by
Jeremy Topping
- The odds of being struck by lightning twice in a lifetime are 1 in 9,000,000. Tell that to Roy Sullivan, the Virginia park ranger who managed to get struck seven times over the course of his life. The lightning never killed him—Sullivan, distraught over a woman, committed suicide at the age of 71.
- For every 10,000 clover plants, only one will have four leaves. If that probability isn’t good enough for you, look for patches of Oxalis deppei, a clover look-alike that always has four leaves.
- Gambling has gone in and out of governmental favor since Massachusetts Puritans first outlawed dice, but it’s always easier to make the case for gambling when the country’s in financial distress. The 1929 stock market crash led to Bingo’s legal reinstatement, and states rushed to the tracks after the Horse Racing Act of 1933 made betting on horses licit again.
- Discovered in a Benedictine abbey in 1847, Carmina Burana is a 13th-century collection of bawdy poems that Carl Orff set to music in 1937. O Fortuna, the first and last movement of the piece, is one of the most widely used classical pieces—in movie trailers.
- In 1922, on the advice of advertising guru Albert Lasker, the American Tobacco Company began a campaign directed at women. It featured the slogan, “Reach for a Lucky instead of a Sweet” and scored endorsements from such celebrities as Amelia Earhart and Helen Hayes. Lucky Strikes sales skyrocketed by 312 percent.
- Lucky Charms inventor John Holahan and his wife were killed in a car crash, just four days before their daughter died of liver cancer. Holahan created his first “magically delicious” marbits in 1963 when he cut up circus peanuts into his Cheerios.
- Under the management of Frank Chance, the Chicago Cubs were the first team to win back-to-back World Series, in 1907 and 1908. The Cubbies haven’t won a championship since. Chance and fellow Cubs Joe Tinker and Johnny Evers were honored in The New York Times verse—“Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance”—for their legendary double plays.
- After the Gold Rush hit California, entrepreneur Sam Brannon purchased all the area’s pickaxes and metal pans. He then ran through the streets of San Francisco broadcasting the presence of gold in the hills. In nine weeks, Brannon banked $36,000 selling tools to prospective miners.
- Rich in amino acids that trigger sex hormones, raw oysters have long been known to rev the libido—Casanova would down 50 or so for breakfast. But the slimy aphrodisiacs have their dark side—10 out of the 11 species of the Vibrio vulnificus microbe known to make people ill are found in oysters.
- Hunter S. Thompson, the original gonzo journalist and gambler extraordinaire, died Feb. 20 of this year at his fortified Woody Creek, Colo. compound of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The family is still arranging to honor Hunter’s wish that his ashes be shot from a 150-foot cannon.
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