What were the results of the last duel ever fought in Canada?

I find it amazing that, over the past few weeks, there is one very important thing I have neglected to mention in the opening lines of the column … baseball.

The greatest of all sports is now deep into spring training, and the 2026 season will begin in just a couple of weeks.  I hope your favorite team does well, but not at the expense of my favorite team, the Chicago Cubs.

Baseball is underway, as is trivia!  That makes spring worth waiting for!

Did you know …

… the hair of Elvis Presley (1935-1977) was not as dark as you think it was?  Presley’s natural hair color was a mid to light blond.  As a youth, he dyed his hair dark, and that became the color fans associated with him.  (Thankyouverymuch.)

… there’s a difference between “the Moon” and a moon?  The proper name of Earth’s only satellite is “the Moon” and, as such, should be capitalized.  All other natural satellites of other planets, however, are just “moons” and have their own proper names.  (Lunacy.  Look it up.)

… four of the five main characters in the long-running animated series The Simpsons are named after family members of the show’s creator?  Homer, Marge, Lisa and Maggie are the names of the real-life parents and sisters of creator Matt Groening (born 1954).  But what of Bart?  Well, Groening says Bart is based on himself.  (Cowabunga.)

… a scene in the classic 1972 film, The Godfather, features some reality-based acting?  The scene in which movie mogul Jack Wolz, played by actor John Marley (1907-1984), awakens to find the severed head of a race horse in his bed features Marley screaming in terror – and the scream was real.  Producers did not tell him that an actual horse’s head, acquired from a dog food company, was going to be used; Marley expected a papier-maché prop.  (They weren’t horsing around, were they?)

… the last duel ever fought in Canada was one in which no one was hurt?  In 1873, two men who had once been friends found that they’d fallen in love with the same woman, and that led to a bitter quarrel between them.  One man challenged the other to a duel, and the two then proceeded to settle their differences in the “honourable” way.  But as the two men stood back to back with upraised pistols, their better nature kicked in and they started wondering what the heck they were doing.  As the two paced off away from each other, terror started to set in, and at the proper ten yards, the two turned and fired.  One man fell, but he had not been shot – he’d fainted in his fear.  Besides, unknown to the participants, both guns were loaded with blanks.  Despite that fact being a serious breach of dueling etiquette, the two men agreed that their “honour” had been satisfied.

… King Charles III of the United Kingdom (born 1947) does not have a passport?  He is not required to have one, as he is the monarch and can come and go as he pleases.  (It’s good to be the king.)

… a British man set a world record for spending time locked in a room with poisonous snakes?  In 2010, Sussex carpenter David Jones (born 1965) spent a total of 121 days locked in a room with forty venomous snakes, including cobras, puff adders, and even the most deadly of them all, the black mamba.  The attempt broke the old record, but it was all for naught – Jones was stunned to learn, upon his release, that the Guinness Book of World Records no longer accepted entries for records involving snakes and humans forced together for a long period of time.  (That had to hurt.)

… an 8,650-year-old mushroom can be found in Oregon?  Qualifying as both the largest and the oldest organism on Earth, a honey mushroom (Armillaria ostoyae) in Malheur National Forest, Oregon, is said by scientists to be 8,650 years old, covers 3.4 square miles of land, and is still growing.  It has countless little “mushroom caps” coming up through the forest floor, and random samples taken from various areas all show it is one huge living organism.  If the estimates of its age are correct, the first spore that would become this huge … thing … began to grow in 6630 BC.

… a crime ring once ran a fake U.S. Embassy?  In Accra, Ghana, visitors to a certain building who thought they were at the U.S. Embassy saw an American flag and a photo of the then-President.  But the building was actually a front for Ghanian and Turkish organized crime rings running immigration scams.  Amazingly, the “Embassy” operated for about ten years, as the crooks paid off Ghanian politicians to look the other way and obtained official documents they could counterfeit.  Finally, in 2016, the real U.S. Embassy in Accra working with Ghanian police raided the fake embassy and shut it down.  (That’s what happens when you don’t pay your cut to the government.)

… until 1932, kidnapping was not a federal offense?  That year, the nation and world were shocked by the abduction of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. (1930-1932), infant son of aviator Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974) and Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001).  A ransom was paid, but the child was not returned, and his body was found 172 days later.  Reacting to the public outcry over the kidnap-murder, Congress passed the Federal Kidnapping Act – also known as the “Little Lindbergh Law” – that finally made kidnapping across state lines a federal offense.  Prior to that, the crime was a local or state issue.

… it takes more than 500 years for a disposable diaper to decompose?  (But what about the … uh, no, I don’t really want to know anything about that.)

Now … you know!