I have a new installment of my “6° of Ken Jennings” column in the new issue of mental_floss, heading to newsstands and subscriber mailboxes now. Hey, I just realized that I have the same initials as “Knowledge Junkies,” the mental_floss target demographic as per their official ad slogan. I guess according to that initials puzzle where “Franklin Pierce” is “Fourteenth President” and “E. E. Cummings” is “Eccentrically Eschewed Capitalization,” then I would be “Knowledge Junkie.” (Or “Killed Jeopardy!” or something like that.)

Anyway, here’s a sneak preview of my column, via the original (slightly longer) draft. Director’s cut!

Martin Luther and Lex Luthor

Why is it that Protestant clergy can marry, while Catholic priests can’t? The practice dates all the way back to Martin Luther, founder of the Protestant Reformation. In 1523, Luther helped twelve unhappy nuns escape from their convent by smuggling them out in herring barrels. The smell of pickled fish was heavy in the air that night, but so was romance: one of the defrocked cuties, Katharina von Bora, caught Luther’s eye. He was reluctant to marry, telling friends he feared death daily: just two years earlier, he’d been branded a heretic by the imperial assembly called the Diet of Worms. But two years later Luther finally wed his “lord Katie,” as he called her, setting a pattern for married pastors that continues to this day.

The diet of worms–earthworms, that is–is made up of whatever chunks of fallen organic material they can scavenge, mostly animal manure and fallen leaves. Luckily for us, when worms digest their dinners, they convert them into humus, the rich black material that makes soil fertile. Recognizing their contribution to the fertility of the Nile River Valley, Cleopatra declared earthworms to be sacred animals in 50 B.C., making it a capital crime to remove a single one from Egypt.

In 45 BC, the Roman calendar was all screwed up, with calendar months lagging three months behind the actual seasons. Luckily, Julius Caesar was shagging Cleopatra at the time, and Egypt had the whole calendar thing figured out. Cleo introduced Caesar to her court astronomer, Sosigenes, who suggested a 12-month year of 365 days with a “leap day” added every four Februarys, a solution which has stuck with us for over two thousand years. For this and other contributions to Rome, the month of Quintilus was renamed in Julius Caesar’s honor, and we still call it “July” today.

An ancient tradition associates the quadrennial leap day, February 29, with “the Ladies’ Privilege.” Supposedly, this was the only time when women were allowed to turn the tables and propose marriage to men–and if the lucky fella said no, he owed his admirer a kiss and either a silk dress or a pair of gloves. The custom supposedly dates back to Ireland’s St. Bridget, who complained incessantly to St. Patrick about the rough lot of single ladies. (Even in 5th-century Ireland, men apparently had issues with commitment.) When Patrick finally agreed to the leap day solution, Bridget immediately proposed to him! St. Pat turned her down, but at least she got a nice gown out of it.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proposed marriage to two women during his life, with spectacularly bad results. The first victim was Mathilde Trampedach, a young piano student he had met only briefly, and the second was Russian-born writer Lou Salome. In each case, he had the woman’s boyfriend deliver the proposal for him! Both, shockingly, said no. Considering that poor Friedrich was such a washout with the ladies, it’s ironic that today he’s most famous for his concept of the Ubermensch: the powerful, confident “superman” of the future.

Superman’s arch-enemy is the criminal genius Lex Luthor, who first appeared in Action Comics #23 way back in 1940. In his early appearances, Luthor had a full head of lustrous red hair. His trademark bald look debuted in the daily Superman newspaper comic, and was a simple goof by artist Leo Novak, who evidently thought one of Luthor’s bald henchmen was the man himself. Later stories resolved the hair contradiction by revealing that Luthor had lost all his hair in a lab accident, for which he blamed Superman. Jeez, is that all it takes to turn someone into a super-villain? Did he even consider the Hair Club for Men?