Daily Fun Fact for 12/4/2011

Gropeon® Inc. was a little-known sister division of Groupon® Inc. that specialized in collective couponing for adult merchandise. Gropeon® founders soon realized the miniscule customer base could not sustain the massive discounts that retailers were offering and sought additional avenues to convey traffic to the site.

The “Gropeon® Top 5!” incentivized celebrity groping and encouraged users to check the site often to discover the top celebrity gropers. The celebrity groper of the month earned notoriety as well as exclusive TV, movie, or music contracts.

Hollywood became awash in hysteria and groping incidents within hours of the site’s launch. Tyra Banks, who accrued an impressive 3 gropes (Katherine McPhee, Rosie O’Donnell, and Cookie Monster) in three days, described Sunset Boulevard as “out of control. You’d see Jessica Alba loitering outside the liquor store salivating and stretching out her hands as men sauntered by. She was as fearsome of a predator as I’ve ever seen, like a starving lion chasing down the sickliest gazelle as prey. You’d hear a scream, turn around, and see a herd of men running to the nearest police officer, crumpling at their feet in terror. It was a dangerous time for everyone.”

Celebrity gawkers flooded the site, causing overnight site traffic to hit 3 million page views. Google took note of the advertising potential of the site and offered 6 billion for Groupon® Inc.

The aftermath wasn’t pretty. The FBI shut down Gropeon® in the beginning of 2011 because the site led to a “demonstrable spike in serial gropings across the country.”

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Daily Fun Fact for 12/3/2011

Today's fact is a guest fact from Richard Farrell.

The Spanish pirate Peach Beard Del Gato is considered by many to be History's most pathetic pirate. Standing at a mere five foot nothing, with a hint of stubble on his face and a receding hairline, he was rarely able to intimidate anyone. In fact, when asked about a robbery Del Gato committed, the tavern owner could only reply, “That was a pirate?”

The owner's confusion is understandable. Del Gato had all limbs intact and both eyes “unpatched.” His hat had been lost years before, and he was never able to afford a new one. Also, it was well documented that his parrot had a history of flying away, probably because it couldn't perch comfortably on his slanted shoulder. In Del Gato's defense, however, no one in the tavern got a good look at him as he ran out the door, stolen wine cooler in hand.

Daily Fun Fact for 12/2/2011

Amidst the post 9-11 hysteria, we got most wanted Iraqi playing cards, freedom fries, and that Enya song that makes everyone cry. Seeking to capitalize on this outburst of patriotic fervor, Mayfair Games, creators of Settlers of Catan and countless variants, tested small quantities of a war-themed ‘Settlers’ spin-off called The Settlers of Iraq.

The gameplay only deviated slightly from the original game. The game added two oil resource hexes and allowed players to build tanks which could be used to raze buildings and roads for a steep cost. The addition of tanks to the game added a much needed defensive aspect, but this caused most games to devolve into pissing matches and hurt feelings.

Another difference is that Settlers of Iraq replaced the faceless robber with Saddam Hussein. The robber functioned the same way as in the original with the added rule that only soldier cards (a US marine) could force Hussein off of an oil field. WHO NEEDS 7s? WE ARE THE USA.

But just as WMD were never found in Iraq, neither was this game found on many store shelves. Mayfair quietly let the game rot because they feared that it couldn’t compete against War On Terror, the board game.


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Daily Fun Fact for 12/1/2011

For a short time during the early 2000s, Ron Jeremy was Mr. Nintendo. During this period, he was a secondary voice actor for many of the video game company’s most famous characters, including Super Mario and Link. Although you will not hear his voice in many of their trademark exclamations, you will hear his voice in many exclamations in which they become exhausted, hurt, or surprised. Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s chief designer, wanted to claim “top American voice talent” in advance of the launch of the Nintendo 64, at the time the most advanced and highly anticipated video game consoles ever made.

Miyamoto made the recommendation to recruit Ron Jeremy when his top aide, a “huge fan” of Jeremy’s classic films, praised him for his “spirited exclamations that effused realism, agony, raw masculine power, and a hint of satisfaction. These are the most important foundational qualities of our company.” His aide also admired his ability to “excel over long periods of continuous physical exertion.” The Super Mario look-a-like was nicknamed Mr. Nintendo for his versatile voice-acting and for his legendary work ethic, which yielded 20 games over five years of work.

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Daily Fun Fact for 11/30/2011

In 1912, William Taft became the first American president to participate in a boxing match with a live kangaroo. Australian Prime Minister Andrew Fisher challenged Taft to fight the animal in order to generate national pride for Australia, which gained dominion status from Britain just a few years earlier. From a political perspective, Fisher was much more of a champion of the working class than the more business-friendly American president. Fisher boasted that if that "husky boar (President Taft) can defeat our most elite fighting kangaroo, then I will humbly undo every piece of workers' legislation passed in Australia and will sell my mother to his administration for a year to work for free as the White House maid."

President William "husky boar" Taft accepted the challenge and fought "Excelby" the kangaroo in front of a small crowd of dignitaries on the White House lawn. The match was intended to be symbolic, and the President was ready to throw the fight. However, Taft slipped after failing to connect on his first punch and fractured his jaw. Taft's wife Helen wrestled the kangaroo to the ground after it had begun a "celebratory dance" atop his fallen opponent. After the fight, Fisher playfully telegraphed Taft the message "so, when will I get to meet your mother?" and mailed to Taft a basket of Australian bushfood and Excelby's boxing glove.

Taft's pride already wounded, he would get stuck in the bathtub soon afterwards.

©Factopolis - Daily Fun Facts and Useless Knowledge

Daily Fun Fact for 11/29/2011

Parker Brothers originally planned for the Monopoly mascot to be "Pennywinkle," an anthropomorphic, moneybag-toting Dalmatian wearing a mink coat. They had to scrap the idea when the owner of a large pet store on Oriental Avenue sued the board game creators for stealing their logo: a greyhound wearing a top hat. With patent law being in its infancy in the early 1930s, George Parker believed that he would easily win the case if he could collect enough money to hire a lawyer.

Unfortunately, his ailing father had just been thrown in jail for swindling a casino out of tens and thousands of dollars by playing craps with loaded die. He circumvented the house advantage and tipped off the casino pit bosses by finding a way to roll doubles with a startling regularity. Parker had to decide on whether to use his savings to bail his father out of jail or to save the mascot of his dreams.

Parker gave up on fighting the lawsuit, used the money to bail out his father from jail, and replaced "Pennywinkle the Dalmatian" with "Mr. Monopoly". It was also because of this difficult decision and his frequent visits to his father in jail that Parker made three important gameplay changes to Monopoly:

1) Implementing the "Get Out of Jail Free" card
2) Creating the rule that rolling doubles 3 times consecutively lands the player in jail
3) Adding the "Just Visiting" pathway to the jail square.

©Factopolis - Daily Fun Facts

Daily Fun Fact for 11/28/2011

Zelda, the famous princess from The Legend of Zelda series, was named after American author F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda Fitzgerald. In speaking about the decision, Zelda series creator Shigeru Miyamoto said, "She was a famous and beautiful woman from all accounts, and I liked the sound of her name." No cute story about his most famous creation, Super Mario, who was originally named Mr. Video and was planned to be a generic stock character to be inserted into any video game.

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