33 Wise Random Facts That’ll Inspire You | Random List #82

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1Farmers Union Iced Coffee

Farmers Union Iced Coffee

Farmers Union Iced Coffee out-sells Coke in South Australia by almost three to one, making it the only place in the world where a milk drink is more popular than cola.


2. The word “magi” (or the singular “magus”) refers to followers of Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persian religion whose modern-day adherents included Freddie Mercury. “Magi” also gave rise to the “magic” and “magician,” as Zoroastrians were known to practice astrology and alchemy.


3. Garfield was never intended to be funny. It was a conscious (and very successful) effort to create a comic strip that would be marketable and make money, not laughs.


4. The idiom "Turning a blind eye" is attributed to Admiral Horatio Nelson who, in the midst of battle and given the permission to retreat by his superior, lifted the telescope to his eye (blinded from an earlier injury) and said "I really do not see the signal" and pressed on with the attack.


5. There is a Moon Treaty signed and ratified that gives the U.N. dominion over all "celestial bodies" including asteroids. The only countries to not sign the treaty all have active space programs (U.S., Russia, China).


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6António de Oliveira Salazar

António de Oliveira Salazar

After António de Oliveira Salazar, the dictator of Portugal suffered a brain hemorrhage, he was expected to die shortly after and was replaced. When he awoke, rather than tell him, his aides continually gave him fake papers to sign and he was made to believe he was still in power for the next two years of his life.


7. Nearly all the bread clips (those flat, U-shaped pieces of plastic) are produced by one family-owned company in Yakima, Washington. The Kwik Lok Corporation has an almost complete monopoly. The first clip was carved from a credit card. The company exports billions of bread clips a year.


8. Ella Slack is the stand-in for Queen Elizabeth II and takes her place for rehearsals of ‘televised engagements’. However, she’s not allowed to sit on the throne and has to ‘hover’ if she’s required to help frame certain shots.


9. There is a rare type of fluffy frost called hair ice that only forms on rotting wood. It baffled scientists for decades until 2015, when scientists determined that fungal activity was largely responsible for this kind of ice formation.


10. The last words of American murderer Robert Alton Harris were, “You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everyone dances with the grim reaper.”


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11Spanish Flu

Spanish Flu

The Spanish Flu is only referred to as such because Spain was not involved in World War 1. Its press did not censor the widespread deaths as other countries did to improve wartime morale.


12. A 2011 study showed that a group of 4-year-olds had a temporary lapse in cognitive function after watching 9 minutes of SpongeBob SquarePants.


13. In 1698, Peter The Great introduced the “Beard Tax” after he visited Western Europe and liked their fashion sense. Anyone with a beard was forced to pay tax for it and in turn given a beard token. If you were stopped by the police without the token they would immediately shave your face on sight.


14. After the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, the prime minister of Portugal sent a query to parishes around the country in order to objectively understand what happened. He is now regarded as a forerunner of modern seismological scientists.


15. In 2007, a man named Marcus Glindon in England counterfeited 14 million one pound coins.


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16Kublai Khan

Kublai Khan

Kublai Khan, although known as a warlord, promoted education and built over 20,000 public schools during his reign.


17. Cartoon characters are depicted as wearing gloves as it eliminated the complexity of drawing a well-defined hand back in the days when they had to manually draw a new drawing per frame for numerous frames.


18. The influenza virus that killed 50–100 million people worldwide in 1918 was genetically reconstructed from tissue samples in 2005. The virus is currently held at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia.


19. A New Jersey man named Francis LeRoy Henning minted hundreds of thousands of counterfeit nickels in the 1950s, some of which still exist in circulation today.


20. Christopher Nolan actually had IMAX cameras strapped to three Spitfire planes for the dogfight scenes in ‘Dunkirk.’ There are only a few dozen airworthy Spitfires left in the world and the three used in the film had no trouble performing complex maneuvers with the cameras mounted on them.


21Squirrels

Squirrels

In the 18th and the 19th century, squirrels were one of the most popular pets in America.


22. There is a man named Stephen Davies in England who makes prosthetics for children in his home shed for free.


23. In 1856, a schoolmaster after warning his students not to harm his tamed sparrow, strangled a student after class because the student stepped on it. The schoolmaster was later shot dead by the student's father.


24. The Phantom Time Hypothesis states that 297 years of history (614-911 A.D.) was completely made up and that we actually live in the 1700s.


25. The Yaghan people adapted to their very cold climate by having significantly higher metabolisms than other humans (average body temperatures 1 degree warmer than Europeans). They routinely went bare naked in the frigid cold of the far southern region of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.

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