Wow, really?

It's Monday yet again and here we are. Time for some Eccentric Spheres, this time concerning some interesting trivia facts.

We'll start off with something nice. In Rome you can find the famous Fontana di Trevi, or Trevi Fountain, if you prefer. Like many fountains around the world, it's popular to throw coins in the water, but it's special with the Trevi. For starters, you should throw three coins, not just one. Now, I have no idea if it'll grant you luck if you do, but I do know needy people get food. You see, about a million euros are thrown in the fountain yearly, and the money is used to fund a supermarket for people in need. So keep tossing those coins.

Next up is the New Zealand town of Brightwater. Back in 1911, they had five electric street lights that were powered with hydroelectricity and controlled by chicken. No that's not a typo. Some Clever Person had rigged it so that when the sun went down and the birds went into their coop to sleep, their weight triggered a pressure switch and that turned on their lights.

How many times do you try again before you give up? Two times? Five? Well, the city of Dallas, Texas has tried one man 82 times in court and lost every time. The man, Robert Groden sells books and magazines about the JFK assassination and the city has tried and tried again to get him to stop. With attempts from tickets to fines to jail time, Dallas keeps loosing. One would think they'd just call it quits, but I guess quitters never die. Read the whole story here:

http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-has-now-lost-82-cases-against-robert-groden-someone-call-guinness-8680799

Did you know that in 1913, Hitler, Freud, Tito, Stalin, and Trotsky all lived within 2.5 square kilometers of each other in Vienna, Austria? Happening place...

Finally we're going to talk about ants. Ants are a constant source of fascination for scientists, and one aspect is their skill at finding their way back home again. A theory was proposed that they counted their steps and this was confirmed when some scientists managed to attach stilts to some ants and set them loose. The stilted ants overshot their nests by about 50%, since they took longer steps, something their brains couldn't process. Imagine attaching teeny tiny stilts to ants? I hate sowing buttons because it's so fiddly, but ant-stilts? Forget it.

That's today's serving, so until next time, have a great week, and stay away from ants, OK?