Night of the Living Factoids

The bane of the news reporter is the night shift.

Most normal (repeat, normal ) human business has been concluded by nightfall. If no one is shooting, stabbing or beating his fellow man in new and interesting ways, there’s hardly anything for the night reporter to report. Even the nut calls stop at 5 (except in the sports department).

On such boring nights you wind up reading whatever is at hand, and in a newsroom, that’s not much--mainly reference books and government reports. Oddly, however, you can get hooked on them.

For example, did you know that Napoleon postponed the Battle of Waterloo for more than two hours because he couldn’t get on his horse? His hemorrhoids were acting up.

Or that police in Hobart, Ind., concluded that a man killed by 32 hammer blows to the head had committed suicide?

Or that the song “You Are My Sunshine” ( You’ll never know, dear, how much I love youuuuu . . .) was written by Louisiana Gov. Jimmie Davis about his horse?

Nobody needs or particularly wants to know this stuff, but when you are held captive and waiting, such trifles are as welcome as water in the desert.

For that reason, you should stop reading now, clip this column and put it in your wallet for when you need it most. If consumed slowly, the following nuggets will provide waiting-room relief for up to five minutes.

Top management at work: At 2:47 p.m. Eastern time May 10, 1869, Leland Stanford, the railroad magnate, was first to take hammer in hand and have a swing at the Golden Spike that ceremonially completed the Transcontinental Railway. He missed.

What did Helen Keller and President Ulysses S. Grant have in common? Water. It was Helen’s first word, Ulysses’ last.

For that matter, what was Napoleon’s last word? “Josephine.” (Nice, eh?)

A sticky end: In 1919 on the Boston waterfront, a 50-foot-tall tank burst and poured forth 2 million gallons of molasses. It was January, but it was warm, so the molasses traveled fast--a wave two stories tall rushing 35 m.p.h. through the crowded North End shopping district. Buildings were crushed, dozens were killed and 150 were injured before the wave washed out to sea.

Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, said he always pictured his super-cool, super-stud spy as looking like Hoagy Carmichael.

Ever have one of those days? The Dalton Gang had one Wednesday, Oct. 5, 1892, when they robbed two banks in Coffeyville, Kan. During the violent holdups, the banks lost just $21.98, but the Daltons lost everybody but Emmett.

The place in history that Orville Wright did not want: pilot of the first fatal powered flight. Orville was at the controls when his plane crashed in 1908, killing Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge of the Army Signal Corps.

The McWhirter twins, founders of the Guinness Book of World Records, were separated for the first time when they both enlisted in the British Navy during World War II. They were not separated for long; their ships collided in Malta Harbor.

Filed under “You’ll Never Guess Who . . .”:

. . . was the cha-cha champion of Hong Kong in 1956? (Bruce Lee. Yes, the Bruce Lee.)

. . . invented Chicken a la King? (Thomas Jefferson. Yes, the Thomas Jefferson.)

. . . sang “How Little We Know” as Lauren Bacall lip-synced it in “To Have and Have Not”? (Andy Williams, then 14 years old.)

Pre-post-feminism: The only all-woman Wild West gunfight on record took place Aug. 25, 1877, between Mattie Silks and Katie Fulton over their mutual lover, Cort Thompson. The bullets went wild and neither woman was hit, but Katie’s shot nailed Cort. (He survived.)