34 Borderline Unbelievable Random Facts You’ll Wish You Knew Sooner | Random List #111

The infamous 18-1/2 minute gap in the Nixon tapes was not one gap, but five to nine separate erasures. The tape is preserved in the National Archives in the hope that we may someday recover what was erased.

2. The Hubble Space Telescope consumes less power than a kitchen kettle.

3. Israel is considered a global leader in medical cannabis research and innovation. Citizens caught using cannabis in public aren’t arrested but face fines, with the money collected from these fines going towards education and rehabilitation programs and it does not result in a criminal record.

4. Sesame Street introduced Julia, the first Sesame Street muppet with autism, to raise awareness about autism among children.

5. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. knew about defective RV tire that had caused deaths and continues to cover up the fact 20 years later using protective court orders.

Even though it's set in Detroit, the Robocop movie was actually filmed in Dallas. The only real shot of Detroit in the entire movie is the aerial shot in the opening, and that was a stock footage.

7. Cheese is high in tyramine, an amino acid linked to migraines. Monterey Jack and mozzarella have low tyramine, making them preferable substitutes for migraine sufferers.

8. In 1937, English novelist George Orwell fought in the Spanish civil war and was shot in the throat. There is now a square in Barcelona named after him called 'Plaça de George Orwell'. Ironically, the square was once one of the heaviest surveilled places in Spain.

9. Early Antarctic explorers used cocaine to cure snow blindness. Diarrhea was treated with "chalk ground up with opium." Colic (severe pain in abdomen) called for "tincture of cannabis" mixed with "tincture of chili pepper."

10. Big Bird is a Golden Condor. During an episode in the 11th season of Mr. Rogers, Big Bird was asked if he was related to a cassowary, and Big Bird noted to Mr. Rogers that he was a Golden Condor.

Once in 2009, a Northwest Airlines Flight 188 flew unresponsive for 100 miles past its destination because the pilots were busy with their laptops and didn’t hear air traffic controller’s radio calls.

12. In the Soviet Union, it was common for people to take their window wipers with them when they parked their car. Otherwise there was a chance of them being stolen because there were severe shortages of auto parts in USSR.

13. Small packets of beef jerky don’t have moisture absorbers, but are packed with iron particles which react with oxygen, removing the oxygen from the sealed jerky package, to prevent oxidation of fat.

14. Since February 23, 2016, the Bank of Canada has no gold reserves and is the only G7 nation that does not hold at least 100 tonnes of gold in its official reserves.

15. The Necco Wafers (formerly called ‘Hub Wafers’), are so old that they were carried by Union soldiers in the civil war as well as American soldiers in World War 2. Necco claims to be the oldest American candy company.

The largest known star in the existence of the universe, UY Scuti, is so big that if it swapped positions with our sun, it would easily engulf the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter.

17. In 1983, before they were famous, John Goodman and Megan Mullally were both in the same McDonalds commercial.

18. Many of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of the female reproductive system are anatomically wrong. Due to the rarity of female cadavers, he extrapolated from animals, with the resulting drawings of the female reproductive organs resembling those of animals more than humans.

19. Donkey Kong was not developed by Nintendo but rather a subcontracting company named Ikegami Tsushinki that also made Sega's Congo Bongo and Zaxxon. They successfully sued after Nintendo used their source code later to create Donkey Kong Jr. without them.

20. Tiger Woods PGA Tour '99 was recalled because the entire South Park pilot was used as dummy data on the disc and players discovered they could watch the episode by simply putting the game disc into a PC.

Frederick Forsyth's novel, The Dogs of War, is considered a textbook for mercenaries. His novel, Day of the Jackal, is considered a guide for assassins.

22. Jimi Hendrix’s national anthem performance at Woodstock 1969 was meant to be a protest to the Vietnam war. In the song, he makes sounds that are supposed to symbolize bombs dropping and screams of people.

23. Sushi is the vinegared rice, not the raw fish (or other) it comes with when you order it. Slice of raw fish is called Sashimi when it isn't accompanied with rice. It is nigiri if there's rice under the raw slices of fish.

24. The world's most difficult word to translate has been identifed as 'ilunga' from the Tshiluba language spoken in south-eastern DR Congo. It means "a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time".

25. During the final hours of the "Woodstock 99," a peace promotion organization handed out candles to the audience to create a candlelight vigil for the final hours of the festival. The audience used the candles to set fire to an audio tower and start bonfires.