41 Staggering Random Facts That’ll Knock You Off Your Feet – Part 173

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26Salt mine

Salt mine

The city of Detroit sits on top of a working salt mine, and that the mine has provided road salt for most of North America since 1910.


27. Despite being studied since its discovery in 1906, scientists have yet to rule out a germ origin for Alzheimer's disease. The infectious hypothesis could explain why neurosurgeons are twice and a half more likely to die from it than the general population.


28. Red tape was actually used to bind government documents and you had to literally cut through them to get stuff done. And you can buy pieces of US red tape from the National Archives.


29. The prize for the Val d'Isere downhill ski competition in 2005 was a cow. The organizers intended to trade the cow for a $5000, but Olympian Lindsey Vonn declined and kept the cow. It was later found to be worth $20,000.


30. The term "silhouette" has a political backstory. King Louis XV's General of Finances, Étienne de Silhouette, had a reputation for being cheap. Shadow portraits became popular during his tenure and got named after him due to being very cheap to make compared to commissioning a painting of oneself.


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31Black sheep

Black sheep

'A black sheep' is unlucky because its wool could not be dyed.


32. The last Saturday of each month in Rwanda is Umuganda day, which means 'coming together in common purpose' when adult Rwandans are required to join in countrywide clean-up tasks like picking up litter.


33. A Wisconsin man named Don Gorske has eaten over 30,000 Big Mac hamburgers over 46 years, averaging 2 per day. He has only missed 8 days in those 46 years, including when his mother died as she requested he forgoes the burger in her memory.


34. In English Criminal Law, you cannot kill a person for food, even out of necessity. In 1884, three sailors were stuck out at sea and killed the weakest one for food. After being rescued, they were found guilty of murder. This set a legal precedent which continues today.


35. Chip pans are the single largest cause of fires in the United Kingdom, causing over 12,000 each year. Some cities even offer chip pan 'amnesty' programs where you can trade in your outdated deep-sided chip pan for a deep-fryer.


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36The Residents

The Residents

The avant-garde band The Residents recorded an album of 40 one-minute songs, then purchased 40 one-minute advertising slots on San Francisco's most popular Top-40 radio station and had the station play each track over the course of three days.


37. Marie Curie invented a mobile x-ray machine for use on the front line during World War 1 and taught 150 women to use them. She also believed her radiation exposure during this time caused her terminal illness, not radium.


38. An indigenous Mexican woman named María Lorena ramírez from the Tarahumara community won a 50km race featuring 500 runners from 12 countries while wearing a skirt and sandals made from tire rubber.


39. A Dutch resistance fighter named Jack Van Der Geest was one of eight people to escape from Buchenwald. Pretending to be dead, at 80 lbs, he hid in a pile of bodies for 11 hours before killing a Nazi, stealing his uniform and a motorcycle to escape.


40. The band Kansas got their record deal by posting signs that said free beer when they knew a producer was coming to their show. They had a huge crowd and the producer thought that if they could draw a crowd like that he should sign them.


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41Band DEVO

Band DEVO

The band DEVO's name comes from the concept of DE-eVOlution; the idea that humanity has begun to regress to a more primitive herd-like mentality and become more dysfunctional.

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