Cleaning out the triviattic

Among the bet-you-can't-read-just-one-entry trivia books compiled since the 1970s by Bruce Felton is What Were They Thinking? Really Bad Ideas Throughout History - you do want to read the Top Ten List of band names that includes Jehovah's Wetness, Accidental Goat Sodomy, Jonestown Punch, and Buster Hymen and the Penetrators, now, don't you? Or the list of "programming ideas no self-respecting broadcast executive would ever admit to", headed by

1. You're In The Picture, possibly the most wretched idea for a TV series ever hatched; TV Guide called it "the biggest disaster since the Johnstown Flood." In this 1961 game show, celebrity guests poked their arms and heads through cutouts in painted backdrops and tried to guess what the scene looked like. The show was panned so mercilessly after it premiered that a second episode never materialized. Instead, host Jackie Gleason spent the entire allotted half-hour the following week apologizing for the fiasco.

Then, via the editors of The People's Almanac, there's the list of

Bruce Felton's 10 Best Oddities

... 4. Most unusual method of abortion: Until the early years of the 20th century, Muslim peasant women in Upper Egypt still believed it was possible to terminate an unwanted pregnancy by lying face down on the railroad tracks and allowing the next scheduled train to pass over them. Conversely, a woman who had difficulty conceiving would lie on her back on the tracks and allow the passing train to impregnate her.

It wasn't only in Egypt that the steam-driven locomotive was considered the embodiment of the male propulsive force. In India years ago, women desirous of impregnation would rush to the tracks as a train approached and as it passed, they would lift their skirts high in the hope of becoming pregnant.

5. Most unusual home run: "Doc" Cutshaw, who played infield for a variety of National League teams in the early years of this century, hit a sizzling ground ball at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field in 1913 that struck the outfield fence and rolled eerily up the fence and into the grandstand for what was then scored as a home run. Some years later, during a game between the New York Yankees and the Washington Senators, Babe Ruth hit a screaming line drive that, according to observers, passed between the legs of Washington pitcher Hod Lisenbee and soared over the center field fence.

6. Most Unusual suicide: In 1971 William G. Hall, of Shrewsbury, England, killed himself by drilling eight holes in his head with an electric power drill.

Not all suicides are so efficient. A woman in Prague, Czechoslovakia, threw herself from a third-floor window after learning that her husband had been unfaithful to her. She landed on her husband, who was entering the building at that moment. He died instantly; she survived.

7. Worst cure: In February, 1685, King Charles II of England died of a stroke, or so his biographers claim. More likely it was the treatment for the stroke that did the monarch in.

On the morning of the stroke, 12 physicians were summoned to the royal chambers, and they immediately embarked upon an exhaustive treatment aimed at purging all poisons from the king's body. First they relieved him of nearly a quart of blood; they also fed him massive doses of emetics to make him vomit up the toxins, along with everything else, in his stomach; and they purged his intestines with a jolting 14-ingredient enema. The king's sickness, however, persisted.

Over the next few days, the doctors shaved Charles's scalp and singed it with burning irons, filled his nose with sneezing powder, blanketed him with hot plasters which they then tore off (much to his displeasure), and administered another series of potent enemas, one of which bore fruit, so to speak, 16 times in one night. Still no improvement. Charles complained of a sore throat and various body aches and suffered cold sweats, for which the medics daubed his feet with an unlikely emollient of resin and pigeon feces.

The treatment produced no results, and Charles sank quickly. Frantically, the doctors subjected the ailing king to bleedings, holes drilled in his skull, and repeated doses of purgatives, cathartics, and rockshivering enemas in a last-ditch effort to scour his insides clean as a hound's tooth. On the fifth day, apologizing for taking so long to die, Charles breathed his last.

8. Worst position for sexual intercourse: Sexual intercourse between consenting anglerfish is limited to only one position--but what a position it is! The male anglerfish, considerably smaller and weaker than the female, sinks his teeth into his mate just above her eyes and hangs on for dear life--forever. Meanwhile, his body atrophies from disuse, and by the time he dies, he has been reduced to a set of disembodied, orally located sex organs. His fins, body, and lower organs have withered away long before. According to MIT biologist Robert Bener, "He's essentially a male wart on the female's forehead."

9. Best proof that winning isn't everything--it's the only thing: The ancient Incas played a primitive form of basketball, the object of which was to shoot a solid rubber ball through a stone ring placed high on a wall. The winner was traditionally awarded the clothes of all spectators present. The loser was put to death.

