Did a man once ride a balloon-powered lawn chair to 16,000 feet altitude?

I received a note in the old e-mail bag the other day …

Actually, I get a lot of them, but this one causes me to comment.

The writer asks, “What do you do to find all the trivial facts you put in the column?”

Well, dear writer, I have several sources that I peruse on a regular basis for little factoids. Most of the ones I find are ones that I’ve used before. Remember, this column is over four years old, and some of them are just not appropriate for the column, for one reason or another.

But those that catch my eye (and which haven’t been here before) are the ones I file for future reference. I research them, see what I can add to the basic factoid, and put it in the master data file, from which I write this silly stuff.

If I am wrong about something, I am quickly corrected by many of you—and the correction appears in a future column.

I told you, I lead a boring life. Now, it’s on to the trivia!

Did you know …

… that glossy coating on jellybeans and candy corn comes from something alive? Shellac, the confectionary coating, is derived from secretions extracted from a beetle. The Kerria lacca beetle, to be precise, or the “Lac” if you know them well enough. The secretion is a resin, collected in dry flakes which are dissolved in alcohol to make the liquid shellac – which is applied to jellybeans and the like to give them that glossy coating everyone is looking for. (And suddenly, my taste for jellybeans went away.)

… the Mongolian navy has only one boat? It’s a tugboat, manned by a crew of seven—only one of whom knows how to swim. (Guess which one is the captain?)

… firehouses have spiral staircases for a reason? Back before the development of the modern fire truck, fire engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor of the fire station, and a few of the smarter ones figured out how to walk up regular staircases, so the spiral staircase was put in to keep the horses from going upstairs. (A horse is a horse, of course, of course …)

… a drunk ant will always fall over on its right side? (Which is as may be, but I have trouble imagining a drunk ant, myself. A drunk uncle, yes.)

… gasoline used to be a waste product of the oil industry? Until the introduction of the internal combustion engine in the late 1800s, oil refiners considered gasoline a waste byproduct and got rid of it. (One man’s trash …)

… a man once rode a lawn chair to over 16,000 feet up? Larry Walters (1949-1993) was a truck driver from California who always wanted to be a pilot in the Air Force. Like many who dreamed that dream, however (including me), Walters’ eyesight was not good enough. So he found a job driving a truck, but the urge to fly never left. On July 2, 1982, he decided to make it happen. Taking his favorite lawn chair and 42 helium-filled weather balloons, Walters decided to hover over his neighborhood for a while, at about 30 feet off the ground. Things did not go according to plan, however. Once he released his ground tether, Walters shot up to a height of about three miles and actually drifted into the controlled airspace over Los Angeles. An incredulous TWA pilot made the radio call, “We have a man in a chair attached to balloons in our ten o’clock position.” Worried but not panicking, Walters decided to try to land by shooting out some of the balloons with the BB gun he carried up … until he dropped the gun. His landing was somewhat scary, as the remaining balloons became entangled in power lines, but the electric company—having been alerted—had already cut power to the area. Walters was arrested on landing and spent two days in jail, being fined $1,500 for violating restricted airspace, but he got his wish—he flew. He is known to pilots, even today, as “Lawnchair Larry.” (Just imagine the view! And the terror!)

… you may be a sufferer of boanthropy? It’s a psychological disorder that leads a person to believe that he or she is actually a cow. The person suffering tries to live his or her life as a cow. (My cousin had something like that. We thought about getting her some help, but we needed the milk.)

… a term exists for the excess weight you gain from emotional overeating? It’s a German word, kummerspeck—which literally means “grief bacon.” The jokes do sometimes write themselves, don’t they?)

… the string on older-style boxes of animal crackers had a purpose? Mostly found on boxes of Barnum’s Animal Crackers™, the string was for the box to be hung on Christmas trees. For a long period of time, boxes of animal crackers were popular Christmas gifts to children.

… “ghost marriages” exist in China? In some areas of the country, families pay a matchmaker to help find a suitable spouse for their deceased loved ones. (You can’t get away from mothers-in-laws, even in the afterlife!)

… squirrels are the cause of the most power outages in the United States? Sure, you thought it was high winds or bad weather. Nope – squirrels. In “The Squirrel Index,” the American Public Power Association says squirrels chewing insulation, tunneling, or just becoming a path between electrical conductors are the cause of more power outages in America than any other reason. (And it never, ever ends well for the squirrel, either.)

… a queen termite can live up to 50 years? If that isn’t impressive enough, think about this – she can lay up to 30,000 eggs a day. (Well, what else does she have to do?)

Now … you know!

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