15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, May 24, 2025
The Black Mirror episode “Beyond the Sea” features astronauts in a space station who are able to remotely connect to android bodies located on Earth. Sometimes, to do maintenance on the station exterior, one of the guys will put on a suit and pop outside. That part about maintenance is just as much science-fiction as the part about beaming their consciousness wirelessly.
In reality, astronauts do perform extravehicular activity, but they don’t just go out immediately. They first have to spend hours in a special low-pressure chamber to adapt their body to the low pressure of the spacewalk. Otherwise, they get decompression sickness and may die.
If you’re currently killing hours waiting for your blood to adapt to space, we suggest you sit back and read about some facts. Today, we have several facts connected to fish and several facts about murder.
Talk Singing
In 1995, a record label released a single that consisted of a nine-minute interview with Oasis, containing no music. The recording, full of profanity, went to number 52 on the British charts.
The Two Montys
Montgomery, Alabama, is located in a county also named Montgomery. However, the city is named for Richard Montgomery, a general from the Revolutionary War, while the county is named for Lemuel P. Montgomery, a major who wasn’t born till Richard Montgomery died.
Casino Ban
The MLB used to come down hard against gambling. The league officially banned Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle from baseball for shaking hands with fans in casinos. The men probably didn’t mind the bans much, as both had already retired.
Getting Their Rocks Off
At the start of the 1990s, Broward Country wanted to run a sting where officers sold crack cocaine, but they didn’t have enough crack on hand from seizures. So, the sheriff’s office got into the business of manufacturing crack themselves.
Devil and Deep Blue Sea
This year, for the first time, humans observed a black seadevil anglerfish approach the surface of the ocean.
Condrik Tenerife
Don’t Think You Know What This
An interviewer asked Tate McRae and her producer about some difficult-to-discern lyrics at the start of the song “Sports Car.” Sadly, neither the singer nor the producer knew what the lyrics were.
Plan B
Tennessee politician Byron Looper changed his middle name to “Low Tax” to raise his chance of winning elections. He also tried to raise his chance of winning by murdering his opponent. Neither tactic worked.
Down With That Thing
In 1981, a polio survivor named Ian Dury recorded the song “Spasticus Autisticus,” responding to the International Year of Disabled Persons. Specifically, the song protested the International Year of Disabled Persons, because Dury thought it was a stupid idea.
Fishy Excuse
Snowpiercer has a scene in which characters gut fish, and some viewers are unsure of the significance of this. Harvey Weinstein disliked the scene and ordered it removed, but director Bong Joon-ho said it was a tribute to his father, a fisherman. His father wasn’t a fisherman. He was just lying.
Voice Mail
In the 1960s, you could buy “Mail Call,” a product that consisted of a pair of tape recorders, so you could send recorded voice messages by post. Considering that telephones had existed for almost a century, few saw any point in this.
Smith Corona
Breaking Their Silence
The famous version of “The Sound of Silence” isn’t the original one. Simon and Garfunkel originally released the song without drums or an electric guitar. When that failed, a producer created a rock remix of the folk song, without the singers’ permission, resulting in the single that we all know.
Walter Blanco
Breaking Bad was remade in Colombia under the name Metástasis. Besides how closely the remake reproduced the original, shot-for-shot, the most startling part of this is how much better a name Metástasis is.
All in the Family
People were disgusted in 2018 when Steven Pladl murdered his 20-year-old bride, Katie. They were even more disgusted when they learned that in addition to being Steven’s wife, Katie had been his daughter.
Call of the Void
In some bodies of water, fish feed primarily on insects that fall into the water and drown. These insects don’t naturally have a good reason to fall there. But parasites called horsehair worms infect them and take over their brains, telling them to jump in and die.
Dude Had Balls
Greg LeMond had a bit of disadvantage going into the 1989 Tour de France. He had recently been shot hunting and still had 30 pellets in his body. He still won.
