It's True! (Part Nine)

You asked for more trivia and true facts so happy to continue this series. Thank you for the comments and suggestions. Without further ado:

• Gate Tower Building in Osaka Japan is a 16-story building with a unique characteristic. It has a highway that runs through the middle of it!

• Bart Simpson was not named after anyone that Matt Groening knew. It's an anagram of the word "BRAT".

Doh!

• Message in a Bottle. The world's oldest message in a bottle was discovered on the shore of western Australia in 2018. It was thrown overboard in 1886 and was 131 years and 223 days old.

• Lightning Strikes the earth about 8 MILLION times a day! A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than the sun's surface (about 53,540 degrees Fahrenheit)

• USB Symbol is modeled after the three-pronged trident carried by the Roman god of the sea, Neptune. It's intended to represent power. The shapes at the end of each spear tip, a circle, triangle and square represent the many options and devices a user has at their disposal using a USB.

Space Shuttle - In 1988, the Soviets launched a new type of space craft that had an almost identical appearance to the U.S. Space Shuttle. It was called Buran.

• The Sphere in Las Vegas uses a technology called Wave Field Synthesis, 167,000 individually controlled speakers hidden behind the LED panels can "beam" specific audio to specific seats, making it sound like the source is right in front of you or far away. A person in a section could be listening to a concert in English, while the person sitting directly next to them hears the exact same performance dubbed in Spanish, without either of them of them needing headphones!

The Sphere - Las Vegas

• Moon Mirrors - Before leaving the Moon on July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin placed a 2-foot-wide panel of 100 mirrors on the lunar surface. It remains the only Apollo experiment still running today. By bouncing laser pulses off these mirrors, scientists can precisely measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon. This has revealed that the Moon is slowly drifting away from us at about 1.5 inches every year.

• Sourtoe Cocktail - The Sourdough Saloon in Dawson City Canada has a signature drink called the Sourtoe Cocktail. It originated in the 1920s when Rum-runners Louie and Otto Linked were caught in a blizzard. Louie suffered severe frostbite and to prevent gangrene amputated his big toe and preserved it in Yukon Jack whiskey as a keepsake. In 1973, the Sourtoe Cocktail club was formed where patrons to the Saloon drink a shot with a preserved human toe in it. The club has collected over 25 toes over the years. (I almost lost it just writing this - ugh - I just can't).

• The Office - For fans of the television series, the Office, it almost looked much differently than when it went into production. Rainn Wilson (who plays Dwight Schrute) auditioned for the part of Michael Scott, which ultimately went to Steve Carell. The producers and writers liked Rainn Wilson's audition so much that they created a new character just to include him in the cast.

• Gilligan's Island was so convincing to viewers that 10 weeks after its 1964 debut, the U.S. Coast Guard had to call the show's producers. They were getting flooded with calls, letters and telegrams demanding to know why the crew of the Minnow hadn't been rescued yet. If you're wondering, the seven stranded castaways made it off the island after 15 years in a made-for-television movie in 1978 but had to be rescued again in 1979 in another movie.

Here's another fun fact...My father, who was an orphan at Girard College in Philadelphia went to school with Russell Johnson, who played the professor (far left) on the show. He was two years older than my Dad.

• Nuclear Car - Ford introduced a concept car in 1958 called the Ford Nucleon. It was designed to be powered by a small nuclear fission reactor in the rear, replacing the standard gas tank with a small replaceable uranium core that would reportedly give the car 5,000 miles of range without refueling. The concept was scrapped because the challenge of shielding the passengers from radiation proved too difficult.

• Perfect 10 - In 1976, Nadia Comaneci scored a perfect TEN in Olympic Gymnastics at the age of 14. She was the first person in history to do so. However, her score appeared as 1.00 because the scoreboard manufacturers hadn't programmed the scoreboard to display a ten since they believed no competitor would ever be able to do it.

• I've got the Power! The Earth receives enough sunlight in one hour to power the electrical needs of every human being on Earth for a full year.