50 Random Facts List #111

Since February 23, 2016, the Bank of Canada has no gold reserves and is the only G7 nation that does not hold at least 100 tonnes of gold in its official reserves.

27. The Necco Wafers (formerly called ‘Hub Wafers’), are so old that they were carried by Union soldiers in the civil war as well as American soldiers in World War 2. Necco claims to be the oldest American candy company.

28. The largest known star in the existence of the universe, UY Scuti, is so big that if it swapped positions with our sun, it would easily engulf the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter.

29. In 1983, before they were famous, John Goodman and Megan Mullally were both in the same McDonalds commercial.

30. Many of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of the female reproductive system are anatomically wrong. Due to the rarity of female cadavers, he extrapolated from animals, with the resulting drawings of the female reproductive organs resembling those of animals more than humans.

Donkey Kong was not developed by Nintendo but rather a subcontracting company named Ikegami Tsushinki that also made Sega's Congo Bongo and Zaxxon. They successfully sued after Nintendo used their source code later to create Donkey Kong Jr. without them.

32. Tiger Woods PGA Tour '99 was recalled because the entire South Park pilot was used as dummy data on the disc and players discovered they could watch the episode by simply putting the game disc into a PC.

33. Frederick Forsyth's novel, The Dogs of War, is considered a textbook for mercenaries. His novel, Day of the Jackal, is considered a guide for assassins.

34. Jimi Hendrix’s national anthem performance at Woodstock 1969 was meant to be a protest to the Vietnam war. In the song, he makes sounds that are supposed to symbolize bombs dropping and screams of people.

35. Sushi is the vinegared rice, not the raw fish (or other) it comes with when you order it. Slice of raw fish is called Sashimi when it isn't accompanied with rice. It is nigiri if there's rice under the raw slices of fish.

The world's most difficult word to translate has been identifed as 'ilunga' from the Tshiluba language spoken in south-eastern DR Congo. It means "a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time".

37. During the final hours of the "Woodstock 99," a peace promotion organization handed out candles to the audience to create a candlelight vigil for the final hours of the festival. The audience used the candles to set fire to an audio tower and start bonfires.

38. Women get more negatively affected from a breakup but make a much better recovery and come out stronger from the experience, while men take much longer to come to terms with the separation, never fully recover, and simply move on.

39. Ed Currie, the creator of the Carolina Reaper (one of the world's hottest pepper), donates half of his pepper harvest to cancer research as capsicum has proven to kill cancer cells.

40. The Australian school authorities once gave a standardized history exam asking students to analyze a painting of the Bolshevik Revolution that they had sourced from internet, not knowing that there was a giant robot photoshopped into the background. They later apologized, promising “new guidelines governing the use of the internet-sourced material in exams.”

Because of the musical "Hamilton", more people visited the grave of Alexander Hamilton in 2015 than in the previous 212 years since his death. Many of those visitors came having just seen the musical on Broadway, or en route to do so.

42. The Boltzmann Brain paradox is the idea that one day in the infinite age of the universe, a self aware entity will be created by thermal fluctuations that occur randomly in the universe.

43. Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, did not live to see the first human to land on the moon.

44. Hitler's perception of Americans as weak and sure to quickly give up in a war was in part shaped by the movie adaptation of Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” and its portrayal of downtrodden Okie farmers.

45. There are mysterious ancient stone cart tracks all over Malta, some of which disappear over cliffs and reappear at the bottom of the ocean.

The SR-71 Blackbird’s original name was supposed to be RS-71, but Lyndon Johnson messed it up during the announcement and called it the SR-71 and the name stuck.

47. The Diverging Diamond Interchange is a type of highway interchange in which the directional roadways of the non-freeway road switch over each other either temporarily using under/overpasses or traffic signals, making it simpler to enter and exit the freeway.

48. The US and Russian sections of the International Space Station use different shields to protect against orbital debris, and if the station is under threat, the crew all move to the Russian section because it is considered to be better protected.

49. In the 1880s, 20% percent of autopsies performed in Iceland revealed echinococcosis, a type of tapeworm that can be passed from dogs to humans, causing blindness and severe complications. As a result, the city of Reykjavik had a ban on keeping dogs as pets for decades.

50. In 1924, the Montreal Canadiens (Ice hockey team) stored the Stanley Cup in the trunk of their car. When they got a flat tire, they removed the cup, then drove off leaving the prized cup on a snowbank.