Statistics Saturday: Most Commonly Misspelled US Cities

1. Cincinnatti, Ohio
2. Schenactedy, New York
3. Schenectedy, New York
4. Pittsburg, Pennsylvania
5. Cincinati, Ohio
6. Schenachtady, New York
7. Cinncinatti, Ohio
8. Culpepper, Virginia
9. Schenectody, New York
10. Cincinnati, Ohio
11. Cinncinnati, Ohio
12. Schenachtady, New York

Reference: On The Laps Of Gods: The Red Summer Of 1919 And The Struggle For Justice That Remade a Nation, Robert Whitaker.

Statistics Saturday: US States Spelled Using Only Their Postal Abbreviations

• Alaaa
• Aaka [*]
• Aza
• Araa
• Caa
• Cooo
• Cctct [*]
• Dee
• Fl
• Gga
• Hii
• Id
• Illii [*]
• Inin
• Ia
• Kss
• Kky
• Laa
• Me
• Md
• Maa
• Mii
• Mnn [*]
• Mssss
• Mo
• Mt
• Ne
• Nv
• Nhh
• Nj
• Nm
• Ny
• Ncn
• Nd [*]
• Oho
• Oko
• Oro
• Paa
• Ri
• Sc
• Sd
• Tnn [*]
• Tx
• Ut
• Vt
• Va
• Wa
• Wv
• Wii
• Wy

[*] Signifies is also an alien character, species, or world in C J Cherryh’s Chanur novels.

Reference: The Air Show At Brescia, 1909, Peter Demetz.

Statistics Saturday: Comic Strip I Most Wanted to Slug This Week, by Day

Day	Slugging-Ready Comic Strip
Sunday	Mary Worth
Monday	Funky Winkerbean
Tuesday	Funky Winkerbean
Wednesday	Funky Winkerbean
Thursday	Funky Winkerbean
Friday	Funky Winkerbean
Saturday	OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD CRANKSHAFT

Reference: When You Were A Tadpole And I Was A Fish: And Other Speculations About This And That, Martin Gardner.

Statistics Saturday: Hosts of The Tonight Show over Time

Not shown: that time Jack Paar just shrugged and walked off and left Hugh Downs to guess what the heck to do next.

Reference: The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed, Amir D Aczel.

Statistics Saturday: the Most Frequently Snarked-Upon Comic Strips in Another Timeline

• Russell Myers’s Broom Hilda
• Gary Larson’s Broom Hilda
• Charles Schulz’s Broom Hilda
• Chester Gould’s Broom Hilda
• Tom Batiuk’s Broom Hilda
• Jim Davis’s Broom Hilda
• Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Broom Hilda
• Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Broom Hilda
• Norm Feuti’s Broom Hilda
• That Guy Who Did The Outbursts of Everett True‘s Broom Hilda
• Bill Watterson’s Broom Hilda
• Walt Kelly’s Broom Hilda

Reference: Magnificent Failure: Free Fall From The Edge Of Space, Craig Ryan.

Statistics Saturday: The Movies, Part II

• The Great Mouse Detective 2: The Greater Mouse Detective
• 2010 II: 2012
• The Maltese Falcon II: The Maltese Falconer
• Gildersleeve’s Ghost 2: Gildersleever’s Ghost
• The Sting II: The Stinger
• The Godfather II: The Godfatherer
• To Sir, With Love 2: To Sirerer With Loverer
• Apollo 11 II: For Serifed Fonts Only
• The Hustler II: The Hustlerer
• 2012 II: 2014
• Broadway Melody of 1933 II: Broadway Melodier of 1933er
• The Man Who Came To Dinner II: The Guy Who Stuck Around For Lunch

Reference: Tulipomania: The Story Of The World’s Most Coveted Flower And The Extraordinary Passions It Aroused, Mike Dash.

Statistics Saturday: Articles of Clothing, Ranked by How Good They Are for Containing Portals Usable for Escaping Unpleasant Conversations

1. Hats
2. Clutch Purses
3. Shoes (giant, unworn)
4. Trenchcoats
5. Dress shirt with pocket
6. Hoodies with pocket
7. Skunk costume tails
8. Socks
9. Infinity scarves
10. Cargo shorts
11. Shoes (regular size, worn)
12. Hair scrunchies

Reference: Creatures Of Accident: The Rise Of The Animal Kingdom, Wallace Arthur.

Statistics Saturday: Stanley Kubrick Movies, By Century

Accurate as of 22 July 2022.

Note: Barry Lyndon is not listed as a 17th century movie; it is set in the 18th century.

