15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, June 7, 2025
This weekend, the video-game industry is unveiling a bunch of trailers as part of its annual Summer Game Fest. Among them will be clips of the remake of 2004’s Metal Gear Solid 3, a game that’s ed for its mechanics, story and product placement. In the game, your character can heal using an energy bar named Calorie Mate, which is an actual product in Japan. Another character delivers a sales pitch for Calorie Mate, describing it as great for weight loss, which makes it a questionable choice for a military guy crawling through the jungle and trying to avoid starving.
Below, we have some facts for you about a better way to avoid starving, along with a disturbing story about someone who ate the wrong thing.
Hang My Head and Cry
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There are two recorded versions of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” the famous second one being recorded at the actual Folsom State Prison and featuring inmates hooting and hollering. But though Cash really did record it in the prison, the hoots were added by the studio in post, as the prisoners themselves were silent for fear of being punished.
For Meatheads Everywhere
Wilson Sporting Goods, the company behind such products as Wilson volleyballs, spun off from Wilson & Co., a company devoted to meat products. Back in the 1960s, they offered such products as “Mor” (a pork product that competed with Spam) and “Bif” (a beef product that apparently had too many additives to simply be called “beef”).
Bees!
A report last week that a truck overturned and released a large swarm of bees was later revealed to have exaggerated the number of bees. Upon closer analysis, it turned out that the accident released only 14 million bees.
What the Truck
Propeller planes usually have an electric starter, which gets the engine running before the engine itself can power the vehicle. This wasn’t always the case. A century ago, a truck would hook up to the propeller to get it started. This was seen as a major improvement over the earlier system, where someone had to spin the propeller by hand.
Fantastic Beast
The fourth Harry Potter movie features a CGI arachnid that many viewers assumed was a fantasy creature, designed to be as weird as possible. But that animal is real, and it’s called a tailless whip-scorpion or an amblypygid.
Happy Sabbatical
Frida Kahlo likely never would have become a painter had a bus not hit her when she was 18. She liked painting as a child, but she didn’t have much time for it as an adult because she had a job, until the bus accident put her out of commission for three months.
Mumbo Jumbo
Over a dozen songs have sampled “Don’t Look Any Further” by Dennis Edwards. The chorus, which isn’t in English, is Swahili for “don’t look any further,” explained Edwards. But people who know Swahili realize that that’s not true at all. A featured artist on the song later revealed that they’d just strung together the names of some African cities, to sound like African speech.
Ping
An object 15,000 light-years away is firing X-rays at us and also radio waves. This is contrary to how celestial objects are supposed to behave, and along with being surprised that this object exists, scientists are surprised that we ever managed to spot it.
Gone Girl
Ben Affleck’s first directorial effort was a short film from 1993. It’s called I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Ηung Ηer on a Μeathook & Νow I Have a Three-Picture Deal with Disney. Affleck does not encourage people to seek this film out.
The Great Panjandrum
During World War II, Britain developed a rocket-propelled cart that consisted of a single huge wheel that could roll toward the enemy and explode. This turned out to be roughly the least effective way of delivering explosives, so they never used it.
Don’t Want to Wait
Michelle Williams’ first big role was as a lead on Dawson’s Creek, where she spent years dating a boy obsessed with Steven Spielberg. Decades later, Spielberg cast her as a fictionalized version of his own mother in The Fabelmans.
Pleasant, With Some Suffering
For over 20 years, all royalties for the song “Bittersweet Symphony” went to the Rolling Stones, thanks to a drum sample that you barely notice. Only in 2019 did the writer, Richard Ashcroft, regain credit for the song.
Bad Meets Evil
A type of wasp injects roaches with a toxin that allows them to go on walking but prevents them from controlling how they walk. So, the wasp can just turn the roach toward the wasp’s nest, and the roach has no choice but to walk there.
Confidence Boost
Showtime’s Masters of Sex had many sex scenes, several of which featured Lizzy Caplan. After the first of these between her and Michael Sheen, Sheen ran to a garbage can and threw up. The culprit turned out to be food poisoning, not disgust.
Depth Charge
The ocean plays a large role in the carbon cycle, exchanging carbon dioxide with the atmosphere. Some scientists have proposed a method for getting the ocean to absorb more carbon: detonating nuclear bombs on the ocean floor. This plan has no way of going wrong, and we it without reservations.