11 Answers To Questions About History To Help Us Nail Our Next Trivia Night

Several noteworthy milestones exist when it comes to CGI - computer-generated imagery. While the first short film to feature CGI was 1972's A Computer Animated Hand by Ed Catmull, the movie Westworld (1973) starring Yul Brynner was the first feature film that used CGI technology. In Westworld, CGI only factored into two minutes of the 88-minute flick and was used to depict what the world looked like from the perspective of a robot. Due to budget limitations, writer and director Michael Crichton couldn't afford the $200,000 and nine months it would have taken for the top CGI lab to make the scene. He ended up employing John Whitney Jr. for the task, the son of one of the leading animators in Hollywood for the task. Crichton paid $20,000 for four months of work, during which Whitney doubted he'd be able to get the scene done. He ultimately did.

Whether or not breakfast is the most important meal of the day is up for debate, but it's something many people have heard at least once in their lives. The saying developed as part of an advertising campaign associated with a breakfast item that has a unique history of its own. When John Harvey Kellogg and his brother Will developed what would eventually be known as Corn Flakes during the late 19th century, they ushered in what would become a breakfast cereal boom. As part of Kellogg's marketing, they pushed forward the idea that breakfast was essential to a healthy diet. The phrase didn't fully come to fruition until 1917, however, when Lenna Cooper, a dietitian and director of Kellogg's Sanitarium School of Home Economics, wrote an article that specifically said "breakfast is the most important meal of the day."

The Simpsons have been on TV for decades, but in all that time, their color has never been explained. Why are they yellow? According to show creator Matt Groening, the choice of color for Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie, and all the other residents of The Simpsons universe went like this: Yellow skin: why... if you're flicking around with your channel changer very fast and you zoom by The Simpsons there's nothing else that looks like them on TV, so therefore we stand out. This is essentially color theory. Yellow naturally stands out amid the red-green-blue color wheel used by televisions, essentially making it more visible to the eye. Former showrunner and writer Mike Reiss added another insight: Bart, Lisa and Maggie have no hairlines – there’s no line that separates their skin from their hair points. So the animators chose yellow – it’s kinda skin, kinda hair.

If you've used a QWERTY keyboard, you may have asked yourself how - and why - the arrangement of letters, numbers, symbols, and function keys came to fruition. Named for the first letters of the top row, the QWERTY keyboard was patented by Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glildden, and Samuel W. Soule n 1868. Sholes (considered to have done most of the designing) was a newspaper editor and printer from Milwaukee, WI, who would spend years refining models for what became the QWERTY keyboard. His design was supposed to minimize jams caused by letters moving in rapid succession, such as the popular letters “S” and “T.” Sholes sold the format to Remington Typewriter; it resembled the modern QWERTY keyboard but had some differences when Remington began producing the design in 1873. The design had both critics and advocates among early typewriter users. Mark Twain ended up being a bit of both and was said to have told his brother in a letter: I am trying get the hang of this new fangled writing machine, but am not making a shining success of it. However this is the first attempt I have ever made, & yet I perceive that I shall soon & easily acquire a fine facility in its use. . . .The machine has several virtues. I believe it will print faster than I can write. One may lean back in his chair & work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It don’t muss things or scatter ink blots around. Of course it saves paper. Sholes got a second patent in 1878 for a different design - one with QWERTY in the top left line of letters. As more and more typewriters came into use, this keyboard was used for correspondence, business, and communication with increased frequency.

After Alexander the Great passed in 323 BCE, it took six days for his body to show any signs of decomposition. According to ancient historian Plutarch: His body, although it lay without special care in places that were moist and stifling, showed no sign of such a destructive influence, but remained pure and fresh. People at the time believed this was an indication of Alexander's godliness. In hindsight, researchers like Dr. Katherine Hall of the Dunedin School of Medicine at New Zealand's University of Otago have posited that he wasn't actually deceased at first. Alexander had been ill for several days before his demise, experienced "progressive, symmetrical, ascending paralysis," and may have been experiencing the effects of a neurological autoimmune disorder called Guillain-Barré Syndrome. The exact cause of his passing has been debated for centuries, and his body has never been found. While the truth behind his demise will never be known with certainty, Hall accomplished what she set out to do: I wanted to stimulate new debate and discussion and possibly rewrite the history books by arguing Alexander’s real death was six days later than previously accepted. His death may be the most famous case of pseudothanatos, or false diagnosis of death, ever recorded.

