April Fool! Three items this week are totally fake; which ones are they?

DID YOU KNOW…?

April Fool! Three items this week are totally fake; which ones are they?

By Jack Bagley

didyouknowcolumn@gmail.com

Copyright © 2025 Jack Bagley

We are at that very special time of year once again! Yes, it’s April Fool’s Day this week!

Regular readers of this silliness know what that means – it’s time to see if you can detect which three of the items in this week’s column are totally made up. No prizes are offered, because I’m a cheap old so-and-so, but if you can tell which ones are fake, you prove that even I can’t fool you. No fair Googling, either.

Send your guesses to me at my e-mail, didyouknowcolumn@gmail.com, and I’ll let you know which ones you get right.

The game’s afoot!  Have fun.

Did you know …

… two Civil War veterans literally “buried the hatchet?” In 1913, surviving veterans of the Battle of Gettysburg fifty years earlier met on the site of the battle. No longer separated by blue and gray, they mingled with each other and told war stories. Two of the men – one from the North, and one from the South – purchased a hatchet, walked into the field where the battle had taken place, and buried it in a symbolic gesture of peace. (I like that.  I like it a lot.)

… the inventor of basketball had a losing record as a coach? Dr. James Naismith (1861-1939) created the game of basketball in 1891. He served as basketball coach at the University of Kansas from 1898-1907, and amassed a record of 55 wins and 60 losses coaching the sport he invented. He is, to this day, the only head basketball coach at Kansas to have an overall losing record. Additional trivia note: Dr. Naismith originally wrote just 13 rules for the game. Today, the NBA Rule Book has 66 pages. (Well, to his credit, Dr. Naismith didn’t actually go out there and play in the games.)

… only one person in all of Nazi Germany was allowed to address Adolf Hitler by his first name? Hitler (1889-1945) was held by his Nazi cohorts in an almost godlike esteem, and was never addressed by anyone in any way other than “mein Führer” (German for “my leader”). All except one man – Ernst Röhm (1887-1934), the commander of Hitler’s Brownshirts, or Sturmabteilung (Storm Troopers), also called the SA. Röhm, a close friend, was permitted to call Hitler “Adolf,” and he did so in public. Not surprisingly, Hitler had Röhm murdered in 1934 during a purge of SA leadership known as the “Night of the Long Knives.” Additional trivia note: Historians are not sure if the woman who married Hitler, Eva Braun (1912-1945), ever spoke to him by his first name in the presence of others. Whether she called him “Adolf” in private is, of course, unknown, but in her correspondence she always referred to him as “the Führer.”

… a future American president was the first choice for the lead role in a classic film? When producers were getting ready to film the 1942 classic Casablanca, they wanted Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) for the lead role of Rick Blaine. But because Reagan was about to be inducted into the U.S. Army, they had to go with their second choice, Humphrey Bogart (1899-1956). (Maybe that casting move would’ve led Bogart into politics, I don’t know.)

… goldfish enjoy listening to music? Not only that, according to researchers, they can distinguish one composer from another. (Yeah, but which ones do they like?)

… the villain in the Back to the Future movie series was inspired by a businessman? The writer of the first movie, Bob Gale (born 1951), says that the temperament of the character of bully Biff Tannen was based on businessman-turned-president Donald Trump (born 1946). Gale created the role of Tannen in 1985 as he and co-writer and director Robert Zemeckis (born 1952) were penning the first draft of the screenplay. Gale admitted to the genesis of the character in a 2015 interview. (No comment from me on this one, folks.)

… corsets were practically death traps? During the 19th Century, women who wanted to be fashionable wore tight-fitting corsets to give them a supple shape. The corsets, however, would constrict blood flow to the point where some women would actually pass out. For that reason, Victorian-era homes had “fainting couches” where women who were thus affected could rest (or pass out, as the case may be). (Curves come at a price, it seems.)

… 701 different types of pure-breed dogs exist? (Name them. Go.)

… the Komodo dragon stores its fat in its tail? The dragon, the world’s largest lizard, is native to Indonesia. It can grow up to 10 feet in length and weigh up to 150 pounds, and they are able to devour five pounds of meat in less than a minute. Komodo dragons are also venomous, and left untreated a Komodo bite can kill a human. (The same is true of an untreated human bite, isn’t it?)

… American law requires businesses to accept cash? The wording on currency, “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private” means it must be accepted as payment for goods and services. (Well, only if they want to get paid, they must.)

… a European country allows murder to have a statute of limitations? Most nations consider very serious crimes such as murder and rape to be open for prosecution no matter how long a time passes after the event. Not Norway. Norway has a 25-year statute of limitations on murder; if a person committed a murder more than 25 years ago, they cannot be prosecuted for it.

… caffeine does not give you “energy”? Instead, caffeine stops your body from breaking down energy, resulting in a surplus. Caffeine also does nothing to help an inebriated person sober up any faster. (What do you know? I shot down two myths with one stone!)

Now … you know!