Mental Floss: Instant Knowledge (35 page)

(as in the whole typing monkeys thing)

USEFUL FOR:
cocktail parties, dates at the zoo, and whenever someone brings up the idea of infinity

KEYWORDS:
Shakespeare, monkeys, and typing

THE FACT:
If a million monkeys typed on a million typewriters for a million years, would they produce a work of Shakespeare by chance? Well, not according to this experiment.

This notion has been used to indicate how over the vastness of time complex creations may arise from chance. Well, researchers at Plymouth University in England have carried out a small-scale experiment by placing a computer in an enclosure with six macaques (short-tailed monkeys). After pounding on it with a rock, defecating on it, and urinating on it, some of the monkeys did hit a few keystrokes, producing mostly a lot of S’s. Theoretically, the hypothesis defies statistics. The odds of striking the correct sequence is so small that you’d have to have a million monkeys typing at a rate of 31,000,000 strokes a year (1 per second) each for a million years, and then multiply that amount by itself almost 200 times. We think there are better odds at winning the Powerball jackpot.

(specifically, the blackest one of the Brontë family)

USEFUL FOR:
cocktail parties, impressing your English teacher, and making friends at the library (please keep the facts to a whisper)

KEYWORDS:
Wuthering Heights
,
Jane Eyre,
or any Brontë

THE FACT:
Anne Brontë may have had an inferiority complex living with sisters like Charlotte and Emily, but she was hardly the least-accomplished child in the family.

That honor goes to their only brother, Branwell. As a child, Branwell showed a lot of promise as an artist and writer, and because of that, ironically enough, Branwell was considered the prodigy of the family. With high expectations, his parents sent him to attend the Royal Academy Schools in London, but that proved to be an embarrassing mistake. Pretty much all Branwell did while he was away was spend exorbitant amounts of family money, become a raging alcoholic and opium addict, sleep around with legions of different women, and get fired from jobs for not showing up or, in one case, “fiddling with the books.”

USEFUL FOR:
cocktail parties, chatting up the French, and consoling the Jan Brady in your family

KEYWORDS:
Fredo Corleone, Jan Brady, or Mom always loved you best

THE FACT:
It’s not easy being the little brother, especially when your big sib is a self-made emperor. So it’s no wonder relations between Lucien Bonaparte and brother Napoléon were often abrasive and strained.

At first a supporter of his big bro, Lucien became disillusioned by what he saw as the betrayal of the French Revolution. Unfortunately, he was sort of the Fredo Corleone of the family, being stupid enough to let a subversive pamphlet he had written fall into the hands of Napoléon’s police. Obviously, it strained their relationship even further and made him one of the few Bonapartes who didn’t end up king of something. In 1804, Lucien went into exile in Rome, and the pope named him Prince of Canino, largely to annoy Napoléon. Not the brightest move. Napoléon imprisoned the pope in 1809. Lucien on the other hand was America-bound. Captured by the British, he remained a prisoner for several years before returning to a comfortable, Napoléon-free retirement on the Continent.

USEFUL FOR:
impressing bakers, inventors, and anyone who loves their bread

KEYWORDS:
toast, sandwich, or the best thing since sliced bread

THE FACT:
It may get a lot of credit now, but at the time of its debut in 1928, sliced bread received less-than-rave reviews.

Baker and inventor Otto Frederick Rohwedder had spent 15 years perfecting his bread slicer (finally settling on one that wrapped the sliced bread to hold it together as opposed to the hat pins he’d tried earlier), but consumers weren’t quick to convert. People found the sliced bread strange and senseless. In fact, it wasn’t until the advent of Wonder bread, and the collective realization that sliced bread worked better in the toaster, that Rohwedder’s invention really took off. By World War II, the military was using sliced bread to serve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as part of soldiers’ rations. Previously uncommon, the PB&J gained a loyal following among servicemen, who kept making the sandwich, sliced bread and all, after they came back to the home front.

(and one man’s tireless shenanigans)

USEFUL FOR:
trips to Vegas, bachelor parties, and impressing anyone who’s ever tried to cheat the system

KEYWORDS:
always bet on the house

THE FACT:
Working from the back of his TV repair shop, Tommy Glenn Carmichael figured out more than a few ways to take Vegas, and all their slot machines, for a heck of a ride.

Starting in 1980, Carmichael invented, refined, then manufactured devices for cheating slot machines. Tommy’s bag of tricks ranged from coins on strings to light wands that blinded machine sensors, fooling them into dropping their coins. Then, for most of two decades, Carmichael and his partners raked in millions of dollars. But his luck finally ran out when federal agents tapped his phone and heard him discussing a new device that would rack up hundreds of credits per minute on slot machines. In 2001, Carmichael was sentenced to about a year in jail, and was ordered to stay out of casinos. In 2003, he told an Associated Press reporter he was developing a new gadget, called “the Protector.” It was designed to stop slot cheaters.