Reference: The Secret Life Of Bletchley Park, Sinclair McKay.

Statistics Saturday: Some Credible Facts About Apollo 11

• Although none of the Apollo 11 astronauts ever flew a spaceship again, they did fly in airplanes and took boat rides and probably even train rides like the rest of us.
• Neil Armstrong left his wristwatch behind in the Lunar Module when it (the watch) stopped working.
• Buzz Aldrin was prescribed Ritalin to cope with his post-Apollo depression.
• The mission patch originally depicted the eagle landing on the moon holding an olive branch in its talons, which for some reason moved to being held in its beak, or maybe it started out held in its beak. Whatever it was on the actual mission patch it started the other way, though.
• The Apollo Guidance Computer was less powerful than the Space Shuttle Guidance Computer, but more powerful than the Gemini Guidance Computer.
• Some of the Apollo 11 prime or backup crew have probably ridden horses some time or other. What the heck, maybe even the support crew.
• Apollo 11 set a record for human lunar population that since then has been tied, but never beaten.
• Though there was a fair chance Apollo 11 would not land on the Moon, there was no reasonable chance it would land on Mars instead.
• There were no woodchucks on the prime, backup, or support crews of Apollo 11.
• At the time of Apollo 11, not a single person person had yet attended the Woodstock music festival.

Reference: Car Wars: The Untold Story, Robert Sobel.

Statistics Saturday: Transformers I Can Still Recognize

This after watching every single episode of the 1980s Transformers cartoon too many times and then moving on to having other things to do since about 1990:

• Optimus Prime
• Starscream
• Girl Autobot [*]
• Megatron
• Blurr
• Grimlock

[*] Yes, I am aware that Girl Autobot’s name was not actually “Girl Autobot”. It was established in the 1986 Transformers: The Movie that her name was Autobelle.

Reference: Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa, Nicholas Shrady.

Statistics Saturday: New York Cities, Ranked

1. Greater New York City
2. New York City
3. West New York, NJ
4. Lesser New York City
5. New New York, New New York, The Future (Earth)
6. New York, Lincolnshire, England
7. New York, New Mexico
8. New York, Santa Barbara, Honduras
9. New New York, New Earth, The Future (Space)
10. New York, Saint Catherine, Jamaica
11. Least New York City
12. New York, Texas

Not listed: I accidentally ran across the Quora page attempting to answer “Why is it called ‘New York, New York’ if the city’s name is ‘New York City’?” and it’s caused my brain to try squeezing out of my skull.

Reference: The Numbers Game: Baseball’s Lifelong Fascination With Statistics, Alan Schwarz.

Statistics Saturday: Some July Holidays

• July 1st. The First of July.
• July 4th. The Fourth of July.
• July 6th. The th of July (early morning).
• July 12th. National Day of Agreeing It Would Be Nice if Things Were Just Quiet for the Day, Maybe We Could Just Have a Pitcher of Iced Tea and Enjoy an Evening Breeze, if There Were One (United States).
• July 14th. The Fourteenth of July.
• July 19th. Start of Summer (Northern Hemisphere, Procrastinators); End of Winter (Southern Hemisphere, People Who Are Always Rushing Things).
• July 22nd. European Pi Day.
• July 24th. The Fourth of July (Belated).
• July 25th. Christmas In July.
• July 26th. Apollo 15 begins (1971).
• July 31st. New Year’s Eve In August.
• July 32nd. Day of Yelling at the Computer for Why Is It Going on Like This Still, We Tested for This Case (software developers only).

Reference: The Bagel: The Surprising History Of A Modest Bread, Maria Balinska.

Statistics Saturday: Some Terms and Conditions

• Bilinearity.
• Differential Gearbox.
• Enthalpy.
• Fondant.
• Twenty-Foot-Equivalent Unit.
• Usufruct.
• 0.6% of the United States covered by snow.
• 39.84% of the United States in drought this week, up 1.6% from last week but down 6.1% from last month.
• Moon: waning crescent.
• Visible satellite shows deepening cumulus towers.
• Wave height of two feet, period of four seconds.
• Windy conditions could develop across the northern Great Basin and Northwest toward the end of next week.

Reference: The Genie in the Bottle: 64 All New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life, Joe Schwarcz.

Statistics Saturday: Some People It Is Incorrect to List as “the Fifth Beatle”

• George R R Martin
• That Guy From Oasis
• Beatles cartoon producer Al Broadax
• Pelé
• St Francis of Assisi
• The Archies
• Erasmus Darwin
• Grover Cleveland
• Tommy Smothers
• 1982 Senior PGA Tour Champion Don January
• Pope Sixtus IV
• Alan Arkin

Reference: Over Here! New York City During World War II, Lorraine B Diehl.

