Did you know: Did two actors who played the same character die one day apart?

And it’s summer!
Long days, short nights, warm, sunshine, occasional rain … ah, summer, my second-favorite time of year. (Spring, as regular readers know, is my all-time favorite.)
Enjoy the summer while you have it, my friends. Get outdoors, get into the fresh air, run and jump and play, and … whew, I made myself exhausted just saying that. Seriously, have some fun this summer, but remember to always come back to this space for your weekly trivia. In fact, there’s a new delivery just arrived for you!
Did you know …
… McDonald’s once tried to sell bubble gum-flavored broccoli? In an obviously misguided attempt to get kids to eat healthier foods, the restaurant chain introduced broccoli flavored with bubble gum into their popular Happy Meals in the early 2000s. To their credit, McDonald’s was trying to find something kids might like to replace French fries, and in 2011 they hit paydirt with apple slices. But prior to that, the chain tried other fruits and vegetables, hitting a low point – both in sales and in taste – with bubble gum flavored broccoli. That stuff sank faster than the Titanic. (Yuck!)
… no Major League Baseball team has played no-hitters in two consecutive games? The closest the feat has come to reality happened on May 5 & 6, 1917. On May 5, Ernie Koob (1892-1941) pitched a no-hitter for the St. Louis Browns against the Chicago White Sox. May 6 featured a doubleheader, and while the first game wasn’t a no-hitter (though the Browns did win), the second was. Bob Groom (1884-1948) tossed a no-no for the Browns against the White Sox in the second game of the day. Back-to-back days is the closest MLB has come yet to no-hitters by the same team in consecutive games. (Back when baseball was a game, don’t you know.)
… the law in Tulsa, Oklahoma, makes it illegal to open a soda bottle without the supervision of a licensed engineer? (I know it can be complicated, but come on!)
… the closest thing to a “clean sweep” in a presidential election since the 18th Century took place in 1984? Running for his second term as 40th President, Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) took 49 out of 50 states in that election, losing only the state of Minnesota to his opponent, former Vice President Walter Mondale (1928-2021). Reagan almost took Mondale’s home state as well – he lost it by less than 4,000 votes. The first two presidential elections, in 1789 and 1792, were in essence clean sweeps, but only because one candidate was running – George Washington (1732-1799).
… two actors who played the same role in a movie and television series died one day apart? In the 1970 film MAS*H, the role of Lt. Col. Henry Blake was played by actor Roger Bowen (1932-1996). Bowen portrayed Blake as a rather befuddled administrator who did not do much surgery himself,
much in keeping with the way the character was presented in the original 1968 novel. In 1972, the film was adapted as a television series, and actor McLean Stevenson (1927-1996) assumed the role of Blake for the show’s first three seasons. Stevenson’s portrayal was not like Bowen’s, and his Blake was a skilled surgeon and a friend of the show’s main characters. Stevenson died of a heart attack on February 15, 1996, while hospitalized and recovering from surgery. In an astonishing coincidence, the following day, February 16, Bowen died of a heart attack while on vacation in Florida. Additional trivia note: Stevenson’s departure from the series was based on his desire to star, rather than be part of an ensemble. He was replaced by one of his best friends, Harry Morgan (1915-2011). Stevenson went on to star in four comedy series, all of which flopped and all of which lived and died while MAS*H was still on the air. (Hence, the “McLean Stevenson Effect” on an actor’s career was created.)
… drinking two glasses of wine has a rather odd effect on your body? You get the same effect as if you’d stayed awake for seventeen hours. (Of course, you could just stay awake that long and not worry about the cost of the wine.)
… your eyes get a lot of exercise? If you want your legs, for example, to get the same amount of exercise your eyes get every day, you would have to walk about 49.7 miles. (Now that’s just silly.  How would you get back home?)
… oak trees produce about 2,200 acorns each season? So that would lead you to wonder why there aren’t gazillions of oak trees everywhere. The answer, of course, is that most of the acorns end up as food for squirrels and other animals. Only 1 in 10,000 acorns will become an oak tree. (But that one more than makes up for it.)
… your favorite orchestra probably does not have an octobass? An octobass, for those who aren’t aware, is a stringed instrument similar to a bass viol that stands almost twelve feet tall. Invented in 1850 by French violin maker Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume (1798-1875), the octobass can produce notes that are so low they fall below the range of human hearing. (I thought octobass was the name of a villain in Batman or something. I’ll be that musical octobass is a son-of-a-gun to play.)
… retailers use smells to help you spend more money at Christmas? For instance, if you detect the aroma of roasting chestnuts in a store, your salivary glands will be stimulated, and you’ll feel more hungry. Hungry shoppers will buy anything, not just food, so the retailers will use food aromas to help you spend more.
… a species of bear has fur on its paws? Most bears have bare (bear?) feet, but polar bears have a layer of fur on the bottom of their paws and between the toes. Bears lose much of their body heat through their paws, and the fur protects polar bears from losing too much of their body warmth. (They can bear-ly handle the cold as it is.)
Now … you know!