DID YOU KNOW…? Was one of the biggest blockbuster movies of all time expected to be a flop? By Jack Bagley
We’re over the hump for 2025.
You know the hump, of course. The point where you stop climbing up and start moving downward toward the valley. That’s where we have come with 2025.
In other words, it all goes downhill from here.
But never fear, there will be the weekly assortment of weird stuff to make the downhill run a bit more enjoyable. In fact, I have some freshly polished nuggets ready to share with you right now. Enjoy!
Did you know …
… insects bite humans on the foot more than they do anywhere else? (Well, of course they do! That’s where most of them are!)
… the belief that people poison or otherwise tamper with Halloween candy is not true? Since the 1960s, children on their annual journey to extort candy from their neighbors by dressing up in weird costumes have been warned to “inspect their take” and not to eat anything until they get home. Supposedly, there are people out there who poison the candy or put razor blades in apples or some such nefarious stuff. But it has never been verified – not even once – as having actually happened. It’s still a good idea to inspect the candy, though, as … well, you never know. (There’s caution, and then there’s this.)
… the largest lake on Earth is really a sea? The Caspian Sea is considered a lake by geographers because it is fully enclosed by land. In all other respects – its size, the fact that it has salt water, and its depth, among others – it meets the geographical definition of a sea. (Whatever you call it, it’s big.)
… it’s best sometimes not to get directions from magazines? In 2004, the British hiking magazine Trail gave readers directions on getting down from the summit of Scotland’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis. The directions, if followed, would have led hikers off the edge of a cliff. In an apology to readers, Trail editors said they inadvertently left out the first of two crucial bearings needed to get down from the peak. (Nowadays your GPS will do that for you.)
… spiked dog collars were invented by the ancient Greeks? They were not intended to make a dog look tough; rather, the spikes were to protect the throats of the dogs from attacking wolves. (Looking tough was important, though, especially with the wolves.)
… the red supergiant star Antares is 60,000 times bigger than the Sun? To put this into perspective, imagine the Sun as being the size of a softball. That would make Antares the size of a house. And it’s not the largest star out there, either. The largest star known is Stephenson 2-18, and to use the same scale as before, that star – a red ultragiant – would be the size of a six-story building. Placed in the center of our Solar System, Stephenson 2-18 would fill everything up to just outside the orbit of the planet Saturn. (A truly heavenly body, if you get my meaning.)
… the entire film industry was convinced that a blockbuster motion picture would be a flop? In 1977, the first Star Wars movie was released by 20th Century-Fox. The industry was convinced that producer George Lucas (born 1944) had wasted so much of the studio’s money on a flop that the studio itself had to use a bizarre marketing scheme to get the movie into theatres. Fox executives essentially threatened any cinema that refused to show Star Wars with not being given the rights to show another film, The Other Side of Midnight, which Fox expected to be a hit. As it turned out, Star Wars made over ten times the money that The Other Side of Midnight did. Additional trivia note: Lucas himself felt the film might flop. After showing a rough cut of the movie to other director friends (and getting some bad reactions), Lucas went on vacation in Hawaii instead of attending the premiere. (The Force was with him.)
… the Titanic almost had a collision with another ship just days before ramming the iceberg that sank it? While the ship was departing from its home port of Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912, a nearby ship – the SS City of New York – slipped free of its moorings and almost drifted right into the side of the massive Titanic. Just four days later, however, the Titanic met its fate and 1,500 people died when it sank. Additional trivia note: There is no existing motion picture footage of the actual Titanic during the time it was leaving port on its first – and last – voyage. Scenes shown in newsreels purporting to be the Titanic leaving its dock were actually of the RMS Olympic, Titanic’s sister ship. The names of the tugboats and tenders around the Olympic were painted out on the film to fool people into thinking they were seeing the actual doomed ship.
… the United States has a lot of Chinese restaurants? There are so many, in fact, that they add up to more than all of the McDonald’s™, KFC™, Burger King™ and Wendy’s™ restaurants put together. (There’s room for a line about MSG here, but I won’t do it.)
… the first African-American to play a leading role in a feature film did so in 1914? The silent production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin starred Sam Lucas (1850-1916) in the title role.
… at one time, the mayor of Philadelphia usually didn’t want the job? In the earliest years of the city’s existence, the office didn’t pay a dime, and many who served in the post most strenuously protested doing so – sometimes opting to pay a large fine rather than serve unpaid. From the city’s founding in 1701 until 1747, men actively fought being named mayor because the job had no compensation. It was not until 1747 that the salary of the mayor was established at £100 per year. (Well, if you’ve ever been to Philadelphia …)
Now … you know!
Copyright © 2025 Jack Bagley
