Mental Floss: Instant Knowledge (23 page)

USEFUL FOR:
barroom banter, bachelor parties, and generally impolite company

KEYWORDS:
sadism, sadomasochism, and de Sade

THE FACT:
How great would it be to have sadism named after you? Of course, you’d have to go to certain lengths, as the Marquis definitely did.

Essentially pawned off by his family, the Marquis de Sade was married to a woman for the money. Choosing to fulfill the “for worse” part of the whole marriage vow deal, he immediately began to busy himself (quite publicly) with prostitutes, and with a sister-in-law. Of course, de Sade’s mother-in-law didn’t like that, and she had him imprisoned. So he spent 14 years in jail, including being condemned to death in the town of Aix for his sexual practices. Yet somehow he got out of that one. Then he was imprisoned again in 1777, and again for six years at the Bastille in Paris in 1784. Imprisonment gave him lots of time to keep churning out the vigorous pornography that made him famous. In fact, the Marquis spent his last 12 years in the insane asylum at Charenton, where he wrote and directed plays starring the staff and inmates.

(it’s not a dirty word)

USEFUL FOR:
dinner parties, cocktail parties, and parties where you get stuck at the kids’ table

KEYWORDS:
chew your food

THE FACT:
Also called “the Chew-Chew Man,” American importer and art dealer Horace Fletcher gained a huge following when he began donning a white jacket, and lecturing and writing about nutrition. His 1890s theme: Chew.

So what made him so popular? Fletcher advised that nothing should be swallowed unless it could be reduced to liquid first by chewing. Supported by studies that found chewing every morsel 32 times could be beneficial for weight loss (it slowed down the rate of eating, at the very least), Fletcher claimed such adherents as novelist Henry James and industrialist John D. Rockefeller. Health reformer Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was also a devotee of “Fletcherizing” for a while, and even made up a “chewing song” for patients. Of course, keeping to the philosophy wasn’t all roses. Many Fletcherizers spit out anything they could not chew to liquid, which eliminated a lot of dietary fiber and led to constipation.

(you should probably pass over)

USEFUL FOR:
cocktail parties, barroom banter, and daring anyone to repeat the feat

KEYWORDS:
Matzo, Passover, dreidl, or all you can eat

THE FACT:
It ain’t easy keeping kosher. Especially for contestants in Ben’s Kosher Delicatessen Charity Matzo Ball Eating Contest (where even the name’s a mouthful).

The contest is a charity fund-raiser for the Interfaith Nutrition Network by a New York–area deli chain. The 2004 record holder is Eric “Badlands” Booker of Copaigue, Long Island, who ate 20 1/4 matzo balls in five minutes and 25 seconds. If that doesn’t sound like a lot, you should know that these matzo balls were roughly the size of
tennis
balls.
Oy!
The winner gets a trophy and a $2,500 gift certificate to a stereo store, while runners-up get various prize packages, all of which involve tickets to a New York Islanders game. Umm…all that matzo for an Islanders ticket? We’re thinking we’ll pass.

(and the women who really love ’em)

USEFUL FOR:
cocktail parties, nerdy dates, and making small talk at Mercedes-Benz dealerships

KEYWORDS:
anytime you hear the word R-E-S-P-E-C-T spelled out in song

THE FACT:
Apparently, the Mercedes-Benz as a status symbol doesn’t just cross highways, it crosses cultures as well. Case in point: the Nanas women of Togo in Africa.

The Nanas represent a stunning rags-to-riches story, overcoming illiteracy and cultural barriers when they cornered the lucrative cloth trade. After acquiring loans and making a few sharp investments, these women now conduct multimillion-dollar international transactions. In fact, the Nanas’ have expanded their businesses to hair salons, bakeries, restaurants, and real estate. What’s the Nanas’ status symbol of choice? The Benz, of course. So many of the Nanas drive around in them, in fact, that the most successful are known as Nana-Benz. The Nanas, however, aren’t the only group in Africa to incorporate the Mercedes moniker into their name. The WaBenzi, a powerful and elite class of people in many African nations, got its name because of its members’ favorite car. WaBenzi loosely translates to “people of Mercedes-Benz.”

(and men)

USEFUL FOR:
barroom banter, irritating members of PETA, and chatting up Australians

KEYWORDS:
mice,
Fear Factor
, or sushi

THE FACT:
Sure, the MTV show
Jackass
spawned a lot of moronic copycats, but two hungry fellas in Brisbane, Australia, win the prize for trying to down a live mouse.

It’s disturbingly true. Participating in a contest at Brisbane’s Exchange Hotel in which they were dared to eat the rodents live, the winner’s grand prize was a vacation package worth a handsome $346. Both men chewed the tails off, and the “winner” actually chewed his mouse whole and spit it out. Needless to say, the RSPCA, Australia’s version of our own SPCA, wasn’t thrilled about the stunt and got the Queensland police on the participants’…um…tail. If caught, the winner will face fines of $75,000 and two years in the pokey. Where there will no doubt be plenty of big, fat, edible rodents for snacking on.