44 Enigmatic Random Facts You Never Learned in School | Random List #81

It took architect Christopher Wren 35 years to complete London's St. Paul's Cathedral. After he died 12 years later in 1723, he was entombed inside, and Wren's son placed a dedication nearby, which contains the words "Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you."

2. Dogs are one of the few species other than humans that can express empathy.

3. Neil Harbisson is a man with Achromatopsia (total colorblindness) who understands color with an antenna implanted in his skull that sends vibrations to his inner ear. He's also the first person to be recognized as a cyborg by the government.

4. Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye and Dr. Darrell Cass, both pediatric surgeons, removed a baby from a womb to cut out a tumor, placed the baby back and several weeks later the baby was born healthy.

5. On a mission to the International Space Station in January 2015, scientists tested the regenerative properties of planarian worms in zero gravity. One specimen actually grew a second head through spontaneous regeneration and when researchers tried amputating it, both heads grew back.

The scene with Morgan Freeman throwing a baseball in ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ took over 9 hours to shoot. Freeman didn’t complain once throughout the entire ordeal, showed up the next day with his arm in a sling, and continued shooting.

7. While leaving Italy during a tour, there was a bomb scare on David Bowie's plane, forcing them to return to the airport. They later discovered that the threat had been a ruse by the Chief of Police, who wanted Bowie's autograph.

8. Rosalind Franklin is the unsung hero of DNA research. Her X-ray Crystallography allowed her colleagues Watson and Crick to accurately characterize the double helix. Many believe she should’ve shared in their Nobel prize.

9. In 2016, a teenage hacker named Jacob Ajit figured out how to get free data on his phone, simply by visiting any URL containing "/speedtest".

10. 90% of Chinese teenagers and young adults suffer from myopia (short-sightedness). It was 10-20% 60 years ago.

Keanu Reeves came to the aid of Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer when she first moved to Los Angeles and was stranded on the side of the road.

12. French is an official language in 29 countries which makes it 2nd to English in terms of official language status.

13. Our bodies, when healthy, produce 1 to 1.5 liters of mucus every day. Most of it trickles down our throat unnoticed.

14. 36% of Asians have Alcohol Flush Reaction. They are more probable to get cancer from drinking alcohol as well as it causing more minor symptoms such as nausea, headache, and discomfort.

15. George R.R. Martin is a big fan of football, but not of Coach Belichick and the Patriots. In "A Dance with Dragons", he even references the 2007 Superbowl where the Patriots fell after a perfect season to the Giants, naming a character "Belichio" who gets eaten by giants.

The late Richard Jolly, a British Army surgeon in the Falklands conflict, saved every life under his care, both British and Argentine. He was the only man decorated by both Britain and Argentina for his services in the war.

17. Human saliva contains a magical chemical compound called Opiorphin, a painkiller six times more powerful than Morphine.

18. Ben Affleck, a Boston Red Sox fan, caused the production of Gone Girl to shut down for 4 days because he refused to wear a New York Yankees cap on screen.

19. In 2004, WB aired a spoof TV show called Superstar USA. The premise was to find the worst singer, unknown to the contestants who were lied to believe they would win a recording career. It was finally revealed to the “winner” (Jamie Foss) that she was, in fact, the worst singer, in front of a live audience.

20. A retired electrical engineer named Bruce Campbell had an old Boeing 727 delivered to the woods near Portland, Oregon and converted it to his home where he lives full time.

The United States has five times more heliports than any other country, and about as many heliports as every other country in the world combined.

22. Leafcutter ants do not actually eat the leaves they cut, instead, they use them to fuel their fungus-based agriculture.

23. Lake Okeechobee, despite being Florida's largest freshwater lake and covering an area of 730 square miles, has an average depth of just 9 feet.

24. A Krasue is a Southeast Asian creature of folklore. The entity appears as the floating head of a beautiful girl but has internal organs hanging out below the neck. It floats through the night dragging its entrails and is said to eat both humans and animals. It drinks blood and eats organs.

25. Moon rock given to Holland by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin tested to be petrified wood.