Insight: A collection of random, useless but interesting facts

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Through the years, my knowledge of obscure and totally meaningless facts and information has served me well. Whether it be matching up from my living room sofa against that day’s Jeopardy contestants or competing against family members in a board game, my accumulation of trivial facts has always been a valuable resource for me.

Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox hit
.326 to lead the American League in batting
average in 1967. COURTESY PHOTO 

And why I retain such information is also a mystery. Even given a grocery list, at times I can forget what I went to the store to purchase, yet somehow I can remember the fact that Carl Yastrzemski of the Bostin Red Sox won the American League batting championship in 1967 with an average of .326. And by the way, he also led the league that year in Runs Batted In with 121 and was tied for first in homeruns with Minnesota’s Harmon Killebrew with 44.

Acquiring some sports facts is like second nature to me, having spent a large part of my career covering sporting events for newspapers.

Off the top of my head, I can tell you that Passaic High School in New Jersey holds the record for consecutive high school boys’ basketball victories with 159, a mark set in the 1910s and 1920s over seven seasons. But what’s not commonly known about that achievement is that after losing to Hackensack High School in 1925 to snap its winning streak, Passaic then went on to win 41 more games in a row, capping a stretch that saw the team go 200-1.

Here’s another one you may not be aware of. While bowling backwards at AMF Van Wyck Lanes at Richmond Hill, New York in April 2007, Ashrita Furman established the record for the highest backwards bowling score with a 199.

To retain a brain filled with trivial facts, one must have a curious nature. Perhaps that’s how I know that Joseph Gayetty of New York is credited with inventing toilet paper. “Gayetty’s Medicated Paper” was first sold in America in 1857 and came in packages of flat sheets. The medication was that it contained aloe and each sheet was inscribed with Gayetty’s last name. That product was sold in pharmacies right up until the 1920s. In case you’re wondering, the Scott Paper Company of Philadelphia came up with the idea of putting toilet paper on rolls about 1880 and started mass-producing and selling perforated paper under its own brand name in 1896.

Or how about that author Theordore Geisel, commonly known as Dr. Seuss, wrote his classic book “Green Eggs and Ham” on a bet with his editor, who suggested that Geisel could not complete a book in 50 words or less. “Green Eggs and Ham” clocks in at exactly 50 words.

From my high school biology days decades ago, I can tell you that a spider has eight legs, the spiny anteater and the duck-billed platypus are the only mammals on Earth who lay eggs and that the pregnancy of an elephant lasts 22 months. How I remember those details, I simply can’t begin to imagine.

One of my favorite college classes was Astronomy 101. Along with more than 300 other students in that class, we learned that five planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn can be viewed without the use of a telescope at night if you know where to look in the sky. From viewing a Sean Connery space movie called “Outland,” I learned that the names of the four largest moons of Jupiter are Europa, Ganymede, Callisto and Io.

For movie buffs, I can rattle off that the first film directed by a woman to earn more than $100 million at the box office was 1988’s “Big” starring Tom Hanks. Penny Marshall, who played Laverne on the popular 1970s television show “Laverne and Shirley”, was the director of “Big.”

And speaking of Tom Hanks, in 1995 Hanks was nominated for an Academy Award for portraying NASA Astronaut Jim Lovell in the film “Apollo 13.” Prior to casting the movie, actor Jon Travolta sought the role from director Ron Howard to play the part of Lovell. Also, the famous line from that movie was never spoken in real life. During the actual Apollo 13 mission, Lovell never said “Houston we have a problem.”

Growing up a baseball fan though, much of my trivial knowledge has been derived from thousands of hours of watching that sport on television. I’ve always thought that Joel Youngblood’s feat of getting a hit for two different teams on the same day in 1982 is very odd. Youngblood collected a hit for the New York Mets against the Chicago Cubs during an afternoon game, then he was traded after the game to the Montreal Expos, took the train to Philadelphia, and got a hit that evening for his new team in a game against the Phillies.

