44 Relaxing Random Facts To Read Before Bed | Random List #307

“Jazz” is statistically the hardest word to guess in hangman. It has to do with it being a short word, having only one vowel, and using “j” and “z,” letters that people rarely guess in hangman.

2. Fermilab used to clean its particle accelerators with a ferret named Felicia, who would run through the tubes with cleaning supplies attached and be rewarded with hamburger meat.

3. Queen Elizabeth once hid in a bush with her corgis to avoid talking to Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife.

4. Model Jennifer O'Neill was cast to star in Disney's, "The Black Hole" but was told she needed to cut her hair as it would be easier for scenes set in zero-g. She gave in, drinking wine during the haircut and leaving noticeably impaired. She lost the part after a serious car crash on the way home.

5. Naked Mole Rats speak in dialects unique to their colonies and will kill intruders with the wrong dialect.

Guy Fawkes was hung, gutted, and tortured for his plans. He was caught red-handed after an anonymous tip-off leading to his torture, which revealed co-conspirators. This was followed up by his execution and his body parts being paraded around London.

7. 61% of U.S troops killed in Vietnam were younger than 21 years old, most of whom were drafted.

8. In 1933, in a publicity stunt for a Mae West movie named "It ain't no Sin", a Hollywood Press Agent bought 50 parrots and had taught them to squawk "It ain't no sin!" Then the movie changed titles and the parrots were subsequently released in South America, still repeating "it ain't no sin."

9. Cheating on exams or any other assignment at the University of Virginia is punished by expulsion. There is no lesser punishment.

10. Until 1956 after the end of British rule, Egypt hadn’t been both fully independent and ruled by native Egyptians for 2500 years.

Before the British left New York City after the Revolution, they nailed the Union Jack to a greased flagpole as a final act of defiance. One American managed to scale the pole with nails and cleats and replace the flag with the Stars and Stripes. Reenacting this feat then became a holiday celebration.

12. Amazon Web Services offers a service called Snowmobile, where they will bring you a truck with 100 Petabytes worth of hard drives, copy your data, then drive it to its destination, bypassing the internet entirely. Transferring this much data over a 1Gbps line would take 20 years.

13. 63 years after its launch on March 17, 1958, Vanguard 1 is the oldest satellite still orbiting Earth. Weighing only 3.2 pounds and with a diameter of 6.5 inches, Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, derided it as "the grapefruit satellite."

14. During the Gulf War, U.S. troops dropped a 6,800 kg BLU-82 bomb as an act of psychological warfare against Iraqi troops. A British SAS unit that witnessed the explosion assumed that U.S.A. had used a nuclear weapon and radioed back to their headquarters, “Sir, the blokes have just nuked Kuwait!”

15. In June 2020, a team of researchers in Japan used a drone that shot pollen-dusted soap bubbles to pollinate a pear orchard; 95% of the flowers bore fruit, which was about the same success rate as hand-pollinating.

Michael Jackson suffered from severe insomnia and did not get any real sleep for 60 days prior to his death. Instead, his personal doctor had been putting him under general anesthesia every night.

17. Gorillas hum happy songs when they eat and if they are eating their favorite food, they sing even louder.

18. Mexico has a Ley Seca (no alcohol) tradition during elections to promote peace and order. They also hold elections on Sunday, allowing most voters to participate without worry of missing school or work.

19. BACA is a biker gang whose members will defend kids who have been abused or bullied, giving them their own vest, take them the school, and will even guard a house 24/7 to make sure the kids can sleep.

20. Sid Meier (of Sid Meier's Civilization and Sid Meier's Pirates!) began placing his name in the title of his games because of a suggestion made by Robin Williams in the 1980s.

The 1,500 Irish Defence Forces members that played the army in Braveheart were promised weekends off, but the shooting often ran over. One weekend, when Colonel McCorley ordered his men to march off the set, “Mel Gibson’s mouth dropped. He couldn’t say anything.”

22. An expedition to find the Niger River accidentally chose the Niger River as a starting point.

23. The boxer who beat Roy Jones Jr. at the 1988 Olympics in a controversial split decision wishes he had lost. Park Si-Hun was so traumatized by his contentious victory that he retired from boxing after the end of the games.

24. Beer bottles are brown as it blocks out the sun's rays and helps preserve the taste. A shortage of brown glass after the Second World War meant higher quality beer makers chose green to distinguish themselves from the companies using clear glass.

25. In 2005, JetBlue Flight 292 leaving from Los Angeles had to make an emergency landing due faulty landing gear. Before landing, they had to fly for a couple of hours to burn off its fuel in case of a fire when landing. This was broadcasted live on TV and the passengers onboard were able to watch it.