41 Popular Random Facts To Keep Your Brain Busy | Random List #77

North Korea still owes Sweden €300 million for 1000 stolen Volvos 40 years ago.

2. Daniel Day-Lewis, on receiving his 2008 Oscar presented by Helen Mirren (who won an Oscar for playing the Queen,) said: "That's the closest I'll come to ever getting a knighthood." He was knighted 6 years later.

3. James Watson (co-discoverer of DNA) decided to auction off his Nobel prize medal in view of his diminished income, for $4.1 million. The medal was subsequently returned to Watson by the purchaser, Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov.

4. The phrase "eat the rich" is attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Philosopher), who is reported to have once said, "When the people have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich."

5. A man named Ken Rex McElroy was shot to death in plain view of 30-45 people in a small town. No one called an ambulance. Elroy was such a bully that even 30 years later no one will say who did it.

When the stunt team tried to flip James Bond’s Aston Martin DBS in ‘Casino Royale,’ they found the car too stable to be overturned by an 18” ramp. In their last attempt, they fitted the DBS with a gas cannon and ended up rolling the car a total of 7 times, accidentally setting a new world record.

7. Scottish fold cats are banned from the UK's pedigree cat registry because a genetic mutation that makes their ears folded and their faces so cute also causes distortion of their limb bone shapes and severe painful arthritis.

8. Matt LeBlanc dislocated his shoulder during the filming of an episode of Friends, where the audience was made up of Pepsi contest winners. The set was shut down meaning Warner Brothers had to fly the winners home and then back out for another episode.

9. A 2016 study found that the Thunder Mountain roller coaster at Disney World reliably makes people pass kidney stones.

10. After a group sued the CIA to release files related to El Salvadorian war crimes, its office was broken into and most of their data were stolen.

The 1992 Olympics US basketball team (the "Dream Team") won all of their games by an average of 44 points. They have been called "the most dominant squad ever assembled in any sport."

12. A contractor won a tender to rebuild part of the MacArthur Maze interchange in San Francisco with a bid of just over $876,000 - about a third of the projected cost. By completing the rebuild more than a month ahead of schedule, the contractor pocketed a $5 million bonus.

13. When the issue of witch trials arose at Charlemagne's Council of Frankfurt in 794 A.D., he had his bishops call the belief in witchcraft superstitious, ordering death penalties for anyone who burned witches. Incidentally, he had founded the first universities since the fall of Rome.

14. In 1969 Forrest Parry, an IBM engineer had the idea to affix magnetic tape to a plastic card. Every adhesive failed. He went home frustrated. His wife was ironing when he walked in. She suggested he fuse the tape onto the card with the iron. It was a success, and the magstripe card was born.

15. The producers of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' rejected Tim Curry's audition for Judge Doom because he was "too terrifying."

Benjamin Franklin disliked the bald eagle as a symbol of America, calling it "a bird of bad moral character", and instead preferred the turkey, calling it "a Bird of Courage" who "would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards"

17. There was once a phone booth in the middle of the Mojave desert that was demolished because it became famous on the internet.

18. The Indian government commissioned a 2-hour Bollywood feature film called "Toilet - Ek Prem Katha", designed to help eradicate the practice of public defecation.

19. One of the first winners of the Miss USA pageant (Mary Leona Gage) was stripped of her title when it was revealed that she was married and had children as being a wife and mother were against contest rules.

20. In England and Wales, deaths caused by willingly taking "unreasonable" risks aren't called accidents, they're called "misadventures."

Sue Finley (Engineer) who is 80 is the longest-serving female employee at NASA. She has a role in nearly every US unmanned space probe, and some missions of other nations.

22. Cattle ranches have been replacing 10 to 50% of cattle feed with the rejected gummy worms and fruit loops from manufacturers to save money, and they've been doing this for years.

23. Lobster used to be considered low-quality food that was eaten by the poor, and was served in prisons to the inmates.

24. Sarah Winchester, the widow of the founder the Winchester Company, built a confusing mansion to ward off the spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles. At its zenith, the house consisted of over 200 rooms, 10,000 windows, 47 fireplaces, 2,000 doors, several trapdoors, and multiple spy holes.

25. George H.W. Bush is the longest living president in US history.