Fun Trivia Facts

Welcome one and ALL!!! It is Monday, time for yet another installment of Fun Trivia Facts (or Fun Trivial Facts depending on your mood). As you may be aware, we choose Monday to provide you with some strange, even bizarre, and mostly fun trivia facts so that you can end your day with a smile. Perhaps you can even amaze your co-workers with your grasp of trivial knowledge, but we will leave that decision to you.

Tonight we are going to be all over the board. I thought it would be fun to cover very strange, obscure trivia this week, just for the sheer joy of it all.

This first trivial fact can be a bit disgusting if you think about it too hard, but it can be extremely funny... did you know that little more than half of the people living in the U.S. would rather fold than wad their toilet paper. Now who in their right mind will take a poll of people using the toilet, and ask how you deal with your toilet paper. What they didn't ask, is did they fold or wad the toilet paper before or AFTER the paper was used? ...HA... a new study may be created because of that question...

This tidbit is a problem I would LOVE to have: One million $1 (one dollar) bills weighs 1 ton.

Every year more people are killed by donkeys than in aircraft crashes. What a thought...

For those of you who have bosses that love to yell, provide them with this little factoid - If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough energy to heat a cup of coffee. So, if your boss likes to yell, keep your coffee cup close, they could re-heat that cup of Joe as they yell...killing two birds with one stone...

On the slang reference to a cup of coffee - Cup of Joe... do you know why a cup of coffee is referred to as a Cup of Joe? One theory is that Josephus Daniels (1862-1948) was appointed Secretary of the U.S. Navy by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913. Among his numerous reforms of the Navy was the abolition of the officers wine mess. From that time on, the strongest drink aboard Navy ships was coffee and over the years, a cup of coffee became known as "a cup of Joe".

Some do not believe this story and have an alternate answer to the derivation of "A Cup of Joe" - The World Detective (www.word-detective.com) suggests that "Joe" as slang for coffee might be derived from "Joe" as a synonym for "the common man", as in "a regular Joe". Perhaps even in reference to "GI Joe" for enlisted men. Perhaps we will never get a definitive answer to that perplexing question...

Prohibition (1920-1933) was an act of U.S. law which made the sales and consumption of alcohol illegal. Somehow, this law had the opposite effect and made the thrill of drinking booze even more delectable and profitable. Speakeasies began sprouting up everywhere (usually in underground basements). One could only enter one of these illegal joints with a secret knock or codeword. Texas Guinan, a former cowgirl star of silent movies, was the Queen of the Speakeasy ownership in NYC. She coined the sassy phrase, "Hello suckers" as she greeted her customers who would pay any amount for her booze. King of the bootlegging and racketeering in Chicago? Al Capone...

Hopefully you had as much fun reading these Fun Trivia Facts as I did finding and posting them. Have a wonderful rest of the week.

Until tomorrow...