50 Random Facts List #108

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, but never tried to make an antibiotic out of it. It was not until a decade later that a man named Howard Florey found Fleming's little-known paper and realized the mold's potential. Florey's work is estimated to have saved up to 200,000,000 lives.

27. One of the most famous lines in movie history, "You're going to need a bigger boat" from 'Jaws' was actually an ad-lib on set. Furthermore, the audience screams at test screenings obscured the line, leading to a longer pause before hearing the line.

28. In 2017, Bud light sent a cease and desist letter to a small brewer who named their beer “Dilly Dilly,” referencing a nonsense phrase coined and trademarked for a series of Bud Light ads. The letter was written on a scroll and announced by a town crier.

29. In the United Kingdom, the April Fool's Day ends at noon.

30. There was a pristine version of the Apollo 11 moon landing footage at NASA for years, but around 1980 due to a data tape shortage they reused the tape for something else. This is the reason we only have a grainy version of the footage.

The Serpent Column, which the Greeks created in 478 B.C. to celebrate their victory over the Persians at Plataea, still exists and was made from the melted-down bronze from the Persian weapons.

32. The African elephant has the longest gestational period out of all mammals, with an average pregnancy lasting almost 2 years.

33. Tea is said to have been discovered in 2737 B.C. by a Chinese emperor named Shen Nung when some tea leaves accidentally blew into a pot of boiling water.

34. Insulin is the 6th most expensive liquid in the world at $9,400 per gallon with prices expected to rise in the future.

35. Ukraine lost 20% of its population in World War 2. This is proportionately more than any other nation that took part in the war.

The Vikings hunted narwhals for their “horns” (which are actually their teeth) and sold them to clueless European traders as “unicorn horns,” which Europeans thought had magical properties.

37. “Baker’s dozen” originated in the 1200s when King Henry III standardized bread loaf weights. A baker who sold skinny loafs could be beaten or thrown in jail. Bakers then began to throw in an extra loaf to cover the short fall.

38. Days are gradually getting longer. A current day is longer by about 1.7 milliseconds than it was a century ago.

39. Glossy paper is heavy because it is literally made of clay. The gloss is made using white clay to fill in the spaces between the fibers.

40. In 2017, an Irish golfer named Adam Rolston set up a 2,000 km golf hole across Mongolia. The hole was par 14,000 and took 80 days to finish. He finished the game 6,000 strokes over par.

August Busch IV, the former president and CEO of Anheuser-Busch, killed his passenger in an accident when he was 19. Although there were empty beer cans scattered around and he fled the scene, no charges were filed. The urine sample was lost and the blood sample was ‘mishandled.’

42. 35% of British adults still sleep with a teddy bear.

43. One popular account of the origin of the phrase "Milky Way" arises from the Ancient Greek myth of Hera (wife of Zeus) breastfeeding Heracles (also known as Hercules). Hercules fed so strongly Hera recoiled, spraying milk from her breast, creating the Milky Way.

44. The Brocken Spectre is an atmospheric phenomenon in which the sun casts a person’s shadow onto fog or clouds, making the shadow appear enormous, otherworldly, and ringed with a rainbow halo.

45. In 1950, over 1 million French citizens were native speakers of a Celtic language called Breton. Today there are less than 250,000 speakers of Breton. The language is isolated to the Brittany peninsula in Northwest France.

America is home to “Body Farms,” where corpses are just tossed out into nature to rot for scientists to study decomposition and forensics.

47. George Wallace was reelected as Governor of Alabama in the 1980's by winning over many black voters. He went on to then appoint over 160 African-Americans into positions of power in the state.

48. Four-legged herbivores such as cows and horses have "stay apparatus" in their legs, which are tendons and ligaments that allow them to remain standing with minimal muscular effort. While this allows them to doze while standing, but they can enter REM sleep and dream only while lying down.

49. In 2013, Facebook acquired Onavo VPN to track user's full online activity and app usage details. With this, they were able to tell that Instagram's Stories crippled Snapchat Stories even before Snapchat made it public.

50. Nintendo's shares skyrocketed when "Pokemon Go" was released in 2016, until investors realized they didn't actually make the game. Stock dropped 17% at one point, representing about $6.4 billion in value.