32 Weird & Random Facts That’ll Make You Smarter – Part 138

In zero gravity, a candle's flame is round and blue.

2. There is a coast-to-coast hiking trail called The American Discovery Trail that connects Delaware and California.

3. Pandas were carnivorous, but they inexplicably lost their appetite for meat during evolution.

4. When Robert Taylor inventor of soap-in-a-pump-bottle (Softsoap), he knew larger competitors like Colgate would try to copy his product. In order to ensure that they couldn't copy him, he bought every small bottle hand-pump (100 million bottles) in the United States. This resulted in a year of the market to himself.

5. The artificial sweetener Sucralose (Splenda) was discovered when a researcher misheard a command to "Test this chemical" as "taste this chemical."

After winning an Oscar, actor Daniel Day-Lewis retired to become a cobbler in Italy, only returning to acting after Martin Scorsese convinced him to star in Gangs of New York.

7. Fourteen years after publication, Dr. Seuss removed a reference to pollution in Lake Erie from The Lorax. Researchers informed him that the environmental efforts to restore the lake had been successful. The line was changed in subsequent editions.

8. Bios Urn turns the ashes from a person's cremation into a tree by using them as a nutrient source for a seed.

9. A town in Russia named Verkhoyansk with an average temperature of -45 °C (-50 °F) in January was attacked by a pack of 400 wolves in 2012. The sun currently rises at 2 pm and sets at 3:30 pm.

10. In 1922, Americans were consuming 1 million Eskimo Pies a day that resulted in the rise of the cost of cocoa beans by 50%. This single-handedly lifted Ecuador's economy out of a depression.

The "cost per GFLOPS" (the cost for a computer that would operate at one billion floating-point operations per second) in 1997 was of $42,000, while nowadays it is of merely $0.03 in 2017.

12. In 1575, a German mass murderer nicknamed Puschpeter is reported to have kept his wits after being impaled. The stake hit his spine and he berated the executioner. Puschpeter commanded the executioner to draw the stake out of him and gave instructions for how to make the impalement properly.

13. Rinconada, Peru is the world's highest elevated city at 16,732 ft above sea level and its economy is based around a gold mine. The mine operates on a unique system where employees work for 30 days without payment, and on the 31st day they are allowed to take as much ore as they can carry.

14. In 2002, a soccer team named AS Adema scored 149 own goals against SO l'Emyrne in one match protesting a controversial referee decision in the previous game.

15. The T-shirt was invented in 1904 and it was primarily marketed towards bachelors as "bachelor undershirt." It was stretchy enough to be pulled over the head. "No safety pins - no buttons - no needle - no thread."

At the age of 15, Jim Carrey quit school and became a janitor to support his family after his father lost his job. They were living out of a van. He also used to carry a baseball bat in his janitor cart because "I was so angry I just wanted to beat the heck out of something."

17. New York City's Flatiron building used to cause enough downdrafts to lift the skirts of women passing by, giving a "daring" view of their ankles and legs. The phenomenon was notorious and resulted in groups of young men regularly gathering on 23rd street to watch.

18. The longest prison sentence ever requested was 384,912 years of jail, against a 22-year-old postman named Gabriel March Granados in Spain was accused of failing to deliver 42,768 letters. This sentence was requested by the prosecutor, while actually he was sentenced only to 14 years and 2 months of imprisonment.

19. The feat for the fastest red card in football history was achieved by Lee Todd of Cross Farm Park Celtic in a mere 2 seconds into the match. Lee Todd was sent off for foul language after he exclaimed "F*ck me that was loud" after the starting whistle.

20. In many states in the USA, you can be charged with a DUI even if the car is parked and you are sleeping in it.

There is a lake in the country of Palau (Pacific Islands) where jellyfishes have evolved without stingers. This happened after the lake's connection to the sea closed, leaving them isolated from their natural predators. These 'Golden' jellyfish are totally harmless to humans and you can swim with them.

22. Rice thrown at weddings poses absolutely no danger to birds. It is just a myth that the rice grains suck up water from the birds' moist innards and cause them to violently burst.

23. Freddie Mercury got a degree in art and graphic design and eventually used his skill to design the Queen logo, also known as Queen Crest.

24. In 1994, NBA MVP Hakeem Olajuwon released a $35 sneaker instead of endorsing shoes from Nike or Reebok because "How can a poor working mother with three boys buy Nikes or Reeboks that cost $120?...She can't. So kids steal these shoes from stores and from other kids. Sometimes they kill for them."

25. In 1992, a lawyer and a judge were looking for files on a former prisoner in a police station near Paraguay. Instead, they stumbled upon archives documenting an international conspiracy involving the torture, murder, and imprisonment of 480,000 people. It is now known as the Archives of Terror.