40 Electrifying Random Facts To Recharge Your Brain – Part 70

The Five golden rings in the Christmas Carol "The Twelve Days Of Christmas" may have originally referred to pheasants, rather than jewelry, so that the sequence of birds is uninterrupted.

2. In June 2016, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police seized one kilogram of carfentanil shipped from China in a box labeled "printer accessories". The shipment contained 50 million lethal doses of the drug, more than enough to wipe out the entire population of the country.

3. In the 1946 movie It's A Wonderful Life when the pharmacist hits young George Baily (Bob Anderson) in anger and blood comes out of the child's ear, that was not a special effect. The pharmacist really smacked him so hard that the child's ear started bleeding.

4. Iran isn't the name of a government entity. It's simply how the Persian people say the name of their country in Farsi (Iran's Official language) "Iran" is Farsi for "Persia" (Greek form) and they simply wanted people to stop using the Greek form.

5. S.S. Eastland became too top heavy, capsized and killed 846 people after adding lifeboats to meet federal requirements after the Titanic sunk.

The Japanese words for wrist and ankle literally translate into "hand neck" and "foot neck".

7. Dickens' A Christmas Carol is largely responsible for modern Christmas celebrations.

8. The song 'Die Eier Von Satan' by American Rock band Tool is just a recipe of a cookie read very aggressively auf Duetsche.

9. Christmas was banned in Boston from 1659 to 1681.

10. Ryan's Rule is a medical precedent in Queensland where, if a person feels their medical concerns are not being taken seriously, they can request a re-evaluation. This rule came about after a 3-year-old child died of a bacterial infection after a hospital doctor declined to perform blood tests.

Maroon 5 was banned from China after keyboardist Jesse Carmichael wished the Dalai Lama of Tibet a happy birthday on Twitter.

12. The oldest mummies in the world are turning into black slime. Over 100 Chinchorro mummies found near the Atacama Desert in Chile are turning gelatinous due to bacterial growth associated with increasing humidity. The mummies date to ~5000 B.C.

13. In order to circumvent a ban on shorts, Swedish male train drivers have started wearing skirts to work.

14. Australia's largest cattle ranch (Anna Creek Station) is slightly larger than Israel.

15. Scorsese's Wolf of Wall Street was funded by Riza Aziz who diverted $155 million from Malaysian wealth fund 1MDB economic development company. In addition, his step-father (Prime Minister Najib Razak) channeled $700 million into his personal account. 1MDB has no company address and was issued a $3 billion bond by Goldman Sachs.

Surveyors have found that the clock tower at the Palace of Westminster (Big Ben) has developed a tilt. Experts say even though the tilt is visible to the naked eye, at its current speed, it would take some 4,000 years to reach the angle of the Leaning Tower of PISA.

17. The tradition of putting Christmas lights up outside started in Denver, Colorado on Christmas Eve, 1914. D.D. Sturgeon, the founder of Sturgeon Electric, wanted to give his ill son some Christmas joy, so he wrapped his pine trees with electric bulbs, which were dipped in red and green paint.

18. Our weeks have 7 days because the ancient Babylonians had one day for each known celestial body: the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn.

19. Kim Peek, a savant who was the inspiration for the Rain Man movie, could read both pages of an open book at once, one page with one eye and the other page with the other eye.

20. Bangkok's real name is "Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit".

American showman PT Barnum bought a blind, elderly slave with a shrunken appearance and toured the country with her while claiming she was 161 years old and had breastfed George Washington when he was a baby. When she died, Barnam then sold her to a surgeon and had her autopsy performed live on Broadway.

22. Among OkCupid users, men ranked women's attractiveness in an almost perfectly even distribution and the majority as average. Women ranked 80% of men as worse looking than average, and all the site's male founders as "significantly worse looking."

23. The old man that fixes Woody in Toy Story 2 is named Geri and is actually a character from a previous Pixar short, Geri's Game.

24. The gene for having an extra finger is dominant opposed to the normal 5 fingers in each hand which is recessive.

25. The raven in It's A Wonderful Life was called Jimmy and starred in over 1000 films over a 20 year period.