By Sam Wein

The Pinhead Chronicles

The Mariner space probe launched from Cape Canaveral on July 28, 1962 towards Venus veered off course and plunged into the Atlantic Ocean four minutes after take-off. Inquiries later revealed that a minus sign had been omitted from the instructions fed into the computer. This minus sign cost approximately $6,805,000. “It was a human error,” a launch spokesman explained.

In the 1880s and 1890s there were 6 saloons for every street block in New York City’s Bowery section, 1 for every 205 inhabitants. In contrast, there was a church or synagogue for every 2,000 citizens.

A grain of musk, a substance secreted in a gland of the musk deer and musk ox, will scent millions of cubic feet of air. Musk is not only more penetrating but is more persistent than any other known substance.

The Big Room at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico is 2,500 feet in length, 600 feet wide, and 250 high.

One of the strangest and still not clearly understood miracles of the universe is the proportion of 0.618034 to 1. This ratio occurs everywhere on earth and in the sky. It is the mathematical basis for the shape of sun flowers and the pyramids of Egypt, of playing cards and fish in the sea. The Greeks knew of it and called it the “golden mean.”

A quarter of a raw potato placed in each shoe at night will keep the leather soft and the shoes smelling fresh and clean.

In 1510, a Spaniard, Montalvo, wrote a romantic novel called “Las Sergas de Esplandian,” in which he described an imaginary island near Paradise. He called this island, “California.” When the Spaniards explored the west, they gave the name to what became the Golden State.

The last married Pope was Adrian II, (867~872). There was no specific obligation to celibacy for the first thirty-seven popes.

Even though it is no longer made by monks, Benedictine bottles still prommently display the letters D.O.M. standing for “Deo Optimo Maximo” (”God most good, most great”). Benedictine is also sold mixed with brandy under the narne B&B.

You can draw a line about 35 miles long with an average pencil.

The Spanish Inquisition once condemned the entire country of the Netherlands to death for heresy.

Your thumb is the same length as your nose.

If two flies were left alone to reproduce without predators or other limitations for one year, the resulting mass of flies would be the size of the earth.

Wein is a Los Altos resident, author and all-around triva hound. “The vacuous pursuit of the insignificant clears the mind wonderfully,” Wein says.