41 Random Facts You Won’t Believe Are True – Part 24

During the first live iPhone presentation, Steve Jobs had to frequently switch the phone to an identical one behind his desk because it would otherwise run out of RAM and crash.

2. The 90s hit "Macarena" is actually about a woman named Macarena who cheats on her boyfriend with his two friends while he's being drafted into the army.

3. Scrappy-Doo, widely considered to be one of the most hated characters in fiction, has not appeared in an animated Scooby-Doo production since 1988 due to audience backlash.

4. Yale university's class of '54 at their reunion raised $375,000 with the idea to invest it in a risky portfolio that grew 37% per year to $90 million, which they donated to the University.

5. The inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, has one regret: adding the double slash // to URLs. In retrospect, he says, it was totally unnecessary.

We produce a lot of salivae just before vomiting in order to protect our teeth from erosion due to the acidity of vomit.

7. Philip II (Father of Alexander the Great) threatened Sparta with "if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city.". The Spartans simply replied with "if.". Neither Philip nor Alexander attempted to capture the city.

8. There's a town in the Oklahoma panhandle named "Hooker" and its slogan is "It's a location, not a vocation".

9. Every night in Providence, Rhode Island, skyscrapers, tugboats, hotels, and police cars flash and blink their lights on and off at 8:30 to tell kids at children's hospitals good night.

10. While in middle-school, Bill Gates and Paul Allen had their computer privileges revoked for taking advantage of software glitches to obtain free computer time from the company that provided the computers. They were allowed back in the computer lab when they offered to debug the program.

There's a Battery in Oxford that's lasted 176 years and there's no telling when it will run out of energy.

12. Australian prime minister Harold Holt who served from 1966 to 1967, one day, while in office, went for a swim and just disappeared without a trace.

13. In 2013, a man named Harrison Odjegba Okene was found alive in an air pocket on a sunk ship after three days of no water, no food, and in pitch black.

14. In 2004, farmers in India used Pepsi and Coca Cola instead of pesticides because they were cheaper and got the job done just as well.

15. Canada's new Governor General-designate (Julie Payette) is an astronaut, spent time on the ISS, speaks 6 languages, did research at the IBM lab in Zurich, played piano and sang with several orchestras, and has helped make space robots.

When we get nervous, we overestimate how much other people notice our anxiety, due to the "Illusion of Transparency". Luckily, studies show that simply being aware of this cognitive bias can make you more confident.

17. Allegations of Walt Disney being Anti-Semitic are unfounded, as he regularly donated to Jewish charities, employed a large amount of Jewish employees, and none of his employees‍ ever accused him of making Anti-Semitic slurs.

18. A convenience store employee and his father stole a 5 million dollar lottery ticket, told the winner it was only worth $5,000, only paid him $4,000 and then pushed him out the door and locked it.

19. Bill Gates coyly defended his LSD use by saying 'I never missed a day of work.'

20. Mount Sunflower, the highest natural point in the state of Kansas, is a site on the plains which is "virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain."

The producers of Game of Thrones wrote an episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, "Flowers for Charlie."

22. A Mexican priest became a Lucha Libre wrestler named Fray Tormenta in order to raise money to support the orphanage he founded. When he retired, one of the children from the orphanage took up his mantle so that the legend of Fray Tormenta can live on.

23. George Lucas came back from shooting Star Wars in England to find Industrial Light & Magic only had 3 of the 365 shots completed yet had spent half of their $2 million. He was hospitalized for hypertension and vowed to never direct another film.

24. We get the word "orange" from the fruit, not vice versa, and that the color was called "yellow-red" before we discovered the fruit.

25. The famous scene from the film Heat, where De Niro's criminal and Pacino's detective talk face to face over coffee, was based on the true story of a Detective Adamson tracking down a criminal McCauley in the 1960s. The two met for coffee and had a conversation almost word for word as in the film.