Fun Facts: Freeform Edition

Life is mostly about the pursuit of knowledge and, therefore, the collection of fun facts. All my fun facts were harvested personally … They started as a physical book purchase from Amazon, then moved to a Kindle download where I bookmarked them by hand; at the conclusion of a book they were transcribed into a Snoopy Moleskine, and finally, they appear here for your personal wonderment.

• Once found in every habitat between the Arctic Circle and present-day Mexico City, gray wolves were all but eliminated in the Lower Forty-Eight states by the 1920s.
• John Adams, our second president defended the British in the trial that followed the Boston Massacre … He was victorious as to this day no one knows who instigated the bloodshed.
• Adolph Coors III was killed in a botched kidnapping attempt in 1960; he was allergic to beer.
• Chester Arthur went to Yellowstone National Park during his time as president and along with a friend from the Senate caught 105 pounds of fish in a single day.
• Allen Collins the lead guitarist for Lynyrd Skynyrd was arrested eighteen times between 1974 and 1985, most of the time for driving while intoxicated.
• Black is not a color, rather it is the absence of color.
• At the very first United States Congress in 1789 there were only eleven states represented as North Carolina and Rhode Island had yet to ratify the Constitution.
• Once at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field, Dodgers public address announcer Tex Richards got irritated with the fans who had hung their coats on the field railing and announced, “Will the fans sitting down the foul line please remove their clothes!”
• The Grateful Dead had only one cardinal rule, “Don’t impose your trip on anyone else.”
• Solitaire was originated in Germany and was known as “Patience.”
• There’s a spruce tree in Dalarna, Sweden that is about 9,500 years old.
• The Tampa NFL team is called the Buccaneers, but there were other good options including The Godfathers, the Aquanuts, Florida Fruits and Tampa Suns of Beaches.
• “Courage is being scared to death … and saddling up anyway,” John Wayne.