The weekly collection of useless and fun facts. In this week’s edition: Unpopular Jell-O, Ty Cobb’s Teeth, A Beer Behemoth, A Thirsty Horse, and An Unlimited Pasta Eater.
Jello-O, that great jiggling treat, hasn’t always hit it out of the ballpark with its flavor selection. Five Jell-O flavors that flopped were celery, coffee, cola, apple, and chocolate. The coffee flavor was the first to go down in 1918. People had obviously decided they didn’t want a gelatinous cup of coffee, and it was pulled from the shelves. The cola flavor hit the skids in 1942, and probably the most famous flavor, celery, didn’t catch on to be used in salads. You can still find unopened boxes for sale of this particular flavor on the internet just in case you wanted to experience it for yourself. Source
Sometimes when you want a piece of memorabilia, you’ll pay anything for it. Karen Shemonsky did such a thing when she paid $7,475 for Ty Cobb’s false teeth in 1999 at a Sotheby’s auction. She had wanted a lower priced piece of history, and when Sotheby’s estimated the teeth between $300 and $500, she knew she may be able to afford the oddity and a bit of a baseball legend. But even though Shemonsky had a connection to dentistry (her father had been one for 53 years), the lure of the auction caused her to bid more than she had bargained for. After Shemonsky had discussed the idea with her husband, she bid by telephone, and the next thing she knew, she had bought the dentures for $6,500. The final tally came in at $7,475. Shemonsky put them in her living room under a glass dome, because what better place would there be for one of the most famous baseball player’s chompers to be displayed? Source
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Now who wouldn’t want to pull this out at their next party? The Austin Beerworks, in Austin, TX, produced a limited-edition 99-pack, case of beer for $99 in 2014. Yes, you read that right, 99 beers. The brewery did it to promote their Peacemaker Anytime Ale, with an emphasis on “anytime”, because 99 beers would certainly be available almost “anytime”. They made twenty of the 99-packs and sold out on the first day. The packaging was seven feet long and weighed about 80 pounds. We’re not sure if there were any back injuries in the process of buying the cases of beer, however. Source
We always see athletes drinking sports drinks on the sidelines to replenish their fluids, but one particular “athlete” took it to a whole new level. The trotting racehorse, Manfred Hanover, won 16 races in a row in 1985 and ’86 and drank 800 quarts of sports-energy drinks during his streak. His owner felt it replaced the horse’s electrolytes and potassium. Manfred Hanover seemed to agree and would drink it straight from the bottle. He even had a favorite flavor–orange. Source
When a company says that their product is “never ending”, they would be safe to assume that someone would take that literally. Alan Martin of North Carolina did just that and purchased one of the thousand offered “Never Ending Pasta Pass” from Olive Garden that lasted for seven weeks in November of 2014. He bought it for $100 and ate there twice a day, every day, for six weeks. He ate his 100th meal on November 5th, 2014. By the time he was done, the food he had eaten was worth over $1600. Source
That’s it for another edition. Until next time, use these facts to annoy those around you with your new found knowledge. Feel free to comment below and share.
Past Issues of the Completely Random Facts of the Week
