31 Random Facts That’ll Give You Something Interesting to Say | Random List #290

Ants sleep by taking about 250 one minute naps throughout their day. It totals just under 5 hours of sleep. This allows for 80% of their colony to be awake, working, and prepared at any given moment.

2. Harvard research showed that having no friends is as deadly as smoking. Researchers have discovered a link between loneliness and the levels of blood-protein which can cause heart attacks and strokes.

3. Stan Lee created The X-men as 'mutants' because he didn't want to explain how they got their powers. They were born with their powers.

4. Johnny Cash's brother, Jack Cash (Left), died when he was 14 after getting mangled by a table saw after cutting wood. Johnny, who admired his brother a lot, was heartbroken. According to his sister, Johnny helped dig Jack's grave.

5. Saudi Arabia once accidentally printed thousands of textbooks containing an image of Yoda sitting next to King Faisal while he signed the 1945 UN charter.

Larger crocodiles can go for over a year without eating a meal. In extreme situations, crocodiles appear to be able to shut down and live off their own tissue for a long period of time.

7. Growing up as a hungry child, Cristiano Ronaldo would knock on the door of a McDonald's asking if they had any burgers. A lady called Edna and two other women would then help him by giving him something to eat.

8. Stanford researchers have shown that mealworms can safely consume various types of plastics including toxic additive-containing plastic such as polystyrene with no ill effects. The worms can then be used as a safe, protein-rich feed supplement.

9. Nazis left behind so many of their Karabiner 98k rifles at the end of World War 2 that they ended up being used for the rest of the 20th century all over the world, and some were even used in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Somewhere out there, an 80-year-old Nazi rifle is still used in warfare.

10. Popcorn, being relatively inexpensive, became popular during the Great Depression. It became a source of income for many struggling farmers, including the Redenbacher family. In fact, when sugar was rationed during World War 2, Americans ate three times as much popcorn as they had before.

The Latin name of a ferret is Mustelidae putorius furo, which translates to “stinky mouse thief.”

12. Famed children’s author and cartoonist Shel Silverstein was also a successful country music songwriter. Among his credits was Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue,” which went on to win the Grammy for Best Country Song.

13. The tumbleweed, an icon of the American West, is an invasive species that was imported in contaminated flaxseed from Russia, where they are a native species.

14. David Dunbar Buick was a plumber who invented the process for adhering enamel to cast iron, clearing the way for cast iron bathtubs in homes. He would later start the Buick Motor Company

15. The world’s rarest autograph belongs to William Shakespeare’s, of which only six are known to exist on 4 documents, all of which are currently in museums.

Pronoia is the opposite of paranoia. A paranoid person thinks everyone is conspiring against him or her, whereas a pronoid person thinks everything is secretly conspiring to help him or her.

17. The proposed Titles of Nobility Amendment to the US Constitution has been pending for 210 years. The Amendment would strip US citizenship from any citizen who accepts a title of nobility from a foreign country.

18. There is no actual difference between frogs and toads, with the popular comparison being used only informally with no taxonomic or evolutionary history. All toads are frogs and toads are just species or families of bumpy frogs.

19. Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels had severe depression and mourned his birthday by wearing black clothes.

20. Leonardo DiCaprio used to be a breakdancer before he made it big as an actor. According to him, he thinks he kept getting rejected by agents because he was a breakdancer at the time and had crazy haircuts.

Popeye was not the main character of his comic strip until he became insanely popular, Olive Oyl was. The strip was called Thimble Theatre and Popeye debuted 10 years after it started.

22. Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crashed in 1972 after the entire cockpit crew became preoccupied with changing a light bulb.

23. Before Harry Houdini died, he and his wife agreed that if Houdini found it possible to communicate after death, he would communicate the message "Rosabelle believe", a secret code which they agreed to use. Rosabelle was their favorite song.

24. "The Singing Revolution" happened between 1987 and 1991 in Estonia when people gathered in public places to sing national songs together despite the ban. This and the "human chain" from Estonia to Lithuania were among the events that led to the independence of Baltic states.

25. There is a lake in Russia that’s been nicknamed the “Siberian Maldives.” A lot of Russians pose there for their Instagram photos due to its bright turquoise color. This isn’t its natural color. It is turquoise due to toxic waste runoff from a local power plant and the lake is very hazardous.