This information is not classified, but it should be. The following ten totally terrific trivia truths are astounding enough to explode the cerebra of the feeble-minded. Proceed with caution.

10. The last three presidential assassins were all heavily involved in communist movements. Charles Guiteau, James Garfield's mentally disturbed assassin, lived for about six years in John Humphrey Noyes's Bible Communism cult in upstate New York. Leon Czolgosz, William McKinley's assassin, was an anarchist follower of Emma Goldman and a frequenter of socialist meetings. Lee Harvey Oswald, John Kennedy's assassin, lived in the Soviet Union for about three years and volunteered for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee upon his return to the United States.

9. The Canadian Football League's all-time leading passer is Damon Allen, brother of NFL Hall of Fame running back Marcus Allen. The CFL's all-time receptions leader is Darren Flutie, brother of Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Doug Flutie.

8. The Honeymooners lasted one season as a television series. The Sex Pistols released a single album of original material. Leon Spinks won the heavyweight title in his eighth fight, thirteen months after turning professional.

7. Peter Wolf, one of the coolest dudes around, co-wrote and co-produced Starship's We Built This City, which Blender magazine famously dubbed the worst song ever.

6. From Azerbaijan to Pakistan, there are nine contiguous countries that end in "an." Coincidence, or just evidence of regional unoriginality?

5. Ryan Adams released three albums in 2005. One of them, Cold Roses, is a double album. By way of comparison with other "active" music outfits, Pink Floyd hasn't released an album since 1994 and Guns n Roses's last original release was in 1991.

4. The Moon rocks! Only it's not a real moon. Contrary to popular belief, the "moon" doesn't revolve, at least primarily, around the Earth--despite what geocentric Earthlings believe. It revolves around the Sun alongside the Earth. The Sun exerts a greater gravitational pull on the Moon than the Earth does. The Moon is about one-fourth the diameter of Earth, but one-eightieth of its mass. The relative proximity in mass makes it so the Moon does not exactly revolve around the Earth, but both bodies (in addition to revolving about the Sun) revolve around a point, the barycenter, closer to the Earth's surface than to its core. Sadly, every year the Moon moves an inch and a half away from Earth. Someday, it will be gone. But while it's here, enjoy the eclipse on March 14.

3. Napoleon Dynamite cost just $400,000 to produce, with the lead actor earning $1,000 to play the title character.

2. The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset" never charted. Neither did David Bowie's "Heroes," nor Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," nor The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now." But Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting," Ace of Base's "The Sign," and The Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight" all hit #1.

1. Fifty-five million years ago, alligators lived on Ellesmere Island. Ellesmere Island is completely within the Arctic Circle.

In my book, Leon Spinks is a true champ. See "Leon Spinks is Down, Not Out" in the San Francisco Chronicle's Christmas Day 2005 issue.

While it's true that the Honeymooners 1/2 hour program only ran for one year (so-called "classic 39"), the Jackie Gleason Show aired for nearly 7 years. During this time, the Honeymooners was one of the most popular bits on the show. If you look at the "lost episodes", that come from the original Gleason Show, many of them are nearly 45-50 minutes long, and would have taken up the entire 1 hour program. So to say that it only lasted one season as a "television series" is technically accurate, the show had a much broader life than you're giving it credit for.

The song Mr Garfield by Johnny Cash is an excellent song, with Charlie Giteau appearing heavily in the chorus. As far as songs with communist presidential assasins appearing in the chorus, this is my favorite.

Homer: More interesting trivia... but isn't your nitpicking similar to claiming that your show began in 1987 (instead of 1990) because it appeared (and was a very popular bit) on the Tracy Ullman show? Or that Good Times started in 1972 because Mrs. Evans was the maid in Maude?

Many of the bits you are referring to, Homer, were six or twelve minutes long, some of them had Art Carney playing a cop, the early ones were on Du Mont and not CBS, and almost all of them had different actresses playing the female leads. Most importantly, these skits--with some of them, as you rightly point out, longer than actual Honeymooners' episodes--weren't aired as a program called "The Honeymooners." They were part of CBS's "Jackie Gleason Show" or Du Mont's "Cavalcade of Stars" or even filmed as part of Gleason's live act, but not run as a series called "The Honeymooners." I said as I posted last night that some Honeymooners fan would post what you did.

thanks for letting us know about the lunar eclipse - starting at 10:21 local time (here).

Most excellent.

Ali G.

Yeah, thanks for that. Turns out that, being in Bahrain that night, I'll be in a really good location to view it.

So to respond to my critics, I didn't really think I was nitpicking, I just thought that comparing the show to a band that only produced one album was a bit of short changing. The volume of work that was produced by each party is not comparable, and it doesn't seem fair to compare it.

And, the Honeymooners' characters were fully developed by the time they had the 30 minute sitcom, rather than shows like the Simpsons (on Tracy Ullman) or Beavis and Butthead (Liquid Television) who developed into much more complete characters once they had their own series. So that, too, is an unfair comparison, IMO.