What did Maureen O’Hara whisper to John Wayne in the last scene of 1952’s “The Quiet Man”?

We’re now just two weeks away from the second of our year-end holidays, Thanksgiving.  It’s one of my favorites, but that’s because I do enjoy eating.

You see, it’s my only true vice.  I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I’ve never done designer pharmaceuticals, so the only thing left I can overindulge in is food. And, to my detriment most of my days, I’ve done so with abandon.

The older I get, the harder it is to lose weight, so I figure, why bother?

Anyway, what’s your favorite Thanksgiving dinner item? Drop me a note at didyouknowcolumn@gmail.com and let me know. Meanwhile, on to this week’s trivia!

Did you know …

… a famous singer wanted to make a Harry Potter musical?  Michael Jackson (1958-2009), a fan of the wizardly novels, approached author J.K. Rowling (born 1965) about turning one of the Potter books into a musical.  Rowling did not see the idea as something that would add to the Potter-verse, so she declined.  (Ah, but it would’ve been a sight to see!  And hear!)

… dead cockroaches attract more roaches?  The insects release a moldy-smelling chemical after they die, which attracts more of the little boogers.  (Even after they die, they’re pests.)

… when snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food?  (How, for heaven’s sake???)

… a quirk in the rules of baseball allows four outs in an inning?  Here’s the scenario:  the team at bat has runners on first and third, and there’s one out.  The batter hits a fly ball, and both runners take off on the hit.  The ball is caught (two outs) and the runner from first is thrown out on appeal (three outs).  The runner from third crosses the plate without going back to third base before the third out is made.  However, if the defensive team does not also appeal that runner from third, the run will count.  An appeal play would rule that runner out as well (four outs).

… a family photo is on the Moon?  During the Apollo 16 mission in 1972, astronaut Charles Duke (born 1935) left behind a photograph of himself, his wife, and his two sons on the surface of the Moon.  The photo is there to this day, though most likely bleached white by more than 50 years of unfiltered sunlight.  (Imagine if the Little Green Men found it.  “Why’s there a blank piece of paper here?”)

… octopuses don’t have tentacles?  Simmer down, and I’ll explain.  The eight arms of an octopus have suckers down their entire lengths.  Tentacles, however, are defined by scientists who study cephalopods as limbs with suckers only at the end.  So they have eight arms (or legs, if you prefer, or some combination of both) but they’re not actually tentacles.  (Call ‘em whatever you like, I suppose.)

… we will never know what the final line of a classic motion picture was?  The 1952 movie The Quiet Man starred actors John Wayne (1907-1979) and Maureen O’Hara (1920-2015).  At the end of the film, O’Hara whispers something into Wayne’s ear, and he has a startled reaction.  What did O’Hara say?  Nobody knows, and nobody ever will.  The two actors kept that a secret to the end of their lives.  Director John Ford (1894-1973) told O’Hara to whisper something to Wayne that would shock him, and would cause him to give a genuine response.  So she did, but we’ll never know what it was.  (Some of the guesses are pretty interesting, though.)

… a famous actor known for his roles as a Native American was not one?  X Brands (born Jay X Brands, 1927-2000) portrayed Native American characters for his entire career, from 1956 to 1978.  But Brands was actually of German descent, with no Native American ancestry at all.  Brands’ portrayal of Native Americans earned him numerous accolades, even getting a letter from a Pawnee native who said Brands gave “authentic” performances.  Brands was best known for his role in the 1958 series Yancy Derringer, in which he played a character named Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wah, or “Wolf Who Stands in Water.”  (Call him Wolfie for short.)

… light does not always travel at the speed of light?  The universe’s ultimate “speed limit,” light travels at 186,282 miles per second – but only in vacuum.  When it passes through any kind of matter, light slows down.  Through water, for instance, photons (particles of light) drop to ¾ the speed of light.  One researcher, Dr. Lene Hau (born 1959), was able to slow the speed of light to a poky 38 miles per hour.  She did so by shooting a laser beam through extremely cold sodium atoms, which dropped the light to a mere tiny fraction of its normal speed.  (Dr. Hau, the only lady to stop light in its tracks.)

… commercial airline flights have not always followed pre-set routes?  Until 1956, commercial flights were allowed to fly any course to their destinations, and in most cases pilots used the flight to show passengers points of interest.  However, in 1956, two sightseeing airplanes collided in mid-air over the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and the practice was ended.  (Well, that would do it.)

… the oldest person ever to go into space is best known for his acting role of a spaceship captain?  On October 13, 2021, actor William Shatner (born 1931) made a suborbital space flight aboard the Blue Origins New Shepard spacecraft along with three other people.  Shatner, who was 90 years old at the time of the flight, is best known for his role as Captain James T. Kirk of the starship USS Enterprise in the television series Star Trek.  The 11-minute ballistic flight crossed the Kármán line, the internationally-accepted boundary between the atmosphere of Earth and space, making Shatner the only member of the Star Trek cast to go into space and return to tell about it.  (Boldly going, indeed!)

Now … you know!