Big Dave’s 5 Nuggets Of Knowledge For Your Noggin’ – Groundhog Day Edition – (2/2/22)

Here are Big Dave’s 5 Random Facts – a Special Groundhog Day Edition – for your Wednesday – February 2nd, 2022. Let’s learn something together:

1. I know this is going to come as a shock, but Punxsutawney Phil’s weather predictions aren’t 100% accurate. Weather is different everywhere, but even in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, Phil has only been correct 39% of the time.
2. The Pennsylvania Lottery’s mascot is a groundhog named Gus, referred to in commercials as “the second-most famous groundhog in Pennsylvania”, behind Phil.
3. Prior to 1993, the Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney attracted crowds of approximately 2,000. The movie “Groundhog Day” made it much more popular, and annual crowds are now between 10,000 and 20,000. (It’s also live-streamed.)
4. In the movie, no one knows how long Bill Murray’s character Phil was stuck in the same day.  Director Harold Ramis said it was probably “30 to 40 years” – but in the original script, he was looping for 10,000 years.
5. The first Groundhog Day celebration in 1887 involved EATING the groundhog. Apparently they taste like a cross between pork and chicken.

Be sure to use one of these little tidbits in your life this week!

(StormFax / PA Lottery / Washington Post / Mental Floss / Time)