Trivia Bits 20 September

 

 

The patron saint of dentists is St. Apollonia (pictured) who reportedly had her teeth pulled out in 249 AD by an anti-Christian mob.

Discovered in 1687 by Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius, Sextans is the faint constellation on the celestial equator near Leo and Hydra.

The commonly used spice of ginger is the rhizome of the plant zingiber officinale which is indigenous to southern China, from whence it is spread to the Spice Islands and other parts of Asia, and subsequently to West Africa and to the Caribbean.

Written by former child rockabilly star Larry Collins and songwriter Alex Harvey, the song Delta Dawn was first sung by Tanya Tucker in 1972, was turned down by Barbra Streisand before gaining widespread pop success by Helen Reddy in 1973.

Australian professional tennis player Lleyton Hewitt was 20 years old when he became the youngest make to be ranked World Number 1 in singles tennis in 2001.

English author Enid Blyton created the children’s character Noddy a little wooden boy from Toyland, that first appeared in the Sunday Graphic on 5 June 1949, and in November that year Noddy Goes to Toyland, the first of at least two dozen books in the series, was published.

In the Gulf of Mirabello in northeastern Crete, the islet of Pseira has an archaeological history from the end of the Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age with the Minoan ruins being the most studied.

Denzel Washington played Rubin Carter in the 1999 biographical movie The Hurricane, the story of former middleweight boxer who was convicted for a triple homicide in a bar in Paterson, New Jersey.

American voice actor, Mel Blanc, was known as the man of a thousand voices and is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros. as the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote, the Tasmanian Devil and many of the other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon short films.

The Super Buddies, a team of DC Comics superheroes, were a comedic Justice League offshoot who first appeared in the Eisner Award-winning miniseries Formerly Known as the Justice League in 2003.