Statistics Saturday: The Alphabet In Order Of Its First Appearance in _We Didn’t Start The Fire_

1. H
2. A
3. R
4. Y
5. T
6. U
7. M
8. N
9. D
10. O
11. I
12. S
13. E
14. C
15. J
16. P
17. F
18. W
19. L
20. G
21. X
22. B
23. K
24. V
25. Q
26. Z

Reference: Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear, Paul Fussell.

Statistics Saturday: The Alphabet In Order Of Its First Appearance On VH-1

1. V
2. H
3. M
3. (tie) T
3. (tie) U
3. (tie) S
3. (tie) I
3. (tie) C
3. (tie) E
3. (tie) L
3. (tie) O
3. (tie) N
3. (tie) B
3. (tie) G
3. (tie) D
3. (tie) K
3. (tie) R
3. (tie) P
3. (tie) A
3. (tie) Y
3. (tie) W
3. (tie) Z
3. (tie) F
3. (tie) X
3. (tie) J
3. (tie) Q

Reference: Words That Make New Jersey History, Editor Howard L Green.

Statistics Saturday: The Alphabet In Order Of Its First Appearance On MTV

1. M
2. T
3. V
4. U
5. S
6. I
7. C
8. E
9. L
10. O
11. N
12. B
13. G
14. D
15. K
16. H
17. R
18. P
19. A
20. Y
21. W
22. Z
23. F
24. X
25. J
26. Q

Reference: The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn, Louisa Gilder.

Statistics Saturday: How Artists Spend The Time On Their Pictures

Not pictured: making funny faces at their web camera (for reference); making funny faces at their web camera (to stave off fury); fingers.

Reference: Chance of a Lifetime: Nucky Johnson, Skinny D’Amato and How Atlantic City Because the Naughty Queen of Resorts, Grace Anselmo D’Amato.

Statistics Saturday: Things I Remember About Dennis Miller’s Short-Lived Early-90s Talk Show

• Dennis Miller had a short-lived early-90s talk show, but so did every white guy in America, must be admitted.
• So this one time a Senator(?) named Brockman Adams had to resign because it turned out eight women reported times he molested them, and Dennis Miller did a little sing-along bit at the start of his Weekend Update-ish segment where he sang to the tune of The Addams Family, “It’s creepy and it’s kooky, mysterious and spooky, it’s altogether ooky, Brock Adams’s sex life!” which is the sort of tasteful thoughtful joke we were making about rape, molestation, and drugged drinks in the early 90s.
• Dennis Miller had this The Case For/The Case Against format to make some quick punchy jokes about some topics.
• Only, wait, Senator (sic) Brock Adams resigned in early 1993 and Dennis Miller’s show ended in … July 1992 according to Wikipedia? But, like, I remember him singing that song so clearly, can I be remembering him on a different show? What other show would he be doing news-of-the-day jokes about though?
• Yeah Miller did a Weekend Update-ish bit in the middle of the show probably because if he didn’t they wouldn’t have let him have a show.
• Okay okay that’s got it it, Brock Adams didn’t resign, he just didn’t run for reelection, after the allegations came out in March and April 1992 so now the timing makes sense.

Okay so that’s six things I remember about Dennis Miller’s short-lived early-90s talk show. Well, it’s four things I have remembered in place of literally anything else, plus two things I have learned about Brock Adams while figuring this out. Good playing, all.

Reference: A House Called Morven: Its Role In American History, Alfred Hoyt Bill, Walter E Edge, Revised by Constance M Greiff, Postscript Bolton F Schwartz.

Statistics Saturday: Dow Jones Companies And How Much I Think I Could Scam Them

Note: everyone has some scam that they will fall for. For the purpose of a fair guideline here, I am thinking of a basic scam. Something like if I were to send an invoice for (say) $17,250 “for services rendered as per contract”, whether the listed company would issue me a check rather than ask any questions.

