Category: Trivia

Those Fake Crocs are Real!

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Remember the stunt in Live and Let Die when James Bond [Roger Moore] ran across the backs of crocodiles?  

I had always thought that they were mechanical crocs.  

They weren’t.  Those crocs were the real thing.  

The stuntman, Ross Kananga, had to attempt the stunt several times to get it right.  As you can see here, he had a few close calls.  

The video makes the stunt, which I had always thought a bit corny, more impressive.

A tip o’ Oddjob’s steel rimmed derby to BoingBoing for the original post. 

 

4 Men & 4 Hats = 1 Life or Death Puzzle

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Here’s a pretty cool little brain teaser from MyCoted.com.  

I wish I could say that I figured it out before checking the answer.  Well, I could say it, but it wouldn’t be true.

  • Shown above are four men buried up to their necks in the ground. They cannot move, so they can only look forward. 
  • Between A and B is a brick wall which cannot be seen through. They all know that between them they are wearing four hats–two black and two white–but they do not know what color they are wearing.
  • Each of them know where the other three men are buried.In order to avoid being shot, one of them must call out to the executioner the color of their hat. If they get it wrong, everyone will be shot. They are not allowed to talk to each other and have 10 minutes to fathom it out.  
  • After one minute, one of them calls out. 
  • Question: Which one of them calls out? Why is he 100% certain of the color of his hat? This is not a trick question. There are no outside influences nor other ways of communicating. They cannot move and are buried in a straight line; A & B can only see their respective sides of the wall, C can see B, and D can see B & C.

Click here for the answer.

Moon Return: Forms, Zombies and Memories

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Did you know that when the first men to land on the moon returned to Earth that they completed a report for customs?  That’s right, NASA astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins completed a customs form upon their return.   A spokesman for NASA has confirmed the authenticity of the document and you can see a full-moonsized version at Space.com.

I was ten years old when we first landed on the moon.  I can remember watching black and white images beamed to us from 240,000 miles away as all of the adults in the room and Walter Cronkite on the tube got giddy.  It was is pretty cool stuff.

We were on the moon!  How long w0uld it be until we had flying cars like Nick Fury?  How long until astronauts were going to Mars and beyond? Perhaps even  a five year mission to go where no man had gone before was in order.

But getting back to the custom’s report, I never knew about it before a few days ago.  I do remember that when Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins returned to Earth that they had to wear special biological containment suits and  were kept in quarantine for three weeks to be sure that they didn’t bring back a virus or germ that could start a zombie-apocalypse.

Ok.  I made up the zombie-apocalypse part, but the astronauts were kept in quarantine and did have to wear the biological containment suits.  Even at ten years old, I remember thinking that the end of the human race would be like a cool episode of The Twilight Zone if the astronauts accidentally brought  back a virus or germ that killed us all.

Think about it, our greatest human triumph leads to our extinction.  Now that would be a cool episode for The Twilight Zone,  except it really wouldn’t be so cool in real life, would it?