📇 Who Is Frank?
The short version: Frank is a retired reference librarian from a town small enough that the library, the diner, and the barbershop share a parking lot. For thirty-four years he sat behind the reference desk answering every question the town could throw at him — how long a possum lives, how to spell "Connecticut" without looking, whether you can legally marry your cousin's tractor (you cannot, and Frank has the statute number written down somewhere). If you have ever wondered what happens to a reference librarian when he retires, the answer is: nothing. He simply loses the desk and keeps the habit.
The Trivia Night Incident of 2003
This whole operation began on a Tuesday evening in the spring of 2003, at the weekly trivia night down at the diner. Frank was doing fine — he usually did — until the quizmaster read out the following question: "True or false: a goldfish's memory lasts only three seconds." Frank answered false, because it is false, and has been demonstrated false by researchers who have trained goldfish to press levers, run mazes, and remember feeding times for weeks and months on end.
The quizmaster's answer card said "true." Frank protested. The quizmaster held up the card as though a laminated card were itself a form of evidence. Frank lost the point, lost the night by that exact point, and — by his own account — sat in his truck in the parking lot for a while, gripping the wheel and thinking hard about the state of the world's facts.
He went home, rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter, and wrote the first-ever edition of what would become this almanac. It went out to eleven people, most of them relatives, one of them the quizmaster (Frank says this was not petty; the historical record is less sure). It has gone out every week since.
The Verification Ritual
Every fact on this site and in the weekly email passes the same test before it gets filed, and the test has one rule: two independent sources, or it doesn't get filed. Independent is the important word. Two websites copying the same wrong paragraph from each other count as one source, and a weak one at that. Frank wants the original study, the primary document, the actual almanac page — and then he wants a second one that got there on its own.
The ritual goes like this: a candidate fact gets written in pencil on a scrap. If it finds its first solid source, it graduates to pen. If it finds its second, it gets typed onto an index card, stamped in the corner, and filed in the long oak drawers Frank bought at the library's surplus sale (he maintains he paid fair value; the head librarian maintains she still hasn't been paid at all — this dispute is ongoing and friendly). If a fact can't find its second source, it goes in a shoebox labeled PURGATORY, where it waits. Some facts have been in there since 2005. Frank checks on them. He is patient.
The Index Cards
As of this writing the drawers hold 1,327 verified facts — the same number you'll see ticking away on the Fact-O-Meter on the right there. Each card carries the fact, its two sources, the date it was verified, and a one-line remark in green ink, because Frank believes a fact without a remark is just filing. A few examples of remarks, pulled from the drawers at random: "Told Earl. Earl didn't believe it. Earl owes me a coffee." — "Reads like a lie. Isn't." — "Checked a third time anyway. Still true. Wonderful."
Why cards, in this day and age? Frank's position is that a computer can lose a thousand facts in a second, but he has never once dropped a drawer. Nobody has been able to argue him out of this, and at this point nobody tries.
Frank Today
These days Frank writes Frank's Five, the free email that goes out every Friday morning: one headliner fact with the story behind it, four quick beauties, one famous phony politely demolished, a stumper for your dinner table, and a bit of this-week-in-history. He still eats at the diner. He still plays trivia on Tuesdays. The quizmaster now checks the answer cards against Frank's website before the night starts, which Frank considers the single greatest achievement of his career, including the thirty-four years.
He'd be pleased to have you aboard. — Frank
Questions for the reference desk? Contact Frank — he answers faster than the possum question deserved. ★