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H
istory
You'll win many a
wager with my favorite
trivia question: How
long did it to take to
build the Empire State
Building?
Most people offer quite
reasonable
guesses—three
years, five years, ten
years. (The Twin Towers
of the World Trade
Center took six to
seven years, depending
on how you parse
completion.) Only those
who actually know the
fact get this one right.
So here’s the
answer and make sure
you’re sitting
down: Thirteen
months—start to
finish, inside and out.
A related fact, which
can also be turned into
a fun follow-up teaser,
is that the grand
edifice which stood on
the site of the Empire
State Building was the
original
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
I’ve mentioned it
before, but during the
Korean War, John
Glenn’s wingman
was a fairly well-known
baseball player named
Ted Williams. As
members of the US
Marine Corps’
VMF-311 squadron, these
two magnificent
Americans flew Grumman
F9F Panther jet fighter
planes.
Baseball
Among my favorite
Baseball trivia
questions, this
straightforward inquiry
often surprises even
well-versed fans of the
game: What was Babe
Ruth’s lifetime
batting average (over
22 seasons, mind you)?
Answer: .342
Part of what makes
Ruth’s career
average so astonishing
is that most
power-hitting, home run
sluggers strike out a
lot; in swinging for
the fences, they often
do little more than
provide a breeze for
the catcher.
The self-proclaimed
greatest, Barry Bonds*,
played the same number
of seasons as Ruth and,
despite the unnatural
assistance of steroids
which enabled the
once-svelte and swift
185-pound outfielder to
gain over 40 pounds of
muscle, only managed a
paltry .298.
In 1961, the same year
that Roger Maris broke
Babe Ruth’s
single-season record of
60 home runs by
clouting 61
round-trippers, Yankees
pitcher Whitey Ford
hurled his 33rd
consecutive scoreless
inning in World Series
competition,
surpassing—you
guessed it—Babe
Ruth’s mark of 29
and 2/3. (After Game 4,
a reporter brought it
to Ford’s
attention that
he’d just broken
Ruth’s pitching
record and the clever
southpaw replied:
“Yeah, it’s
been a tough year for
The Babe.”)
But for pure poetry,
for impossibly perfect
symmetry, consider this
fact: In his 22-year
career with the St.
Louis Cardinals, Stan
Musial amassed 3,630
hits—1,815 at
home and 1,815 on the
road.
Second Acts
When The Beatles
disbanded in 1969,
George Harrison, the
youngest member of the
Fab Four, was 26.
I’ll let you ponder that fact for a minute.
The guy who invented
the sugar packet was
Benjamin Eisenstadt. He
ran a cafeteria across
from the Brooklyn Navy
Yard back in the 1940s.
One day he had the idea
of putting individual
servings of sugar in
little paper satchels.
Foolishly, Ben
didn’t patent his
idea before pitching it
to the big sugar
companies. They told
him they weren’t
interested,
then—probably
before Ben had left
each of their
offices—called
down to their mills to
start packaging the
sweet stuff in packets.
The fat cats stole his
idea and Eisenstadt
never saw a penny in
royalties for his still
ubiquitous invention.
Did old Ben pack it
in and drown himself in
the harbor? Hardly. Are
you ready for this? In
1957, Ben and his son
Marvin invented Sweet
’N Low! And he
packaged his
saccharin-based,
zero-calorie sugar
substitute in bright
pink paper packs to
clearly differentiate
it from sugar. Talk
about sweet revenge.
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