Trivia

New York City’s “21” Club at 21 West 52nd started as a Prohibition speakeasy. At the time, a bartender could trip a police-raid-emergency device. It dropped shelves behind the bar. All bottles rattled into a chute to the cellar. They smashed on iron gratings. The liquor flowed into the sewer drain. Customers laughed, customers cried.

Stonewall Jackson was an orphan. So was William Tecumseh Sherman.

It’s conceivable that the American writer Mary Wilson Little might have become well-known even if she’d written nothing but this: “A youth with his first cigar makes himself sick. A youth with his first girl makes everybody sick.”

Actor Ben Kingsley’s real name is listed as Krishna Bhanji.

James Thurber also wrote, “A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.”

Q. The original Henry Ford wanted to know which parts in his Model T sometimes failed. He ordered a survey of wrecking yards and learned every part failed in time under certain conditions, except the car’s kingpins. Instead of raising the specs on all other parts, he lowered the specs on the kingpins. Why?

A. History records his explanation: He wanted to turn out a car that cost even less, if possible, not one that cost a great deal more.