33 Genuine Random Facts That’ll Surprise Even the Most Intelligent People – Part 219

People with schizophrenia are not fooled by the Charlie Chaplin Optical Illusion.

2. In 1964, a 49-year-old man named John Thomas Doyle left a puzzling suicide note before he jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge. It read "Absolutely no reason except I have a toothache."

3. California Penal Codes 837, 839, and 844 allows citizens to round up a posse Wild Wild West style and kick in the front door of someone's house to arrest them for committing a felony, whether or not a police officer is present for the arrest.

4. The entire declaration of independence of Indonesia reads: We the people of Indonesia hereby declare the independence of Indonesia. Matters which concern the transfer of power and other things will be executed by careful means and in the shortest possible time. Djarkata, 17 August 1945.

5. Dire wolves' extinction has been related to their inability to compete for prey against faster wolves, making them scavengers.

When a Ford plant pulled out of Green Island, New York the town seized it's water-powered electrical turbine by eminent domain and now it provides electric to its residents for about 40% cheaper than surrounding areas. Most residents have electric heat.

7. A man received an emergency satellite locator beacon as a present, didn't read the instructions and ended up triggering 9 false alarm Search and Rescue deployments over the course of 12 weeks.

8. A California man driving in an HOV lane claimed the Articles of Incorporation of his business, which had been placed unbuckled on the driver’s seat, constituted a person, citing a California law that defines a person as "natural persons and corporations". The courts ruled against him, citing "common sense."

9. An American schoolgirl named Samantha Smith became famous in the USSR after she wrote a letter to the newly appointed Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Yuri Andropov in 1982, and received a personal reply which included an invitation to visit the Soviet Union, which she accepted.

10. Stephen King wrote the book Misery because his fans complained about The Eyes of the Dragon, which was written for his children, not being a horror book.

Coyotes and badgers sometimes hunt together. The badger digs up the prey and the coyote runs it down.

12. In July 1984, President Ronald Reagan called ice cream "a nutritious and wholesome food" and established National Ice Cream Month.

13. Rock musician Chuck Berry created Berry Park in Missouri, his own rock n roll themed amusement park with a guitar-shaped swimming pool, in response to the whites-only country clubs from where he was once excluded.

14. Lisa Montgomery was a Kansas woman who in 2004, strangled a pregnant woman, cut the baby from her womb, then proceeded to show the baby off as her own to her friends and family.

15. Due to their small brains, koalas are unable to perform complex, unfamiliar tasks such as eat leaves off of flat surfaces.

"That orange couch" from Television series The Wire was originally found in a dumpster by the set crew and used in the Pilot. A month later when the show was picked up, they spent $5,000 building a new couch from scratch because someone threw out the old one.

17. Morgan Freeman played a singing vampire obsessed with vegetables on The Electric Company in the 1970s.

18. When John F. Kennedy met Joseph Luns, the former Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kennedy asked for his hobbies and he answered: "I fok horses", Kennedy, struck with surprise responded: "Pardon?", Luns replied: "Yes, paarden!". 'Fokken' means 'to breed', and 'horses' means 'paarden' in Dutch

19. MTV contacted Weird Al and told him they would not air his "Don't Download This Song" video if references to filesharing programs were not in some way removed, so he "made the creative decision to bleep them out as obnoxiously as possible, so that there would be no mistake I was being censored."

20. Birds that live close to the ground have low pitched calls that burst with chatter, allowing the sound to cut through ground clutter effectively. Birds that live high in trees have long, high pitched calls, which is more suited for traveling long distances through the air.

The postage stamp of The Statue of Liberty depicts not the real statue in New York, but the replica in Las Vegas.

22. The guy getting punched in the face on Pantera's album Vulgar Display of Power got paid $300 in total for it. The reason was that it took 30 tries to get it just right.

23. Wearing a white t-shirt with a large letter "T" on the front is scientifically proven to make you 10% more attractive to women.

24. When actor Jackie Gleason needed $200 for a train ticket to New York (he was afraid of flying), he went to a local storekeeper and asked for a loan. When the shopkeeper asked for ID, Gleason took him to a movie theater to watch a movie he was in. Gleason got the loan and paid it back promptly.

25. The 19th-century biologist Sir John Lubbock experimented on ants by getting them drunk. He discovered that sober ants would carry their drunken ant comrades back to their nest if they were from the same colony, but they threw drunken strangers into the ditch.