This is the thread for unusual details in wikipedia articles.

Wow, looking up Sousa I learned a couple of good 'uns:

Sousa ranked as one of the all-time great trapshooters and was enshrined in the Trapshooting Hall of Fame. He organized the first national trapshooting organization, a forerunner to today's Amateur Trapshooting Association (ATA). He also wrote numerous articles about trapshooting. He was a regular competitor representing the Navy in trapshooting competitions, particularly against the Army. Records indicate that he registered more than 35,000 targets during his shooting career. "Let me say that just about the sweetest music to me is when I call, 'pull,' the old gun barks, and the referee in perfect key announces, 'dead'."

In his 1902 novella The Fifth String, a virtuoso violinist makes a deal with the Devil for a magic violin with five strings. The first four strings excite the emotions of Pity, Hope, Love, and Joy, but the fifth string, made from the hair of Eve, will cause the player's death once played. The violinist wins the love of the woman he desires, but out of jealous suspicion, she commands him to play the death string, which he does. He published Pipetown Sandy in 1905, which includes a satirical poem titled "The Feast of the Monkeys". He wrote a 40,000-word story entitled "The Transit of Venus" in 1920. He also wrote the booklet "A manual for trumpet and drum", published by the Ludwig drum company with advice for playing drums and trumpet. An early version of the trumpet solo to "Semper Fidelis" was included in this volume.

Sousa held a very low opinion of the emerging recording industry and he derided recordings as "canned music", a reference to the early wax cylinder records that came in can-like cylindrical cardboard boxes. He argued to a congressional hearing in 1906:

"These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy… in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape".

The Amityville Terror August 2, 2016 Michael Angelo
Amityville: No Escape August 5, 2016 Henrique Couto
Amityville: Evil Never Dies June 2017 Dustin Ferguson Sequel to The Amityville Legacy , Re-released as Amityville Clownhouse in 2020
Amityville Exorcism January 3, 2017 Mark Polonia Billy D'Amato
Against the Night September 15, 2017 Limited theatrical release Brian Cavallaro aka Amityville Prison
Amityville: The Awakening October 28, 2017 Franck Khalfoun
Amityville: Mt. Misery Road May 31, 2018 Chuck Morrongiello and Karolina Morrongiello Chuck Morrongiello
The Amityville Murders October 9, 2018 Daniel Farrands
The Amityville Dawn September 25, 2019 Direct-to-video Brandon Slagle Elliot Diviney and Brandon Slagle aka The Dawn
Amityville Island March 17, 2020 Mark Polonia John Oak Dalton
Amityville Vibrator June 6th, 2020 Nathan Rumler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Central_High

Alternative version

The Italian version of this film, called Sexy Jeans, was edited with pornographic inserts.[9]

Dunking

In Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time, one of the narrator's childhood memories sets in while tasting a madeleine dunked in tea. The soft, spongy consistency of the madeleine could seem like an odd choice as dunking is more common with crisp baked products, such as biscuits. In fact, draft versions of Proust's manuscript reveal that the author initially had the narrator dunk a piece of toasted bread

The band released debut album Vibrate You in May 2001 and follow-up Who Do You Love? in March 2004. The band was notable for their short, riotous live shows and built a small, dedicated fanbase, which, at present day, consists of one person, name unknown.

Hahaha

vg+

From the entry for Russell Webb (bass player for the Skids / Public Image Ltd)

Webb retired from performing to design board games. Following a discussion with Richard Branson at the latter's knighthood party, Branson agreed to take Webb's first board game (4 years in the making) entitled Lost to Necker Island for play testing with his family and children. The play testing was a success, but no game was released. Instead it became the initial inspiration for JJ Abrams' hit TV show Lost, for which Webb was never credited

lol that's great

Am assuming that Webb wrote that himself and still feels sore about it.

The United States government has determined that taquitos must contain at least 15% meat.

the taquito that defined a malnutrition

^ comment surpasses the RDA of lol

There's not so much an unexpected detail, but more of an unexpected hyperlink on the Wikipedia entry for Foxbase Alpha:

"The album was re-released in May 2009 as part of the Universal Music Deluxe Edition re-issue program. The album has been remastered, and is accompanied by a second disc featuring B-sides, mixes and five previously unreleased tracks. The CD booklet features new sleeve notes by Jon Savage and Tom Ewing, images and memorabilia."

edit history shows the reference was added by an ilx0r, but not the link

"On 20 October 2018, by adapting a construction by Aaron Williams for constructing Hamiltonian paths through the Cayley graph of the symmetric group, Greg Egan devised an algorithm to produce superpermutations of length n! + (n−1)! + (n−2)! + (n−3)! + n − 3."

Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you.

Lol josh

The Add N to (X) article sounds like it was written by a(n analogue) computer

Andrew then asked his friend Barry Smith (a former Radio Prague DJ)[3] if he too would be interested in joining.[citation needed] They then spent some time gigging under this name before a fall out which led to Anderson's departure from the band. There being only three remaining Andrew then renamed the group Add N to X, based upon a mathematical formula.[4] They kept the name but placed brackets around the X due to legal reasons.

Fellow Greek singer Nana Mouskouri paid tribute to Roussos on the French radio station RTL, saying "He had a superb voice, he travelled in the world ... he loved what he was doing... He was an artist, a friend. I hope he is in a better world."[1]

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said: “This artist left a bright mark in the world music art and made history as one of the greatest singers, whose extremely emotional manner of singing caught the hearts of listeners all over the world ..."[44]

nana mouskori’s wikipedia page is full of unusual details btw

I watched 976-EVIL tonight and wondered what had become of its OTT star (Stephen 'EvilEd' Geoffreys of Fright Night infamy) and, well

During the 1990s, Geoffreys appeared for several years in gay pornographic movies, using the alias Sam Ritter.[4][5][6]

I guess he changed his name so no one would know about his horror movie infamy.

Film critic Marco Giusti writes that Kinski "is mad, hysterical, but dominates the film", remembers the nice intrigue around Kinski's character, and praises the lesbian scenes.

Nice one, Nicko.

The song was performed by the Cockerel Chorus (the cockerel is the emblem of Tottenham Hotspur) fronted by Spiro, with Jamie Phillips singing the opening operatic part.[8] It is also the first professional recording of future Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain.

between 896 and 904 there was a new pope every year

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod which is an absolute trove of wtf Rome

Sparta was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon, while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement on the banks of the Eurotas River in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. Wikipedia

Dialing code: +30

(Not Wikipedia but the standard Google precis you get when googling Sparta)

John C. McGinley made his character's voice as deep as possible in an effort to sound like Orson Welles. He has since admitted that this was a bad idea

"In June 2011, ARK Music Factory started charging $2.99 (equivalent to $3.4 in 2019) to watch the music video on YouTube" - I'm not sure you need to show the inflation adjusted number when it's only 8 years old.

It'll be even more fascinating in three years when people click through to see it now costs $7.43

In his 2010 book Music: What Happened?, critic and musician Scott Miller declared that the song possesses "one of the best hooks of the eighties" and listed it among his top song picks for 1984. Nonetheless, he cautioned: "It must be admitted that this song suffers from an embarrassingly out-of-place disco funk interlude, and the word Kriegsminister."[21]

Scott Miller is totally wrong about the disco funk interlude in "99 Luftballons"

In the US, the English-language version did not chart, while the German-language recording became Nena's only US hit.

I did not know that. If only the English version had been a hit in the US (was #1 in the UK) he wouldn't have been able to complain about 'Kriegsminister' either.

Rappin' is a 1985 film directed by Joel Silberg, written by Adam Friedman and Robert J. Litz, produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and starring Mario Van Peebles. The film is a sequel to Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, and is also known as Breakdance 3: Electric Boogalee. Although it features Ice-T (who featured in Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo), Rappin' has a plot unconnected to the previous two films and features different lead characters and locations. The film has developed a small cult following, despite Van Peebles' lack of rapping ability and the film's overall poor production values.

citation not needed imo

If it's a sequel to part 2, then why is it not part 3?

