Here are some things I just learned:

Next to popcorn, Twizzlers are the favorite movies snack.

Mario Puzo got a paltry $5,000 advance to write “The Godfather.”

Marilyn Chambers, the porn star, once appeared on Ivory Soap boxes as a clean-scrubbed mom holding a baby.

Betty Crocker was not a real person.

It takes 10 pounds of milk to make a pound of cheese.

I saw those items in “The Essential Book of Useless Information.” Its subtitle is, “The Most Unimportant Things You’ll Never Need to Know.”

It got me thinking about the useless information I have myself.

Today, I thought I’d pass some of it on.

• A soda can left in the freezer by a teenager overnight will explode, and then refreeze.

• At Samsung headquarters outside Seoul, security guards salute executives as they drive through the entry gate.

• Hyperinflation is so bad in Zimbabwe, the government recently began printing One-Hundred-Trillion-Dollar bills — which you use to buy groceries.

• Ilie Nastase, the tennis star, once leapt over the net and kicked a mark left on a clay court by a ball so the umpire couldn’t verify that his shot was out.

• During the Lebanon war in the mid-1980s, there was parrot in the lobby of a Beirut hotel that could mimic the sound of an incoming shell.

• And when staying in hotels there, the staffs encouraged you to choose a lower floor, since they were less exposed to errant shells.

• A towel rolled into a rat-tail stings a lot more if you dip the end in water before you snap it.

• Bookkeeper and sweettooth are the only words with three double letters in a row. Well, if you want to get technical, bookkeeping, too.

• A failed formula for glue — it didn’t hold — led to the invention of Post-It notes.

• When Romania was still a Stalinist dictatorship, the Dutch ambassador was known for his contacts with government dissidents, but before telling you anything, he’d crank up classical music in his home to overwhelm bugs.

• Woody Allen’s real name is Allen Stewart Konigsberg.

• Instead of saying an athlete is stuck on the bench, you say he’s “riding the pine.”

• And if a batter gets beaned, the pitcher “rung his bell.”

• In St. Catherine’s Church of Little Compton, there is a stained-glass window featuring Joseph the Carpenter — but his face is that of Edward Sousa, a local carpenter who spent years donating after-hours time to renovate the building.

• When you tell a child to “mind his P’s and Q’s,” you’re really borrowing from Irish bartenders telling rowdy drunks to mind their pints and quarts.

• Once, in Providence traffic court, a Southeast Asian there for a minor violation suddenly fell to his knees before the judge with his head bent until the bailiffs helped him up, explaining that we don’t do that in America.

• Not so long ago, the way to signal to your college roommate to find other accommodations was to put a tie on the doorknob. I don’t know how they signal today. Texting, I suppose.

• There is a downsized batting cage just behind the Red Sox dugout where batters can get in a few quick swings if needed.

• And next to it, there is an equipment room with everyone’s gear stuck in old plastic barrels; the room looks like it could be in the gym of a high school with budget problems.

• The phrase “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” came from a warning used in the Middle Ages because bathwater used in small tubs was reused so often it became opaque before finally being dumped out the window.

• A few decades ago, a journalist was approached at a neighborhood border in Belfast by a gang asking if he was Catholic or Protestant. He falsely said he was Jewish, and was let go — the only known case of someone in 20th-century Europe claiming to be Jewish to avoid religious persecution.

• The Providence Grays, then a major league team, were world champions in 1884.

• The Grays later re-formed as a minor league team, and at one point had a young pitcher on the roster named Babe Ruth.

• eBay, now with a market capitalization of over $30 billion, began with a guy trading Pez dispensers online.

• A lot of that pure, spring bottled water we buy comes from regular city taps; the difference is the filtration system.

• Amy Carter — the one with braces in the White House — is 42.

And finally, one of my favorites, because it’s so manipulatively un-Ivy-like:

• The visitors’ bench in Brown University’s Meehan Auditorium ice rink was built at a lower height than the home bench.

mpatinkin@projo.com