50 Random Facts List #1

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1Calvin Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge

Former US President Calvin Coolidge enjoyed "buzzing for his bodyguards and then hiding under his desk as they frantically searched for him."


2. 50 years before women were allowed to enroll into medical school, Margaret Ann Bulkley dressed as a man for 56 years to study medicine and become her alter-ego, Dr. James Barry. It was only when she died in 1865 that her secret was exposed after 46 years working as an army medical officer.


3. Adding a type of seaweed to the diet of cows reduces their methane production by 70%.


4. While penniless and dying, Ulysses S Grant wrote a book of memoirs so his wife could live off of the royalties. Mark Twain heard the best royalty offer was 10% and immediately offered Grant 75%. Grant's book, was a critical and commercial success giving his wife about $450,000 in royalties.


5. A Russian MIG Pilot named Viktor Belenko defected to USA during the cold war along with his aircraft. When he arrived in the USA he was convinced the CIA had specially stocked the grocery stores he went to because he couldn't believe the vast array of products for sale.


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6Spam text

Spam text

A suicide bomber planning on detonating in Moscow at New Year's Eve used her phone as the trigger. When her mobile phone company sent her a spam message, the bomb detonated, killing only herself.


7. A man once tried to sue Pepsi because he found a mouse in his can of Mountain Dew, Pepsi defended the case by proving that Mountain Dew can dissolve a mouse in a few months.


8. The average life expectancy for those with Down syndrome has gone from 12 years in 1912 to 25 years in the 1980's, to upwards of 60 years in the developed world today.


9. BuzzFeed writer Benny Johnson was found guilty of plagiarizing over 40 different times before he was fired. He was subsequently hired by National Review as a social media editor.


10. There used to be 4 billion American chestnut trees, but they all disappeared because of a fungus that kills them as saplings.


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11Chevy Chase

Chevy Chase

Chevy Chase played drums in college for a band called The Leather Canary, which he referred to as a "bad Jazz band". After leaving, two band members and classmates went on to be successful as the band Steely Dan.


12. Mathematician Paul Erdös regularly took amphetamines, which worried his friends enough that one bet him $500 that he couldn't quit for a month. Erdös won the bet but later claimed mathematics had been set back a month.


13. The "Made in [Country]" mark was first established by the UK in 1887 in order to denounce foreign goods (mostly made in Germany) and encourage consumption of domestic goods. The plan backfired and consumers specifically bought products made in Germany as they were seen as reliable and cheap.


14. Lodges made by Beavers have two chambers. The floor of the first chamber is a few inches above the water level and is used to dry off after coming out of the water. The floor of the second chamber is above the first, and is used for sleeping and caring for kits (baby beavers).


15. Dry counties (counties where the sale of alcohol is banned) have a drunk driving fatality rate ~3.6 times higher than wet counties.


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16Mr. Rogers

Mr. Rogers

Mr. Rogers sued the KKK for impersonating him.


17. The Weezer song "Mykel & Carli", released in 1994, is about sisters Mykel and Carli Allan who established the band's fan club and are considered the band's biggest fans. Mykel and Carli and younger sister Trisha died in a car accident in 1997; members of Weezer attended their funeral.


18. Winston Churchill was prescribed alcohol to get around American Prohibition


19. We use "lbs" as shorthand for pounds in English because of the Latin phrase "Libra Poundo", which is also where we derived "pounds" from


20. The Soviets Dropped Cluster Bombs on Finland but Claimed they Were Humanitarian Food Drops. As a Result, The Finns Coined the Term "Molotov Bread Basket" to Describe These Bombs and then the Term "Molotov Cocktail" as "A Drink To Go With The Food"


21"Save the planet, kill yourself" motto

There was a church of Euthanasia whose motto was "Save the planet, kill yourself".


22. Snoop Dogg says the only person that has "out-smoked" him is Willie Nelson, saying, “that’s the only person that’s ever smoked me under the table.”


23. The Japanese considered raw salmon dangerous since Pacific salmon was prone to parasites. Norway had too much salmon and decided to focus on teaching Japanese consumers that Atlantic salmon was safe to eat raw. It took ten years for Salmon sushi/sashimi to finally become popular.


24. It is illegal to collect or possess eagle feathers in the United States and only enrolled members of a federally recognized Native American tribe may legally possess them.


25. Jonathan Taylor Thomas, the '90s child actor also known simply as JTT, walked away from fame at the height of his career to study philosophy at Harvard.

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1 COMMENT

  1. 30. Marozia wasn’t a prostitute. Sha was the daughter of the count of Tusculum, at that time the most power full noble of Latium and wife of the duke of Spoleto. After his dead, she would mary with a Roman noble man and later with the (Frankish) king of Italy. She and her mother reigned Rome and Latium as mistresses of the popes and would later place her children on the papal throne and reign as the power behind the throne.

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