FWIW the first Breakin' movie is important to me because when it came out, my family ran a dance school and needed to be hip to all the trends.

Also we watched every dance movie. There is a whole camon of these,, with persistent conventions. like the "training montage." Sports and martial arts movies all hd training montages, but I submit that those are derivative of dance movie training montages.

By law, every dance movie has a big audition scene that starts off with skeptical and stuffy judges who are gradually won over by the sheer street RAWNESS of the edgy maverick protagonist dancer(s), who subvert the judges' classicism preconceptions of what dance can be.

Fame has this scene, so does Breakin'. The cliche reaches its zenith with Save the Last Dance for Me, effectively satirized in the Onion here:

https://entertainment.theonion.com/dancer-risks-everything-1819569738/amp

Like, this is literally the plot of at least ten movies:

school administrators are still baffled as to where such a talented ballet dancer could have learned a second form of dancing, some speculate Lisbon may have ventured out into the rough but vibrant neighborhoods surrounding the private academy.

"I can only assume that Cassie must have visited one of the local nightclub establishments where teens hang out and perform spontaneous, elaborately choreographed one-on-one dance competitions to the music of a young gentleman named Soulja Boy, among others," head instructor James Tillingford said. "Of course, there's no way Cassie could have infiltrated this subculture, unless she entered a biracial relationship with a young man who wanted a better life for himself than stealing cars and playing ball, someone who could teach her how to let go of her formal training—along with the pain of her mother's untimely death—and just let it flow so she could, in turn, convince his hardened, cynical friends that she was 'not bad for a white girl.'"

The only student in the history of the form to realize that ballet is incapable of expressing a whole range of different but equally true emotions, Lisbon said the road to popping and locking onstage wasn't an easy one. At times, Lisbon admitted, she felt like giving up and just performing the highly technical routine of graceful leaps and spins she had been training for over the last decade.

If it's a sequel to part 2, then why is it not part 3?

"Rappin' has a plot unconnected to the previous two films and features different lead characters and locations" is a pretty good reason. Also, it appears to be more about rappin', and less about breakin'.

Makes more sense than:

First Blood
Rambo
Rambo 3
Rambo
Rambo: Last Blood

Um, can we discuss the term "boogalee," because that is definitely the weirdest thing about that film's title, y'all.

That was the main detail I believe warrants no citation, inasmuch as someone has put it into the wikipedia to be funny.

The DVDs being sold of it use the term, too.

dammit I said no citations!

looks like that is only on one budget-price UK licensor's DVD release, and almost nothing in their catalogue uses key art or official logos, so imo it's safe to shift to "someone at the office, or the bloke who photoshops their sleeves for beer money, thought it was funny"

It's often deemed a racist slur!

ohhh yikes

Cy Curnin is dancing in a classy navy blue double-breasted suit and open-necked white shirt. He is then in a bright tube, wearing a gray sleeveless shirt with his arms and shoulders exposed. Then, in a blue tunnel, he is running with a dog.

In May 2007, Sandy Smith had launched an essay writing competition, asking entrants to attempt to prove that Junior could be considered the greatest film of all time. He obsessively started collecting copies of the film in November 2005, and eventually collected 24 copies. In February 2008, despite Sunday Herald covering the story,[11] the competition received fewer entries than there were prizes offered.

Was the prize a copy of Junior?

the criterion collection version

Originally named "Theo's Zoo bar" after the head bouncer and before the reputation of an underage venue the Zoo bar was one of the first "indie" clubs in halifax. It was classed as an alternative club where people classed the customers as slightly weird. The Djs played classics like "light my fire" the Doors_ "sympathy for the devil" the stones. Etc. later filling the dancefloor to tunes by the latest indie gods such as Suede, pulp etc. Characters always filled the club. There was "roller guy" who wore roller boots and took photos all night, "daddy Acid" who used to walk around with a bowl of fruit (apparently laced with Acid tabs). It was a real hive and buzzing place of individual clubbers.

Yorkshire or Nova Scotia?

I’m now imagining this Cat Marnell character there, spraypainting away

#onethread