33 Leading Random Facts That’ll Liberate Your Mind – Part 227

Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright invented the condition “drapetomania” (the urge to run away from captivity). He practiced in the United States in the 1850s, and couldn’t understand African slaves’ desire to flee the ‘paradise’ of captivity. So he made up a term for it.

27. In the Hobbit movies, Smaug is guarding 16,646,250 metric tons of gold, and it would be worth approximately 676 trillion USD.

28. Actress Glynis Johns originally thought she was being offered the role of Mary Poppins. To soften the blow of telling her she was being cast as Mrs. Banks, Walt Disney announced she’d get her own song, then quickly called the film’s songwriters, who adapted a deleted song into Sister Suffragette.

29. After a Taliban fighter successfully shot down an American CH-47D Chinook, he bragged about it over his radio. Signals Intelligence was able to determine who had made the call and after only 2 days, an F-16, a C-130, and two Apache Gunships killed him and 5 others using their combined firepower.

30. Für Elise, one of Beethoven’s most popular compositions, was not published during his lifetime. It was only discovered in 1867, 40 years after his death.

Redoshi was a woman who is believed to have been the last survivor of the transatlantic slave trade. She was captured in 1860 in West Africa at the age of 12 and she worked on a plantation in Alabama. She died in 1937 and lived long enough to become acquainted with people active in the civil rights movement.

32. From 1983-85, there was a huge crash in the Video games industry. Market saturation was a factor, with too many competing consoles & games. Revenues went from $3.2 billion to $100 million, a 97% drop. Despite NES’s later success, the crash ended the 80’s generation of console gaming in the US.

33. In the traditional version of ‘The Frog Prince’ story, the frog was not transformed by a kiss, but by being thrown angrily by the Princess, with all her strength, against a wall.