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More “Useless Facts for Inquiring Minds.”

● Rhode Island, the smallest of the states, has the longest official name: “The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”

● King Francis I of France (reigned 1515-1547), aka “Francis of the Large Nose,” was a major patron of the arts. He attracted many Italian artists to France, including Leonardo da Vinci. Francis acquired the Mona Lisa from Leonardo and hung it in his bathroom.

● British filmmaker Duncan Jones (full name Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones), noted for making the sci-fi movie Moon and the fantasy film Warcraft, is the son of the late David Bowie (real name David Robert Jones).

● Adermatoglyphia is a condition in which a person is born without fingerprints; the pads are flat, lacking the usual ridges and whorls. The rare condition is caused by a gene mutation and has occurred in only four known families around the world.

● Niagara Falls was formed about 10,000 years ago, and in that time, it has eroded seven miles back upstream. At that rate, the falls will disappear into Lake Erie in 22,000 years.

● In 2008, the mayor of the Kurdish city of Batman, Turkey, threatened to sue Warner Bros. because it used the city’s name without permission in the film The Dark Knight. The mayor wanted a percentage of the film’s profits, almost $1 billion worldwide. The mayor never filed the suit.

● The Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 celebrated the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World. Among the new products introduced at the fair: Juicy Fruit chewing gum, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, Vienna Sausage, Cream of Wheat, Quaker Oats, Shredded Wheat, and Aunt Jemima pancake mix.

● The Nakisumo festival in Japan is a 400-year-old ceremony in which sumo wrestlers compete to make babies cry. Scaring babies is considered a positive thing, based on the Japanese proverb “crying babies grow fastest.”

● If a person at the seashore looks out to sea, and eye level is six feet above the sand, the horizon will be three miles away.

● New York City’s “sidewalk sheds” are temporary structures that protect pedestrians from falling debris and construction accidents. They date back to 1979, when a college coed was killed by falling masonry. On any given day, about 190 miles of sidewalk sheds are in place around NYC.

● The stock symbol of Steinway Musical Instruments, Inc. is LVB, in honor of Ludwig van Beethoven.

● The Venus Flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, is a carnivorous plant with a specialized two-part leaf structure that snaps shut when triggered by a passing insect or spider. The trap includes gaps around the edges so prey too small to be worth digesting can escape. The plant is found only in the coastal wetlands of North Carolina and South Carolina.