36 Truly Odd Random Facts You’ll Have A Hard Time Believing | Random List #34

Between 200-1200s AD, Inuit and Vikings colonized Greenland multiple times, but they often missed the other and found the ruins of the other's attempt. First contact finally happened in the 1200s, with Inuits colonizing the Vikings.

2. Ants make up 15% of all terrestrial animal biomass, and there are 10 thousand trillion ants on the planet.

3. Elvis Presley once handed Alice Cooper one of his guns and asked him to point it at him to show off his karate skills. Cooper later said that he genuinely wanted to pull the trigger to do something legendary with his life, but Elvis knocked the gun out of his hand and pinned him before he could fire.

4. Due to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, the Nobel Committee refused to give the Nobel Peace Prize that year because there was “no suitable living candidate.” The Prize cannot be given to deceased candidates. That way Gandhi's place on the list was silently but respectfully left open.

5. In 2012, Walmart held a contest, in which the rapper Pitbull would perform in a Walmart with the most likes on its FB page. After the #ExilePitbull Twitter campaign, the shop in the remote island town of Kodiak, Alaska, ended up winning.

When the Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow stars during World War 2, it backfired. Doing so increased sympathy for the Jews, who were (contrary to Nazi propaganda) obviously not responsible for how badly the war was going. People began tipping hats to Jews as a symbol of anti-German resistance.

7. When 20th-century archaeologist Leonard Woolley excavated the temple at Ur (Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum), he found rows of neatly arranged artifacts of varying ages accompanied by inscriptions describing them: a 2500-year-old archaeological museum.

8. Forensic lip readers have analyzed silent footage from World War 1 and were able to reconstruct conversations that were previously thought to be lost in time.

9. After the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 13% of the US people were in favor of "killing off" all Japanese people. And after Japan surrendered, 22.7% of Americans wished more atomic bombs had been dropped.

10. A man named Christopher Knight probably holds the record for the most burglaries committed. He was a hermit who lived in the Maine woods and avoided human contact for almost 30 years.

A one pound onion has 191 calories, a blooming onion from Outback Steakhouse has 1954 calories.

12. Sesame Street has an Incarceration Tool Kit which assists parents and family with explaining prison to children.

13. In the early 20th Century, a surgical antiseptic was distilled and sold as a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. It was then re-marketed as what we now know as Listerine.

14. A group of women navigated canvas and plywood planes at night to drop 23,000 tons of bombs over invading German armies in World War 2. Their stealthy swooshing sounds led them to be known as the Night Witches.

15. Tanya Savicheva was a young girl trapped in the Seige of Leningrad. She kept a diary of the names of each family member that died, ending with a final entry for herself: "The Savichevas are dead Everyone is dead Only Tanya is left"

Starboard means "steer" board, which is the side of the steering oar on the right side since most people are right-handed. Naturally, in that case, the left-side will be where you dock with the "Port".

17. England used to have a "Window tax". People refused to disclose how much money they made, considering it an invasion of privacy - so you would be charged based on how many windows your house had. In retaliation, people bricked up their windows, which you can still see today.

18. When Robert Knievel was in jail, his cellmate's name was William "Awful" Knofel. When the jailer went to check on them he stated: "Well look who we have here, Awful Knofel and Evil Knievel." Thus the legend of Evel Knievel was born.

19. The only reason we know about Onfime, a boy from the 13th century is because his handwriting lessons were found on pieces of birch.

20. In the U.S. 42.6 million adults age 45 and older are chronically lonely.

Sportscaster Bob Costas jokingly promised Kirby Puckett he would name his first child Kirby if Puckett was batting over .350 when the child was born. Kirby hit over .350 but the child had already been named. He reminded Costas and the birth certificate was changed to "Keith Michael Kirby Costas"

22. An expedition to the Titanic accidentally recovered "a wedding band and part of a human finger", confirming that human remains still exist on the wreck.

23. Tara Strong, the voice actress on Powerpuff Girls, Rugrats, Teen Titans, Hello Kitty, Ultimate Spider Man, Princess Mononoke, and much more, was given a visa into the US as an "Alien of Extraordinary Ability."

24. There's a huge illegal industry that salvages old shipwrecks that predate nuclear testing to get steel untainted by atmospheric radiation.

25. Panspermia is a hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by meteoroids, asteroids, spacecraft etc. in form of extremophile types of bacteria. If met with ideal conditions on a new planet's surfaces, the organisms become active and the process of evolution begins.