Every morning around 8:15am Brooks gives you one minute of Useless Facts to impress your friends with…

• In four of the five movies nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2011 Oscars, a character lost an arm: “127 Hours”, “Toy Story 3”, “True Grit”, and “Winter’s Bone”. The fifth movie was “The Social Network”, where no one lost an arm . . . and it won the Oscar. Maybe there’s a lesson there?
• When the A&E Network launched in 1984, it came on after Nickelodeon signed off for the night . . . on the same channel.
• Amtrak started in 1971 . . . and has lost money all 50 years it’s been in existence. It survives mainly on a $1 billion government subsidy.
• The Pledge of Allegiance was adopted by Congress in 1942 but didn’t say “under God” until it was amended by Congress in 1954.
• The word “apron” was originally “napron.” But when people would say, “a napron,” most people would hear, “an apron” . . . so eventually it just became “apron.”