Friday, November 6, 2026 | 4-minute read
Morning. Today we’re putting Bubble Wrap on the walls, giving a guy named Nacho his due, and finding out what Emma Stone owes the Spice Girls. You could spend Friday making small talk. Or you could make it weirdly informative.
The Big Story
Two Men Invent Poppable Wallpaper, Somehow Sell It to IBM
Imagine showing somebody a sheet of Bubble Wrap and saying, “Picture this in the dining room.” That was more or less the pitch in 1957, when Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes tried to make textured wallpaper in Hawthorne, New Jersey. They laminated two sheets of plastic with air trapped between them. The result had texture, certainly. It also gave houseguests a compelling reason to pick at the walls.
The wallpaper didn’t catch on. But if you squeeze one of those bubbles instead of popping it, you can feel what the inventors had made by accident: a little air cushion. Put a sheet of those cushions around something breakable and the bubbles can absorb some of the shock when the package gets knocked around. Air was now doing the work. It didn’t even ask for a job title.
The two founded Sealed Air in 1960. One early use for the material was protecting IBM’s 1401 computers in transit. That’s the part to keep for trivia night. They went looking for a wall covering and wound up helping ship computers. Most of us can’t even get the thing we ordered into the right recycling bin.
So the next time somebody pops all the bubbles before you get a turn, tell them they’ve just vandalized a piece of midcentury interior design. Is that a little dramatic? Sure. They knew what they did.
The Tie-Breaker Cheat Sheet
Original idea: Textured wallpaper, 1957
Inventors: Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes
Company: Sealed Air, founded in 1960
Early cargo: IBM 1401 computers
This Day in History
Lincoln Wins the Presidency With a Percentage You Wouldn’t Brag About on a Test
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln won the presidency with just under 40% of the popular vote. Before you fire off a correction, yes, he also won a majority. It was just a majority of a different number: 180 of the 303 electoral votes.
There were four major candidates, and the Democratic Party split between Stephen Douglas and John C. Breckinridge. Here’s the useful bar-trivia wrinkle: Douglas came in second in the popular vote but last in the Electoral College, with just 12 votes. Same election, very different leaderboard.
Birthday Bragging Rights
Emma Stone Turns 38, Has the Spice Girls to Thank for at Least One Thing
Emily Jean Stone was born on November 6, 1988. She’s said she wanted to go by Emma as a kid because she loved Baby Spice, whose real name is Emma Bunton. So yes, when someone asks how the Spice Girls shaped cinema, you do actually have somewhere to go with that.
Birthday question: Which movie earned Stone her second Best Actress Oscar?
A) Easy A
B) La La Land
C) Poor Things
Today’s Observance
National Nachos Day Would Like You to Know There Was an Actual Nacho
November 6 is the unofficial National Nachos Day. The snack itself is commonly traced to 1943 in Piedras Negras, Mexico. The story goes that Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya, the maître d’ at the Victory Club, improvised something for a group of guests: fried tortilla pieces, cheese, and sliced jalapeños. That’s it. He did not need a squeeze bottle or a toppings menu with its own table of contents.
Observance question: Which Texas MLB team’s home ballpark began selling a concession-stand version in 1976?
A) Texas Rangers
B) Houston Astros
C) Neither. It debuted at a rodeo.
Smug, Smugger and Smuggest
Today’s theme: The microwave is still an hour ahead.
SMUG: It’s daylight saving time, singular. There’s no extra “s.” You can share this at brunch, ideally with someone who already knows what you’re like.
SMUGGER: When most U.S. clocks changed on Sunday, they went from 2 a.m. back to 1 a.m. So it’s the 1 o’clock hour that happened twice. If you wasted it both times, honestly, impressive.
SMUGGEST: Most of Arizona skips the clock changes, but the Navajo Nation observes them. “Arizona doesn’t change its clocks” is a perfectly good sentence until someone at trivia says “everywhere.”
Daily Smug Test
Three questions. Yes, you can eat nachos while you answer. No, licking the cheese off your fingers does not stop the clock.
Slow Turn: Which planet takes longer to rotate once on its axis than to orbit the Sun?
A) Mercury · B) Venus · C) MarsGood Knight: Which chess piece moves in an L shape?
A) Bishop · B) Rook · C) KnightHeavy Metal: Which element has the chemical symbol Hg?
A) Mercury · B) Magnesium · C) Manganese
The Answer Desk
Birthday Bragging Rights: C) Poor Things. Stone won in 2024. Her first win was for La La Land in 2017.
Today’s Observance: A) Texas Rangers. Frank Liberto’s concession-stand version reached Arlington Stadium in 1976.
Slow Turn: B) Venus. One spin takes about 243 Earth days. One orbit takes about 225.
Good Knight: C) Knight. Two squares in one direction, one at a right angle. It can jump intervening pieces, which is a delightful privilege for a horse made of wood.
Heavy Metal: A) Mercury. Hg comes from hydrargyrum, a name meaning “liquid silver.” Actual silver, which would like to be left out of this, is Ag.
Your standing
3/3 (Smuggest): Go ahead, take the nacho with all the cheese. You’ve earned the resentment.
2/3 (Smug): Solid. You can tell one of these stories at dinner without looking anything up.
0 or 1/3 (Humbled): At least now you know who Nacho was. Not every Friday can give you that.
Put Your Smugness to Work
Fancy another round? Play daily puzzles and trivia at City Games, right in your browser. No downloads required. And please, leave a few bubbles for the next person.
Know more. Gloat responsibly.