It’s National Trivia Day(and I’ve got a local bit you probably didn’t know)
January 4 is National Trivia Day. Let's get to work and play.
Let's start with a couple bits of Presidential trivia. Perhaps you know that Jimmy Carter was the first President born in a hospital. But did you know his mother worked as a registered nurse at the hospital he was born in?
President Gerald Ford's birth parents divorced. His father remarried and had three more children. President Ford didn't meet all three of his half siblings till he was 47 or so years of age.
Let's do sports. Roy and Bob Johnson were brothers from Oklahoma. They each played outfielder in over 1,000 major league games. Hard to believe but they both wound up their careers with identical lifetime batting averages of .296.
Be very careful this weekend. Sunday is January 6 and that's the day the most deaths occur. According to the British Office for National Statistics, January 6 has 25% more deaths than any other date of the year. This has been the case since 2005. Whether this applies to America I'm really not sure.
Plenty of us still watch the old Andy Griffith show reruns. Ever notice that a number of episodes had this little boy dressed in a cowboy outfit eating a peanut butter sandwich? His name is Clint Howard. His big brother Ron Howard played Opie on the show.
Here's one with a Southern Minnesota twist. Charles was one of the oldest if not the oldest inhabitants of nearby Goodhue County. He was a long time farmer near Pine Island and lived to the ripe old age of 92. It was written that he rarely mentioned and never even met his cousin, a guy by the name of Thomas Edison.Charles Edison was born in Ontario, Canada and even though Thomas was born in Ohio, his older siblings were born in Ontario. I see Thomas had a son named Charles but have no idea if he was named for his father's Minnesota cousin. I ran across this in a 1929 Rochester newspaper and found it interesting.
Happy Trivia