World along with huge success as a major marketing icon for the franchise.

Trivia

Throughout The Northeastern U.S., Sunrooms Are Commonly Referred To As?

Arizona Rooms                                                           Florida Rooms

Solarium's                                                                Covered Porches

Answer: Florida Rooms

If you’re a west coast transplant now living in the northeast and northeastern midwest, you may be a bit confused to hear people talking about the “Florida rooms” in their homes. What people in the region call a “Florida room” is what people in other regions might call a sunroom, solarium, or, in some cases, a three-seasons room. Florida rooms are rooms within or adjoining a home that are designed to allow a lot of sunlight and fresh air into the home, and may be weatherized to the point that they can be used all year long or left unheated and only used in the warmer months.

Why “Florida room” instead of the more widely used “sunroom”? There is a long history of people in the northeastern U.S. vacationing in sunny Florida to escape the chill of the winter (and, in fact, some of those “snow birds” establish a permanent residence in their old age to permanently avoid the cold). It was only natural that when the northerners returned north and tried to recapture some of that near-equatorial sun and brightness, they would refer to the room in which they did so as a Florida room.

Curiously, Florida rooms aren’t the only spaces in homes to bear the name of a state. In Arizona and the surrounding arid regions, you’ll find “Arizona rooms”, which are screened in and covered porches designed to let air flow freely while avoiding the searing desert sun and insects. Frankly, we’d like to see the etymological trend continue with each state getting its own type of room. Perhaps “Colorado rooms” could be a variation of the sunroom with large A-frame windows designed to help you take in views of the Rocky Mountains, and “Alaska Rooms” could be super-insulated with glass roofs to help you cozily enjoy the Northern lights.

Trivia

A Common Theme In Low-Budget Animation Is Characters With?

Tri-Coloration                                                                          Collars

Three Finger Hands                                                          Static Eyes

Answer: Collars

If you dip back into the archives of 20th century animation, you may quickly notice a trend that was, perhaps, lost on you as a child. The vast majority of cartoon characters in your run-of-the-mill daily animation shorts have some sort of neck adornment, be it a collar of some sort, a necklace, a tie, or anything of similar size and composition.

In the image seen here, for example, showing Ranger Smith, Yogi Bear, Cindy Bear, and Boo-Boo Bear, from the very popular Yogi Bear animation franchise, you’ll notice that all four of them (including Yogi Bear who, inexplicably, is wearing a shirt collar and tie with no shirt) have a neck adornment of some sort.

The reason for this has nothing to do with 20th century fashion sensibilities and everything to do with budget animation practices. High end animation, like that seen in Walt Disney feature films, involves a total redraw of every character and moving object in every frame of every scene. While the end result is superior, it’s also incredibly time consuming and expensive.

To cut down on expenses for lower budget productions, animators would use a simple trick: separating the body from the head with some sort of adornment to break the two up. In that way, you could avoid redrawing Yogi Bear’s body if he wasn’t moving and only redraw his head, from the collar line up, if he was talking or making a facial expression. By doing so, animators saved hundreds of hours worth of additional work and were able to produce television cartoon shorts at a rapid enough pace to meet production deadlines.

Trivia

When A TV Character Vanishes From A Series Without Mention, They’ve Fallen Victim To?

A Winslow Wash                                                     Death By Retcon

Chuck Cunningham Syndrome                                   Unpersonhood

Answer: Chuck Cunningham Syndrome

There are many reasons for a character to leave a show, and quite a few ways for showrunners to work that character out of the story in a way that maintains a sort of plausibility. Sometimes, if an actress is pregnant in real life, for example, she may go missing in the show for a period of time. When Gillian Anderson, best known for her role as Agent Scully on the X-Files, was pregnant during filming, she was abducted and MIA until the pregnancy was over. Other times, actors leave because of conflicts with the rest of the cast, or schedule conflicts with the filming of the show itself. In such cases, the character is, depending on the nature of the show, killed off, put on a bus (moved away), or replaced with a new actor.

In the worst case scenario, because it provides absolutely no closure at all to viewers, a character may fall victim to what’s called Chuck Cunningham Syndrome. The term is named after the older brother of Happy Days character Richie Cunningham. Chuck was on the show for two seasons and then, after heading upstairs in a particular episode, never mentioned again in the show. A similar fate befell the youngest Winslow daughter Judy on the show Family Matters—she also went upstairs one episode and simply never returned. Clearly, sitcom staircases are dangerous territory for second string characters.

Given how often, over the years, a character vanishes from a TV show with no good explanation, why name the trope after Chuck Cunningham? Not only does the age of Happy Days help (in that it was an early example of the phenomenon), but viewers got a peculiar reminder of Chuck’s disappearance nearly every year, which further cemented how bizarre it was that he was gone but never mentioned. The episode Chuck vanishes in was the Christmas special episode from the end of the second season that was particularly popular because it involved the Fonz spending the holidays with the Cunningham family. Because the episode was so popular, ABC re-ran the episode around Christmas for years and years after the initial air date. Given that Happy Days was on the air for nine years after Chuck Cunningham vanished from the show, yet for many years afterwards viewers got a Christmas reminder that he was gone, his absence became a running joke and a shoo-in for the name of this trope.

Trivia

The First And Only Human Deaths In Space Were The Crew Of The?

Space Shuttle Challenger                                                     Gemini 8

Soyuz 11                                                       Space Shuttle Columbia

Answer: Soyuz 11

Since the start of the space race in the mid-20th century, there have been more than a few space flight-related fatalities. The nature of the fatalities over the previous decades starkly highlight the riskiest element of space travel: going to space and returning. Nearly every astronaut death has occurred either on the launch pad (as with Apollo 1 in 1967), during ascent (as with the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986), or during re-entry (as with the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003). Much like terrestrial flight, the vast majority of space travel-related accidents occur during the lift off and touch down phases of the trip.

