40 Impressive Random Facts That Made Us Seriously Curious – Part 277

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26William Franklin

William Franklin

William Franklin, the bastard son of Benjamin Franklin, was a Loyalist leader opposing the American Revolution. When Benjamin died, he only left his son some worthless land, stating in his will that, had the British won, he would've no wealth at all to give him.


27. Robert Wadlow, the world's tallest man, had over a ten-foot-long casket that weighed 1000 lbs. and required 16 pallbearers. His family ordered his casket entombed in concrete as they feared grave diggers.


28. Sarah Biffin was a Victorian English painter who was born without arms and legs. She learned to write, sew and paint with her mouth. Her miniature portraits at a traveling show impressed an Earl so much that he paid for her tutelage. She became very popular and even the Royal Family commissioned her work.


29. London not only has the "Big Ben" but also "Little Ben“, located at Victoria Station. It mimics the design of its big brother not far away at Westminster Bridge.


30. Edward the Black Prince (1330-1376) was regarded by his English contemporaries as a model of chivalry and one of the greatest knights of his age. He is, on the other hand, remembered in France for his well-documented brutality and the massacres he ordered.


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31Kunigami Shrine

Kunigami Shrine

Japan has a shrine for hemorrhoids called the Kunigami Shrine. Visitors can point their butts towards the butt-washing stone and recite a chant to cure or prevent hemorrhoids.


32. A study showed that plants have the potential to store memory. A plant species that would close up when touched was repeatedly dropped. At first, the plants closed on every drop but over time remained open because the drops did not harm them. They retained this memory even a month later.


33. Singapore Changi Airport has been rated the World's Best Airport by Skytrax for 8 consecutive years, the first airport to ever do so. It contains an indoor slide, butterfly garden, movie theater, and the world's tallest indoor waterfall.


34. Eugene Schieffelin hoped to introduce into North America every bird mentioned by Shakespeare. He imported starlings from England and released them in Manhattan in 1890 and 1891. Starlings soon started to drive native birds out of their habitats, ate massive amounts of crops, and spread disease.


35. The reason why the unicorn on the UK's royal coat of arms is chained, but the lion isn't, is that according to legend a free unicorn was a very dangerous animal.


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36Kiddo the Cat

Kiddo the Cat

A stowaway named Kiddo the Cat became the first feline to attempt to cross the Atlantic in an airship. His eventual howling led to chief engineer Melvin Vaniman making the first radio message from an aircraft in flight: “Roy, come and get this ---damn cat.”


37. Alexander Grothendieck, the greatest mathematician of the 20th century, became obsessed with the devil who he thought orchestrated any turmoil in the world. One such conviction was that Devil corrupted the numerically beautiful speed of light, from 300,000 km/sec to the irrational 298,779 km/sec.


38. Old books smell like vanilla due to the decomposition of a class of organic polymers called lignin into vanillin.


39. In 1930, the Indiana Bell telephone company shifted its eight-story Headquarters in downtown Indianapolis 152 feet and rotated it 90º over 34 days without interrupting any services in the building.


40. Vomiting up fecal contents is known as feculent vomiting. It is can occur when the bowel is obstructed and as the intestines try to contract, it pushes the feces back up the esophageal tract.

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