I’ve been using the calculator trick on Google for a long time. You use the calculator trick on Google when you’ve got some simple math you need doing. Just type the problem into the Google search bar along with an equal sign and you’ll get the answer, like so:

So I knew Google was giving some answers in the search bar, but I had never seen anything in the search bar besides math. Until this morning.

I found an announcement about a new campaign finance site, and to test it I wanted to make sure I knew how to spell Pat McCrory’s name. (As I try to make ResearchBuzz as politically-neutral as possible, I will simply note that Pat McCrory is governor of North Carolina. Only the Google Doc I wrote this on will have note of all the other things I called him until I remembered I don’t have a legal fund. Anyway.)

As I was typing out the search on Google, Google gave me the answer in the search bar:

I had never seen that before. So I tried another political search, this one a bit more historical:

Cool deal. So does this work with everything? I tried first black woman in space. Alas, this didn’t work, though Mae Jemison does rate a Google Knowledge Card:

Wondering if I had maybe used the wrong terminology, I tried again for first African-American woman in space. Alas, this result was worse:

No card, no instant results. (Of course, once I activated the search I would get pages and pages of results.)

I tried a lot of trivia-type stuff and didn’t get any results, and searches for non-US politicians didn’t get me any results either. Anybody else seen this?