38 Simple Random Facts About Everything | Random List #164

The "Daughter from California" syndrome is a situation in which a long-lost distant relative arrives at the hospital at which a dying elderly relative is being treated, and insists on aggressive measures to prolong the patient's life, or otherwise challenges the care the patient is being given.

27. The United Nations officially use British English instead of American English.

28. The Titanic was hauling over 3000 mail sacks during its maiden voyage. When it began to flood, the five postal clerks on board tried to save as much mail as they could by hauling the sacks on deck. All five of the postal clerks died in the sinking.

29. Buzz Aldrin is the oldest person to ever reach the South Pole, visiting it in November 2016 at the age of 86.

30. Alheira de Mirandela is a kosher bread sausage which was invented in Portugal to help hide Jews from the Spanish Inquisition. Jews had fled to Portugal from Spain and pretended to be Catholic. Catholic homes hung preserved meat sausages from the rafters, and Jews were conspicuous for their missing sausages.

NYC’s first public WiFi kiosks had to shut off browser access because so many people were using them to watch porn.

32. The Iberian Ribbed Newt has a special defense mechanism. When in danger, it juts its pointed ribs out so that they pierce its skin, making it appear hard to eat. Once the predator backs off, the skin regenerates.

33. General Robert E. Lee had a pet hen during the Civil War. She would lay an egg every day under his bed but was eventually killed by the General's cook, which greatly upset him.

34. We originally discovered how digestion work from a man named Alexis St. Martin who developed a fistula in his stomach after a gunshot wound. The physician placed bits of food on a spoon and inserted them into the man’s stomach through the fistula in order to observe the process of digestion.

35. A Maine restaurant named Lost Kitchen will only take reservations by mail and not a phone, email or app after Boston Globe’s food critic once declared it “best Maine restaurant you may never be able to eat at.” Your sole option is snail-mailing them a letter with your name and contact information.

In 1993, Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn paid kidnapper Ray Marion Cuddy $1.45 million in $100 bills for the return of his daughter. Cuddy was caught soon after trying to buy a Ferrari Testarossa with $100 bills.

37. During the filming of Planet Earth II, the filmmakers went out of their way to save the lost baby turtles despite the convention that, as Sir David Attenborough said, "If you’re a film cameraman you are trained, as it were, to be the observer, a non-participant."

38. Tomochichi, the renown Native American Chief and friend to the English was given a monument and burial site at the center of Savannah, GA's Wright Square, only to have it destroyed and replaced with a monument to a railroad man in 1883.