#TIL: Today I Learned, an acronym you've probably pondered but were afraid to ask your (grand)kids to define

#TIL: Today I Learned: Hilarious, Entertaining, and Educational Trivia
Stephen J. Spignesi
Skyhorse
$10.99 Kindle only, available now

The Publisher Says: From Abraham Lincoln to Babe Ruth, movies and music to politics and biology, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Spignesi compiles five hundred facts in this addictive bathroom reader trivia book.

From history and science to sports and literature, Spignesi offers eye-opening trivia in 500 facts inspired by the viral social media acronym TIL used on Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook. #TIL: Today I Learned is sure to intrigue even the most jaded know-it-alls and walking encyclopedias, including little-known anecdotes and stories involving some of history’s most famous people, places, and things.

My Review: It's Friday, it's been a craptastic week, and I don't feel like being serious.
Consider:
There are approximately 100 million acts of sexual intercourse around the world each day.
Then:
Three billion pizzas are sold in America every year. Americans eat 350 slices of pizza a second.
And these represent the damnedest, weirdest, least likely statistics I've ever imagined someone collecting. I mean, *everyone* lies about sex, so who asked whom and then decided to trust the answer given? I'd respond to someone's nosy sex-questions with some tart observations on the need for some people to get themselves a less intrusive hobby; but how many would resist the chance to fuck with the poor grad student or bureaucrat and hand 'em a line of nonsense? And the pizza one, well, again we run across the "...according to whom?" issue. The pizza companies no doubt collect statistics. Then, depending on whether the puritanical fear-your-food idiots, the meddlesome make-healthier-choices crumb-bums, or the investors' earnings committee is asking, they can slice and dice the data to present the desired picture to make them go away.

So I'm a cynical, skeptical old fart. Big shock, right? Yes, stats are the best lens we have for viewing the world and its multivarious multitudes on a macro level. We need them to model data to help predict and (if they're given to actual decent human beings with souls) prevent things like pandemics. They're also famously fungible. Mark Twain said of them, "Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'"

But the bizarre statistics in this book, many of them so extremely strange that I want sources that Stephen Spignesi doesn't give, are leavening for my reading pleasure. The bread that's rising is trivia, the weird-but-true little flour particles ground so fine from the cereal grains of the world's astounding supply of facts and yeasted with those damned statistics. For instance:

The name of the zipper was created by the B.F. Goodrich company in 1923 when they started using the fastener in their rubber boots. They wanted something catchy or their promotional material, so they created a name based on the sound the clasp made when it was opened and closed: Zip!
–and–
Stay Puft Marshmallows have 100 mg. of caffeine in each marshmallow.

First: Oh my gawd that makes total sense, followed by "...and what'd they call 'em before 1923?" They were apparently first marketed as "hookless fasteners" starting in 1891 (see Wikipedia) but a more bloodless name I've never heard. Good on y'all, BF Goodrich, for giving the world an *excellent* new word.
Then: WHY IS THERE CAFFEINE IN MARSHMALLOWS?!
What's it doing there? How'd it get there? Why do they leave it in/put it there? Is there really, not just ing Ghostbusters, a Stay-Puft Marshmallow Company? (As a matter of fact...)

Things we never knew (or cared to know) about famous people are the evergreens of the trivia world. No one who's ever played Trivial Pursuit can escape the realization that we're a nosy bunch when it comes to what others do/think/feel.

U.S. President James Garfield could simultaneously write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other.
–and–
One of Abraham Lincoln’s most memorable quotes on slavery was, “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to have it tried on him personally.”

What a tragedy that Garfield was assassinated so early in his term! And Lincoln, well, he was an amazing person. Spignesi has a little tendresse for Presidential trivia, you see, so we get a lot of it. I'm not mad. They're always interesting people, presidents, even if not always for positive reasons. Although the positive reasons certainly exist:

So far, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who served twice as long as any other president, has been the only United States president who did not lose a single staff member or member of his administration due to a scandal or an indictment.

How perfectly astonishing. Especially given the virulence with which FDR was *loathed* by the right-wing reactionary segment of the US population! And the business community! Well, she who laughs last, laughs best, I suppose, and now we're existing in the opposite end of the pendulum's swing. While Spignesi doesn't make the claim that this is a political, let alone presidential, piece of trivia, I offer it here in the spirit of spite and unkind laughter that this moment in political history elicits in me:

In the pre-politically correct era of the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, the bottom three categories for IQ measurement were “Idiot” (<70 IQ); “Imbecile” (70-80 IQ); and “Moron” (80-90 IQ).

I will leave the butt of my joke unnamed. I hope it's crystal clear.