50 Random Facts List #105

In Japan, letting a sumo wrestler make your baby cry is considered good luck.

27. Napoleon Bonaparte struggled to learn English, and some of his attempts were saved. One such attempt read, “Since sixt week j learn the Englich and j do not any progress.”

28. Many fire departments, including the San Francisco and Florida, still prefer wooden ladders because they are non-conductors of electricity, the best natural insulator against heat, and only burn on the outside while the center of wood remains solid and strong.

29. In 2013, a man named Malcolm Myatt had a stroke that made him lose the ability to feel sad.

30. A woman named Clara Brown was born as a slave in Virginia, who after receiving her freedom went on to start a laundry business, became the owner of mines in Colorado during the gold rush, and even traveled to Kansas to help the freed slaves build communities.

During the 2013 elections in the Maldives, a coconut was detained on the suspicion of 'vote-rigging' through the use of black magic. A magician was called in and established that the coconut was innocent.

32. There is a theme park named Diggerland Construction Theme Park in West Berlin, New Jersey where you can operate real heavy machinery for fun.

33. Guugu Yimithirr is an aboriginal language that doesn’t have words for egocentric/relative directions like “left and right.” Rather, its speakers are trained to keep track of pure cardinal directions. For example, they say “north leg” when referring to the left leg of an eastward facing person.

34. Some 9th-century Scottish nuns literally cut off their noses and upper lips in order to make themselves too grotesque for invading Viking pirates to plunder (rape) them.

35. 65% of Brits admitted to falsely claiming to have read a classic book in order to impress someone, with “Nineteen eighty-four” by George Orwell being the most popular with 42% of respondents having lied about reading it.

In 2005, a company named SeaCode wanted to anchor a cruise ship three miles off the coast of Los Angeles, and fill it with up to 600 foreign programmers. The idea was to eliminate visa restrictions and avoid U.S. labor laws.

37. Bernard Vonnegut won an Ig Nobel prize for determining that the ability of a tornado to pluck the feathers from a chicken is not a good method of estimating its wind speed.

38. William Donovan was the only person to have received all four of the United States' highest awards: The Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Security Medal. Donovan was also awarded the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts.

39. Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev died the same day as Stalin in 1953. Millions attended Stalin's funeral, but only 40 attended for Prokofiev's. A musical periodical noted his death on page 116, with pages 1 to 115 devoted to Stalin. Flowers were so scarce in Moscow that Prokofiev's family used cuttings from houseplants.

40. Nigeria's population is expected to not only surpass the US' population by the end of 2050 but to also to become the third most populous country by the end of the century.

In 1962, Marilyn Monroe left most of her estate to her acting coach Lee Strasberg. When Strasberg died in 1982, his wife Anna, who had never known Monroe, inherited her estate. In 1999, she auctioned off Monroe's personal belongings for $14 million.

42. The shortest run for a TV series was 11 minutes. In 1969, a sketch show called “Turn-On”, by the creator of Laugh-In was deemed so risqué that during the 1st commercial break of the 1st episode, the network announced that it would no longer play the show and instead aired organ music over a black screen.

43. Peter Jackson made Elijah Wood perform the final shoot for Frodo in “Return of The King” many more times than actually necessary because he couldn't bear to say goodbye.

44. Rob Lowe, Charlie Sheen, Robert Downey Jr., and Sean Penn all went to the same school (Santa Monica High School) together.

45. The longest river in Antarctica is the Onyx River. It's 20 miles long and flows away from the ocean.

Patients who suffered from aphasia, the inability to express speech, can start to produce words by singing. This is because aphasia results from damages to the left hemisphere of the brain, while singing uses the right hemisphere.

47. A small triangle in New York City about 27x25x27 inches was not accounted for in an eminent domain seizure in 1914. The owner installed a small mosaic which said "PROPERTY OF THE HESS ESTATE WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN DEDICATED FOR PUBLIC PURPOSES." It is still there today.

48. On average, cats who are allowed to roam outdoors often don't live to the age of five. Cats who are always kept safely indoors can live to be 20 years old (or more).

49. English comedian John Cleese has a garbage dump named Mt. Cleese in New Zealand after him. It was done entirely out of spite.

50. In 2017, a woman asked Tinder for her data. They sent her 800 pages of her "deepest, darkest secrets."