10. Most unusual blitzkrieg: During the early days of W.W.II, a psychologist on the staff of the British secret service observed that despite Adolf Hitler's much-bandied-about deviant sexual predilections, he seemed unwilling to admit to himself that pornography was rampant throughout Germany. Thus, the psychologist theorized, if a heady dose of Aryan lewdness were to be pushed in Hitler's face, the dictator would suffer a mental breakdown and the leaderless Germans would lose the war. He suggested that a squadron of RAF fliers bomb Hitler's home with several tons of the ripest pornographic art and literature available in Germany.

The plan might have worked but for the reluctance of the RAF fliers. Ordinarily willing to carry out the orders of their government without question, the fliers refused to risk life and limb carpet-bombing Adolf Hitler with photographs of women copulating with Shetland ponies. The war, they said, would have to be won through more orthodox means.

Then, from 1975, there was the Bruce Felton trivia book that started me down this delightfully-twisted road when at a summer sidewalk sale in Marquette, Michigan I found a probably-illegal cover-stripped copy of the paperback reprint of Felton and Fowler's Best, Worst and Most Unusual, whose hundreds of other nuggets, some of them chicken, include these from its entry on ... Best Chicken:


Read just one entry, I dare you, from the Google Books edition of both volumes - Felton and Fowler's Best, Worst and Most Unusual (1975) and Felton and Fowler's More Best, Worst and Most Unusual (1976)

... Colonel Sanders now spends most of his time at the hotel and restaurant he operates in Shelbyville, Kentucky. In the Louisville-Lexington area he is an honored citizen, and on slow news days the local papers often send a reporter around to solicit his views on world affairs. Once a reporter asked him what he thought about hippies. The colonel smiled benevolently and said, ‘They eats chicken, don’t they?’

...The gravy has been the Colonel’s pet peeve ever since he sold his recipe and franchises to a McDonald’s-like supercorporation. After sampling the gravy that the corporation substituted for his own, the colonel sputtered, ‘How do you serve this goddamned slop? With a straw?’ A corporation executive interviewed by The New Yorker was apologetic. ‘Let’s face it,’ he explained, ‘the Colonel’s gravy is fantastic, but you have to be a Rhodes scholar to cook it.’

More finger-lickin' fun with the extra-crispy Colonel via the Guardian last month:


The original celebrity chef ... a giant KFC logo of Colonel Sanders in the Nevada desert, in the US, which is visible from space. Photograph: Rex Features

KFC dishes up Colonel Sanders' autobiography for free

Kentucky Fried Chicken to make recipe-laden autobiography, written in 1966 but discovered last November, available for free download via Facebook

... It was 1930, and Sanders was 40, when he began cooking for visitors to his service station in Corbin, Kentucky. By 1935 he was made a Kentucky Colonel by the state's governor for contributions to the state's cuisine, and he perfected his "secret blend of 11 herbs and spices" over the next decade. In 1955 he began developing his chicken franchising business, and in 1964 he sold his interest in the company – which then numbered some 600 KFC franchises in the US and Canada – for $2m. Sanders travelled 250,000 miles a year to visit KFC restaurants around the world until he died in 1980 at the age of 90.

... A sneak preview of his autobiography is already provided on Facebook, where hungry fans are eagerly anticipating its arrival. "I've read hundreds of cookbooks. Most of those cookbooks don't even tell you how to get a steak ready, how to bake biscuits or an apple pie. The food I've liked in my time is American country cookin'," wrote the Colonel. "But in this book I'm going to try something new. I'm going to tell how I grew up and at the same time tell you how you can have the kind of food I grew up on. When I tell you how to get food ready for eating, I won't use just a cold mathematical formula to help you put it on your table. I'll be telling you how to prepare it like a man who's talking to you right over your kitchen stove. My list of American country food you won't find in fancy cookbooks."



A World of Curiosities: Surprising, Interesting, and Downright Unbelievable Facts from Every Nation on the Planet

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe: everything you never knew you never knew about every country on Earth.

A scientist by training and an explorer by passion, Dr. John Oldale has logged half a million miles visiting more than ninety nations. Now, he celebrates our weird and wonderful world in a cornucopia of fascinating facts brought vividly to life through the unexpected stories behind them. Touching on history, travel, politics, natural history and more, he paints a unique portrait of each country from the mightiest to the most miniscule. You won't find the following in your average travel guide:

· Why is kissing on trains banned in France?

· In what country are litigants expected to present their case at court in the form of a poem?

· Which war did women win in 1929 just by sitting down?

· If Panama hats aren’t from Panama, where are they from?

· Who eat fresh camel dung as a cure for dysentery (and why does it work)?

· Why were US disk jockeys once told they could play birthday requests on any day except the one requested?

