50 Random Facts List #35

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1Louis Bonaparte

Louis Bonaparte

Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon's brother) was known as and is still called The King of Rabbits because he mispronounced the Dutch phrase "I am your king" and instead said, "I am your rabbit" when he took over the Netherlands in 1806.


2. The creators of Rocky and Bullwinkle started a campaign to get Moosylvania recognition as a state. They arrived at the White House and demanded to see President Kennedy, but were turned away at gunpoint. They would later learn that they arrived during the Cuban Missile Crisis.


3. Kit Harrington arrived at his Game of Thrones audition with a black eye after getting into a fight at McDonald's the night before.


4. George Clooney keeps a photo of himself as Batman, 'As cautionary reminder of what happens when you make movies for commercial reasons'.


5. Mangrove trees live in salt water, filter out 99% of salt through their roots, and are literally desalination plants.


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6Hans Asperger

Hans Asperger

Hans Asperger, who identified autism in 1944, once said, "It seems that for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential. The necessary ingredient may be an ability to turn away from the everyday world, to rethink a subject with originality so as to create in new untrodden ways.".


7. There is a genetic disorder named Angelman's syndrome which makes the affected person have a uniquely happy personality and an interest in water.


8. Women used to wear foot long pins in their hats which could be used in self-defense to stab men who groped or assaulted them.


9. Disney owned Miramax for a time, technically making Pulp Fiction a Disney film.


10. In 6 B.C., the Greeks dug a tunnel named Tunnel of Eupalinos which is over 1,000 meter long through a mountain, by digging from both ends and meeting in the middle. Ingenious surveying and geometrical techniques were used to ensure the two tunnels didn't miss.


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11Bielefeld town

Bielefeld town

German internet users have a meme since 1999 where they pretend the town of Bielefeld (population of about 323,000, 18th largest city) does not exist.


12. When a hamster wheel is placed outside, wild mice will come run on it.


13. The longest recorded time spent awake was set in 1965 by a high school student named Randy Gardner who stayed awake for 264 hours (about 11 days).


14. Guy Fieri's restaurant Guy's American Kitchen in Times Square is the only restaurant since 2012 to receive the worst rating in a New York Times restaurant review.


15. Cats 'play' with their prey to ensure that the prey is weak enough to be killed without endangering the cat.


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16Matt Groening

Matt Groening

Even though only 10-15% of people are left-handed, there is a higher than a usual number of characters in The Simpsons who appear to be left-handed (Bart Simpson, Seymour Skinner, Ned Flanders and others). This is due to the fact that the creator of the show Matt Groening himself is left-handed.


17. A New York man named Paul J. Newman was arrested for fraud after pretending to be an architect in a bust referred to by the state as "Operation Vandelay Industries". “For over seven years the defendant has pretended to be a registered architect, deceiving hundreds of New Yorkers — including families and senior citizens — with the sole goal of enriching himself,” Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement about what his office called Operation Vandelay Industries. “By allegedly falsifying building plans, code compliance inspections, and field reports, the defendant jeopardized the safety of those who resided in and frequented the buildings he was contracted to work on.”


18. Multiple people have died attempting to cross a seemingly calm, innocent creek called the Bolton Strid in Yorkshire, England. The stream actually hosts multiple underwater cave systems and dangerous currents below the surface that have sucked numerous people to their deaths.


19. Scientists say caesarian births are "affecting human evolution" because women with narrow hips are spreading this genetic predisposition to their daughters.


20. In the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Mao Zedong invited people to openly express their opinions and have free discussions. Once this happened, he cracked down on those who said the wrong things.


21Dolph Lundgren

Dolph Lundgren

Dolph Lundgren had a Fulbright scholarship to MIT to study chemical engineering, and road-tripped up from New York City on a motorcycle and rolled onto campus with his then girlfriend Grace Jones on the back.


22. Our Milky Way is home to the darkest planet ever discovered, TrES-2b, the coal-black planet which absorbs almost 100% of the light that falls on it.


23. The Harvard debate team once lost to a team of inmates serving time for manslaughter.


24. In 1952, a French man named Paul Félix Armand Delille used a contagious and deadly virus to kill rabbits on his estate. It spread out of control, killing up to 98% of rabbits in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Britain. He was later given a medal by the head of the Department of Rivers and Forests.


25. Hugh O'Flaherty was a priest who saved the lives of 6500 Allied soldiers and Jews during World War 2 by hiding them in farms, homes, and convents. He was a master at disguises and evaded capture by the Gestapo many times, earning him the nickname "Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican".

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