Knowing questionably
useless things can render some pretty funny moments sometimes... My
grandfather used to work on the
Brazilian Navy's
Library in
Rio de Janeiro, thus he used to read a lot on his
free time. He used to listen to a
radio station that keeps track of the time of day --
all day long -- while he was getting ready for work. I think you can imagine how boring it would be to have a
radio station broadcasting "
sixteen hours... twenty minutes... ten seconds... beep" and so on during the day. So the radio's solution was to broadcast small newscasts and lots of
trivia between the time marks...
So one day, during a family dinner, absolutely
out of the blue he says:
- Did you people know that an adult
blue whale's
tongue weighs nearly four tons?
And the whole table cracked with laughter and disbelief! They said stuff like "isn't that a bit too heavy? Come on, stop exaggerating" and
blah blah blah. He had no choice but to stay quiet. Months later, my dad found a book on
sea creatures... and he confirmed that info. That darned
four-ton blue whale tongue trivia was right!
You see, he was
right. But was it worth it? I still think
one man's trash is another man's treasure, even when it comes to
information, useless or otherwise... but there's no other way to find out, is there?