30 Astonishing Random Facts That Seem Fake At First Glance | Random List #266

Screech owls bring Texas blind snakes into their nests so the snakes will eat the parasites that feed on the owlets.

2. Between the years 4000 of 3500 B.C., the Tripolye culture which was centered around the modern Moldova in Eastern Europe built the largest settlements in the world at that time. They were inhabited by 20,000 to 46,000 people. Cities of this size only reappeared in Mesopotamia a Millennium later.

3. Macaroons and macarons are not the same things. Macaroons are American coconut-based cookies. Macarons are French (originally Italian) meringue-based confection made up of two cookies with filling in the center.

4. Orville Wright, the co-inventor of the airplane was still alive when the sound barrier was broken in 1947 by Chuck Yeager.

5. Towards the end of filming the first Harry Potter film, Daniel Radcliffe's voice broke. For the final filmed scenes, a "soundalike" child actor, Joe Sowerbutts, was recruited to overdub his lines in post-production. 

The 442nd Infantry Regiment was comprised almost entirely of Japanese American soldiers during World War 2. In total, about 18,000 men served, ultimately earning 9,486 Purple Hearts and 21 Medals of Honor, making it the most decorated combat unit in US history.

7. A Marine Corps veteran by the name of John "Chick" Donohue snuck into Vietnam in 1967 during the ongoing war simply to deliver beer to his friends in combat.

8. Jerry Lawson pioneered home video gaming in the 1970s by helping to invent the Fairchild Channel F, the first system with interchangeable cartridges. One of the few black engineers in computing at the time, he, unfortunately, received less recognition than deserved due to the Channel F's poor sales.

9. Dr. Khurshid Guru, the director of Robotic Surgery at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in New York, saved the life of a child having an asthma attack aboard his transatlantic flight, by making a makeshift inhaler with a water bottle, cup, some tape, and an oxygen tank.

10. 44% of deaths among Russian soldiers are due to suicide after being a victim of a systematic abuse called Dedovshchina.

Edward Craven Walker, the inventor of the Lava Light was an accountant and originally didn’t envision his product associating with groovy psychedelic hippie culture. An ad for them in the straight-laced American Bar Association Journal pitched an “executive” desk version mounted on a walnut base beside a ballpoint pen.

12. The names at the 9/11 memorial are not organized alphabetically, by company or location, but rather by how close of a relationship that person had with those names around them.

13. The shape of Pringles purposely causes a loud sound when consumed. This loud noise causes people to perceive the chips as fresher and crispier.

14. Max Brooks, the author of "World War Z" and son of Mel Brooks, was invited to join the Modern War Institute at West Point as a non-resident fellow to write about non-military issues that could turn violent in the future, such as corporate control of the food chain.

15. Razzle Dazzle is a carnival game that is designed to make the player believe he is almost winning. But mathematically it actually is near impossible to win despite being very very few points from winning.

Actors Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were temporarily blinded with 'burnt retinas' on the set of Twister (1996) by bright lamps used to make the sky look stormy.

17. In Abraham Lincoln's time in the Illinois legislature, he once leaped out of a first-story window in a failed attempt to prevent a quorum from being present. The doors of the Capitol had been locked to prevent legislators from fleeing.

18. Keanu Reeves was forced to shoot a film after a friend forged his signature on the film's contract. 'The Watcher' went down as one of his worst movies by critics.

19. In Ghana, imported second-hand clothing is known as 'obroni wawo', or 'dead white man's clothes.'

20. Milton Wright, a bishop once famously said: "Men will never fly because flying is reserved for the angels." He was the father of the Wright Brothers.

During World War 2, it was found that British tank crews regularly left the safety of their tanks in order to make tea. Accordingly, post-war British tanks have been fitted with internal tea-making facilities to enable tank crews to make tea in safety.

22. Bill Nye had worked alongside Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future: The Animated Series, where he played Doc Brown's assistant and demonstrated several experiments. These segments later led to Nye getting his own show.

23. A recent study found that the size of a lottery win subsequently increases borrowing and bankruptcies among neighbors of the winner.

24. The first book to be banned in USA was the “New English Canaan” which was banned in 1637. The author lampoons and criticizes the Puritans and compares their leadership to crustaceans because Puritans believed that Indians were wild men that needed to be suppressed (among other thing). A first edition copy of the book was recently sold at an auction for $60,000.

25. Hoatzins are the only birds born with claws on their wings, a trait exhibited in dinosaurs like archaeopteryx.