This is the thread for unusual details in wikipedia articles.

"Buddy Holly is gay"

But he has also "resigned as an operations manager at a Nashville delivery company as a result of the debacle".

OVERREACT MUCH? WTF am I missing something here?

ha ha I love cranks with an axe to grind.

Ha, the guy who tracked him down is a notorious crank... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Brandt

Wikipedia Watch is a website critical of Wikipedia. It is owned by Daniel Brandt, the leader of the Southwestern chapter of Aryan Nations and an Internet activist.

The first such article I read was published by Salon.com and can be found here (http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/08/29/google_watch/print.html). This article isn't so bad as the others, the author does expose Brandt's motives:

Brandt is not a disinterested party; the dispute between Daniel Brandt and Google is personal. He has spent thousands of hours building a Web site that he believes is both useful and important, and Google, in its algorithmic blindness, has given Brandt a lower page rank than he thinks he's entitled to. Brandt finds it genuinely hard to believe -- and even personally insulting -- that Google won't give him more credit.

However the article does paint Mr. Brandt in a friendly light, and so it lends credibility to his cause - a cause which most if not all search engine professionals would regard as absurd.

The crux of Brandt's argument can be summed up with these paragraphs from the Salon.com article.

When you type "NameBase" into Google, Brandt's site comes up first, but Brandt is not satisfied with that. "My problem has been to get Google to go deep enough into my site," he says. In other words, Brandt wants Google to index the 100,000 names he has in his database, so that a Google search for "Donald Rumsfeld" will bring up NameBase's page for the secretary of defense. For some reason, though, all of NameBase's deep pages -- its pages with specific names and citations -- have a low Google page rank, which causes them to show up low in the search results. Search for "Donald Rumsfeld" in Google and in the first five pages you get a lot of .mil and .gov sites, some news stories, and some activist sites. Namebase's entry on Rumsfeld doesn't come up. (It is in Google's database, but to find it somebody would have to first wade through hundreds of results.)

Why is a Nazi collecting people's names and citations?

One criticism of the Tribune Company is that they are responsible for the Cubs' perpetual losing. The Tribune Company discovered that the Cubs are more profitable fielding a poor team, rather than spending big on free agents. The Chicago Cubs are located in a trendy area of Chicago, causing them to have great attendance at home games, even when the team is doing poorly.

If the Tribune Company is so unhappy about this, why don't they just edit it?

ROFFLE

Plus, all the slang...

Track listing

1. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (Cobain/Grohl/Novoselic) - 5:02
2. "In Bloom" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 4:15
3. "Come As You Are" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 3:39
4. "Breed" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 3:04
5. "Lithium" (Cobain) - 4:17
6. "Polly" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 2:56
7. "Territorial Pissings" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 2:23
8. "Drain You" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 3:44
9. "Lounge Act" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 2:37
10. "Stay Away" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 3:33
11. "On a Plain" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 3:17
12. "Something In The Way" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 3:51
13. "Endless, Nameless" (Hidden track) (Cobain/Hongro/Nirvana)

it appears to have been edited again, not by me:

"Endless, Nameless" (Hidden track) (Cobain/Hongro/Cuomo/Urkel/Nirvana)

Portions of the name sound like vulgarities in English and Spanish, leading to its use in various jokes. Titicaca is the lake that Cornholio, alter-ego of Beavis of MTV's animated series Beavis and Butt-head, claims to come from although he believes the lake is located in Nicaragua.

The word 'Trekdom' is used interchangeably with 'Fandom' when referring to Star Trek Fandom or their fans and has been in use by fans of Star Trek fans for several decades.

After the recent cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise, the future of Trekdom is still uncertain, though it has been scaled back to its own core. Some may believe that Trekdom might die off, or it might be extinct at the onset of such conflicts such as World War III.

"Plus, all the slang..."
But shouldn't the 81 be called a 010?

Was what I found at the top of the page when I checked wikipedia a few weeks before starting a class on the Reformation.

