36 Random Magnificient Facts To Help You Overcome Boredom – Part 38

Aliens moving faster as you kill them in Space Invaders was a byproduct of the processor freeing up more memory as they could be rendered more quickly the fewer there were on screen. It was left in the game to make it more challenging.

2. The Price Is Right rigs the Plinko game for promotional ads using the fishing line so that the chip lands in the $10,000 slot. The wire was mistakenly left in place and a contestant dropped 3 consecutive chips before it was noticed. She was allowed to keep the money.

3. JRR Tolkien initially fell in love with his future wife named Edith Bratt at 16 years old. His guardian, a Catholic priest ordered him to not have any contact until he was 21. He obeyed and met her under a railroad viaduct and she broke up her engagement, converted to Catholicism and married Tolkien.

4. During World War 2, there was an Australian dog named Gunner whose hearing was so accurate that it could warn air force personnel of incoming Japanese planes 20 minutes before they came and before they showed up on the radar. He could also differentiate the sounds between allied and enemy planes.

5. Naloxone (Narcon) has became a mainstay of hospital emergency rooms and medical wards. It can be injected or sprayed up the nose and can stop/reverse a heroin overdose in under 2 minutes. It's so vital that the World Health Organization placed the drug on its list of essential medications in 1983.

Steve Jobs got a new Mercedes every 6 months because a car didn't need a license plate until it was 6 months old.

7. In 1982, a man named Clay Thompson died while vandalizing a saguaro cactus for fun. He shot the cactus repetitively and then went up to poke it to try to get it to fall over. Instead, the 500-pound saguaro arm fell and killed him.

8. Sweden is so good at recycling that, for several years, it has imported garbage from other countries to keep its recycling plants going.

9. The Federal Trade Commission once issued a cease and desist order to Campbell's Soup company for using marbles in their soup ads. The marbles were placed in the bottom of the soup to push the solid ingredients to the top, which was considered deceptive.

10. Although deaf schizophrenics who have never heard do report "hearing voices", they are not referring to true auditory hallucinations. Instead, communication comes via the mind's eye: visual hallucinations of moving lips, or disembodied hands and arms making sign language movements.

Genoa airport in Italy makes one exception to the 3 ounces of liquid rule - for pesto, which goes through a special pesto scanner.

12. Cristiano Ronaldo was asked to donate boots to raise funds for an ill child's surgery. Instead, he paid for the full cost of treatment.

13. Although park authorities deny it, Central Park officially has a population of 25 residents according to the 2010 census.

14. Portuguese soldiers used black swords in the Age of Discovery in order to not reflect the light and announce their presence on ships, avoiding also it's rusting when used near salt water.

15. Best Buy removed the fighting video game "Primal Rage" from its shelves after an Arizona woman complained that her 11-year-old son had faithfully portrayed one of the game's gorilla-like character's "golden shower/urination" fatality move.

In 2010, a group of Weight Watchers members gathered to see how much weight they had lost, only for the floor to collapse under their combined weight.

17. The Michelin Man's 'real' name is Bibendum, and the reason he's white is because he was created before carbon was added as a preservative and a strengthener to the basic rubber material. Before 1912, tires were a gray-white or light and translucent-beige color.

18. Arizona has a law called the "Stupid Motorist Law" that allows the state to charge drivers for their rescue if they ignore barricades and get stuck in flooded roadways.

19. The Plum Island Pink House is a house in which the wife of a divorcing couple forced her ex-husband to build a replica of their family home as part of the divorce settlement. She didn't specify the location, so he built it in the middle of a salt marsh and plumbed it solely with salt water. It's uninhabitable.

20. American sharpshooter Annie Oakley was such a great shooter that she could repeatedly split a playing card, edge-on, and put several more holes in it before it could touch the ground, while using a .22 caliber rifle, at 90 feet.

Ed Sheeran's childhood friend was struggling financially and asked him to put one of her songs on his then-nearly completed album "X". Instead, they wrote "Thinking Out Loud" together which was released as a single and hit #1. She'll never have to worry about money again.

22. 'The Mountain' actor named Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson from Game of Thrones beat the 1,000-year-old world record for taking 5 steps with a 10-meter log that weighed 1,430 lb.

23. It's forbidden to fly over Disneyland and you will be intercepted by fighter jets, just like near the White House Airspace.

24. Walt Disney helped the Army design a Mickey Mouse gas mask in the '40s to make chemical warfare less frightening to kids.

25. Smoking near an Apple device will void the warranty.