Facts You Probably don’t Need

• On March 10, 1998, Netflix, which began as a mail-order DVD service, shipped out its very first movie: a copy of Tim Burton’s 1988 hit “Beetlejuice.”

• Al Roker and Lenny Kravitz are distant cousins; they share a great-great-grandfather.

• When Al Capone was held at Alcatraz, he played in the inmate band, The Rock Islanders. He played the banjo.

• Illegible handwriting is known as “griffonage.”

• “I Am Legend” author Richard Matheson became a published writer at just eight years old, when he had a short story printed in the Brooklyn Eagle.

• If you open your eyes in a pitch-black room, the color you’ll see is called “eigengrau.”

• Before he wrote “Goosebumps,” R.L. Stine wrote jokes for Bazooka bubble gum.

• A “smidgen” is an actual measurement. It is half of a pinch or one-thirty-second of a teaspoon.

          Facts by Sean McVeigh, factologist.