First go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discontinued_gay_pornography_awards

Go to the Probe / Men in Video Awards section.

Click on the 1995 recipient of the "Best Bottom" award.

Note the expression on his face.

LOL

Cultural imperialism at its WTF-est:

Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão GCL (born José Alexandre Gusmão, on June 20, 1946) is a former freedom fighter who became the first President of East Timor since independence from Indonesia.
(...)
His nickname, "Xanana", is taken from the name of the 1970's rock and roll/comedy group Sha Na Na.

On a radio interview, Trina said that the relationship was more of a "brother-sister" relationship. Later, on Victoria's RapBasement, Lil Wayne said he knew nothing of the rumors. During Wayne's childhood, he mistakenly got thought of as a gay guy but late he dismissed all these claims by watching naked gun 33 and a third.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lil_Wayne#Personal_life

And in the next chapter:

"Lil Wayne and Trina have recently ended their porno relationship, which was stated by Lil Wayne, himself, on BET's 106 and Park."

Did someone misspell "promo"?

Regarding the director who wanted to make a pornographic film about Jesus:

Thorsen was also a jazz musician and co-founder of the group Papa Bue's Viking Jazzband.

The things people said about that film and the "Gay Jesus Film Hoax" that followed it:

Modern People News has revealed plans for the filming of a movie based on the SEX LIFE OF JESUS in which Jesus is portrayed as a swinging HOMOSEXUAL. This film will be shot in the U.S.A. this year unless the public outcry is great. Already a French Prostitute has been named to play the part of Mary Magdalene, with who Christ has a blatant affair. We CANNOT AFFORD to standby and DO NOTHING about this disgrace. We must not allow this perveted world to drag our Lord through the dirt. PLEASE HELP us to get this film banned from the U.S.A. as it has been in Europe. Let us show how we feel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Jesus_film_hoax

The proposed plot of the film (the script of which was published, but only in a Danish translation)...

Thorsen was fascinated with both Jesus and sex, appearing on a magazine cover in 1963 as a crucified Santa Claus with a cannon for a penis.[10] Creating a pornographic film about Jesus became his greatest goal.[11] He explained:[12]

I believe the best way to give the Pope a forceful kick in the ass is to turn up the heat on Jesus. ... In the film when Jesus rises up out of the grave he'll ball a farmer girl. A nice blonde girl. That by itself signifies in my opinion what Jesus ought to stand for, instead of standing for the repression of life and eroticism.

Thorsen's planned film, The Many Faces of Jesus, would depict Jesus as a drunk, a bank robber, and a lover of both John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene.[16] In one scene, Jesus was to strip in the presence of a group of prostitutes and chant "Prophet save us, God Hare Krishna, Hallelujah, Red Front, Heil Hitler".[8]

Real "A Serbian Film" vibes.

As in other countries, the plans sparked controversy, including inspiring a country song, "Hey Jesus, Don't You Worry", written by Edward A. Boucher and performed by Van Trevor.[57]

I was unable to find a recording of the country song online.

Hey Jesus, don't you worry
Nothin' wrong with lovin' a nice farm girl
Maybe cool it on the Heil Hitler though

let he who is without heil cast the first sieg

The leading UK dance music magazines Mixmag and Muzik were enthusiastic, with Mixmag saying that "Orbital are still light-years ahead of the competition"[24] while Muzik said that "billed as six unrelated 'sound scenarios', In Sides neatly illustrates why Orbital remain light years ahead of the competition.

From the Wikipedia thread on Aimo Koivunen, a Finnish soldier in the Continuation War and the first documented case of a soldier overdosing on methamphetamine during combat:

Koivunen was a Finnish soldier, assigned to a ski patrol on 15 March 1944 along with several other Finnish soldiers. Three days into their mission on 18 March, the group was attacked and surrounded by Soviet forces, from whom they were able to escape. Koivunen became fatigued after skiing for a long distance but could not stop. He was carrying his patrol's entire supply of army-issued Pervitin, or methamphetamine, a stimulant used to remain awake while on duty. He consumed the entire supply of Pervitin, and had a short burst of energy, but soon entered a state of delirium and eventually lost consciousness. Koivunen later recalled waking up the following morning, separated from his patrol and having no supplies.

