Useless, and useful, facts

Hope A. Smith
Published: July 18, 2008

We have a good friend who starts off a lot of conversations by saying, “A little known fact ...”

Some of these little known facts are simple trivial items like: The Guinness Book of World Records was an idea started in 1951 by then-managing director of the Guinness Brewery, and Petey from “Little Rascals” was the first registered American Pit Bull Terrier of the United Kennel Club.

Yes, the useless trivia a lot of us know could fill a lot of books. In my opinion, the whole trivia train started in the 1980s with the massive popularity of the board game Trivial Pursuit. Now there’s a Trivial Pursuit for every hobby or subject you can think of.

Proud to say, I am the owner of the Totally 80s edition. As one of my partners, Arnold, would say — “When I play, I retire other players like Social Security!”

If you’ve ever played the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” you know that just about every celebrity in the past 30 years is only six degrees away from Kevin Bacon. I even successfully traced Elvis Presley to Kevin Bacon — Elvis starred with Ann Margret in “Viva Las Vegas”; Ann Margret was in “Grumpy Old Men” with Daryl Hannah; Daryl Hannah was in “Splash” with Tom Hanks; Tom Hanks was in “Apollo 13” with Kevin Bacon.

From Elvis to Kevin Bacon in four degrees! Oh, if only I could use my powers for good instead of evil.

A co-worker gave me a printout once that said, “If 99.9 percent is good enough, then ...”

- 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily (yikes!)

- 2 million documents will be lost by the IRS this year

- 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions will be written

- 291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly.

There are more useless facts on this printout that I keep hung up on my corkboard at work. It reminds me that just because I think something is 99.9 percent correct, it’s still not enough.

Sifting through the little known facts for urban legends can be a job in itself. That’s why I rely on extensive research to validate those facts (i.e., snopes.com or urbanlegend.com). I can only hope those resources are correct, or the risk of looking like a fool right now is on me.

Here are some celebrity tidbits you may not have known: Warren Beatty and Shirley Maclaine are siblings – plus, they are both from Virginia! I’ve heard they were from Front Royal, but per the Internet, they lived in various locales, including Richmond, Norfolk and Arlington.

Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones were dorm mates in college. Vincent Price’s grandfather invented the first cream of tartar baking powder.

That’s information classifying as “completely useless.”

Want information that is important to us locally and historically significant? Look no further than the Museum of Culpeper History! Its Web site, culpepermuseum.com, tells us that the largest number of dinosaur tracks was found right here in Culpeper (215 million years old, too).

Culpeper was also the home of Eppa Rixey, pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds and member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Clara Barton, nurse and founder of the Red Cross, performed her first field duty in Culpeper at the Battle of Cedar Mountain. Daniel Boone lived in Stevensburg for three years during the 1750s.

And for all you Civil War buffs, it should come as no surprise that the Culpeper area figured prominently in the war, as Robert E. Lee made his headquarters in Culpeper several times, or that Ulysses Grant lived in Culpeper for a time in 1864. And our first president, George Washington, worked in Culpeper at the age of 17 as official county surveyor.

Thank you, Museum of Culpeper History, for some completely useful little known facts!

Hope A. Smith is an
independent columnist and
resident of Orange County
Her column appears Fridays. E-mail