40 Outstanding Random Facts You’ll Find Damn Interesting | Random List #286

Charles-Henri Sanson, who was the Master Executioner under King Louis XVI, was responsible for executing 2,918 people. In April of 1792, Sanson became the first executioner to use the guillotine. Less than a year later, he would use it on King Louis XVI himself during the French Revolution.

27. Adriana Caselotti only made six movies, but half of those movies became all-time classics: Snow White, The Wizard of Oz, and It’s a Wonderful Life.

28. Harry Melling who played Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films lost so much weight in the 3-year gap between the fifth and seventh films that he was nearly recast due to being “unrecognizable.” He had to wear a fat suit for his final appearance as the character.

29. Peanuts start out as flowers above ground. They then wilt, and the remaining peg goes back into the ground and turns into a peanut.

30. When taking an oath of office, Kentucky officials have to swear they have never fought a duel with deadly weapons.

José Arturo Castellanos Contreras was a Salvadoran army colonel, and diplomat who, while working as El Salvador’s Consul General for Geneva during World War 2 helped save up to 40,000 Jews and Central Europeans from Nazi persecution by providing them with false papers of Salvadoran nationality.

32. American singer Charley Pride couldn’t make the majors in baseball, so he did something even more improbable. He became the first black superstar in country music.

33. Before its release in 1993, Jurassic Park was shown to 200 London school children ages 8-11. They overwhelmingly enjoyed the film and no ill effects were reported from schools or parents, earning the film a "PG" rating in Britain. Meanwhile, the American rating for the movie was "PG-13."

34. Gino Bartali not only won the Tour de France twice but also saved 800 Jewish lives during World War 2 by smuggling counterfeit identity papers in his bike’s handlebars. 

35. No matter the language, we all exchange information at 39 bits/second, suggesting a biological limit. Languages that are lower information density are spoken fast (Spanish & Japanese) while denser languages are spoken more slowly (Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese).

There is a deepsea crab named after the metal band "Metallica" because its habitat contains all kinds of metals and to raise awareness of the effects of deepsea metal mining.

37. Falernian wine was the most renowned wine in ancient Rome. In Pompeii, a price list on the wall says “For one [coin] you can drink wine, For two you can drink the best, For four you can drink Falernian.”

38. In the 9th century A.D., a Viking named Halvdan carved his name on marble in Hagia Sophia. The runes he carved reads "Halvdan was here" which are still visible today. 

39. The “Pilgrim Army” was a group of 15000 crusaders who were blown off course to the holy land and made to stop in Portugal where the King convinced them to help defeat the Moors in return for anything they could plunder. The majority elected to retire in Lisbon afterward.

40. NASA’s upcoming Dragonfly mission (launching in the year 2027) will launch a nuclear-powered drone weighing half a ton to Saturn’s moon Titan. This nuclear drone will fly around on Titan, scouting its terrain while searching for complex and prebiotic chemistry.