39 Surprising Random Facts No One Told You – Part 265

Barcodes were first invented to track railroad cars traveling across the country in the 1960s. A colored barcode was attached to steel plates on the side of train cars and scanned as they entered and exited railroad facilities.

27. There is an equation to estimate how quickly a real conspiracy theory would reveal itself. The more people involved the quicker the truth comes out. According to this equation, if the Moon landing was really faked, it would have been revealed in just under 4 years.

28. Oymyakon in Russia is the coldest village on earth. The lowest temperature recorded here was in January 1924 of -71.2°C (-96.2°F). It is known as “The Pole of the Cold”. Food here includes the frozen raw Arctic fish, white salmon, whitefish and frozen raw horse liver, which is considered to be a delicacy.

29. Pandora's Box is a mistranslation. In the original story of Pandora, the container was actually a large storage jar, meaning we should be saying "Pandora's Jar."

30. Women are naturally more affected by alcohol than men because they don't produce an enzyme in their stomachs that starts metabolization early as men do.

Most people now think Oreos are vegan, but they’re not because they have cross-contact with milk.

32. In August 2020, a group of scientists from the University College, London set a new world record for the fastest ever broadband speed at 178Tbps. That’s almost 3 million times faster than the fastest conventional broadband speeds.

33. A chicken can be hypnotized, or put into a trance by drawing a line along the ground with a stick or a finger, starting at the beak and extending in front of the chicken. If the chicken is hypnotized in this manner, it will continue to stare at the line, remaining immobile for up to 30 minutes.

34. The Australian Aboriginal flag is the only flag in the world that is copyrighted and ‘owned’ by a single (Aboriginal) individual who leased the royalties to a corporation who are now suing Aboriginal businesses for using images and/or depictions of the flag.

35. Joseph Grew, who was the US ambassador to Japan during the lead-up to World War 2, heard rumors in in January 1941 in Tokyo that the Japanese were preparing a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in case of a break with the US. When Grew alerted Washington, his warnings were ignored.

There are multiple replicas of the White House, built mostly by private citizens, throughout the United States, and two in Iran and China (the Chinese White House includes a replica of Mount Rushmore as well).

37. The average number of stars we can see with the naked eye is around 10000. This number is only the 0.000004% of all stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

38. Pro wrestler Brutus Beefcake caused an Anthrax scare by leaving a bag of cocaine in the Boston Subway back in 2004.

39. Industrialist George Pullman was buried in a lead-lined mahogany coffin sealed in a subterranean reinforced concrete cube. After the national Pullman Strike failed, his family feared strikers would defile his gravesite in retaliation.