DID YOU KNOW …? Did a West Virginia town turn to the Soviet Union for help in getting a new bridge built?

Well, if this ain’t a kick in the head!

Last week, this column – the silliness you’re reading right now – won an award! For the second year in a row, my little exercise in trivia was voted second place in the Lifestyle/Feature Column category in the Georgia Press Association’s annual Better Newspaper Contest.

Apparently, this makes me (gasp) an award-winning columnist!

I didn’t make mention of it last year because it was such a neat, new thing, but now … read on for some award-winning trivia!

Thanks, Georgia Press!

Did you know …

… it was once considered bad luck to bathe during the last week of the year? Pennsylvania Germans in the early 20th Century considered it bad luck to bathe or even change clothes between Christmas and New Year’s Day. (Gross.)

… we know more about the planet Mars than we do about the floors of our oceans? There are a lot of reasons for this, but the biggest one is darkness – light from the Sun does not penetrate far into the ocean water, and the bottoms are in total pitch blackness. (We know more about Mars than we want to know.)

… cartoons have been lying to us for years? I’m specifically talking about the Road Runner series of cartoons, in which the hapless Wile E. Coyote tries – and consistently fails – to catch the speedy bird. Despite the laughs, there’s a strong factual error here – road runners in real life are much slower than coyotes. The average speed of a road runner when it does what it does is about 27 miles per hour, while coyotes can run at speeds up to 42 miles per hour. (Meep meep indeed.)

… how many officially recognized constellations are in the night sky? While there are literally an uncountable number of stars in the universe, the International Astronomical Union officially recognizes 88 constellations. The official list was promulgated in 1922. (I have to get me one of those jobs counting constellations.)

… the most popular sit-down meal ordered in U.S. restaurants is fried chicken? After that comes roast beef, spaghetti, turkey, baked ham, and fried shrimp. Steak and hamburgers are farther down the list, as are fish and other seafood items. (Interesting, since I never order fried chicken at a sit-down restaurant.  But then, I am not average, either.)

… a West Virginia town used Soviet help to get a bridge built? During the mid 1970s, the footbridge connecting the tiny town of Vulcan, West Virginia, with the state of Kentucky across the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River – a single-lane swinging bridge – collapsed. Local leaders tried to get the state to replace the bridge to no avail, until 1977, when the town’s self-appointed “mayor” John Robinette (born 1935), frustrated by the lack of support, turned to the Soviet Union for assistance. Robinette sent two letters to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982) asking for help in replacing the bridge but got no reply; however, New York-based Soviet journalist Iona Andronov (1934-2024) did learn about the letters and traveled to the West Virginia town. The Soviets saw a tailor-made way to embarrass the United States, and promised that if the state or federal governments did not fund a new bridge, the Soviets would. Within an hour of Andronov’s arrival, the West Virginia legislature passed an emergency bill providing $1.3 million for the construction of a new bridge, which was completed in 1980. Robinette christened the bridge with two bottles of Russian vodka. (Comrade, we build bridge if decadent Americans will not.)

… two countries on Earth are doubly landlocked? For a country to be “doubly landlocked,” it has to be landlocked itself, and then surrounded by countries that are also landlocked. (Landlocked, you know, means that a country does not have a sea coast.) Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein are the only two doubly landlocked countries on Earth; you would have to cross two national boundaries to get to a sea coast from either one. (I guess it’s easy to enlist in the navy in either country, then.)

… a video game series has had numerous lawsuits filed against it? Take-Two and Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series of video games has had a stunning total of more than $1 billion in lawsuits filed against it. Some of the reasons for the suits are, shall we say, out there: one suit claims a man was interviewed by the game creators, and then found some of the particulars of his life in the game; another claimed damages because the online version of the game wasn’t available until two weeks after the game itself launched; and actress Lindsey Lohan (born 1986) claimed that the in-game character of Lacey Jonas was based on her. All of the suits were dismissed. Additional trivia note: And then there’s attorney Jack Thompson (born 1951), who has seemingly taken on the entire video game industry in court. Thompson has filed dozens of suits seeking to remove what he considers “violent” video games from the market. Thompson’s tactics got him disbarred in Florida at one point. (And they were worried that the game would teach you how to steal a car!)

… the healthiest place on Earth to live is in Panama? A small valley near the town of Volcán in Panama was named the “Healthiest Place on Earth” in 2018 by International Living magazine. The area, unsurprisingly called Shangri-La Valley, boasts beautiful scenery, a very low cost of living, and a significantly higher life expectancy than anywhere else. (Book me a ticket on the next boat to Panama.) magazine. The area, unsurprisingly called Shangri-La Valley, boasts beautiful scenery, a very low cost of living, and a significantly higher life expectancy than anywhere else. (Book me a ticket on the next boat to Panama.)

Now … you know!