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Transcribing animal songs and sounds to sheet music
This began because I'd heard that pigeons default to singing in either 5/4 or 17/8 time signature, but it turns out there's not a lot of definitive info on this outside of a 2010 study looking at meter, rhythm, and tempo discriminations in pigeons (which didn't conclusively identify whether pigeons themselves sing in one time signature over another with any notable frequency). But that led to a larger rabbit hole about birds and music theory in general (turns out this is not as niche of a discussion topic as you might imagine), which segued into music theory and animal songs/sounds in general.
Oh, and a bonus trivia fact from the 5/4 pigeon research attempt, I also learned that the Gorillaz song "5/4" is not in 5/4 time if you actually listen to the drums, not the guitar line.
The Cold War
Continuing on the ice cream dive....this one is a longer read, and it seems a little crazy/not as cheerful in parts, but it's fascinating niche drama and doesn't end badly. Also it has punny section titles, I knew it was going to be a winner as soon as I read "Operation Dessert Storm."
Gargoyles, Grotesques, and Hunky Punks: Ancient and Modern
Building on the architecture theme (I originally phrased it that way because I was just trying to come up with an alternative to "continuing on from" since I already used that in the ice cream cold war note, then realized it was a bad pun, then decided to leave it because I can't think of a quick alternative and I figured this narration of my thought process would make you laugh, if nothing else), have some gargoyles! And grotesques, which I think I knew at one point were a different less-functional category but had definitely forgotten. I am filled with regret that I didn't know there was an Alien-inspired gargoyle at a church in Scotland so I could make a pilgrimage while we were there 😠That would be one of the best possible carvings for someone to unearth in the future with zero context though.
Isaac Newton Invented The Cat Flap Door
Why the Dublin City Council was posting random articles of facts about cats in June of 2020, I have no idea. They did not, however, note that the guy who (much) later invented the microchip cat flap door (Dr. Nick Hill) was also a Cambridge physicist like Newton. An excellent lineage of cat inventions.
The Embarrassing Catapult Unveiling At Tlatelolco Market
I would not normally send you trebuchet trivia, but it seemed to qualify solely because of the connection to Tenochtitlán/Mexico City ahead of your upcoming trip. This was one of the, if not the, last documented (attempted) use of a large-scale trebuchet in a battle, which was a little surprising since I would have thought there would be more uses still occurring into the 1600s at least. Of course, some of that might be due to people opting for other types of catapults instead (yet another case of "all trebuchets are catapults, but not all catapults are trebuchets" that required some further investigating on my part lol).
Top 25 deadliest films of all time by on-screen death counts
This one is mostly for Hans lol, in case he has not heard the fun fact that Return of the King has the most on-screen deaths of any movie ever made (with the caveat that the ranking excludes "sort of on-screen but not shown in any detail" deaths like Alderaan being exploded by the Death Star in Star Wars). Christopher Lee is also the actor who has died the most times on screen in history, with his grand total being 70 on-screen deaths (1 of which was as Saruman).
Woman believed to be last remaining widow of US civil war soldier dies
She was the last one, as far as anyone knows, but even back in 2005 there were still about 400 widows receiving spousal benefits from husbands who fought in the Civil War. This one is probably seriously skirting the line of "happy," but the whole series of events is just so interesting and it's oddly sweet how everyone involved was kind of trying to do right by each other, albeit in super unorthodox ways.
Broadway’s Top Ten Musical Flops
I had no idea there was a sequel to Phantom of the Opera. Did you???? Have you seen it??? There's a movie version in addition to the (flopped) stage version, apparently, and it sounds like you would have Strong Feelings about it based on some of the discussions I've read lol. Either way, Dance of the Vampires didn't even make this list, which tells me there are countless other tiny broadway flops yet for me to discover.
Also I never realized Breakfast at Tiffany's was a short by Capote????? So many new things to learn.
The bloody Broadway mess that was Dance of the Vampires.
Since it wasn't mentioned in the Broadway flops list, here's a fabulous little history of the show and everything wrong with it. I don't know if you watched the bad Broadway version of Total Eclipse or not, and if you did whether you noticed that it was Michael Crawford (the og Phantom) in the lead male role, but that's also covered here. This quote about the original Vienna production is my favorite: "The story for Tanz der Vampire, Kunze says, is the battle between a Kantian hyperintellectual and a Nietzschean death-and-sex demiurge for one young man’s soul. (The demiurge, to be clear, is the one in satin pants.)"