Carla Rea’s Weekly Dose Of “Hey, I’ll Bet You Didn’t Know…”

It's time for my weekly, "hey, I'll bet you didn't know that..."

A few fun facts to have in your back pocket to impress the kids, to be a pompous ass at parties, or to just know - a la Cliff Clavin. (Kids, look him up on the Google machine)

As you probably already know by now, I love useless information.

Knowledge is seen as "attractive," and people who show off their knowledge of random facts to others are often thought of as intelligent. Do I seem smarter yet?

These are the kind of useless facts that will help you beat your know it all family member at Trivial Pursuit, or maybe just win a free beer at Trivia night at PT's.

Here you go:

1. 97% of clothes and 98% of shoes sold in the U.S. are imported

2. There are several colleges in the U.S. where you're required to pass a swimming test to graduate, including three Ivy League schools:  Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, MIT, Bryn Mawr, and Swarthmore

3. Angelina Jolie, Reese Witherspoon, and Sarah Michelle Gellar all auditioned for the lead part in "Clueless" before it went to Alicia Silverstone.

4. Ever heard your Grammy tell you to "Snap him?"  Only 2% of people 65 and older are on Snapchat.

5. If you grunt when you hit a tennis ball, your shot will be approximately 3.8% faster. (I played tennis, and I never knew! this!)

6. Yuma, Arizona is known as the sunniest city on Earth.  It gets more than 4,000 sunlight hours per year, the most of any city in the world.

7. The jockstrap was invented in 1874, to help "bicycle jockeys" as they'd make deliveries on cobblestone streets in Boston.

8. Female senators weren't allowed to wear pants on the Senate floor until 1993.  (There are currently 24 women in the Senate)

9. The last movie ever released on VHS was "A History of Violence" in 2006.

10. As of 2022, there are 197,163 individual fast-food restaurants in the U.S.

11. And here's a little real magic for you:  If you hold your key fob up to your chin, it increases the range to lock or unlock your car.  Why?  Because the fluids in your head act as a conductor that make it more powerful. (Have fun with this one!)

-Carla Rea