Does Superman’s home city of Metropolis exist in real life?

I think we should take a whole new approach to 2021.

After all, look what all that brightness and happiness got us last year, right?

Not that I’m advocating doom and gloom, mark you … we already have had plenty of that.

But I’m thinking of optimism, the belief that it has to get better! There will be sunny days ahead, and we will have everything back to normal soon.

Whatever normal is.

(I always say normal is just a setting on your dryer.)

So here’s to a brighter, sunnier 2021 … anything would be better than last year!

Now for some trivia to make you smile.

Did you know …

… the wing span of a Boeing 747 jet aircraft is longer than the entire distance covered in the first powered airplane flight, by the Wright Brothers in 1903? (One small flight for man …)

… it is illegal in Connecticut to ride a bicycle at a speed greater than 65 miles per hour? (I don’t want to speculate on how hard it is to pedal a bicycle that fast, but making it illegal makes sense to me.)

… the first celebration of Mardi Gras in New Orleans was in 1699? Two French explorers, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville (1680-1767) and his brother, Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville (1661-1706), landed in Louisiana – then called French America – and had a small-scale Mardi Gras celebration that year. Additional trivia note: Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne is credited as the founder of the city of New Orleans. (Small-scale celebration? I wonder what it consisted of … music, booze, beads? Probably.)

… a popular tourist attraction in California has a redundant name? The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles is visited by thousands of people each year. The fossil excavation site has a duplicated name, as “la brea” is Spanish for “the tar.” In other words, the name of the attraction is The The Tar Tar Pits. (Anything I add here would be repetitious and redundant, wouldn’t it?)

… despite what some sources say, more greenhouse gases are expelled by livestock than by ground and air travel? Livestock put out 14.5% of all the greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, far more than the worldwide emissions of cars, trains, and airplanes combined. (How they put it out, I leave to you to research.)

… Superman’s home city, Metropolis, exists in real life? True, it is nothing like the giant city envisioned in the comics and movies, but the town of Metropolis, Illinois, calls itself the “Home of Superman.” In the town there is a Superman museum, containing comics and relics of the classic 1950s television series as well as the many movies made about the character, and a statue of Lois Lane as portrayed by Noel Neill (1920-2016) in the television series. Included in the museum’s exhibits are the Clark Kent and Superman costumes worn by actor George Reeves (1914-1959) in the 1950s series and the Superman costume worn by Christopher Reeve (1952-2004) in the 1970s series of movies. Metropolis, Illinois, can be found just across the Ohio River from the city of Paducah, Kentucky, along Interstate 24. Additional trivia note: The city of Metropolis in the Superman saga, as well as Gotham City in the Batman classics, is based on New York City. (I have been to the Superman Museum in Metropolis, and I can assure you that if you’re ever in that part of the country, it’s well worth a visit.)

… it is possible for microbes to live on the moon? When the Surveyor 3 probe was launched to soft-land on the moon in 1967, it had unknowingly picked up some passengers – a colony of bacteria known as Streptococcus mitis. These little guys cause nose and throat irritation. In November of 1969, when the Apollo 12 mission landed nearby, the astronauts detached the camera from the unmanned Surveyor 3 and returned it to Earth. It was discovered that the bacteria had survived the trip to the Moon and more than two years of vacuum. (Space germs … great.)

… the first man to circumnavigate the world was not Ferdinand Magellan? Magellan (1480-1521) is credited with the first voyage around the world, but he didn’t survive past the Philippines. One of his sailing masters, Juan Sebastian Elcano (1476-1526), brought the single remaining ship in Magellan’s fleet back to Spain in 1521 to complete the voyage. (Somebody ought to set the record straight, don’t you think?)

… if all of the world’s more than seven billion people stood side by side, they’d fit within the city limits of Los Angeles, California? (With room to spare, I would bet.)

… your armpit has a name? It’s called an oxter. The term came about in the Middle Ages to describe that area of the anatomy. (I call mine Irving.)

… by the age of 60, most people have lost half of their taste buds? (That explains a lot.)

… the longest prison sentence ever served was almost 71 years? Charles Fossard (1880-1972) spent 70 years, 308 days in prison in Australia for murdering an elderly man in 1903 and stealing his boots. Fossard was housed at the J. Ward Mental Asylum in Ararat, Victoria, Australia and was still incarcerated when he died there at the age of 92, having entered prison as a 21-year-old.

… your home may have a “lawn mullet?” That’s the term for having grass in the front yard neatly mowed, but the back yard allowed to grow wild. (An alternate term for having your yard like that is “lazy homeowner.”)

Now … you know!

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