As the old saying goes: "Knowledge is power."
Though I rarely find myself in the middle of a game of Trivial Pursuit, I do like to stay on top of my easily accessible random factoids just in case. I would always hate to be the guy who brings the team down when we're in fierce board game competition.
I do know some people who are bottomless pits of useless information. They may have a lot of practical knowledge as well, but it's the trivial facts that impress me the most. As a friend of mine says when he meets somebody who can list pointless information off the top off his or her head, "You seem pretty encyclopedic with that stuff."
I'm regularly brushing up on some of the lesser-known facts, in hopes that they will one day pay off. They may not even be lesser-known facts, but if I'm learning them for myself, then they are lesser known.
One of my favourite places to find useless information is the Mental Floss website, or for those inclined to read print only, the magazine Mental Floss. It is here that I learn interesting but otherwise pointless things like how peacock only refers to the male of the peafowl species. The females are peahens.
One that I'm certain could be an answer to a question in the science section of a Pursuit game would be that a day on Mercury is longer than a year. It's a strange concept for us, but it makes perfect sense. It simply takes the planet longer to complete a full rotation than it does to orbit the sun.
I have more factoids for those interested in learning something new today. I admit that not all of these facts and stats are revelations, but surely there is one that will help with you impress somebody tonight around the dinner table.
Felix the Cat was the first image ever broadcast on television, when, during testing, a statue of the feline's liking was rotating on a turntable.
Witches convicted during the Salem Witch Trials were not burned but hanged, probably because witches had spells to protect them from flames.
I do have a certain respect for A.J. Jacobs, the author of The Know-It All, who in the book recounted his experience reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z. Devoting yourself to such an experiment would definitely lodge volumes of unimportant facts inside the brain.
I don't quite have the attention span to take things that far, but I do my best to soak up random facts throughout the day, paying particularly close attention to the most outlandish ones. I do a lot of reading, whether it's the day's headlines, something online or Mercury news stories.
I'm only mildly competitive, but my family, at times, likes to show off its smarts to one another. Everybody basks in the glow of being the know-it-all in the family. I just hope these tidbits stick in there somewhere and wind up earning me some bragging rights. I so rarely have any sort of advantage over the siblings in my family. I have to do whatever I can to get an edge.
