48 Jolly Random Facts That’ll Quench Your Mental Thirst – Part 103

A polar bear won't set off an infrared motion detector.

27. Green smarties are strawberry flavored.

28. The punishment for theft in Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s rule was amputation of the right hand and a branding on the forehead. Doctors who performed cosmetic procedures to hide the brand had their right hand amputated and their forehead branded.

29. The guns on the HMS Belfast, the battleship moored on the Thames, are aimed at a service station in North London.

30. In 1999, following the Russian apartment bombings, 3 FSB agents were arrested for planting a live bomb in an apartment building. They were later released after the head of the FSB claimed it was an exercise.

The reason that Dippin' Dots ice cream which is made by flash freezing ice cream mix in liquid nitrogen is rarely sold in supermarkets is that it requires storage at temperatures below −40°F (−40°C), and supermarkets generally cannot provide such extreme cooling requirements.

32. During the Attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese pilot named Shigenori Nishikaichi crash-landed on the island of Ni'ihau (an island in Hawaii). With the help of Japanese-speaking residents, he terrorized the island before being killed.

33. In 2006, Judge Garland Ellis Burrell, Jr. ordered that items from Ted Kaczynski’s (Unabomber) cabin be sold at a “reasonably advertised Internet auction.” Bomb-making materials, such as diagrams for bombs, were excluded. The auction raised $232,000 which went towards restitution of Kaczynski’s victims.

34. The small pocket of blue jeans was originally designed to hold pocket watches. The pocket dates back to the old west. Cowboys kept their pocket watches on chains and they put the watch in the small pocket, to help protect it.

35. There is a military-only resort on Disney property in Florida that charges guests based on their rank.

A genetic condition named Myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy gives people increased muscle strength and twice the usual amount of muscle mass. There are no known related health issues. Those affected from it are intellectually normal.

37. Many shoe stores in the U.S. during the 1940's-70's had shoe-fitting fluoroscopes, which were essentially X-ray machines for the feet to see how well a person’s foot fit in the shoes they were considering buying.

38. Doctors in the early 1900s thought bicycles would turn women gay.

39. The reason currency in US is green in color because U.S. Bureau of Printing and Engraving had plenty of green ink, which was durable. The color green was also associated with stability.

40. Luciano Leggio, the former head of the Corleonesi Mafia clan, was first convicted at the age of 18 for stealing corn. As soon as he completed a six-month sentence, he murdered the man who had reported him to the police.

Film producer Carl Laemmle immigrated to USA in 1884. He started one of the first movie theaters in Chicago, challenged Thomas Edison’s monopoly on films, began advertising stars to increase their earnings, founded Universal Studios and sponsored hundreds of Jews to immigrate from Nazi Germany to USA.

42. The “Drinkable Book” turns dirty water clean. Not only is it an instruction manual on how to filter water but it also has removable pages that are coated in silver nanoparticles that can be used to filter unclean water itself.

43. The croissant is not really French. It was inspired by the Austrian kipfel that dates back to at least 1227.

44. Mark Twain was obsessed with technology, writing science fiction including 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court' which featured time travel. He also had a close personal friendship with Nikola Tesla and said: "a man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds".

45. Armageddon is a real place in Israel. It is a mountain named Megiddo that was misspelled in Greek translation to Armageddon. So everyone can visit Armageddon.

Modern Hard Disk Drives have read/write heads that float 4 to 5 nanometers above the surface of the disk while it spins. For scale, a human hair is 80,000-100,000 nm thick.

47. Making eye contact with an infant makes adults’ and babies’ brainwaves ‘get in sync’ with each other which is likely to support communication and learning according to researchers at the University of Cambridge.

48. St. Patrick was not Irish. Hailing originally from Wales, during his teens he was kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland to herd and tend sheep.