Did you know:
* That 'the first paved road was 7 1/2 miles long and 6 feet wide and was built in Egypt ... 4,600 years' ago.
* That 'Antarctica is the world's largest desert, covering 5.5 million square miles.'
* That 'A typical human skeleton consists of 206 bones including 22 in the skull, 14 in the face, 1 in the throat (hyoid bone).'
* The Cracker Jack dog's name is Bingo.
More important, do you care? If so, head down to your local bookstore or library, where the shelves are bending from the weight of books packed with such fluffy nuggets. They include 'Why Do Men Have Nipples?' by Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg, M.D., 'Vitamin Q: A Temple of Trivia Lists and Curious Words' by Roddy Lumsden, 'One Letter Words: A Dictionary' by Craig Conley, 'Why?' by Erin McHugh, 'Schott's Original Miscellany' by Ben Schott, and 'Do Blue Bedsheets Bring Babies?' by Thomas Craughwell (they don't).
There's even a growing subgenre of books by people detailing their attempts to master trivia, such as 'The Know-It-All' by A.J. Jacobs, 'The Areas of My Expertise' by John Hodgman and the September title 'Braniac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs' by Ken Jennings.
Scour these books and you'll be a hit when your cocktail party guests need to know who's the patron saint of motorists (John the Baptist); Arabic for the craving of certain foods during pregnancy (waham); the name of Popeye's father (Poopdeck Pappy) or the person who invented the can opener (Ezra J. Warner).
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