In the following days, Koivunen escaped Soviet forces once again, was injured by a land mine, and stayed in a ditch for a week, waiting for help. In the week that he was gone, he subsisted only on pine buds and a single Siberian jay that he caught and ate raw. Having skied more than 400 km (248.5 mi), he was later found and admitted to a nearby hospital, where his heart rate was measured at 200 beats per minute, and he weighed only 43 kg (94.8 lbs).

The first and only Hearts World Championship was held in Budapest, Hungary in 2002, shortly after the development of the World Wide Web enabled millions to play Hearts across the globe. It was won by an Englishman named Steven Wilson, who discovered his skill at the game after winning the perfect round of 104-104-104-0 against a computer in 1999. Wilson demolished all of his opponents at the 2002 Championship, it was not renewed for a second year because too many top players dropped out as they were so distraught by the loss. The Hearts World Championship has yet to be renewed since.

they really did... lose heart(s)

Hearing DJ John Peel mention on-air that he was hungry, Bragg rushed to the BBC with a mushroom biryani, so Peel played "The Milkman of Human Kindness" from Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy albeit at the wrong speed (since the 12" LP was, unconventionally, cut to play at 45rpm). Peel insisted he would have played the song even without the biryani and later played it at the correct speed.

It has since been said that several of his bandmates knew where Burns was the whole time, and that he simply did not want to be involved with the book. On Oct 3rd 2024 he was pictured on that there TwiXter with MB, clearly very much alive.

Caveat: I know nothing about cricket, so maybe these details are not unusual and are commonly known and discussed by all fans of the sport:

Many of Warne's most spectacular performances occurred in Ashes series against England; in particular, the "Gatting Ball", better known as the "Ball of the Century", which drifted significantly out of the hand, pitching well outside leg stump and sharply spun past the front of the bat, clipping the top of Off Stump, bowling a bemused Mike Gatting in the 1993 Ashes series.

Those details are not unusual and are commonly known and discussed by all fans of the sport.

Or rather the ball bowled by Warne was certainly unusual but the details of it are commonly known and discussed by all fans of the sport.

Yeah like NFL fans discussing famous Hail Mary plays decades after the fact, I get it.

A campaign in Oklahoma from 1934 to 1945 dynamited 3.8 million birds.

That means they liked it very much, in 1938

Based on a mistaken belief that the British monarch owns all the swans in Britain, it is popularly believed the British monarch is the only person allowed to eat swans in the United Kingdom.

I just like this photo.

Bingo game on Labor Day in Sheffield, Vermont, 2017

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Bingo_Sheffield_Field_Day_2017_Labor_Day_Sheffield_VT_September_2017.jpg

Hallinan grew up in a 22-room mansion in Ross, California.[4] At age twelve, he fell off his horse, fractured his skull, and spent five days stranded outside Yosemite before being rescued by helicopter.[5]

As a young man Hallinan developed, in the words of California Supreme Court Justice Raymond E. Peters, a "habitual and continuing resort to fisticuffs to settle personal differences."[6] He became a ward of juvenile court in 1954 when he took a case of beer from three sailors after he and his brother had run them off the road on Point Reyes and beat them.[5] The juvenile court banned him from Marin County so he got a job in a warehouse in Sacramento before clerking for the Longshoremen's Union in Hawaii.[7] Shortly after turning eighteen, he pleaded guilty to battery for punching the proprietor of the Edelweiss Ski Lodge.

