Mental Floss: Instant Knowledge (42 page)

(you probably don’t want)

USEFUL FOR:
seafood buffets, barroom banter, and realizing how much better your job is than you know

KEYWORDS:
Alaska, fishermen, or king crab special

THE FACT:
Annoying bosses, bad benefits, and even preretirement pink slips can’t make a job more hellish than that of Alaskan king crab fishermen.

Because most crab are harvested during the winter months in Alaska, conditions are particularly brutal, with strong winds, short daylight hours, and high seas. Every year, 34 fishing vessels and 24 lives are lost in the water around Alaska—an occupational fatality rate 20 times the national average. Most deaths result from hypothermia, capsizing, or falling overboard. The risks are exacerbated by exhaustion, because the fishermen often work 20-hour shifts pulling 450-pound crab cages across the slippery deck. But the hard work pays off—if you survive. Alaskan king crab fishermen work for shares of their vessel, with some boats bringing in $200,000 a day, and deckhands taking home up to $100,000 in a four-month season.

(as almost started by a bear)

USEFUL FOR:
impressing your history teacher, terrifying your friends, and occasionally as a fun fact whenever you’re watching Yogi Bear cartoons

KEYWORDS:
Cuban Missile Crisis, nuclear holocaust, or the Bad News Bears

THE FACT:
On October 25, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a security guard at an airbase in Duluth, Iowa, saw a shadowy figure scaling one of the fences enclosing the base. It almost led to a world war.

The guard shot at the intruder and activated an intruder alarm, automatically setting off intruder alarms at neighboring bases. However, at the Volk Field airbase in Wisconsin, the Klaxon loudspeaker had been wired incorrectly, and instead sounded an alarm ordering F-106A interceptors armed with nuclear missiles to take off. The pilots presumed that a full-scale nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union had begun, and the planes were about to take off when a car from the air traffic control tower raced down the tarmac and signaled the planes to stop. The intruder in Duluth had finally been identified: it was a bear.

(a guy named Napoleon)

USEFUL FOR:
cocktail parties, academic gatherings, and making friends with a Yanomami

KEYWORDS:
Napoleon, anthropology, or “I’ve never had the measles”

THE FACT:
Until 2000, Napoleon Chagnon was known as author of the best-selling anthropology text of all time:
Yanomamö: The Fierce People
. But since then his so-called research has been mired in controversy.

The anthropologist, along with geneticist James Neel, inoculated many of the Venezuelan tribe’s members against measles. Unfortunately, it was right about this time that the Yanomami experienced their first-ever measles epidemic, leading to thousands of deaths and reducing the tribe to half its original size. Coincidence? Perhaps. Many defend the expedition, claiming it would be impossible for a vaccine to spark such an outbreak. Critics point to the expedition’s financier, the Atomic Energy Commission, as proof that the accused were using the Yanomami as human test subjects. Either way, the scandal raised serious questions about the practices of studying indigenous peoples, and made it nearly impossible for Neel and Chagnon to pick up ladies at future anthropological conventions.

(’cause when you’re Wright, you’re Wright)

USEFUL FOR:
housewarming parties, chatting up architects, and irritating fans of Frank Lloyd Wright

KEYWORDS:
temper tantrum, prima donna, or
Trading Spaces

THE FACT:
Whether or not Frank Lloyd Wright could walk on water, the genius designer behind Fallingwater sort of believed he could.

It’s true, the amazing designer of the Robie House, Fallingwater, Taliesin West, the Guggenheim Museum, and countless other buildings was notorious for his belief in his superiority to mere mortals. In fact, the architectural egomaniac frequently acted as if the rules did not apply to him—even the rules of geography and climate. But when you’re Wright, your Wright. Commissioned in 1935 to design a Dallas home for department store magnate Stanley Marcus, the project quickly went sour when he insisted that his client sleep outdoors year-round on “sleeping porches.” He also decreed that the Marcus small bedroom “cubicles” would have almost no closet space. When Stan respectfully explained that a) it is frequently well over 90 degrees at night during Dallas summers and b) a high-fashion tastemaker might need bigger closets, Wright threw a series of tantrums in letters still extant that make for delicious reading.

(and the wrathful god that wielded it)

USEFUL FOR:
scaring kids, impressing mass murderers, and making conversation during the Kali Ma scenes of
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

KEYWORDS:
Aztec, sacrifices, or the phrase “show a little heart”

THE FACT:
The ambition of the Aztec empire might well be linked to one wrathful god and his turquoise snake.

According to Aztec legend, Huitzilopochtli’s 401 older siblings tried to kill him, but the clever god turned the tables on them and wiped ’em out with his weapon of choice, the xiuhcóatl (or for those of you who don’t speak Aztec, a turquoise snake). Represented either as a hummingbird or as a warrior with armor and helmet made of hummingbird feathers (not exactly bulletproof), Huitzilopochtli was both God of the Sun and the God of War. As such, Aztecs believed that he needed a steady diet of human hearts—preferably of the warrior variety—and human blood. In fact, the need to feed Huitzilopochtli fueled the Aztecs’ ambition, and increased their urgency for fighting and conquering other peoples.