In 1966, the greatest amount of rain to fall in one day was recorded during a cyclone in the Indian Ocean at Foc-Foc on Reunion Island, which received 71.8 inches of rain in a torrential 24-hour period. For context, Birmingham, AL, broke its record for the most rain in a single day in June 2022, when The National Weather Service indicated 6.97 inches fell in 24 hours.

There's no indication any female pilots flew kamikaze missions during World War II, but Japan reportedly maintained a group of young girls designated to wave to airmen as they departed on missions. Called Nadeshiko, girls as young as 14 spent time with the pilots before they left and participated in ceremonial goodbyes. One former Nadeshiko (a name derived from the delicate pink flowers they waved), Chino Kuwashiro, recalled the sorrowful experience: We waved and waved until we couldn't see them anymore. Chino indicated she waved at nearly 440 pilots in 1945 from Chiran Air Base, where kamikaze pilots were trained.

According to journalist and author Susan Orlean, canine performer Rin Tin Tin received the most votes for the Best Actor Academy Award in 1929, but was denied the prize because he was a dog (German actor Emil Jannings got the award instead). Those were the first Academy Awards ever held, and in Orlean's Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, she revealed that "members of the Academy, anxious to establish the awards were serious and important, decided that giving an Oscar to a dog did not serve that end." The Rin Tin Tin myth continues to make its rounds, but there's no evidence to support it. That said, awards were given to animals that appeared on screen at one point, but they were discontinued in 1986. Starting in 1951, the PATSY Awards - Picture Animal Top Star of the Year - were presented to animals in movies. TV was added in 1958, with winners and two runners-up honored annually. Animal activist and former The Price is Right host Bob Barker hosted the final PATSY Awards ceremony for the year 1986. Comparable awards are now given by the American Humane Association - the Pawscars.

As the story goes, one day the 4th Earl of Sandwich John Montagu "invented" the sandwich when he came up with the idea to put meat and mustard between two pieces of bread in 1758. In reality, pieces of food bookended by bread had long been consumed - as far back as the 1st century BCE - so it wasn't a Montagu creation in any way. The term "sandwich," however, does come from the Earl. When historian Edward Gibbons wrote about men eating sandwiches in 1762, he capitalized the word "sandwich," giving the implication it was named after someone. Soon after, the snack was associated with gamblers nibbling on meat "between two slices of toasted bread…without ever quitting the game." By the middle of the 19th century, "sandwich" had widespread use as both a noun and a verb.

The lyrics of The Backstreet Boys' hit "I Want It That Way" start with these words: You are my fire The one desire Believe when I say I want it that way Over and over, the song refers to wanting it "that way," but there's never an explanation as to what it means. When asked about what they're referring to, the band's Twitter account explained it like this in 2018: Don't wanna hear you say that you want heartaches and mistakes… or to be 2 worlds apart. We don't want you to want "it" that way - that's the way we want it… for you to not want it that way. Still a bit confusing, the reason the lyrics seem nonsensical is actually a language issue. Swedish songwriter Max Martin didn't have a strong grasp of English when he co-penned the song, but according to band member Kevin Richardson, "His English has gotten much better." Keyboardist Tommy Smith added that the band also recorded a version with sensical lyrics, but because they changed the song's meaning, the group opted instead for the version that was released. And band member AJ McLean later said, "I don't think that it would have ended up the way that it did had we gone with the proper version."

Around the year 524 BCE, King Cambyses II of Persia sent 50,000 of his troops on a campaign in Egypt. They were never seen again. According to the ancient historian Herodotus: When the Persians were crossing the sand from the Oasis to attack them, and were about midway between their country and the Oasis, while they were breakfasting a great and violent south wind arose, which buried them in the masses of sand which it bore; and so they disappeared from sight. Whether the Persian army was truly swept up by a sandstorm is shrouded in myth, but historians and archaeologists have continued to look for any evidence in the sands of Egypt. In 2009, researchers from the University of Salento (formerly called the University of Lecce) in Italy found jewelry, weapons, and bones in the desert, albeit on a route different from what historians previously believed the army had taken. A subsequent investigation in 2014 by Olaf Kaper from Leiden University in the Netherlands posited the army was ambushed by rebel Egyptian forces and the sandstorm was used to explain the defeat. The debate continues.