Due to circumstances beyond my control, this is an actual blog post tonight

I hope everyone remembered to celebrate National Trivia Day today!

I briefly considered throwing a highly improper costume bash to celebrate, but then realized that I'd mislaid my sassy gold lamé Martian princess outfit. Again! And if I can't afford my very own petting zoo, then how can I ever afford enough champagne to fill a swimming pool? I feel quite peeved, to be perfectly honest. However, I cannot let the day pass without including only the very best in educational trivia...

to wit, "Valuable Facts For the Discerning Individual"


1. The longest recorded flight by a chicken is thirteen seconds.

2. For the amusement of Louis XI, the Abbot of Baigne constructed an unusual musical instrument consisting of a small herd of pigs that squealed in different ranges when pricked by spikes attached to a keyboard.

3. Seabee Leon Louie was the first person to ever be court-martialed for throwing a pie.

4. The Ophites were an early Christian sect who required that the communion be licked by snakes before being given to worshippers.

5. Shitala is the Indian goddess of smallpox.

6. The War of Jenkin's Ear (between Spain and Great Britain), which lasted almost ten years, was declared after a British sea captain claimed that the Spanish coast guard severed his ear (later pickled).

7. Levophobia is the fear of objects to the left side of the body

8. The French poet Edouard Corbiere spent a large amount of time constructing scale models of ships then destroying them.

9. In 1877 a Belgian society was formed to promote the use of cats to deliver mail.

10. A whale's penis is called a dork