Curiosity Tidbits – 2025

March 31: 

Vatican City is the smallest country in the world. It’s 120 times smaller than the island of Manhattan.

VARIOUS SOURCES USED:  The Book of Useless Information (Publications International, Ltd);  Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts (Wings Books); More Fascinating Facts (David Louis, Crown Publishers); Evan Swensen’s Publications Consultant newsletter; Explaining Space website; American Shrimp Processors Association; Parade Magazine: 105 Weird Facts; True Facts That Sound Like Bull$#*t, by Shane Carley; MerriamWebster.com; Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Book 5; Cosmopolitan magazine; others from the web in some form.

Previous Tidbits:

March 31:

A day on Venus is longer than a Venusian year! This is because Venus takes longer to spin on its axis (243 [Earth] days) than it does to orbit the Sun (224.7 [Earth] days)

March 10:

Edwin Smith, a miner in the California gold rush of the mid-1800s, liked his beard so much that he let it grow for 16 years. It reached a length of 8 ft (2.4 m) and was so long that Smith had to hire a servant just to wash and comb it.

February 24:

Alaska is the only state whose name can be spelled using letters entirely taken from one row (in this case, the 2nd) of a (normal QWERTY) keyboard.

February 10:

Grok may be the only English word that derives from Martian. Grok was introduced in Robert A. Heinlein‘s 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. Grok was quickly adopted by the youth culture of America and has since peppered the vernacular of those who grok it.

January 27:

Doubly interesting facts about MLB pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm’s career home runs (as a batter):

A) He hit a home run in his very first major league at bat! B) He never hit another home run over the remainder of his 21 year MLB career (’52 – ’72)!

January 13: 

The fastest temperature change on record is a rise of 49 degrees (F). In two minutes, between 7:30 and 7:32 AM on Jan 22, 1943, in Spearfish, SD, the temperature rose from -4 to 45 degrees (F) !