44 Random Facts That’ll Make You Feel Instantly Smarter | Random List #170

In 1958, filmmaker William Castle came up with one of the most famous movie marketing stunts of all time. Upon purchasing a ticket to the Movie “Macabre” you were also given a $1,000 life insurance policy. If you died of fright during the film, the film promised to pay out to your heirs.

27. A male grey wolf, dubbed OR-7 or Journey, migrated more than 1000 miles in 2011, alone through Oregon and California in search of a mate.

28. If you clap your hands at the base of a Chichen Itza pyramid, it makes a “bird” sound.

29. The Legend of the Christmas Spider is an Eastern European folktale explains the tinsel on Christmas trees. According to the story, a poor widow couldn’t afford to decorate her tree. A spider covered it in cobwebs overnight and morning sunlight turned the webs into gold and silver. The family then never lived in poverty again.

30. The raised reflectors in between lanes on the highway also indicate direction. Normally they reflect white or yellow but if they appear red, it’s because you are going the wrong way.

There is a public high school named James Madison High School in Brooklyn that produced 5 Nobel Prize winners, 3 US Senators, 1 Supreme Court Judge and numerous other scientists, artists, and entertainers.

32. If a tail shed by a Tokay gecko as a decoy was not eaten by the chasing predator (and the lizard gets away too), the lizard would return to eat its own tail. Turns out the shed tail is a great source of fat to regain the energy lost in its getaway.

33. ‘Shturmovshchina’ is a Russian term for working frantically to meet a deadline after having not done anything for a month.

34. Shaq (Shaquille O’Neal) is an electronic music DJ, and goes by the name 'DJ Deisel.' He put out an album in 1993, which went platinum. He did spend most of 1992-2011 on the basketball court, but Shaq also recorded four more studio albums and one compilation album.

35. Americans eat 100 acres of pizza every day. That’s 350 slices every second.

It takes four or five generations of monarch butterflies to complete the annual migration from Mexico to northern USA/Canada in the spring but in the fall a single "super generation" completes the entire 3,000-mile journey.

37. A 6th-grade student named Hunter Scott did a research project on the USS Indianapolis in 1997 which eventually led to the exoneration of Captain Charles B McVay, who had widely been held responsible for the sinking of the ship in 1945 by Japanese forces. McVay committed suicide in 1968.

38. In 2018, 12 camels were disqualified from a Saudi beauty pageant when a veterinarian was caught injecting their noses, lips, and jaw with botox to make them more attractive.

39. In 2017, astronomers detected 100 Earths' worth of gold being forged in space. They revealed the first-ever detection of two neutron stars colliding in space. "You smash these two things together at one-third the speed of light, and that's how you make gold," said astronomer Duncan Brown.

40. There is a Guinness world record for "greatest robbery of a government", currently held by the dictator of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda. It is estimated that they have embezzled up to $10 billion of which only $860 million have been recovered.

In 2016, a Sri Lankan church service printed the rap lyrics for “Hail Mary” by Tupac accidentally instead of the actual prayer.

42. In 2016, a 104-year-old man named Jack Reynolds became the oldest person to get a tattoo, and a year later at 105-years-old, he became the oldest person to ride a rollercoaster.

43. Toyota used to be called Toyoda but in 1936 the company decided for a new name held a competition and got over 27000 entries. Toyota was chosen because the number of strokes to write Toyota in Japanese (eight) was thought to bring luck and prosperity.

44. Female Greenland sharks reach sexual maturity at the age of 150.