36 Mind-Boggling Random Facts You Have Never Read | Random List #298

Chris McCandless's "Into the Wild" bus in Alaska was removed from Denali after tourists kept getting severely injured or dying while trying to visit it.

27. Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel died of tuberculosis at the age of 26 and did most of his major work in a span of about 7 years while living in poverty. The equivalent of the Nobel prize in the field of mathematics; the Abel Prize, is named after him.

28. There is another kind of Panda that is brown and super rare. Qinling panda is a subspecies of the giant panda and only inhabits in Qinling Mountains of China.

29. During World War 2 soldiers would keep photos of their loved ones under clear grips on their pistols. These were known as 'sweetheart grips' and soldiers made these grips themselves using plexiglass salvaged from downed aircraft.

30. Gladiators in Ancient Rome formed trade unions called "collegia" that would often pay for the funerals of fallen gladiators and take care of their families.

When relocating adult koalas to populate new areas of bush, the incoming koalas are fed a poo smoothie of local koala poo so that they would be able to digest local leaves.

32. Poe's Masque of the Red Death was inspired by a masquerade ball held in Paris during the height of a global cholera epidemic. Over 2000 attended, including a man dressed as the Personification of Cholera.

33. In 2000, a NASA plane accidentally flew over Mount Hekla, a.k.a., the Gateway to Hell in Iceland, resulting in the first-ever directly recorded plume measurements of sulfur dioxide and temperature readings taken from an actively erupting volcano.

34. Edward St. John was an Australian politician who threw away his political career in his maiden speech in 1967 when he took the opportunity to criticize his own party in order to restore the honor of a Naval Officer wrongly censured after a collision at sea.

35. During the persecution of English Catholics, Nicholas Owen built secret compartments called “priest holes” into Catholic houses to hide priests from being rounded up. 400 years later some may still be undiscovered since Owen was tortured to death for not giving up their locations.

The lifespan of the first generation of postal pilots was around 900 flight hours. The job was so dangerous that 35 of the first 40 pilots hired died in crashes, leading to the nickname 'The Suicide Club.'