The single exception to this pattern is the sole instance of a crew dying in actual space, as opposed to in Earth’s atmosphere: the crew of the Soviet space mission Soyuz 11. In 1971, the crew—comprised of Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev—was killed when an erroneously opened valve depressurized the crew capsule during preparations for re-entry. The men asphyxiated almost immediately and were already dead upon re-entry.

The tragedy led to an extensive redesign of the Soyuz spacecraft so that cosmonauts aboard the vessel could wear pressurized suits in order to avoid any future tragedies caused by a loss of cabin pressure.

Trivia

The Most Covered Beatles Song Of All Time Is?

Eleanor Rigby                                                                   Yesterday

Come Together                                                                  Help!

Answer: Yesterday

The Beatles were such a music powerhouse with such a wide range of popular songs over the ten years they were active, we’ll absolutely forgive you if you vacillated between trivia answers before finally just giving up and making your best guess. Collectively, Beatles songs have been covered hundreds of times and you’ve likely heard more covers, in a diverse range of musical styles at that, over the years than you can even remember.

Popular songs like “Help!”, “With a Little Help from My Friends”, “Hey Jude”, and “Come Together” have all been covered dozens of times over the years, and even less popular songs like “Dig a Pony” and “Misery” have had a cover or two.

Among The Beatles’ total discography, however, no other song has enjoyed the same level of cover popularity as “Yesterday”. Between the song’s release in 1965 and today, the song has been covered over 2,200 times by everyone from Ray Charles to Linkin Park.

What’s particularly interesting about the popularity of the song is that within The Beatles group, the song was controversial. It was written by McCartney (credited to Lennon–McCartney), but the only Beatle to appear in the recording of the song was McCartney. Because the song was so unlike their music at the time, the other Beatles vetoed the release of the song as a single in the UK and there was internal tension among the group and the band managers regarding the song. It was clearly a heavily McCartney-influenced piece, but the managers were terrified of presenting it as a McCartney solo for fear of jinxing the group or presenting the band as beginning to break up. The song was not released as a single in the UK until 1976—six years after the band had broken up.

Trivia

The First Nuclear Merchant Ship Was The?

NS Nautilus                                                               NS Springwater

NS Atomos                                                                    NS Savannah

Answer: NS Savannah

When it comes to nuclear-powered nautical vessels, the bulk of all ships worldwide are, as you would assume, military vessels. Outside of naval use, there are only a handful of nuclear-powered non-military vessels and, currently, the small handful of them in operation are Russian designed and deployed icebreakers intended to help clear and navigate treacherous Arctic waters (including one container ship outfitted as an icebreaker, the Sevmorput).

The first nuclear merchant ship, long since decommissioned, was put into service by the United States way back in the golden age of atomic power. The Nuclear Ship Savannah was a curious hybrid ship that was part merchant cargo ship and part cruise ship, all held together with a giant serving of mid-century faith in the power of the Atomic Age. That giant serving was the brain child of then President Dwight Eisenhower, as part of his “Atoms for Peace” initiative. The NS Savannah was commissioned by the U.S. government to serve as an ambassador ship around the world and was christened by First Lady Mamie Eisenhower at the ship’s launching on July 21, 1959.

The vessel was in service until 1972 and is currently docked in Baltimore, Maryland, reclassified as a museum ship. For any readers interested in Atomic Age designs, we’d strongly encourage stopping by the NS Savannah Association website and checking out the photos and virtual tour of the boat—the interior design of the ship captures the heart of 1950s futurism in an incredible way.

Trivia

A Music Composition Trick Used To Give The Illusion Of An Ever Rising Pitch Is Called A?

Sliderno                                                                           Black Tone

Shepard Tone                                                                  Infinipitch

Answer: Shepard Tone

If you’ve ever been at the cinema and noticed that the musical score for the movie or a sound effect within the movie seems to be perpetually climbing ever higher in scale (even though such a thing would be impossible), you’re likely experiencing an artful application of what is known as a “Shepard tone”.

Named after Roger Shepard, a pioneering cognitive scientist, the Shepard scale is a type of auditory illusion created by combining several tones together. The key to the illusion is that all the tones follow an octave-separated sine wave pattern and that one is a bass tone. When the tones are played in a rising and descending sequence, the combination of the sine wave pattern and the anchoring bass tone creates the auditory illusion that the tones are rising (or falling) indefinitely. When the transition between tones is continuous, it is known as continuous Risset scale or Shepard-Risset glissando.

This effect is used by game designers and movie directors when they wish to create a high sense of tension. In the video game Super Mario 64, for example, the endless staircase in the final castle has a Shepard tone-driven soundtrack that creates a sense of urgency and tension as the player runs up the winding stairs. The Batpod, Batman’s motorcycle in the Dark Knight trilogy, has a Shepard-tone-based sound effect for acceleration (so the Batpod sounds like it is smoothly accelerating instead of shifting gears). The recently released film Dunkirk uses a Shepard tone extensively in the musical score to create a perpetually rising sense of tension in the viewer as the story progresses.

A bit of trivia about an auditory illusion would hardly be complete without examples for the reader (soon to be listener) to enjoy. Here’s an example of the Shepard tone—listening to it, you can hear how it would be the perfect way to create the illusion of something like the aforementioned Batpod or the warp drive of a starship continually accelerating.