Are there really religions dedicated to UFOs?

Something special this way comes! A new year, 2021, is with us. The horrid 2020 is now consigned to the dustbin of history, where it should be.

This is not to say that some of the holdovers of 2020 won’t be with us awhile longer. I knew this virus wasn’t going away that quickly, though there were many who said, “Just wait until after the election.”

If only it were that easy.

But it’s time for our New Year’s resolutions, and you already know what my one resolution is … the one I promptly break.

I resolve not to make any resolutions.

With that out of the way, let’s get 2021 started off with some freshly minted trivia, polished up just for you!

Did you know …

… babies start dreaming before they are born? (Granted, I have no idea what they would dream about, but it’s interesting to know nevertheless.)

… the average life span of a hermit crab is 75 years? (Staying alone has its advantages.)

… you may be a sufferer of arachibutyrophobia? In case you’re wondering, arachibutyrophobia means the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. (I’ve often wondered why they can’t just call such things by the meaning, instead of the silly name. I still wonder.)

… more than one Mona Lisa exists? X-rays of the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) have revealed three completely different paintings of the same subject. The person who sat for the portrait was Lisa del Giocondo (1479-1542). (Doing it until you get it right—one of da Vinci’s lesser-known qualities, it seems.)

… there are religions dedicated to UFOs? Besides the Church of Scientology, the best known is probably the Aetherius Society, founded in 1954 by George King (1919-1997) in the United Kingdom. King claimed to have received “commands” from “interplanetary sources” to become “the voice of Interplanetary Parliament.” If Aetherius is the best known, the wackiest has to be the Church of the Sub-Genius, founded in 1979 in Dallas, Texas, by Douglass St. Clair Smith (born 1953) under the pseudonym “Ivan Stang.” While Aetherius is serious, the Church of the Sub-Genius is basically a religious parody, using UFOs and a mythical prophetic salesman named J.R. “Bob” Dobbs—actually a piece of clip art showing a man smoking a pipe—to poke good-natured fun at organized religion, the world, and anything else that comes to their minds. (Arrive, Space Brothers, and show us the way! The way to what, I don’t know, but we need to see the way!)

… a movie star almost caused part of the undergarment industry to go out of business? In 1934, the classic motion picture, “It Happened One Night,” premiered. One of the stars of the movie, Clark Gable (1901-1960), appeared in a scene without an undershirt. Wives all over the country suddenly stopped buying undershirts for their husbands, and the undershirt industry went through a serious downturn throughout the rest of the decade. (It didn’t take long for the wives to figure out that lack of an undershirt didn’t make their men look like Clark Gable, I betcha.)

… some people in the United States still believe Elvis Presley is alive? Presley (1935-1977), long acknowledged as the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” was a larger-than-life figure while still around and performing, so it’s not unexpected that there would be some who doubted his demise. But more than 40 years after his death, an astonishing seven percent of people in the U.S. still think Presley is alive. If you survey just people under 30—those who were born after the king’s death—you find around 11% think Presley is still alive and enjoying a life of peace and seclusion. (What percentage of them don’t even know who Elvis was?)

… the first bank-issued “credit card” was in 1946? John Briggs (1893-1966) created a “Charge-It” card for his Flatbush National Bank in New York in that year. The catch was that the cardholder had to have an account at Flatbush National Bank, the card could only be used at local merchants and the full bill had to be paid off each month, making it actually a charge card rather than a true credit card. The first actual credit card as such was issued by Diner’s Club in 1950. (The first actual credit card bill was issued the same year, too.)

… you may recently have been involved in a logomachy? Before you go turn yourself in to the authorities, you might want to know that a logomachy is simply an argument or a dispute about words. (If the dispute was a nasty one, you may still need to turn yourself in.)

… you can’t always depend on what the package says? For example, in boxes of a particular brand of instant oatmeal, the dehydrated “strawberries” and “peaches” are actually apples. In the same brand, the dehydrated “blueberries” are actually dried figs. (No, I won’t name the brand.)

… a popular musical artist’s work is used to scare off pirates? The British Navy uses music recorded by Britney Spears (born 1981) to frighten off Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. (There are any number of Britney Spears jokes I could make here, but I’ll just let this speak for itself.)

… a pig is a hog, but a hog is not necessarily a pig? “Hog” is the generic term for all swine, but a pig is a baby hog less than 10 weeks old. Once it becomes 10 weeks and one day old, it’s officially a hog. (And if you can keep that straight, you’re entitled to hog all of the glory.)

Now … you know!

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