Dow Jones Company	How Much I Think I Could Scam Them
3M	Very Likely
American Express	Dead Certainty
Amgen	Unlikely
Apple	Toss-up
Boeing	More Likely Than Not
Caterpillar	Likely
Chevron	Very Likely
Cisco	Not Likely
Coca-Cola	Toss-up
Disney	They Don’t Even Pay The People They Actually Contracted To Pay
Dow	More Likely Than Not
Goldman Sachs	Would Send $50,000 Just Because That’s An Easier Number To Write Out
Home Depot	Unlikely
Honeywell	Wait, they’re in the Dow Jones Industrial Average? Like, the thermostat people? Really? Did every other business turn Mr Jones down?
IBM	Absolutely
Intel	They would try to pay and somehow it would never go through
Johnson & Johnson	Not until I showed up at their headquarters in New Brunswick and asked why their offices there look more like a college campus than the actual Rutgers campus across the street does
JPMorgan Chase	Oh yes
McDonald’s	Oh no
Merck	Probably not
Microsoft	Would either get laughed at or get the check in ten minutes with an apology, hard to say, depends who opens the envelope
Nike	Nope
Proctor & Gamble	Wait, they’re still around? I thought they vanished when the soap operas went off the air?
Salesforce	This company is itself a hoax slipped into the Dow Jones, so of course they’d pay, out of respect for another player of the game
Travelers	More Likely Not
UnitedHealth	Probably Not
Verizon	Don’t Get Me Started On Verizon
Visa	Somewhat Likely
Walgreen Boots Alliance	I have to have copied that name wrong, that can’t be it
Walmart	Without Question

Reference: West Jersey: Under Four Flags, Ralph K Turp.

Statistics Saturday: The Movies (an incomplete list)

• The Hustler
• The Apartment
• The Discrete Charm of The Bourgeoisie
• The Casablanca
• The Dog Day Afternoon
• The E.T.
• The Fall of The House of the Usher
• Who Framed The Roger Rabbit
• The A Hard Day’s The Night
• The Man Who Shot Liberty The Valance
• The Mon Oncle
• The Night of The Hunter

Reference: The Big Rich: The Rise And Fall of The Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes, Bryan Burrough.

Statistics Saturday: Most and Least Common Dates of Easter

Most Common	Occasional	Almost Never	Least Common
Sundays in March, April	Sundays in May (Orthodox)	Sunday in July (that one time Sweden was going back-and-forth on whether they were going to be on the Gregorian or the Julian calendar and they threw in a February 30th for the heck of it)	Thursdays in July

Reference: Pirates of New Jersey: Plunder and High Adventure On The Garden State Coastline, Mark P Donnelly, Daniel Diehl.

Statistics Saturday: When Does Palm Sunday Happen?

Not listed: “51 weeks after Easter” because that’s almost never right.

Reference: Jersey Blue: Civil War Politics in New Jersey 1854 – 1865, William Gillette.

Statistics Saturday: Some April Holidays

• April 1. April Fool’s Day.
• April 4. April Fool’s Day Observed. (Scotland, West Australia)
• April 6. Graperil Fool’s Day. (National Grape-Grower’s Association keeps insisting this is a thing and sends so many whiny e-mails if you don’t list it.)
• April 12 – 17. News Sites Publish Articles Explaining How Something Kind of Like Some Part of the Miracles of Exodus or the Resurrection Could Maybe Have Happened Naturally So Christianity Is True, Okay?
• April 13. Friday the 13th (Unobserved).
• April 15. Calendar Nerds Explain How This Is Not The Ides Of April (United States).
• April 16. Your Atheist Friend Goes on About How Not a Single Newspaper From Rome From 33 AD Mentions the Resurrection So Christianity Is False, Okay?
• April 17. Your Pagan Friend Goes on About How “Easter” Is Originally a Pagan Word Meaning “Christianity Is Fake but Paganism Is Real” So Connect the Dots, People, Okay?
• April 21. Day of Being Haunted by the Word Sequence “Haiku’ing for Space Ghost” and Trying to Think Why That’s In Our Heads And What That Could Possibly Even Mean. (Gen X only)
• April 22. Conan O’Brien’s Birthday (Belated).
• April 26. Moment of Silence Followed by Embarrassed Cough. (United States, Canada, Philippines)
• April 31. April Fool’s Day (Extended Remix).

Reference: The Jersey Midlands, Henry Charlton Beck.

Statistics Saturday: Some Signs of a Toxic Workplace

• All questions, including about whether it’s still raining, met with glassy stares and nervous looking-about.
• Curious faint green glow across the workplace when seen by night.
• Dress code is one paragraph plus a 22-page addendum about scarves.
• All your anecdotes about work peter out because of that look on your friends’ faces.
• Corporation featured in eight-part essay on Skeletor’s Bad Management Blog.
• Cobalt-60 elemental holding court in Conference Room B.
• Company is named for the evil corporation in an R-rated 80s movie kids watched all the time anyway.
• Voluntary gender identification box on the application form offers “Normal” or “Difficult”.
• Corporate communication style guides insist on employees using the word “sould” whether or not it fits and even though it isn’t a word.
• Ninja turtles keep showing up to keep nefarious forces from dipping the company in the city reservoir.

