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More “Useless Facts for Inquiring Minds.”

● The sea otter has the densest fur of any mammal, with up to a million hairs per square inch of skin. They have an undercoat of dense fur and an outer layer of longer “guard hairs.” Air trapped between the layers keeps the skin dry.

● The world’s largest lake is the Caspian Sea, located between Iran and Russia. The Caspian is landlocked, but once was connected to the open ocean. Tectonic uplifting closed it off a few million years ago.

The Caspian is neither a sea nor a freshwater lake. The water is fresh at the north end, thanks to inflow from the Volga River, but the south end is brackish.

● The first daytime radio soap opera in the U.S. was Painted Dreams, which ran on WGN in Chicago from 1930 until 1943. It was created by radio actress Irna Phillips, who went on to write The Guiding Light and As the World Turns. Her first TV soap was These Are My Children in 1949.

Phillips, the “Queen of the Soaps,” came up with the concepts of a musical transition between scenes (the “organ bridge”) and ending episodes with a cliffhanger.

● Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night, a work almost as famous as the artist, while he was a patient at an asylum, being treated for paranoia, hallucinations, depression, and epileptic fits.

Van Gogh created the painting during a relapse of depression. It uses darker colors than his previous work and represents a break from his usual realism. Further, it was done entirely from memory; no such view exists near the asylum.

● Elizabeth Barrett Browning the famous British poet of the Elizabethan era (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”) was plagued by dog-nappers. Her cocker spaniel Flush was stolen four times. Each time, Ms. Browning offered a reward of 10 pounds for the dog’s safe return, which probably explains why Flush kept disappearing.

● The narrow strips of wood, metal, or plastic that separate the glass panes of a window are called “muntins” or “muntin bars.” The name comes from the French word monter (to mount).

● Ebbets Field was the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1913 until 1957, when the Dodgers stiffed Brooklyn and moved to Los Angeles. The stadium was promptly torn down and replaced by an apartment complex.

● Undoubtedly, the hardiest, most resilient creature on earth is the tardigrade (aka water bear), a microscopic animal that lives in a wide range of wet environments — oceans, mountains, rain forests, the Arctic, and everywhere in between.

Tardigrades can survive temperatures as high as 300°F and as low as –458°F. They can withstand the vacuum of space; more than 1,200 times atmospheric pressure; and 1,000 times more radiation than any other animal. When subjected to dry conditions, they can hibernate for years and revive when moisture is restored.

● In many Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 40s, including The Wizard of Oz and Holiday Inn, a soft, fluffy substance called chrysolite was used to simulate snow. Chrysolite (aka white asbestos) later was discovered to be a major carcinogen, and it was banned.

Over the years, Hollywood has made snow out of salt, flour, and potato flakes. In the late 1940s, it was done by mixing the chemical foamite (used in fire extinguishers) with sugar and soap flakes. Today, most snow is simulated by a substance called SnowCell, which is made from recycled paper.

● The word scuba (as in scuba diving) is an acronym for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.

● When the original Disneyland opened in 1955 in Anaheim, California, it consisted of five “lands” — Main Street USA, Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland.

At the time, Tomorrowland was set in the far-distant future: 1986. When the park was updated in the late 1960s, the 1986 thing was quietly dropped.

● In pre-Columbian South America, the Incas built an extensive network of rope suspension bridges to cross canyons and rivers. They were made by weaving grass into lengths of rope, then weaving the rope into cables. Local peasants were tasked with annual repair and maintenance.

Eventually, the bridges were replaced by Spanish masonry bridges, and the Incas are long gone, but one famous rope bridge remains: the Keshwa Chaca bridge in Peru. Local villagers rebuild it every year using traditional Incan techniques.