Sometimes our staff likes to sit around and challenge our brilliant research editors, Sandy Wood and Kara Kovalchik, by throwing out a topic and seeing how many interesting related facts they can come up with. I’m always amazed at how much knowledge they’ve got packed into those brains. Sandy and Kara are now sharing some of that brain power in a book called The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Not So Useless Facts. Here are a few facts I learned from the book:

• Coca-Cola wasn’t the only soft drink to at one time contain a drug derivative in its mixture; lithium was once part of the formula for 7-Up.
• The “RB” for which Arby’s restaurants were named does not stand for “roast beef” as is widely thought, but for the company’s founders, the Raffel Brothers.
• The last two living Beatles also happen to be the two left-handed members of the group: Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
• And a fact I find truly disturbing:
  The song that was played the most number of times on American radio during the twentieth century was “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.”

There are almost 1000 more fascinating facts in the book. Congrats to Sandy and Kara!