42 Simply Ridiculous Random Facts That Are Absolutely True | Random List #273

The world's first known author was a woman named Enheduanna. She was a high priestess who composed hymns, prayers, psalms, and poetry more than 4000 years ago.

2. English speakers of Indian descent in South Africa say "Y'all" with the same meaning and pronunciation as southerners in the U.S. It is one of the few non-American instances of "y'all" in English and is attributed to coincidence.

3. Farmed salmon is actually naturally white in color. It's reddish-pink only because farmers add in a pigmenting compound to the fishes' food that changes the color of their flesh, which is more appealing to consumers.

4. While Mark Zuckerberg was critical overall of his portrayal in "The Social Network", he was impressed by the accuracy of his depicted wardrobe: "Like every single shirt and fleece they had in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece that I own."

5. President Andrew Jackson didn’t like paper money. This is because during his presidency, paper money was printed by individual banks, and their value could fluctuate greatly. Some of it was worthless, and Jackson felt bankers were abusing the citizenry.

Byzantine Emperor Justinian II was called "the slit-nosed". After he was deposed in 695 A.D., his nose was cut off, to prevent him from seeking the throne again. Tradition prevented mutilated people from Imperial rule. He replaced his nose with a solid golden prosthesis, and in 705 A.D. retook the throne.

7. One in three women in Europe inherited the receptor for progesterone from Neandertals—a gene variant associated with increased fertility, fewer bleedings during early pregnancy, fewer miscarriages. and birthing more children.

8. A 37-year-old opera singer named Frederick Federici died whilst performing the role of Mephistopheles in "Faust," on opening night. At the end of the opera, Mephistopheles sinks through a trapdoor in the stage, returning to hell. As Federici was lowered, he suffered a heart attack and died in minutes.

9. Many of the sports/ basketball phrases we use every day - "Slam Dunk", "Air Ball", "No Harm, No Foul", "Throw A Brick", "Garbage Time" etc, were coined by one man - Lakers announcer Chick Hearn.

10. Harold Harmsworth, the founder of The Daily Mail in the UK, openly supported fascism and regularly sent telegrams to Adolf Hitler describing him as “Adolf the great” while praising the “genius” of Mussolini.

Marian 'Joe' Carstairs who was born in 1900 in London dressed as a man, had tattoos, drove ambulances in World War 1 France, had affairs with Garbo & Dietrich, inherited a Standard Oil fortune, became a successful powerboat racer, employed 100s of Bahamians, died at 93, and was buried with a doll Lord Tod Wadley.

12. Tater tots were invented in 1953 to use up leftover slivers of cut-up potatoes.

13. Rapper Lil Wayne was kicked out of an anti-violence charity basketball game after he tried to fight a referee.

14. In Hindu astrology, someone born under the influence of Mars is said to have a "Mars defect", and such a bride will cause her husband's early death. To prevent this disaster, the bride will be married to a tree, an animal, or an object, and her subsequent marriage to a human will be a happy one.

15. After the samurai class was dismantled in Japan, some samurai became farmers. These samurai were given apple seedlings in the town of Aomori so that they could produce them. Aomori would later become Japan's apple capital.

The largest mass mailing in American history was the ‘Understanding AIDS’ pamphlet in 1988. 126 million pamphlets were sent out hoping to reach every household in the USA. It contained information to avoid AIDS and encouraged the reader not to fear day-to-day contact with people with AIDS.

17. Princess Diana was a member and patron for more than 100 charities, many of which are now supported by her two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry.

18. The Aztec noble class spoke in parallelisms, repeating a phrase in two different ways, and in difrasismo, words said in a metaphorical sense. Examples are "may we not die, may we not perish" and "The flower, the song" – meaning "poetry."

19. A Semordnilap (The Word Palindromes spelled backward) is a word that describes a word that spells a different word backward. Like the word "Stops" spells "Spots" backward.

20. Beaver colonies can occupy an area for 1000s of years. Lewis Henry Morgan observed and mapped beaver ponds in Michigan's Upper Peninsula in the 1800s and 150 years later 75% of the original dams and ponds were still there.

“Knotty pine” paneling was made popular in New England homes because ship captains requested that their ship quarters be well-outfitted with knot-free pine. Shipbuilders took the leftover knotty pine to use in their own homes.

22. Volkswagen was sued by the Czechoslovakian car maker Tatra before World War 2 because the KdF-Wagen (the original Beetle) was so similar to the Tatra 97. Porsche was willing to settle but Hitler said he would "would settle the matter." After Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, T97 production was stopped.

23. The 1947 British partition of India was driven by fear of civil war. Yet, in haste, borders went unannounced for days after Independence Day. As a result, Hindus didn't know if they would wake up one day in Pakistan, or Muslims in India. 15 million were displaced and over a million died in the chaos.

24. In 2004, the computer worm "Slammer" almost took down the entire internet in 15 minutes. The malware was very small (404 bytes) and once it infected a server it would send millions of copies to random IP addresses. It caused over $1 billion in damages and the creator has never been identified.

25. The study that was reported in saying “cheese is just as addictive as drugs” actually found no such thing. The dietician who made the questionable claim works for an advocacy group called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which pushes veganism and urges people to shun cheese.