In 1957, he punched a fraternity brother who denied him admission to a private party. He was indicted in 1959 after he broke a man's jaw during a brawl at a Greenbrae bowling alley. While at UC Berkeley, he boxed for the Golden Bears and sparred with Muhammad Ali in the 1960 Olympic boxing team eliminations.[8]

Hallinan's propensity for fistfights continued in law school. When he and his brother were picketing in San Francisco against the House Un-American Activities Committee, some of their classmates arrived to picket them.[6] Strong words ensued and a fight was arranged in Golden Gate Park. Initially Hallinan was part of the crowd of UC Hastings student onlookers but he soon began a brawl with one of the opposing spectators. He also engaged in fistfights at a Young Democrats meeting and over a woman while at UC Hastings.[6]

....

As a student, Hallinan also became interested in nonviolent resistance. While attending the London School of Economics, he was arrested with Lord Bertrand Russell during a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament sit-down demonstration in front of the U.S. embassy.[9] When he returned to America, he joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and spent the summer of 1963 in Mississippi.[7] Local authorities jailed Hallinan twice but the U.S. Attorney General and the National Council of Churches intervened to secure his release.[6]

Was remembering back to the candidate I voted for (TWICE!) over Kamala Harris in our local District Attorney races oh about 21 years ago.

I don't think his wikipedia article had this level of detail back then... 😬😬😬

At the age of seven, Bede was sent as a puer oblatus[20] to the monastery of Monkwearmouth by his family to be educated by Benedict Biscop and later by Ceolfrith.[21]

At three o'clock, according to Cuthbert, he asked for a box of his to be brought and distributed among the priests of the monastery "a few treasures" of his: "some pepper, and napkins, and some incense".

I Was a Teenage Magoo (later released on the TV series Mister Magoo retitled "Teenage Magoo"; submitted and screened at the 33rd Academy Awards for an Oscar consideration, but wasn't nominated[6])

Planters is best known for its processed nuts and for the Mr. Peanut icon that symbolizes them.[1] Mr. Peanut was created by grade schooler Antonio Gentile for a 1916 contest to design the company's brand icon.[1] The design was modified by a commercial artist and has continued to change over the years.

Ward was a very sensitive man and needed to be reassured regularly.[2]

from The Thrills' So Much for the City

The song "Say It Ain't So" appeared on US President George W. Bush's iPod in 2005.[18]

In 1975-76, "Sandy" was in Bergamo, Italy studying Montessori Elementary education. He participated in the congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and spoke in Italian to his friends there. At the final exam, he became nervous over a question and the examiner asked him what he would rather do. Not thinking that a different question/demonstration was being offered him, he responded he would rather be playing his guitar.[citation needed] He returned to Utah and married.

Ward was a very sensitive man and needed to be reassured regularly.[2]

It's all true

"Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan (née MacFarlane, 25 November 1897 – 6 December 1956) was a Scottish medium best known as the last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act 1735."

In 1944! Albeit for "fraudulent spiritual activity," which is both ironic and pretty uncool.

The siege was captured by Pathé News cameras—one of their earliest stories and the first siege to be captured on film—and it included footage of Churchill.[15][106] When the newsreels were screened in cinemas, Churchill was booed with shouts of "shoot him" from audiences.[126]

... and here is the footage by the way, serial attention seeker Churchill shows up about 90 seconds in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0wPKpAVDGE

"Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan (née MacFarlane, 25 November 1897 – 6 December 1956) was a Scottish medium best known as the last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act 1735."

In 1944! Albeit for "fraudulent spiritual activity," which is both ironic and pretty uncool.

The 'fraudulent use of cheesecloth' event for which Duncan was imprisoned happened not far from me in the Copnor district of Portsmouth. It is mentioned in the lyrics of The Fall's Psykick Dancehall #2.

no bedknobs & broomsticks spoilers pls

Here's a meta-weird one. On Thanksgiving we played some trivia game where the clue was something like "Alabama resident bla bla became the first person to do what while she was sleeping on her couch in 1954," or something like that. The answer was she was the first person to be hit by a meteorite.

Wiki:

At 12:46 PM (CST) on November 30, 1954, a meteorite fell through the skies of Sylacauga, Alabama. It split into at least three fragments, with one of the fragments falling through a roof and then landing on Hodges, who was napping on her couch.

