When did the phrase “fun fact” creep into our vocabulary? I found it amusing that a young visitors-centre guide introduced almost every sentence with the phrase “fun fact”. Today my column is a collection of facts that at least I think are fun. These random statements might also be called trivia.
Fun fact: The board game Trivial Pursuit was created by Canadians Chris Haney and Scott Abbott in 1979. After finding pieces of their Scrabble game missing they decided to create their own game.
Fun fact: The Olympic flame in Paris is not actually a flame. It is more environmentally friendly than an open flame. The flame is a display of water vapour and electric lights. Four hundred LED projectors illuminate a cloud of mist created by 200 high-pressure nozzles.
Fun fact: A light emitting diode (LED) is a semi-conductor device that emits light when current flows through it. The first LEDs shone red but now many colours are manufactured. LEDs use less energy, last longer and create less heat than incandescent lights.
Fun fact: The 2024 Olympic “flame” in Paris is contained in the basket of a hot air balloon, a tribute to the original balloon flight which took off from the same location. On Nov. 21, 1783, the first free flight carrying a human was in Paris in a hot air balloon made of paper and silk.
Fun fact: The Olympic torch is a modern invention inspired by practices from ancient Greece. The Olympic torch relay heralds the start of the Olympic games. The Olympic torch relay began at the 1936 Berlin summer Olympics.
Fun fact: The earliest recorded use of “fun fact” in the United States is from the New York Herald May 5, 1849 edition. The current use a “fun fact” for a little nugget of knowledge became popular in the 1970s.
Fun(?) fact: Mosquitoes kill more humans than any other animal every year. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, vector borne disease including those transmitted by mosquitoes cause more than 700,000 deaths worldwide every year. Mosquitoes spread malaria, yellow fever, Zika, dengue, West Nile, chikungunya and lymphatic filariasis. Of those, only West Nilte virus is spread by mosquitoes in Saskatchewan. West Nile can make you quite sick but very few people die from West Nile virus.
