Mental Floss: Instant Knowledge (5 page)

(and the guy you should
always
bet against)

USEFUL FOR:
consoling anyone who’s ever lost a fight

KEYWORDS:
jab, TKO, or I’ve seen grandmothers throw better punches

THE FACT:
Despite being knocked out more than any professional boxer, the abysmal Bruce “the Mouse” Strauss isn’t a sore loser.

In fact, Strauss proudly claims to have been knocked out on every continent except Antarctica. His career began in Oklahoma City in 1976 when the completely novice (and
drunk)
Strauss agreed to enter the ring as a last-minute replacement fighter for a match. Surprisingly, he won. Afterward, he became a professional boxer, though he never sought formal training. Later, he decided to fight as an “opponent,” a boxer who almost exclusively fights inferior opponents in order to pad his or her record. By doing this, opponents can qualify for big fights to collect big checks, knowing with almost complete certainty that they won’t win. This can lead to some pretty nasty losses, of which the Mouse had plenty. Of his strategy, Strauss once said, “If I couldn’t knock ’em out, I’d look for a soft spot in the canvas, wait for a big punch, and close my eyes.”

(the kind you could never afford)

USEFUL FOR:
wedding rehearsal small talk, blowing a cheapskate’s mind, scaring potential fathers of the bride, and consoling your parents after spending so much on your wedding dress

KEYWORDS:
I do, for better or for worse, or doesn’t this stuff ever go on sale

THE FACT:
In possibly the most luxurious wedding in history, Vanisha Mittal, daughter of Anglo-Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, married Amit Bhatia, an investment banker who literally cashed in.

The wedding, held in June 2004 in a chateau in France, lasted six days and was reported to have cost over $90 million (yes, that’s U.S. dollars). The guest roster included some of Bollywood’s brightest stars and some of Europe’s deepest pockets. Among the expenditures: $520,000 for a performance by pop diva Kylie Minogue, who performed for a half hour. That’s almost $300 per second, a figure even more shocking when you factor in dollars per unit of talent.

(the original “Little Drummer Boy”)

USEFUL FOR:
barroom banter and anytime a country song plays on the jukebox

KEYWORDS:
Buddy Rich, drumming, or child prodigy

THE FACT:
Sure, Bernard “Buddy” Rich’s technique and speed were impressive, but the fact that he never took a lesson and refused to practice outside of performances made him just plain unbelievable.

The son of vaudeville performers, Rich hit the stage in 1921 when he was only four years old and soon became the second-highest-paid child entertainer in the world. During his later career, he led some of the most successful big bands ever, and played with such greats as Tommy Dorsey, Dizzy Gillespie, and Louis Armstrong. But his drive and competitive nature also came with a volatile temper, which Rich was happy to showcase. He was notorious for screaming at his band members for hours on end (which they secretly tape-recorded) and fearlessly ridiculing pop stars during public interviews. Oh, and Rich also always needed to have the last word, even on his deathbed. While lying in a hospital after surgery, a nurse asked Rich if anything was bothering him. His response: “Yes…country music.”

(where the early bird gets the body)

USEFUL FOR:
when you’re watching birds feed and making small talk at wakes

KEYWORDS:
vultures, sky burials, or death

THE FACT:
Many Parsis or Zoroastrians (who are mainly concentrated in Mumbai, India) have a truly unusual way of disposing of their dead…involving vultures.

They place corpses on a tower or on treetops to be devoured by vultures. It might seem crude at first, but it’s religiously poetic. Because Parsis believe that nature is sacred, they choose not to defile the earth, fire, or water by using the elements to dispose of their bodies. Instead, they rely on vultures to perform a “sky burial” and leave little more than crumbs of bone to disintegrate. The practice is not wholly unique to the Parsis, though. Tibetan Buddhists in some areas of China perform comparable sky burials where the body of the deceased is first prepared, then distributed to dogs, crows, and vultures. Similarly, certain Bantu tribes in South Africa leave dead bodies for jackals to devour.

USEFUL FOR:
stunning your nerdy friends and definitively proving to your Charlie Brownish pals that they’re just as unlucky as everyone else

KEYWORDS:
my bread, dropped, or damn (usually in the form of “Damn! I dropped my bread”)

THE FACT:
The reports are in: Toast really does fall butterside down!

In an experiment led by physicist Robert Matthews of Aston University, British schoolchildren dropped thousands of buttered and unbuttered pieces of toast from their tables. The results are in: The buttered side will hit the ground first more often. In fact, irrespective of the buttering, the side of the toast facing up on the plate will probably hit the floor first. Why? Simply put, when the bread falls, it begins to flip. And it generally only has time to flip over once before it hits the floor, given the average kitchen table height—all of which leads to crying, whining, and restarting the whole toasting and buttering process. Oddly enough, in a related experiment, when the toast is dropped from a significantly higher height, the unbuttered side, on average, hits first.