31 Regular Random Facts That Are So Fascinating | Random List #267

People really do have a "type" when it comes to romantic attraction. According to a study, 50% of people’s preferences for faces is unique to them, and who we find attractive is most strongly influenced by our life experiences.

2. African American architect Paul Williams learned to draw upside down because white clients were uncomfortable sitting next to a black man. He practiced mostly in Southern California and designed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, and Lon Chaney.

3. There's a "Women Only" village in Kenya, Africa named Umoja Village that was created in 1990 as a safe haven for women escaping violence.

4. Ferdinand Magellan didn’t actually circumnavigate the globe. He was killed by a poisoned arrow in the Philippines, and under the leadership of Juan Sebastian de Elcano, his expedition completed the trip without him.

5. Hard Drives are Drive "C:/" because originally PCs only had up to 2 floppy disk drives labeled A and B. Sometime later hard disks got added and became drive C.

During the sinking of the Titanic, an order to evacuate women and children first by Captain Smith was misinterpreted to mean women and children only. As a result, men were prevented from entering lifeboats even when there were empty seats. Only 20% of the men survived.

7. During Napoleon's exile on Saint Helena, no ship could leave the island until the governor laid eyes on him to make sure he doesn't escape. Napoleon sometimes hid just to cause problems to ships trying to leave the harbor.

8. Some languages like English and Mandarin Chinese are spoken slower than others, like Spanish and Japanese, with 20-30% fewer syllables spoken per second. However, in "slower" languages, more information is conveyed in fewer words, but the same amount of information is communicated per unit of time.

9. In 1790, Thomas Jefferson proposed a decimal-based system for weight, length, and volume that predates the metric system. If it had been adopted, 1 mile would equal 10,000 ft, an inch would be divisible by 10, and 1 cubic foot would equal exactly 1,000 ounces.

10. 67% of the prisoners in India have not had a trial due largely in part to the 25+ million backlogged cases. It is estimated that with the current amount of judges it would take at least 12 years to clear the pending cases.

Jim Carrey was the first actor to have three films go straight to number one in the same year. The year was 1994, and the films were The Mask, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and Dumb and Dumber.

12. Danny Elfman of Oingo Boingo fame, who also composed the themes for many Hollywood hits like Back To School, Beetlejuice, Batman, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Men in Black, & Edward Scissorhands, was rejected from his elementary school orchestra "for having no propensity for music."

13. Disney tried unsuccessfully to trademark "SEAL Team 6" the day after the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

14. The name "Dracula", used by Romanian ruler Vlad the Impaler (and later by Bram Stoker), means "son of the Dragon". His father, Vlad Dracul, was a member of the Order of the Dragon, a Christian chivalric order (named after St. George and his legendary defeat of a dragon) that fought the Ottomans

15. Boston's debut album was initially rejected because band founder Tom Scholz had recorded and produced it entirely in his basement. In order to appease/fool the label, Scholz hired someone to pretend to produce the album while he rerecorded and reproduced the same album from his basement again.

There are 500 varieties of mangoes, and they are related to the cashew and pistachio family and are one of the most consumed fruits in the world.

17. Bats can breathe through their wings. Wings make up 85% of a bat's surface area and can contribute up to 10% of its gas exchange.

18. It was once popular to name your children after the President of the United States. Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander is an example of this phenomenon. The trend fell out of style during Nixon’s term.

19. When Academy Award-winning actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier III of Monaco - becoming Princess Grace of Monaco - the religious ceremony took only 15 minutes, but the following recitation of the 142 royal titles acquired by Kelly took another 25 minutes.

20. There is a Portuguese messianic mystic belief called Sebastianism in which a child King from the 16th century that vanished in battle will come back to save Portugal in its darkest hour.

Physicist Wallace Sabine was assigned the impossible task of fixing the sound quality of a poorly designed lecture hall. Despite having no background in acoustics, he discovered a relationship between chamber size, absorption surface, and sound quality, thus founding the field of acoustics.

22. During her wedding in 1981, Princess Diana deviated from tradition and omitted the line in which she promised to "obey" Prince Charles.

23. In 1950, Edith Sampson became the first African-American to represent the U.S. at the United Nations. She later became the first Black U.S. representative to NATO and became the first Black woman to be elected judge in the state of Illinois.

24. When the power goes out in an area, the majority of people who utilize rooftop solar panels (the form most commonly used by the public) will lose power along with everyone else; even when still in direct sunlight. A solar battery can be installed to use this power later but isn't the "norm".

25. Sandra Perron was the first female infantry officer in the Canadian Army. Viewed as a threat by the male officers, she was beaten, tied to a tree, and left in the snow for two hours without boots. Her experience forced the army to revise its procedures to prevent harassment.