36 Noteworthy Random Facts To Help You Keep Your Mind Sharp | Random List #133

Every year in ancient Athens, citizens could vote to banish any person from the city for 10 years.

2. As a 2 1/2-year-old girl, Michelle Funk fell into a creek in Salt Lake City and was submerged for 66 minutes. When rescuers arrived she didn't have a pulse and was not breathing. Three hours after that, her blood was warmed. When it reached 77ºF. She came back to life and is still living to this day.

3. Studies have shown that women in poor countries with worse health tend to be attracted more to masculine looking men, while women in rich countries prefer more feminine looking men.

4. When oxygen first developed on Earth, it wiped out nearly 99% of all life.

5. About 15% of snails survive digestion by birds and are found alive in their droppings, potentially leading to the spread of snail populations.

License plates in the Canadian Northwest Territories are shaped like polar bears.

7. When Arnold Schwarzenegger turned down the planned sequel to Commando, it was reworked to star Bruce Willis and was retitled Die Hard.

8. Table knives are rounded instead of pointed to prevent people from picking their teeth and from stabbing each other.

9. The German word Backpfeifengesicht means a face that cries out for a fist in it.

10. Honey badgers emit smelly, suffocating secretions from its anal glands to fumigate hives, causing bees to flee and leave their honey for the honey badger.

An analysis of Justin Bieber's Twitter followers found that around 50% of them are probably fake. The criteria for determining if an account was fake included whether it was used to tweet phrases such as "diet," "make money" and "work from home."

12. Cats are one of the only animals to domesticate themselves and approached humans on their own terms.

13. When bitten by caterpillars, plants send chemical SOS signals to parasitic wasps that attack the caterpillars.

14. During World War 2, a German U-boat (German submarine U-1206) sank due to a toilet malfunction.

15. During 1916 rising in Dublin, the British and Irish Troops fighting at St. Stephen's Green held daily ceasefires to allow the park-keeper feed the ducks that lived there.

Through a series of mistranslated texts, the Christian Church unwittingly accepted the Buddha as a Christian saint in the Middle Ages.

17. An Australian physicist named Mark Oliphant was responsible for the discovery of Tritium & Helium-3, conducted the first nuclear fusion experiment and convinced the Americans an atomic bomb was feasible, thus beginning the Manhattan Project.

18. The original score for Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was written by Alex North, but Kubrick didn't like it and switched at the last minute. No one told North, who showed up at the film's premiere only to be devastated when none of his music was used.

19. During the Italian invasion of France, 9 French soldiers defended the Pont Saint Louis against 5000 Italians for 10 days, of which 700 Italians were killed or injured. Eventually, an armistice was agreed.

20. In 2012, Italian doctors saved the life of a 16-month-old boy by implanting the world's smallest artificial heart to keep the infant alive until a donor was found for a transplant.

At normal speed, it takes a fully loaded supertanker/oil tanker approximately 20 minutes to stop. Therefore they cut their engines 15 miles away from the dock.

22. Craisins are not dried cranberries (like raisins are dried grapes). They are in fact discarded cranberry husks re-infused with cranberry juice.

23. The water between India and Sri Lanka is only 3-30 feet deep and was purportedly passable on foot until 1480 A.D. when a cyclone moved some sand around.

24. Beethoven actually intended many of his most famous pieces (including the 5th Symphony) to be played much faster than they are generally always played. So fast, in fact, that many professional orchestras are unable to successfully play them.

25. The last meal is based on a superstition from pre-modern Europe. By accepting the last meal, the condemned was believed to forgive the executioner, the judge, and witness(es). This would prevent the condemned from returning as a ghost to haunt those responsible for their killing.