Trivia Minute

Hey, you know, guys, we come across a lot of interesting trivia working on this show. We don’t have time to put it all in and so the producers had a great idea. What do you say we compress the trivia into a minute and have it presented in sort of bullet form by one of our producers, in this case, Nina Earnest.

BRIAN: How did you draw the short straw, Nina?

NINA EARNEST: I don’t know.

ED: Oh, but it’s going to be fun, Nina, really. And here are the rules. You have exactly one minute to tell us all the amazing trivia that you learned about the history of gambling for this episode. Are you ready?

NINA EARNEST: No, but I will be.

ED: Too bad. We’re going anyway. They’re off to the races. On your mark, get set, go.

NINA EARNEST: During the terrible Yellow Fever plagues in the late 18th century, it’s reported that Philadelphians bet that a third more New Yorkers would die from the disease and New Yorkers bet the opposite.

We talked about horse racing earlier on the show, but Americans have also bet on pigeons, greyhounds, even greyhounds with Capuchin monkey jockeys, and steam boats. Civil War soldiers, desperate for entertainment, bet on lice racing, as in lice from their heads. That one’s a real head-scratcher in my opinion.

In 1960, Dr. Seuss’s publisher bet him $50 that he couldn’t write a book with 50 or fewer distinct words. The result? Green Eggs and Ham.

Forget that stereotype of old west gamblers playing poker. The most popular card game in the Old West was Faro, spelled F-A-R-O.

Speaking of poker, Presidents have been known to play the game. Richard Nixon picked up poker in the Navy during World War II and won thousands of dollars, which he reportedly used to fund his first congressional campaign in 1946, which he won. So without gambling, Americans may never have lived through Watergate when the people called his bluff or multiple bluffs, actually.

PETER: You did it.

NINA EARNEST: I did.

ED: Yeah. So, Nina, that was really good. Were there any nuggets that you wish you could have gotten in that you couldn’t?

NINA EARNEST: Yes, I do have one. But it’s contemporary but I’m going to tell it anyway.

ED: That’s OK.

NINA EARNEST: So there was a professional poker player named John Hennagan and his friends bet him that he couldn’t last in Des Moines, Iowa, couldn’t live there for six weeks. And he couldn’t. He lost after two days.

PETER: Oh, no, Iowa.

NINA EARNEST: And as an Iowan, I just love it.

PETER: And how long did you stay at Iowa, Nina?

NINA EARNEST: 22 years,

ED: So folks, there’s always more trivia where that came from, fortunately or not. And we wager that you know some of it. So let us hear from you. Tweet us, write us on Facebook, email, whatever you got, backstoryradio.org.