Did Germany design a ‘super tank’ during World War II?

The annual renewal of the world is less than three weeks away!  Yes, Spring will spring, and the winter doldrums will fade away with time.

Warmer weather, longer days, and a growth in all things good and wonderful come to us with the start of spring.

For all of that, my small contribution is herewith attached – yes, the trivia column for the week.  I hope you enjoy it!

Did you know …

… lemmings do not regularly commit suicide? The idea only became popular when producers of a 1958 Disney documentary, White Wilderness, herded hundreds of lemmings and basically forced them to jump off a cliff to their deaths, just for the sake of the movie. The so-called “ritual suicide” has never been seen in nature before or since regarding the cute little Arctic rodents. The actual instances of them going over such cliffs happens as a result of migration numbers – there are simply too many lemmings trying to get over a certain area, and some of them fall off. But they do not commit “ritual suicide.”  (Makes you wonder what people really mean when they call you a lemming.)

… Babe Ruth finished his baseball career as a coach? Ruth (1895-1948) played for the Boston Red Sox from 1914 to 1919, New York Yankees from 1920 to 1934, and he finished his career with the Boston Braves in 1935. In 1938, Ruth became first-base coach for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and he spent the year basically as a gate attraction – team owners felt having Ruth on the field, even as just a coach, would bring in fans.  He left the team after Leo Durocher (1905-1991) was hired as manager at season’s end – Ruth and Durocher did not get along well with each other. Ruth never had a job in professional baseball afterward.  (Which is a shame, if you ask me.)

… those cloudlike trails that appear in the sky behind high-flying aircraft are really harmless? Despite what your favorite conspiracy theorist might believe, those trails are just water vapor. As jet aircraft burn fuel, they produce water vapor, which goes out the jet engine’s exhaust. At high altitudes, the vapor almost immediately condenses and freezes, forming the long white streaks known as contrails.  (Another theory goes down the tubes.)

… a popular snack food was invented by a janitor? Richard Montañez (born 1958) was working as a janitor at a Frito-Lay plant in California in 1976 when he put some chili powder on rejected Cheetos™ snacks. He managed to pitch the idea to the company’s CEO, and the popular Flamin’ Hot Cheetos™ was born. Montañez is now a successful executive with Frito-Lay’s parent company and does motivational speaking tours. The 2023 movie Flamin’ Hot is about his amazing life. (Hot stuff!)

… the founder of a religion fought a long naval battle with an enemy that did not exist? Science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986) was an officer in the U.S. Navy from 1941 to 1946. During World War II, Hubbard reportedly fought a 68-hour naval battle with two Japanese submarines that didn’t exist. Hubbard had misread the sonar equipment on his ship, the USS PC-815, during the ship’s initial shakedown cruise. He believed there were submarines in an area where there were none, and was ultimately ordered to bring the ship back to port. About four years after his release from the Navy, Hubbard wrote Dianetics, the book that indirectly led to the founding of his Church of Scientology.  Additional trivia note: There is a story, possibly apocryphal, in which Hubbard created Scientology following a conversation with fellow author Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988). Hubbard, whose books were not selling well, confided such to Heinlein, and the two made a bet about Hubbard creating a religion, or perhaps both of them doing so. Heinlein’s effort turned out to be his classic novel Stranger in a Strange Land.

… during World War II, Germany planned a super tank? Designs still exist for the Landkreuzer P. 1000, a “super tank” which would have a crew of 40 men. The tank would have weighed 1,000 tons and would have been 115 feet long, 46 feet wide, and 36 feet high. The issues with the tank, had it actually ever been built, would have been considerable: its weight would have destroyed any roads on which it traveled, and it could not have crossed any bridges without collapsing them. It size would have made it vulnerable to aircraft bombardment, and there would have been no way to get it to any potential battlefield except for driving it there – railroad cars were not large enough to carry it. Despite the design drawbacks, the plans were approved by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) in 1942, but the project was cancelled a few months later by Armaments Minister Albert Speer (1905-1981) due to the massive consumption of supplies that would have been needed.  (Besides, what would have been the point?)

… the modern term for a funeral director was developed due to a public relations campaign? In 1895, the funeral industry placed a call for ideas for a new, more customer-friendly name for the person then known most well as an undertaker. The ideas, called for in the trade publication Embalmers’ Monthly, asked funeral directors to come up with something that sounded better than “undertaker.” The winning entry was “mortician,” built from the Latin root word for death, mort, with an ending denoting a person skilled in a particular field. It took several decades, but finally the word undertaker slipped out of popular use, replaced by the contest winner.

… the collective word for a group of ravens is an unkindness? (Fitting, wouldn’t you say?)

Now … you know!