That Can't Be Right, Can It? Trivia Quiz

Answer: True!

Australia is 3,987 km wide from Cape Byron in the east to Steep Point in the west. The diameter of the moon is only 3,475 km making the continent of Australia wider than the diameter of the moon!

Cape Byron is the easternmost point of Australia in northern New South Wales, a few km away from the Queensland border. Steep Point is the westernmost point of Australia next to Shark Bay.

The moon is 385,500 km away from the Earth and it takes 27.3 days to orbit around the Earth. This is also the exact amount of time for the moon to make one rotation resulting in only one side of the moon ever being visible from the Earth.

Answer: True!

Telling someone they have a bird brain is usually an insult to their intelligence. Ostriches have great eyesight but are not the brightest. Their brains are indeed smaller than one of their eyeballs. Each eye is about the size of a billiard ball which does not leave much room for brains.

As a result, the ostrich has an underdeveloped brain making it one of the least intelligent birds. They do have fantastic eyelashes that look dashing and eyelids that are great at keeping out the desert sand.

Answer: True!

Believe it or not, the Statue of Liberty was a lighthouse for 16 years! The statue was officially completed in October of 1886, and a month later it became an operational lighthouse! Not only that, it was the first electric-powered lighthouse in the USA. That is where the coolness ends though, as its functionality was absolutely dreadful.

The statue was not built to be a lighthouse and there was not a good place to set up the lamp. On top of that, there was no way to magnify the light so the beam was weak and shone in sailor's eyes.

In addition to their impracticality, the electric lights were expensive to operate, and the New York government was not happy with the idea of paying for the inefficient light. So in 1902 the Statue of Liberty ended its run as a lighthouse and has since served as its original intention as a beautiful monument for freedom.

Answer: True!

I was a bit surprised that the letter "J" was actually the last letter to be added to the English alphabet. In the Roman alphabet the letters "I" and "J" were used interchangeably. The "J" was called a swash and was typically used at the end of the Roman numerals as the last "I". So instead of VIII, it might have been written as VIIJ.

It was not until 1524 that linguist Gian Giorgio Trissino wrote an essay trying to establish the difference between an "I" and a "J" with the "I" representing the vowel and "J" representing a consonant as it is pronounced in Beijing.

The harder "J" sound as in "jam" did not come until later.

Answer: True!

While the most predominant definition of a nurdle is a small pellet for making plastics, in 1968 Vote toothpaste used the ad jingle "A nurdle a day keeps the dragon away!" In 1990 the American Dental Association accepted the term nurdle as the wavy blob on a toothbrush.

It may seem silly, but both Colgate and GlaxoSmithKline had to settle a lawsuit over the wave shape of their nurdle! Heaven forbid if they look too similar! Who knew nurdles were such serious business?

Answer: False!

Venus is the only planet that spins clockwise...NOT counterclockwise. All the other planets of our Solar System spin in a counterclockwise direction. So on the planet Venus, the sun rises in the west and sets in the east...but a day on Venus lasts for 243 Earth days and is actually longer than a Venus year.

The Astronomie et Systemes Dynamiques has proposed that maybe Venus originally was counterclockwise like the rest but currently has a flipped axis. No one knows for sure.

Answer: False!

An octothorpe is not a marine arachnid but rather the pound symbol (#) also known as the hashtag. The most popular theory is the name originated in 1960 by Don MacPherson of Bell Telephone Laboratories. The "octo" part was named for the 8 points of the (#) symbol and the "thorpe" part is supposedly named for Jim Thorpe.

The more popular term hashtag has its roots in cross-hatching and is the most commonly known name for # by digital natives.

Answer: False!

The Italian national anthem "Il Canto degli Italiani" not only has words, it has six stanzas. The Italians most commonly call the hymn "Inno di Mameli" named after the composer of the poem, Goffredo Mameli. The song was very popular during the Italian unification in 1861 but did not become the provisional anthem until 1946.

Many attempts were made to make "Inno di Mameli" the official national anthem, but it was not until 2017 that it became official by de jure. By the way, there are no words in the Spanish national anthem.

Answer: False!

Hippos do not make good pets! In fact, hippos are quite dangerous and kill an estimated 500 humans each year. They are very aggressive and territorial. Legend has it that John Quincy Adams did have a pet alligator who lived in the bathroom tub of the East Room of the White House! What a lovely surprise for ladies going to powder their noses at a state dinner.

The gator was supposedly a gift from the Marquis de Lafayette. Sadly, historians list this legend as dubious at best.

Answer: False!

While identical twins have similar fingerprints, they are not identical. Genetics do play a large role in fingerprints, but the environment within the womb plays a role as well. The fingerprint pattern of an individual is mostly set between the fetal weeks of 13 and 19.

Some environmental factors that can play a role in fingerprint patterns include nutrition, blood pressure, position inside the womb, and even umbilical cord length. Amazingly, no two people have ever been found to have identical fingerprints. Scientific American puts the chances of identical fingerprints at 1 in 64 trillion!