50 Random Facts List #28

The Ottoman Empire's Sultan Ibrahim I had 280 of his concubines drowned in the ocean after one of them slept with another man.

27. Anne Frank only assumed that her father was killed in the concentration camps and that a childhood friend of hers stated that if she knew he was still alive she believed Anne would have summoned the courage to survive.

28. Search and rescue dogs searching for survivors after 9/11 would experience depression-like symptoms because they couldn't find survivors, only bodies.

29. During O.J. Simpson's 1995 verdict announcement for murder, long-distance calls declined by 58%, trading on the New York Stock Exchange decreased by 41%, water usage decreased, and there was an estimated $480 million in lost productivity due to work stopping.

30. Planktons perform 45% of Earth's photosynthesis, yet constitute less than 1% of its total plant mass.

Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, once voiced Barney Rubble from the Flintstones while he was in the full-body cast as he laid flat on his back with the other Flintstones co-stars gathered around him after a car crash.

32. The Goldman family was given legal ownership of OJ Simpson's canceled book "If I Did It." They republished with a new cover hiding the word "If" so the title appeared to be "I Did It."

33. The CEO of Spotify (Daniel Ek) was the CEO of uTorrent in 2006.

34. Recently, a group of parents among a subset of the anti-vaxxer community are actively trying to cure their children's autism with daily bleach enemas.

35. Bob Marley's song, Buffalo Soldier, refers to the name given to black troops by Native Americans, who thought black soldiers' hair looked and felt like a buffalo's pelt. Buffalo Soldiers settled railroad disputes, built and repaired forts, and protected settlers from Native American attacks.

The kiln was originally pronounced with a silent "n." Linguists believe that when written descriptions of kilns reached people who had never heard of them before; they assumed the "n" was pronounced, and this mispronunciation took over.

37. The Brontosaurus once was considered to have never existed but has recently been declared to have actually existed. It was thought to have been in the same genus as the Apatosaurus but recent discoveries have separated the two as distinct.

38. Despite receiving an annual rainfall of just 3 inches, Yuma, Arizona produces 90% of the United States' lettuce during the winter.

39. In 2006, skydiver Michael Holmes jumped out of a plane at 15,000 feet wearing a helmet camera. His first parachute failed, then his reserve failed too. Then he waved goodbye before landing in a blackberry bush and surviving.

40. A Mexican diplomat named Gilberto Bosques Saldivar rescued 40,000 people, mainly Spaniards and Jews, who wanted to flee Nazi occupied France during World War 2. His heroism remained unknown to the world at large for some 60 years.

Director James Cameron reached the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench in 2012. He is the first person to accomplish the trip solo. The data he collected resulted in interesting new finds in the field of marine biology, including new species of sea cucumber and squid worm.

42. In the 1880s, a man named Larry Donovan tried to make a living by jumping off bridges to gain fame and recognition. After he died penniless jumping off a low bridge on a drunken bet, his mother was quoted as saying: "I told him that jumping off bridges was a poor way of earning a living."

43. One of the reasons the gloves didn't fit O.J. Simpson is that he stopped taking medication for his arthritis which led to his hands becoming swollen.

44. The South Pacific island of Vanuatu banned the imports of western junk food as a way to combat future health problems.

45. A man named Steve Easton sneezed out the tip (penny sized) of a toy dart while he was at his computer. The toy had been lodged unknowingly in his nasal cavity for 44 years. He had to confirm with his mom.

Shifting Baseline Syndrome describes the phenomena, where each generation uses previous reference points as baselines despite those points representing significant changes from even earlier states. Each generation defines the "natural" state differently, and large changes over time often go unnoticed.

47. White tigers are not an endangered species that need to be saved, but are the result of double recessive traits, and are severely inbred to produce more white tigers, resulting in health problems.

48. The reason PINs are typically 4 digits is that the inventor's wife (John Adrian Shepherd-Barron's wife) could only remember 4 digits. Had she not mentioned this they would have been 6 digits.

49. The "bubonic plague" was a specific way of dying from the plague wherein lymph nodes would swell into lumps called "buboes." This is also the origin of bruises being called "boo-boos."

50. The parents of Donald Duck are Quackmore Duck and Hortense McDuck, Hortense being the sister of Scrooge McDuck and grandmother of Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck.