50 Random Facts List #112

Of the United States' 2.9 million female high school athletes, only 3% of them are cheerleaders, yet cheerleading accounts for nearly 65% of all catastrophic injuries in girls' high school athletics and carries the highest rate of catastrophic injuries in sports.

2. Hugh Jackman never knew wolverines were real animals and he therefore studied wolves in preparation for the iconic superhero role of Wolverine.

3. A child is 16 times safer riding to school in a school bus than in a family car.

4. In 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt accidentally ran into a naked Winston Churchill one day. When Roosevelt apologized Churchill said, “The Prime Minister of Great Britain has nothing to hide from the President of the United States.”

5. After only 73 years of separation, the Korean language spoken in the North and South has diverged so much that 45% of North Korean defectors have trouble understanding South Koreans and 1% can't understand South Koreans at all.

In 2029, on the Friday of April 13th, an asteroid more than 1,000 feet wide will pass by Earth closer than the moon. It will easily be observed with the naked eye.

7. The most popular prison currency in USA is no longer cigarettes, but ramen noodles.

8. The city of Bruges enjoyed almost 400 years of prosperity due to a single storm in 1134 that opened up a natural channel that allowed sea trade. It lost its prestige when the channel got blocked again in the 1500s.

9. 1 out of every 160 New Zealanders was a part of the production of The Lord of the Rings films.

10. The “Magic Eight” plants are inherently Native American that were given to the world and didn’t exist anywhere outside of America before 1491. They are corn, beans, squash, chili, tomato, potato, vanilla, and cacao.

The famous 'Pony Express' that was vital in sending mail from east to west during the wild 1800's was actually a failed venture that bled money and lasted only a mere 19 months.

12. In 1945, a British Indian Army soldier named Fazal Din was impaled by the sword of a Japanese officer. He pulled out the sword, killed the officer who stabbed him and another enemy soldier, destroyed an entire enemy position, and walked 25 yards with a hole in his chest to deliver his report. He was taken to the Regimental Aid Post, but he did not survive.

13. ESPN anchors Keith Olberman and Dan Patrick always made sure to announce the results of the NASCAR driver Dick Trickle because they thought his name was funny. Trickle had a hole drilled into his helmet so that he could smoke cigarettes during races, and won rookie of the year at 48 years old.

14. During the entire month of December in 2017, Moscow experienced only 6 minutes of sunlight total.

15. Chichen Itza was constructed so that on the spring and autumn equinox it created the image of a snake slithering down the pyramid to honor the Mayan deity Kukulan, the Feathered Serpent.

Sesame Street's Oscar the Grouch has been performed by the same original Muppeteer (Caroll Spinney) since 1969.

17. Latin abbreviations e.g doesn't stand for "example given", it stands for "exempli gratia" (for example) and i.e stands for "id est" (in other words), and they're not interchangeable.

18. In 2016, when a Baptist church in Texas put an anti-beer advertisement in the newspaper calling craft beer “the devil’s craft,” listing excerpts of 10 different bible verses as a warning to those who drink booze. According to the ad, you could die in a coma or lose your kingdom. Avoiding booze, on the other hand, could result in you becoming “great in the sight of the Lord.” A local brewery accepted it as a $1 off coupon.

19. The word “Good” replaced an old Germanic word “Bat,” which is why the comparative forms are better and best.

20. The Duracell Bunny promotes battery everywhere in the world, except in USA and Canada where Energizer holds the trademarks to a “battery bunny.”

Because the Space Shuttle was so hard to land (it was nicknamed "the flying brick"), shuttle crews trained in a modified Gulfstream with its main landing gears down, its engines in reverse, and its left hand side windows covered.

22. The fade-out at the end of Holst's Neptune was achieved by slowly closing the door on a female choir as they sang in another room.

23. Coins (originally made from precious metals) have ridges in them to prevent people from shaving down the edges to sell those shavings and use the devalued coins to their original value.

24. Spain brought back so much Aztec gold that it caused massive inflation and crashed the economy of Europe.

25. Friday the 13th is the most common day of the week for the 13th to fall on.