· Which modern dictator banned old age, libraries and gold teeth, and was later replaced by his dentist?

· And 2,000 more funny, trivial, poignant, and telling facts

A must for active and armchair globe-trotters alike, A World of Curiosities will engross anyone who is at all curious about the world beyond their door. Explore and enjoy.

About the Author

John Oldale speaks five languages, has outrun knife-wielding brigands (twice), and has been rescued from a sub-Antarctic beach. He lives with his family in a former village pub in Hampshire, England.

“Jam-packed with facts of every description from the horrific to the hilarious. My life has been richer since I read that, in order to cram more showings into the day, one cinema in South Korea made The Sound of Music shorter by cutting out the songs.”

—Caroline Taggart, author of I Used to Know That

That bit about the Korean theater also appeared, be it noted, almost forty years ago in Felton and Fowler's Best, Worst and Most Unusual, from which, a few more entries:

Most Unusual Dictionary: Lexicographers in Wales have been working on a dictionary of the Welsh tongue for over fifty years. As of 1970 they are up the letter H.

Most Unusual Hijacking: It sounds almost too pat to be true, but police in Santa Fe, Argentina, arrested a man who bourded a city bus, drew a revolver, and demanded to be driven to Cuba.

Most Unusual Biblical Essay: In 1663 a noted orientalist presented to the French Academy a paper in which he concluded that Adam was 140 feet tall, Noah 50 feet tall, Abraham 40 feet tall, and Moses, 25.

Benjamin Phelan reviews Island Practice: Cobblestone Rash, Underground Tom, and Other Adventures of a Nantucket Doctor by NYT reporter Pam Belluck, "the study of a 67-year-old Nantucket doctor and his anachronistic approach to medicine":

[One chapter] is a clearinghouse for anecdotes about his surgical daring: Once, a nurse jiggled her underarm flab and asked Lepore if he could cut it off. “I can do that,” he said, though he’d never performed the operation, a brachioplasty. The nurse was pleased with the results but found it necessary to request that her flesh not be “jerkied and given to Ajax,” Lepore’s red-tailed hawk.

This quarantining of Lepore’s quirks into discrete sections means some of the major rhythms governing his life don’t emerge until late in the book. He’s depicted as having an appealingly unsentimental attitude toward injury and death — he tells a patient with a ballpoint pen stuck in his urethra that he’s “a dumb bastard” — so it’s surprising to learn, in the penultimate chapter, that a constant stream of foster children and other “strays” flows through Lepore’s house ...

From the description at Amazon.com of the missionary memoir Through Gates of Splendor: The Event That Shocked the World, Changed a People, and Inspired a Nation by Elisabeth Elliot:

In 1956, five young men, including Elliot's husband, Jim, traveled into the jungles of Ecuador to establish communication with the fierce Huaorani Tribe, a people whose only previous response to the outside world has been to attack all strangers.

The dead men (SPOILER ALERT) couldn't say they hadn't been warned - or say much of anything, now you mention it ...



This is "The ABC of Anger". It was in the section for older pre-readers, ie 5-7. That's a koala bear, nattily dressed, caressing a little girl. His face is, I feel, chillingly disassociated from the penitent child. Justice will be served. Think about this cool koala sociopath next time you are tempted to be rude to a French waiter

Terrifying French children's books - in pictures

When Jenny Colgan moved to France, she was so alarmed by the children's books that she decided to blog the scariest.

"I don't know why so many French children's books are so bafflingly, needlessly frightening. Before moving there, we lived in the Netherlands; they had the same rabbits with ethnically varied chums and dinosaur mummies tucking up dinosaur babies as we do in the UK. I also can't envisage the publishing meeting in which someone says 'Hey! I've got this great kids' book where a girl puts her head in a plastic bag!' ('La Tête dans le Sac') and everyone thinks what a fine idea, but - tant pis. Here are a few examples (more on my blog), all courtesy of the Médiathèque d'Antibes, which is shut on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays, Thursday and Friday mornings, and 12-2pm Wednesday and Saturday, but when open has the most helpful (and rested) librarians to be found anywhere."



It's a huge lady who sucks children out of their upper storey windows with her umbrella then spirits them away under her skirts. Sweet dreams, darling!



Death visits a little girl. He kills her



Well, I'm sure you must think, this must be a kind of arty book for adults that's been misfiled. It is not. Every page has one line of simple prose on it, and it was filed in ages 7-9. About the day papa killed his old aunt. A true story



"The Thief of Lily". YOIKS. She gets away by whacking him with a mop and her entire family think it is HILARIOUS