44 Sensational Random Facts That’ll Tingle Your Senses | Random List #39

After surviving a year-long experiment on an isolated island for a British reality TV show (Eden[2016]), 10 contestants learned that the show had been canceled 4 months into production.

2. In 1990, a pilot named Captain Timothy Lancaster was sucked out of the cockpit of a passenger jet. A crew member held on to his body until landing, at which point they discovered he had survived.

3. In 2002, a fake sequel to Harry Potter appeared in China with the title "Harry Potter and Bao Zuolong." The book consists of the text of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit with names changed to those of Harry Potter characters.

4. When Three Six Mafia beat out Dolly Parton to win the 2006 Academy Award for Best Original Song, Dolly was thrilled, and personally sent a congratulatory letter, "We're proud of you guys, and I'm just glad that the Oscar came back to Tennessee one way or another!"

5. The Simpsons character "Edna Krabappel" was retired after Emmy Award-winning voice actress Marcia Wallace died in 2013. To acknowledged her death, the chalkboard in the opening sequence was changed to read a single "We'll really miss you Mrs. K".

English sailors on the HMS Dolphin in 1766 discovered that native women on islands would trade sex for iron, and began pulling nails out, causing loss of the ship's structural integrity.

7. The apples you buy in the grocery store are 5-12 months old. They are stored in a special low temperature, low oxygen (2%) environment, which preserves the nutritional content of the fruit.

8. North Korea is sitting on 6-10 trillion dollars worth of minerals but it can't access them due to lack of technology and equipment.

9. An officially recommended solution to a common problem with the Apple 3 was to "lift the computer two inches and drop it".

10. While filming Armageddon, Ben Affleck asked Michael Bay why they would train oil drillers as astronauts instead of the opposite to which Michael Bay told him to 'Shut the f*ck up'.

Katie Holmes' father negotiated a prenuptial agreement for her that reportedly filled five bankers’ boxes. Because of it, when Katie Holmes made her bombshell announcement that she was divorcing Tom Cruise, the case was able to be resolved in a mere 11 days.

12. Tom Cruise split with all 3 of his wives when they were 33.

13. A day before 9/11, George Carlin recorded a live show for an album that was titled 'I Kinda Like It When a Lotta People Die" which was shelved due to the events of the next day. The title was later planned to be re-used for a special in 2004 but was again discarded due to Hurricane Katrina.

14. Jewish ballerina Franceska Mann in 1943 while being forced to disrobe at Auschwitz for delousing, distracted an SS guard, stole his pistol and shot him dead.

15. There was a prison warden named John Whitley so loved that when he retired, 100 inmates pooled together their money to throw him a party.

The $4 billion nuclear-powered supercarrier "USS Ronald Reagan" has an unlimited range distance of up to 20-25 years, powered by two A4W Reactors.

17. There was some controversy over the inclusion of Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B. Goode' on the Voyager Golden Record. Carl Sagan was told that rock music was adolescent. Sagan responded, "There are a lot of adolescents on the planet."

18. The Cali Cartel murdered so many people and dumped their bodies in the Cauca River that the local municipality was eventually bankrupt by the cost of recovering corpses and conducting autopsies.

19. In 2012, Drake had his security team threaten a tattoo artist in his shop, while Drake sat in the car outside.

20. Woodie Guthrie' copywriters claim to "This Land is Your Land" was for 28 years and stated, "anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern.” Today multiple organizations claim copyright for the song.

Humans can generally detect their parents, children, and siblings (but not spouses, half-siblings, and stepchildren/step-parents) by smell, and females prefer sexual partners with a different smell than their own. Scientists believe this is an evolved defense against incest.

22. Alcatraz was the only federal prison at the time to offer hot-water showers for its inmates because the prison staff felt the inmates would find the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay almost impossible to withstand during an escape attempt.

23. Iceland is extremely protective of their language. Instead of loaning words from other languages, they repurpose old ones. The telephone is 'Simi', meaning thread, a jet plane is 'Thota', meaning to zoom and the word for computer, 'tölva' translates to number priestess or numbers witch.

24. A Roman Mile was defined as 1,000 paces. Armies would leave mile markers every 1,000 steps as they marched. As a result, well-fed armies marching at a fast pace marked longer miles.

25. The Walt Disney Company is the largest consumer of fireworks in the world and the second largest purchaser of explosive devices, right behind the U.S. military.