Reference: 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History Of The Promised Land, Daniel Wolff.

Statistics Saturday: Some Signs of Spring

• Local news anchors chat a lot about how they like the weather forecaster now.
• Hardware store replaces fortress of bags of rock salt with fortress of bags of mulch.
• Fancy young men thinking of love.
• They play the Emergency Spring Alert System timer right before starting The Price Is Right but then never the spiel about how this was only a test.
• It’s 40 degrees Fahrenheit at noon. It’s 72 degrees at 3 pm. At 5 pm, it starts to flurry. By midnight, all subcompact and compact cars are lost under the new snow.
• Fourth robin of the season tweeting about what a jerk the first robin is.
• All your Argentinian blogger friends posting “Some Signs of Autumn”.
• They take the Moon down to change the batteries out.
• You switch from forgetting your plants shouldn’t be watered to forgetting to water your plants.
• “Spring: Next 6 Exits”

Reference: Steel Pier, Atlantic City: Showplace of the Nation, Steve Liebowitz.

Statistics Saturday: Some Bad Wordle Starts

• XYLEM
• AAAGH (word)
• XYZZY (cheat code)
• (Four greys, one yellow, and a scolding look from Word-Lor, the Elemental Spirit of Word Games)
• AAAGH (cry of despair)
• (Computer catches on fire)
• SZKZK (snore)
• (Computer, self catch on fire)
• “@[=g3,8d]\&fbb=-q]/hK%fg” (cat walked across keyboard)
• (Three greys and two squares of a color never before seen, or suspected, in the existence of any beings capable of reason.)
• :wq! (Exit-with-save command for the vi text editor)
• (Computer, self catch on fire; earthquake)

Reference: The Pine Barrens, John McPhee.

Statistics Saturday: Some Popular 19th Century Gambling Games, So Far As You Know

• Faro
• Brag-and-Stick
• Twenty-card Poker
• Chuck-a-Luck
• Cudgels
• Phreno
• Tiger and Mugwump
• Policy
• Lick-the-Walloon
• Two-Card Monte (the third card took a blue ribbon, pastimes and recreations, when introduced at the Lewis and Clark Exhibition of 1905)
• Lexo
• Thimble-Rig

Reference: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life Of Cornelius Vanderbilt, T J Stiles.

Statistics Saturday: Some Common Words Put in Alphabetical Order

• eeimmosst
• adeis
• ouy
• rsttu
• ader
• ciklquy
• eghnou
• eelopp
• not’w
• eoprstt
• ehirt
• deeelnnrsss

Reference: The Medieval Calendar Year, Bridget Ann Henisch.

Statistics Saturday: Some More Winter Olympics Trivia

• For several months the 1956 Winter Olympics were scheduled to be held in Santo Domingo until someone asked why Avery Brundage’s geography whiz of a grand-nephew kept giggling.
• If this were 1988? You could get a laugh anywhere, anytime, out of anyone, just talking about the “luge”. Just the idea of the sport was the most funniest thing anyone could imagine. By 1992, the moment had passed. Sorry if you missed it.
• Although they’re formally named the “Winter Olympics”, in the southern hemisphere where the seasons are opposite they’re known as the “Winter”.
• They didn’t originally plan to have the 1976 Games in Innsbruck, it’s just everyone assumed that’s where the Games would be and everyone had bought their plane tickets before anyone checked where they were supposed to be held (Santo Domingo).
• Fictional nation with the greatest number of gold medals in the Winter Olympics? Freedonia. Greatest number of medals, period? Klopstokia.
• Sports never played in the Winter Olympics include ice baseball, snow basketball, sleet football, frost hockey, and slush rugby.
• Like you could pretend you’re trying to think of the name of “luge” and then say your brain keeps on wanting you to say “luge” and that isn’t even a word, and if it’s 1988, you’re beloved for your sense of humor.
• Oh yeah and if this were 1994? It would be crazy funny for David Letterman to have his Mom asking Olympics athletes questions, and that’s why to this day we have the talk show comedy genre of “somebody’s relative does a halting, insecure interview that would be painfully embarrassing to watch if you weren’t at least 75% sure the relative was in on and liked the joke”.
• Luge, though. Luge.
• Olympic events added for Richie Rich include $ledding, bob$leigh, $peed $kating, and ¢ro$$-¢ountry $kiing.
• They are figuring to sneak in an extra Winter Olympics in Innsbruck next year, just to stay in practice.
• Happy luge, everybody! We probably missed it for this year, though.

Reference: Expository Sciences, Editors Terry Shinn, Richard Whitley.