The first time I tried to read The Lord of the Rings was 25 years ago. The text was so dry and unpleasant I barely made it through the first chapter.

Insomnia compelled me to try again and there's some Duesies in here that no one seems to talk about much.

Sam Gamgee's father is canonically named Ham Gamgee.

Frodo and Bilbo are cousins who share the same birthday but are somehow 78 years apart. That birthday is September 22, which means that Middle Earth uses a Julian calendar.

So at some point in the past Middle Earth had some kind of a Roman civilization and a Julius Caesar figure, who was *also named* Julius.

I'm only on page 2.

Remember these? There was a brief period of time when analog wiring still hadn't given way to LED and LCD displays. These little light bulbs that could display Arabic numerals were called Nixie tubes.

They were invented by, you guessed it...

... a guy named Hagelbarger.

The guy who invented the toaster had a unique problem.

"Check out this thing I made. I take a slice of bread, I put it in, and it cooks it."

"Um, OK? What is that good for?"

"Well, the bread gets hard and dark."

"Sounds dreadful."

"It is! But you can kind of fix it if you smear the bread with butter or jam after you take it out."

"And it tastes good?"

"Well, it tastes like butter or jam. It doesn't really have much of a bread flavor anymore. If you cook the slice of bread too long it just tastes like charcoal."

"And what do you call this thing you've made?"

"I DON'T KNOW."