College students have long been known to be among the most loyal customers of fast-food restaurants. In 1975 the students of Caltech combined their love of burgers with their scientific and engineering […]
I Hope They Had Time for Their Studies
Not in the Cards to Repeat a Shuffle
Photo credit: By Alan Cleaver (Flickr: Shuffling the deck) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons In a deck of 52 cards, there are 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000 possible combinations. To give you an idea of […]
A Pretty Good Indication of a Gambling Problem
Some of us who break out in a rash at the thought of losing a quarter in a faulty vending machine may have difficulty empathizing with Australian businessman Harry Kakavas. He didn’t […]
Dishonesty Doesn’t Pay
British Member of Parliament Horatio Bottomley made a lot of money through fraud. He also lost a lot of money the same way. In a classic case of karma, in 1914 Bottomley […]
The Ugliest Man Ever
John Heidegger rose to fame in Switzerland and later in England as a promoter of masquerade balls. It should be no surprise that Heidegger was drawn to a profession that depended on […]
Around the World with a Baby Carriage
The Earl of Lonsdale accepted a bet from his friend John Pierpoint Morgan that no man could circumnavigate the globe, on foot, without being recognized. The wager didn’t end there. By 1908, […]
An Odd Bit of Odds
In 2011 European bookies were putting the odds of Queen Elizabeth II abdicating and replacing Bruce Forsyth as the host of the popular BBC dance competition Strictly Come Dancing at 50,000 to […]
Betting on the Intelligence (or Lack Thereof) of the Masses
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating […]
When You Gotta Go… You REALLY Should Go
Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old woman from Sacramento, died in 2007 of water intoxication while trying to win a Wii console in a radio station’s “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest, which […]
Taking a Gamble With Town Politics
In 2011 Granen, a small Spanish town on the brink of economic collapse, bet in the world’s largest lottery and won €700 million ($761,110,000). source
I Rose And Met This Bet and Yet …..
Bennett Cerf, co-founder of Random House, one of the biggest publishing companies in the world, bet a client of his that he couldn’t write a book with fifty or fewer distinct words. […]
Life or Death… Now That’s a Real Gamble
In 1980 a Las Vegas hospital suspended employees for taking bets on when patients would die. source
Commonplace Fun Facts 