Know It All

Human fingernails grow twice as fast as toenails.

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The Pied Piper was a legendary folk tale about a man who plays a flute to lure rats out of town and into a river to drown. In Germany, the Pied Piper is known as der Rattenfänger, which mean the rat catcher.

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Jane Seymour (born 1951) was the tarot card reading Bond girl named Solitaire in “Live and Let Die” (1973).

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The state flower of Arizona is the blossom of the saguaro cactus. The saguaro blooms white flowers in May and June.

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Weary Willie, the sad-faced clown at Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, was played by Emmett Kelly (1898-1979). Willie came out after the circus acts to sweep up. His most famous act was trying the sweep up the spotlight. Kelly left the circus in 1957 to work as a mascot for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

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The original make-up wearing members of the rock band KISS were Paul Stanley (born 1952), Gene Simmons (born 1949), Ace Frehley (born 1951) and Peter Criss (born 1945).

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Coral is very sensitive to environment changes. Coral will die if the water temperature varies by one or two degrees from its normal range.

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Can you name the films Clint Eastwood (born 1930) was in that had the word dollar in the title? See answer at end.

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“A proper copper coffeepot” is a tough tongue twister.

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The dahlia flower is named after a Swedish botanist named Anders Dahl (1751-1789).

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The longest waterslide in the world is at the Sonnentherme Lutzmannsburg water park in Austria. The 693-foot-long waterslide has lights and sound effects and a 19-foot free fall section in the middle.

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Throughout history, kings have been given nicknames that described their leadership. Some kings had good nicknames, like King Charles the Wise (France, ruled from 1364 to 1380) and King Richard the Lionheart (England, ruled from 1189 to 1199). Some kings had bad nicknames such as King Henry the Impotent (Castile, ruled from 1454-1474) and King Ivan the Terrible (Russia, ruled from 1547-1584).

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The first jet airplane flown was Germany’s single seat Heineken He-178 in 1939. It flew more than 400 mph.

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Answer: “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), “For a Few Dollars More” (1965) and “Million Dollar Baby” (2004). The movies from the 1960s were spaghetti westerns that were part of the Dollars trilogy. The third movie was “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966). Eastwood was the poncho clad Man with No Name in the trilogy. He wore the same poncho in all three of the westerns and never washed it.

Know It All is by Kerry McArdle. It runs in the weekend edition of the Daily Journal. Questions? Comments? Email knowitall(at)smdailyjournal.com or call 344-5200 ext. 128.