Trivial knowledge can be both a blessing and a curse. My wife usually cringes and rolls her eyes when I tell her that the actor Terry O’Quinn, who played John Locke on television’s “Lost”, also was in the 1980 western movie “Heaven’s Gate” with Christopher Walken and Kris Kristofferson.

Someday maybe I can put it all to good use on “Jeopardy.”<

Insight: Possible pre-requisites for matriculation

By Ed Pierce

Managing Editor

Right now, many students in Maine and across the nation are preparing to head back to school and some of them are wondering what classes they will be signing up for this fall. 

Back in my final year of college at the University of New Mexico, I had already wrapped up the requirements for both my major (journalism) and my minor (history), so I had my choice of five three-hour elective courses to complete my studies and earn my Bachelor of Arts degree.

In looking over the list of available courses and discussing it with my friends and family, I was faced with a tough decision. I could either load up on fun and easy classes or try to learn something meaningful and make it worth the cost of my tuition. I decided to choose courses that offered me opportunities to relate to my daily life and upcoming professional career in journalism.

My schedule included an internship in the newsroom of the Albuquerque Journal newspaper starting at 3 p.m. every day, so my college classes needed to be mostly in the mornings. I enrolled for Spanish, Introduction to Astronomy, Film Appreciation, History of Native Americans, and American Constitutional Law.

I figured that each one of these courses would be challenging, but each one also would give me some basic knowledge to use going forward as a newspaper reporter. 

The Spanish class came very early on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 7 a.m. The Spanish instructor was the daughter of an American diplomat and had lived in Panama growing up. She was patient and funny and frequently would include singing in her lessons. Just imagine a room of adults swaying and harmonizing to “La Cucaracha” early in the morning and you’ll get the picture. Whatever she did, it worked because almost four decades later, I can still remember basic Spanish words and what they mean.

Astronomy was a large class of about 300 students and was held at 9 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays in a large science lecture hall. It included a large theater-sized projection screen for our professor to show us slides of stars and galaxies that he was talking about during each session. From that class, I carried away a rudimentary understanding of astronomical terms such as what is a quasar, where to find the Big Dipper in the night sky, and that one of Jupiter’s moons, Ganymede. is the largest moon in our solar system, has its own magnetic field, and is bigger in size than the planet Mercury.

In Film Appreciation class, we watched and discussed some all-time classic movies, many of which I had never seen before. We learned about film directors, film genres and techniques used by filmmakers to tell their stories. As a huge fan of Westerns, I recall watching “Shane” for the first time in that class and being enthralled with the cinematic landscape of frontier Wyoming that director George Stevens and cinematographer Loyal Griggs depicted in that film. It’s a great story too, especially the showdown between good guy Alan Ladd and the menacing villain of the movie, Jack Palance.

The History of Native Americans class turned out to be one of my favorite courses I ever had in college. The professor was eccentric and dressed in an unusual fashion. (Think German lederhosen outfits if you know what those look like.) But he was a masterful teacher and I learned so much about Native American culture and tribes that it left me wanting to know more about the original inhabitants of the North American continent.

I learned about ancient burial mounds, inspiring Native American leaders such as Sequoyah, Tecumseh, and Black Hawk, and elaborate systems of government such as the Iroquois Confederacy.

In American Constitutional Law, I gained understanding of the structure and functioning of the U.S. government, what a tort is, and studied famous U.S. Supreme Court decisions. To this day, I can tell you why “Miranda warnings” are required to be given by police officers during an interrogation, or that in the 1963 landmark case, Gideon vs. Wainwright, the court ruled that all defendants have the right to an attorney and must be provided one by the state if they are unable to afford legal counsel.

Each of these elective courses served to broaden my education and helped me to better understand the world I live in. If I had to do it all over again and was back in college and faced with a decision about what to take, I would probably follow the same path and enroll for those same elective courses once more.

In my opinion, the purpose of education is not merely to accumulate useless facts and knowledge that you may never use again, it’s really all about growing as an individual and learning to think critically to make informed decisions later in life.

Wouldn’t the world be a much better place if everybody had some valuable insight about the subject or subjects that they tend to spout off about? <