30 Fun Random Facts About Practically Everything – Part 217

A delivery truck driver named Steve Flaig was adopted as a child. At the age of 18, he decided to look for his birth mother. Four years later he succeeded and discovered that they were colleagues working in the same store.

2. A British Royal Marine named Matthew Croucher threw himself onto a grenade to save the lives of his comrades. His body armor and backpack shielded him from the blast. He was left with just a nosebleed and a headache.

3. Jimmy Carter became cancer-free after months of treatment for deadly cancer that spread to his brain. His doctor said, "He's a physically and mentally active individual who's in the best health possible for someone in his age group..."

4. Jack Trice was the first African-American athlete for Iowa State College and second black college football player. Before his first game, he wrote about how proud he was to have the opportunity. He was intentionally targeted throughout the game, breaking his collarbone and causing internal bleeding, which in turn caused his death.

5. During the American Civil War, Winston County, Alabama attempted to cede from the Confederacy and become a free republic as the lack of any plantations and resulting rarity of slaveholders in the region gave the locals little reason to sympathize with the rebel cause.

On Fleetwood Mac's 1971 tour, Jeremy Spencer, one of their guitarists left to "get a magazine" and never came back. When he was found a few days later, he had joined a cult and quit the band.

7. Ivan the Terrible of Russia, the Grand Prince of Moscow had a bodyguard corps (Oprichnik) that wore black clothing and rode black horses. They also had a severed dog's head attached to their saddles, using them to “sniff out” treason. Due to the lack of taxidermy, a constant supply of fresh heads was needed.

8. In the cartoon series The Jetsons, George Jetson's workweek consists of an hour a day, two days a week.

9. Nicholas Cage has a goth son named Weston Cage who sang in a Black Metal band and invented a genre called "Ghost Metal" in which he incorporates ancient instruments, like the Bouzouki, to invoke a "ghostly feeling."

10. American minister Malcolm X said that white people could not join his black nationalist Organization of Afro-American Unity, but "if John Brown were still alive, we might accept him." Brown was a famous abolitionist convicted and hanged for treason after attempting to lead a slave rebellion in 1859.

The Vatican has a single pharmacy. The Vatican claims it is the busiest pharmacy in the world with 2,000 daily visitors. Due to complicated Italian laws, the pharmacy has medicines available years before Italian pharmacies. People often visit this pharmacy to buy them.

12. After submitting six names in order to get a post office and having all six rejected, citizens responded by stating, "Let the post office be nameless and be damned!" The government accepted this suggestion and the town of Nameless, Texas was born.

13. The Jacuzzi was invented by Candido Jacuzzi to provide pain relief for his 15-month-old son named Kenny Jacuzzi, who was born with rheumatoid arthritis.

14. If an Interstate is an odd number, it runs North and South and even-numbered Interstates run East and West.

15. Dragonfly wings kill bacteria on contact by ripping apart their cell membranes with sharp nanopillars as they move across the surface of the wing.

In Tina Fey's childhood, her parents allowed her to watch Young Frankenstein, SNL, Monty Python, Marx Brothers, and The Honeymooners, but she was not allowed to watch The Flintstones.

17. Until the late 15th century the word ‘girl’ simply means a child of either sex. Male babies were called ‘knave girls’ and female babies were referred to as ‘gay girls.’

18. Charlie Chaplin was the subject of an FBI investigation due to alleged communist sympathies during the height of McCarthyism. He later said "As for politics, I am an anarchist. I hate government and rules - and fetters ... People must be free."

19. It was first assumed that the sharks in the freshwater Lake Nicaragua were an endemic species, but it was later observed that the sharks were able to jump up and down the rapids of the freshwater San Juan River (which connects Lake Nicaragua and the Caribbean Sea) like salmon.

20. During the Parsley Massacre, Dominican soldiers identified and killed thousands of Haitian migrants based on their pronunciation of the Spanish word for ‘parsley.’

An American psychiatrist named Herbert Kleber pushed for evidence-based addiction treatment, not punishment and moralisms. This approach treated addiction as a medical condition instead of a failure of moral character and helped prevent relapses, saving countless lives and transforming substance abuse treatment.

22. Some trucks in North Korea are powered by burning charcoal because the price of oil is too high for most citizens.

23. When The Beatles were performing 'Twist and Shout' live, John Lennon would change the lyrics to 'I'm pissed with gout', and due to the screaming crowds, no one ever noticed.

24. The production of Apocalypse Now had actual dead bodies on set, from someone who supplied bodies to medical schools for autopsies. It turned out he was a grave robber.

25. In 1723, the death rate in London outstripped the birth rate and it remained higher for the next decade. Gin was to blame. Women addicted to gin neglected their infants or quietened them with Gin. The term “Mother’s Ruin” survives to this day.