What modern convenience that we now take for granted was discovered by accident?

A couple of neat things come up during this week, and I can’t decide which I want to spotlight.

Fall begins officially at 9:04 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, on Thursday of this week. (Yes, I know I’ve made a case that fall actually starts after Labor Day, but you know what I mean.)

On the other hand, my birthday, the 64th in the ongoing series of such silly things, is next Monday.

Which is more important? Which should I spotlight?

The answer is obvious, of course. Let’s all be certain to celebrate the beginning of fall!

And with it we can have some freshly minted trivia, polished up just for you!

Did you know…

…a Google™ query ties up a lot of computers? When the average user does a Google query, the answer is found in about 0.2 seconds, after close to 1,000 computers search. (Of course, 0.2 seconds in computer time is almost an eternity!)

…a famous movie director went to great lengths to protect the secret of one of his films? For the 1960 thriller Psycho, director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) required theatres showing the movie to not allow admittance to anyone after the feature started. But Hitchcock went beyond that – according to Variety, Hitchcock actually bought all the copies of the novel Psycho by Robert Bloch (1917-1994) upon which the movie was based. (I could be a total rat fink and spoil the surprise, but I won’t.)

…honeybee wings flap an average of 230 times per second? (You have to wonder who’s in charge of counting that, don’t you?)

…rabbits are not able to vomit? Unlike other animals, a rabbit’s digestive system only goes one way. As a result, rabbits eat a lot of roughage. (I’ll let you figure out why.)

…the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth was in north Africa? Sure, in some parts of the world, summer means heat and lots of it. But be glad you’re not living in El Azizia, Libya. On September 13, 1922, the temperature hit a record 136° Fahrenheit, or 57.8° Celsius. And that may not be the upper limit, as it’s quite possible higher temperatures have occurred in areas which were not official weather reporting stations. (It’s not the heat, it’s the… oh, it is the heat.)

…the father and daughter in a classic television comedy were really very close to each other in age? From 1964 to 1966 – and ever since in reruns – viewers were delighted by The Munsters. The comedy about a family of monsters living among normal people starred Fred Gwynne (1926-1993), Yvonne De Carlo (1923-2007), and Al Lewis (1922-2006). Lewis, in fact, played the part of De Carlo’s father. But the actor was actually only seven months older than De Carlo. A combination of skillful makeup and De Carlo’s natural young looks gave the impression of several years between her and Lewis. (The characters were both vampires, so it should have been several hundred years. And notice, they never mentioned that Lewis always looked like an old guy anyway.)

…the discovery of Teflon™ was an accident? Chemist Roy Plunkett (1910-1994) was working in the DuPont Company’s Jackson Laboratory in 1938, trying to devise a new gas to use in refrigeration. One day, Plunkett found that the gas he was working with had changed form into a solid, and that nothing seemed to stick to it. The first uses of the new solid, now called Teflon, were industrial. It wasn’t until the 1960s, when the material was used to coat the inside of frying pans, that Teflon became a household name. Teflon is the substance’s nom de voyage. Its real name is polytetraflouroethylene. Additional trivia note: Plunkett was a contestant on the game show To Tell the Truth in 1971. The panel was half-fooled, with two voting for him and two for one of the impostors. (Since nobody ever asks the question, I will … if Teflon is so non-stick, how do they get it to stick to the frying pan?)

…the average cod deposits between 4 and 6 million eggs in a single spawning? Most of those will become food for other fish; only a tiny fraction will actually hatch, and only a small percentage of those that do hatch will live to adulthood. (Which, of course, explains why they have so many.)

…the last time the United States was in a war was 1945? That was the year World War II ended. Since then, of course, we’ve had Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but none of these are officially considered wars because Congress was never asked by the incumbent President at the time to declare war.

…a species of jellyfish is believed unable to die of old age? The “immortal jellyfish” can theoretically live forever, because after it reaches maturity, it ages backward, going through its entire life cycle in reverse – then beginning again. As far as science knows, this jellyfish can do that indefinitely. (Granted, they haven’t been watching it all that long, but you get the idea.)

…a flea can jump 200 times the length of its own body? Sure, fleas are small, so we’re not talking a lot of jump here. But if you put it on a human scale, that’s the equivalent of a person jumping almost a quarter of a mile. (One giant leap, if you will.)

…in one particular species of bird, the female can be brutally mean to the male? The male of the knot-tying weaver bird builds an elaborate nest to attract a mate. But if the nest isn’t up to the female bird’s standards, she will spurn the male – but will also wait around impatiently while he rebuilds the nest to her wishes. (We know, right, guys?)

…more than 100,000 chemical reactions take place in a human’s brain every second? (Including one right now!)

Now… you know!

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