31 Amazing Quick Random Facts For When You’re Bored | Random List #143

Benjamin Franklin became a vocal advocate for inoculation after losing his oldest son to smallpox.

2. Soviet politician Joseph Stalin had a webbed left foot. In Russian folklore, this is a sign of the devil.

3. The Wright brothers may not have done what they did if not for a hockey accident that sent Wilbur Wright into a depression, causing him to cancel his plans of going to Yale, and eventually open the bicycle shop with his brother.

4. A man named William Dean Sullivan attempted to board a cruise ship by bungee jumping off a bridge as it sailed below. He miscalculated the speed and suffered minor head injuries when he bounced off the ship’s tennis court, volleyball net, and a deck railing before being left dangling in mid-air as the ship sailed away.

5. The one-liner, "Why Do We Drive on Parkways and Park on Driveways?" seems ironic because the terms predate automobiles. Way means path, park means scenic natural space, and drive means a short private road.

Ostriches don't bury their heads in the sand and think are have hidden from danger. They dig holes to bury their eggs. The myth came about from people seeing ostriches putting their heads in the holes to turn the eggs to ensure they are evenly heated.

7. Queen's drummer, Roger Taylor has the same 4-octave vocal range as Freddie Mercury and Aretha Franklin.

8. Every Autumn a fungus epidemic kills off 75% of house flies. It attacks their brain forcing them to land on a surface and climb to the highest point, stand up on its front legs and spread its wings. The fungus then erupts from its abdomen to be spread to other flies.

9. Bats can eat up to 1,200 mosquitoes in an hour and often consume their body weight in insects every night.

10. One chapter of Memory of Light, the last book in the Wheel of Time series, contained 81,200 words. By comparison, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone was about 78,000 words in its entirety.

British people tend to be “bi-measurement” the same way some people are bilingual. Both imperial and metric units factor into their lives.

12. In 2012, a schizophrenic inmate named Darren Rainey died after he was put in a 180°F (82°C) shower for 2 hours. His skin reportedly "fell off at the touch". Two officers who were on duty at the time later received promotions and nobody has ever been charged.

13. The British World War 2 Civilian Respirator gas mask had filters containing blue asbestos and arsenic. Because of this, it is recommended to wear a gas mask when handling the gas mask.

14. Franklin W. Dixon, who wrote the Hardy Boys books, wasn't a single individual. Instead, a publishing house used the pseudonym to have multiple people produce a lot of books quickly. The Nancy Drew books worked the same way.

15. The Blues Brothers started out as a warm-up act on Saturday Night Live to get the crowd going before they went on air.

Avocados are particularly filling because they are very high in fiber. Its fat is slowly digested, which helps your meal stay with you longer

17. Cougars have a rich social structure and even share kill with other cougars, who eventually return the favor.

18. A card-counter named Bill Benter developed an algorithm for betting on Hong Kong horse races that earned him nearly a billion dollars.

19. As the Roman Emperor Vespasian was dying with severe diarrhea, he remarked: "Dear me, I think I'm becoming a God" before succumbing to his illness.

20. American singer Sara Bareilles wrote "Love Song" in response to her record label demanding that she write a "marketable love song."

Sweden was the first country to put a eugenic state into practice before World War 2 and the first state that set up for racial biology. An estimated 63,000 women were sterilized who were deemed to not have ‘Aryan-like’ genes. It ended in 1973 and compensation has been paid since 2000 to any victims.

22. There is an AI algorithm that can identify who is gay or not via photograph up to 91% of the time.

23. Seven new rare earth elements have been found in the small Swedish village of Ytterby. Four of the elements are named after the village, ytterbium, yttrium, terbium, and erbium, the other three are holmium, thulium, and gadolinium.

24. After 2 years of using a Catalan mercenary company to fight the Turks, the Byzantine emperor betrayed the company and tried to wipe them out in 1305. The mercenaries went on a rampage so destructive that the monks of Mount Athos only lifted their ban of Catalan citizens in the year 2000.

25. Sociologist David Dunning once wrote: "If you're incompetent, you can't know you're incompetent... The skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is." He described this phenomenon as the "the anosognosia of everyday life."