So we just happened to get a random trivia question almost exactly 70 years to the day after its point of trivia happened!

The lawsuit was initiated after Ross was informed by a friend playing slots at a casino of a "Happy Days" machine on which players win the jackpot when five Marion Rosses are rolled.[8]

Finding cracks in the metal coating required diving into the pool, which was out of the question due to the gamma radiation levels in the vicinity of the nuclear waste drums reaching 17,000 R/h. An attempt to eliminate the leak was made by pouring in 20 sacks of flour, thus filling the cracks with dough. However, the leak continued, and the service personnel discovered icing on the right side of the building.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown_Jets

Honours and records
...
Career records

Most tries
109 – Ray Preston

Most points
1,001 – Ken Wilson (25T, 447G, 28FG)

Most murder convictions
1 – Chris Dawson

Her dates, most of whom are never seen, shower her with expensive gifts, allowing her to live in a huge penthouse apartment with a piano and a doorbell that plays the song "Fly Me to the Moon" (in the original network run) or "Beautiful Dreamer" (in subsequent syndication and the original Fox Season 1 DVD release.[2] Shout! Factory restored the original doorbell chime for their subsequent DVD releases.[3])

A pilot for a show called Dude, This Sucks was cancelled after teens attending a taping at the Snow Summit Ski Resort in January 2001 were sprayed with liquidized fecal matter by a group known as "The Shower Rangers". The teens later sued, with MTV later apologizing and ordering the segment's removal.

ok i am cheating here since this actually comes from knowyourmeme

This multi-layered structure in the Yo Dawg formula makes it reminiscent of the "strange loops" described in Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach.

In 2014, during an interview on Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast, screenwriters Alexander and Karaszewski revealed that the studio was reluctant to rehire them, only doing so because they wanted to shoot a sequel before Michael Oliver could noticeably grow and, as the writers of the first film, could produce a script quicker than writers new to the story and characters.[3]

Frustrated with the criticisms of the first film, they deliberately increased the poor taste, intending to make a Pasolini or John Waters film for children, and went so far overboard that the first cut received an R rating from the MPAA, a secret kept until their 2014 appearance on the podcast. Dubbing over Junior's use of the term "pussy-whipped" got a PG-13 on appeal, but the studio was still so nervous that, at the last minute, they added the 1947 Woody Woodpecker cartoon Smoked Hams to its theatrical run, to reassure parents that it was suitable for children.[3]

ha the original Problem Child is one of the first movies I remember seeing in the theater in my life and even at age 8 I remember being able to pick up on it being cynical and mean-spirited, even if I didn't have that language to describe it. Will have to see #2 someday, get my "Pasolini for children" on

sadly they kinda sanded off the rough edges to get a PG-13, all I remember is there being a dog and the running joke being that it takes gigantic shits bigger than Junior, including at the wedding at the end.

behind the scenes weirdness-

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rayner_Goddard,_Baron_Goddard

In 2017, Montgomery and Tim Batt recorded a pilot episode of a The Worst Idea of All Time TV series for YouTube Red, in which they spent five days in a New York City sewer watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. The show was never ordered to series.

:(

were they allowed to leave the sewer?

From the Wikipedia entry for Bobby Farrell of Boney M:

He died on the morning of 30 December 2010, in a hotel room in St. Petersburg, Russia, of heart failure... Coincidentally, he died on the same date and in the same city as Grigori Rasputin, the subject of one of his group's most iconic songs and whom he had dressed as in some live performances.

lol

Nono promised to send drafts and sketches to Kremer so he could practice and learn the piece during the summer of 1988. Kremer, however, received no score until two days before the premiere, on August 31, when Kremer decided to travel to Berlin to meet Nono in person. Upon meeting, Kremer could listen to the tapes but only have a gander at a few fragments in some scraps of paper.

La Romareda boasts the bizarre claim to have Europe's deepest goal nets, which stretch back four metres. The nets also have a striking blue and white diagonal stripe design.