Dr. Maura Isles (Sasha Alexander)

Dr. Maura Isles, of RIZZOLI & ISLES, must be the best Trivial Pursuit player in the world.

Over 17 episodes, the woman referred to by Jane Rizzoli as “The Talking Google” has informed us of many obscure facts. This might be expected of someone who named her pet tortoise Bass after the forensic anthropologist William M. Bass (the man who founded the original Body Farm in Tennessee).

Things I would not know, were it not for Dr. Isles:

• Without sleep, hallucinations begin by day 4 followed by slurred speech, short attention span and death.
• The native american tribe that most recently inhabited the Boston area was the Wampanoag, also known as the Massachusett.
• It takes 20 to 30 seconds to render someone unconscious by strangulation.
• Atlanto-occipital disarticulation is the fastest way to committ suicide.
• Paul Revere didn’t actually do the midnight ride. William Dawes did.


Monkshood

• The universe was at its highest level of entropy just after the big bang.
• Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have proven that optimistic people live longer.
• For gang members, a change of nickname indicates a change of status.
• Monkshood is a purple flowering plant that lives in Boston. It contains an almost undetectable poison.
• The word kundalini means ‘sacred work’.
• A league is a unit of distance, not of depth.
• Good cashmir is 14 microns thick.
• Teepees were generally constructed from buffalo hides.
• Sex releases immunoglobulin A which wards off colds.
• A 28,000 year old phallus was recently discovered in a German cave.
• Early humans ran very comfortably without shoes. Research has proven that the bare foot strike pattern is
  much less stressful.


Rizzoli & Isles

• Dennis Rainear ran the last 16 miles of the 1978 Grand Valley Marathon (Palisade, CO) with a bullet lodged in his head.
• Karma is a sanskrit word for ‘the cycle of cosmic effect’ which originated in the Shri Mana tradition.
• 32% of divorces are the result of inequality in domestic chores.
• There are 250 nerve receptors per centimeter in fingertips.
• Ulcers are caused by the bacterium H. pylori.
• Thousands of women served as laundresses, nurses, and seamstresses in the Revolutionary War.
• Colonial militia didn’t use bayonets until 1778.
• Avian flu can only be contracted by ingesting infected feces.
• Human gas is a mixture of hydrogen, carbon dioxide and methane. Most people produce about a half litre per day.
• The Washington pygmy rabbit is being bred in captivity.
• Women that have the most symmetrical facial features are the most attractive to men.
• Those who practice the dark arts give blood for use in spells.


Washington Pygmy Rabbit

• The genetics of mental illness are far more complex than those of the rare single-gene diseases.
• Coven is the middle english word for convent and is an assembly of 13 witches.
• In tha Hua society of New Guinea, feeding and sexual intercourse are believed to transfer vital essence.
• Roman centurions attached their capes to their nipple piercings.