Trivia

Time for another trivial post--thanks to mental_floss.

--One of Richard Nixon's quirks was building a fire in the Lincoln sitting room in July--then turning up the air conditioning to make it bearable!

--Warren Harding played poker at least twice a week and one time gambled away an entire set of White House china.

--When hooked up to an electroencephalograph machine (a machine that records the electrical activity of the brain) Jell-O demonstrates movement virtually identical to a healthy adult man or woman.

--There is a family in Norway that has three children born on February 29--they are NOT triplets, but were born three Leap Year's in a row.

--"The Last Works of Henri Matisse" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art was in its 47th day before a woman noticed one painting was hung upside down. When she mentioned this fact to a museum worker, she wasn't taken seriously. The painting was hung correctly only after the woman brought the story to The New York Times and it was published.

--87 days after New Coke was launched, the Coca Cola Company re-issued the original Coke as "Coca Cola Classic" in order to appease angry fans. This news was considered so important to the American people that Peter Jennings of ABC news interrupted "General Hospital" to break the story on national TV.

--The word 'lucky' was rarely used in "I Love Lucy" scripts, because the show's sponsor, Phillip Morris, was in competition with Lucky Strike cigarettes at the time.

--If you start counting at one and spell out the numbers as you go, you won't use the letter 'A' until you reach 1,000.

--Great Roles Actors Regrettably Turned Down:

--Cary Grant turned down the role of James Bond in Dr. No.
--Will Smith turned down the role of Neo in the Matrix.
--Sean Connery turned down the role of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
--Steve McQueen turned down Sundance in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, "Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection, and Captain Benjamin Willard in Apocolypse Now.

--The 2003 world Scrabble champion was from Thailand and didn't speak English fluently.

--The 1984 film Red Dawn was the first motion picture rated PG-13.

--Silver has been the most popular exterior color for US cars since 2000.

--Swiss steak, English muffins, and Russian dressing were all invented in the US.

--In 2006, Michigan became the eighth US state to have a population exceeding 10 million.