35 Truly Credible Random Facts To Blow Your Mind | Random List #232

An “okta” is a unit equal to 1/8 of the sky. Cloud conditions are measured in oktas, so the scientific difference between “partly sunny” and “mostly cloudy” is 1 okta.

2. The guy who played the Xenomorph in ‘Alien’ was a 7’2” man from Nigeria named Bolanji Badejo. He was discovered by a member of Ridley Scott’s casting team by chance in a pub in Soho. His role as the Xenomorph was his only film credit ever.

3. David Letterman created a scholarship for the “academically average”, like himself. In order to be considered, students must submit a creative project, such as writing, research or interactive media.

4. European dragons are mostly featured as evil creatures, greedily hoarding gold, breathing fire on innocents, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. Asian dragons, however, are benevolent creatures, bringing good luck and prosperity wherever it goes.

5. Monty Python and the Holy Grail was originally planned to end with a massive battle between Arthur’s forces, the French knights, and the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog. This was scrapped because the movie didn’t have a big enough budget for it.

In 2017, a group of travel influencers called ‘High on Life’ were banned from all U.S. public lands. Their violations included driving an RV across the Bonneville Salt Flats, walking on Yellowstone’s hot springs, and affixing a rope swing to the Corona Arch. A year later, they fell off a waterfall in British Columbia and died.

7. As a teenager, Neil Degrasse Tyson walked people’s dogs and earned 50 cents per dog, per walk, two or three times a day. He saved up $200 and bought his first serious telescope at the age of 14.

8. A Canadian lawyer named Charles Vance Millar used his will for practical jokes. He gave a house to 3 men who hated each other, stocks in a brewery to preachers, shares of a racetrack to each ministers “except Spracklin, who shot a hotelkeeper”, and gave the rest to whoever had the most kids in 10 years.

9. Some of the founding fathers of the USA were deists. They believed there was a God who created our universe, but they also believed that he hasn’t interfered with it since its creation.

10. In Hiroshima, Japan, the Peace Flame has been burning continuously since it was lit in 1964 and will remain lit until all nuclear bombs on the planet are destroyed.

There is a Canadian TV anchor who translates all the English news into Inuktitut live on air. Igalaaq is the only Inuktitut supper hour TV program in the whole country where unilingual Inuktitut speakers have this one chance, for 30 minutes, to see someone speaking their language.

12. When the Red Army captured Hitler’s bunker on 2 May 1945, the only person they found alive was a mechanic named Johannes Hentschel. He had stayed behind after everyone else had either fled or committed suicide, to keep the field hospital in the building above supplied with water and electricity.

13. Godwin's law asserts that if an online discussion (regardless of topic) goes on for long enough, someone will inevitably compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or his deeds, at which point the discussion often ends.

14. Once the Civil War began, Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s plantation outside Washington DC was repurposed by the Lincoln administration to house a camp for escaped slaves. It contained a school, hospital, and cemetery, and it is now the site of Arlington National Cemetery.

15. Warner Bros canceled Home Alone because they didn’t want to spend $14.7 million on it. 21st Century Fox then continued its production and the film grossed $476 million worldwide.

As a joke, the Apple II release of “Karateka” had a full version of the game on the reverse side of the disk that rendered the game upside down prompting users to call support and ask why the game was upside down. They were told to “take the disk out, insert it right-side up, and reboot.”

17. The boots worn by the actors portraying American soldiers in Saving Private Ryan were made by the same company that supplied boots for American soldiers during the Second World War.

18. In 1979, a woman became ill on Space Mountain and couldn’t exit the rollercoaster. While waiting for help, she was accidentally sent on the ride a second time by a different set of employees. She slipped into a coma and died one week later.

19. During the “Smalls Lighthouse Tragedy” of 1801, 1 of the 2 men manning the lighthouse died in a freak accident. The other one went crazy watching the rotting corpse of his friend wave in a “beckoning” motion. As a result, lighthouse teams were changed to rosters of three men, which continued until the automation of British lighthouses in the 1980s.

20. About 70,000 years ago, a Red Dwarf star passed very close (in astronomical terms) to our Solar System. So close in fact, that it passed through the Solar System’s outer shell known as the Oort Cloud and nudged some Comets out of their orbits. It may have been visible to early Humans and Neanderthals.

Maryam Nawaz Sharif, the daughter of Pakistan’s ex-Prime Minister used Typeface Calibri Font to forge documents about illegal offshore companies. The documents were purportedly created in 2006. However, the font wasn’t publicly available to computer users worldwide until 2007.

22. During the filming of Quigley, actor Gary Busey demanded that Heaven be changed to reflect what he saw when he was there during his near-death experience. He then came to blows with another actor who had also had a near-death experience, over what Heaven actually looks like.

23. Yakuzas amputated pinkies for transgressions. There is a woman in Japan that handcrafts new pinkies for former members. They help reformed criminals regain a normal life. The fake tip, which lasts 5-10 years slides on to the existing stub like a lid on to a pen.

24. In the Middle Ages, a nun in a French convent inexplicably began to meow like a cat, shortly leading to the other nuns in the convent also meowing. Eventually, all the nuns would meow together for a certain period every day. This did not stop until the police threatened to whip the nuns.

25. A parrot named ‘Freddy Krueger’ was once caught in the crossfire during a drug raid and was blinded and burned, thus his namesake. Freddy recovered at a zoo where he was bitten by a snake yet survived. Later he was stolen by armed thieves. He came back to the zoo later but no one knows how.