39 Useless Random Facts Too Entertaining For Words | Random List #285

The Battle of Adwa in 1896 saw Ethiopia win a decisive victory against Italy, securing Ethiopia's independence for another 40 years. In that period Ethiopia was hailed as the only surviving African state to defeat a European colonial power in an open battle.

27. Queen Elizabeth's grandfather, King George V, was euthanized by his physician. The physician wrote in his journal that he euthanized the King so that his death would be announced in the morning newspapers, rather than the "less appropriate evening journals." 

28. Mel Gibson and Liam Neeson were largely considered to play James Bond in the movie "Goldeneye". Neeson turned it down because he wasn't interested in action films at the time and Gibson was too busy with his project "Braveheart" despite being recommended by Sean Connery. 

29. The novel ‘Finnegans Wake’ by James Joyce is so incomprehensible that no two plot summaries made have ever agreed with each other. Some have even said any attempt to work out the plot is impossible and a waste of time.

30. In Bugatti's world record video of the Chiron going from 0-400kmph-0, the one-shot scene of the car accelerating was achieved by simply using another Bugatti Chiron as the camera car because nothing else on set was fast enough to record the shot.

Gertrude Temple, Shirley Temple's mother tried to make her childhood as normal as possible. She asked the parents of Shirley's friends to not let their children see her films so they wouldn't treat her differently, and she withheld all of Shirley's fan mail until she was much older. 

32. The term "420" was coined by five students in 1971 at San Rafael High School to signal a meetup at 4:20 p.m. by the campus’ statue of chemist Louis Pasteur to take a hit. They chose that specific time because extracurricular activities had usually ended by then.

33. In 1987, an engineer used a new computer program “rwall” to send a message to his university server. Instead, the program broadcasted the message to every user on the internet—including the Pentagon.

34. A 3600-year-old ancient Egyptian papyrus is the oldest known surgical text and contains the earliest recorded use of the word “brain” and suggests using raw meat to stop bleeding.

35. Russians eat ice cream in the winter to be warm.

Despite flopping massively, Grease 2 inspired an Indian remake (Premaloka). While Bollywood didn't make a remake of the original Grease, instead only focusing on the sequel, the movie became so successful the state of Karnataka had to grant a public leave day so people could watch the movie.

37. In 2008, a German actor named Daniel Hoevels accidentally cut his own throat on stage in a “suicide scene” when he was given a real knife by mistake.

38. Spies can eavesdrop on a conversation from hundreds of feet away, just by watching a light bulb’s vibrations through a telescope.

39. Santa was skinny for most of his existence. In 1863, cartoonist Thomas Nast began drawing him with a huge stomach. Both the skinny and fat versions of Santa existed into the 1930s, when Coca Cola used a fat Santa in their advertisings, forever cementing that image in pop culture.