50 Random Facts List #45

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1James A. Garfield

James A. Garfield

President James A. Garfield likely died of starvation after doctors insisted he be fed rectally after an assassination attempt.


2. More money was spent buying Central Park's land than all of Alaska.


3. Breast milk contains sugars which aren't digestible by human infants, but which serve as food for desirable gut bacteria.


4. Dolphins will play with whales by lying on the whale's head while the whale slowly raises it above the water's surface.


5. A 75-yr-old woman took shelter from a tornado in her bathtub. The tornado ripped off the roof of her house, lifted the tub out of her bathroom, and deposited it in the woods with the uninjured woman still in it.


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6Mountains of Kong

Mountains of Kong

The Mountains of Kong was a West African mountain range that was charted on maps for nearly a hundred years. It was later discovered that the mountains never existed and were made up by the original cartographer.


7. A billionaire named Yuri Milner is plotting to propel thousands of miniature satellites at 20% the speed of light by aiming minutes-long 100-gigawatt laser pulses at light sails as early as the 2040s, to arrive at Proxima B (the nearest Earthlike planet in the Goldilocks Zone of Alpha Centauri) by the 2060s.


8. Whataburger and What-a-burger are both different restaurants that opened on the same day without the knowledge of each other's existence.


9. Armadillos of the genus Dasypus (the only ones found in the US) give birth to four genetically identical young that split from the same embryo; i.e. they always have identical quadruplets. They are the only known vertebrate animals to exhibit this "polyembryony".


10. The coins that are tossed into many of the world's most famous fountains are collected and donated to charities. The Trevi Fountain in Italy alone collects about $15,000 a week!


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11Jesse Spencer

Jesse Spencer

Jesse Spencer, the actor who plays Dr. Chase in House M.D., has three siblings, all of whom are doctors.


12. The Can-Can dance was originally considered scandalous as it became popular in the mid-19th century because many women of that time wore pantalettes, which had an open crotch, meaning that a high kick could be unintentionally revealing.


13. The stereotypical American southern accent is an aristocratic British accent with a southern lilt.


14. A French philosopher named Jean-Paul Sartre hallucinated seeing crabs for most of his life after taking mescaline (psychedelic alkaloid).


15. "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is based on a poem Tim Burton wrote in 1982 while working at Disney, who had purchased the film rights but felt it was too weird. Years later (after being fired from Disney) Tim realized they still owned the rights and convinced Disney to greenlight the movie.


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16DPRK_News twitter

DPRK_News twitter

The parody Twitter account DPRK_News has been quoted by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and Fox News as if speaking for the real North Korean state news agency.


17. Bladerunner is so visually stunning partly because of the 1980 Hollywood Actors Strike, which gave the film's Art Department and Designers an extra 3 months to improve and refine significantly their futuristic sets and props.


18. Actress Veronica Lake, famous for her "peek a boo" hairstyle with one eye covered, changed her style during World War 2 in order to encourage women to adopt safer hairstyles when working in factories.


19. The bald eagle hasn't been considered an endangered species since 2007.


20. Sardine isn't actually a species of fish but rather a generic name given to various small, oily fish within the herring family of Clupeidae.


21Carrie Fisher

Carrie Fisher

The cast/crew of Star Wars: A New Hope flew coach to England due to a low budget. Carrie Fisher's mother, Debbie Reynolds, called George Lucas to complain about her daughter flying coach. Fisher took the phone from Lucas and said "Mother, I want to fly coach, will you fu*k off?!" and hung up.


22. The Count of Monte Cristo has never been out of print in most modern languages.


23. October 31, 2017, will be the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther posting the 95 Theses, sparking the Protestant Reformation.


24. If you send a letter to Israel addressed to God, they will place it in the Western Wall, where visitors traditionally place handwritten notes of prayer and wishes in the cracks between its stones.


25. During the Irish Potato Famine, the poor were given construction jobs, so they could earn food rather than receive it as a handout. However, to avoid taking jobs from other workers, these people built useless projects, like roads in the middle of nowhere, and piers in the middle of bogs.

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