50 Random Facts List #113

American actor and voice actor Ronald Lee Ermey voiced all the Green Army Men in Toy Story 1 and 2.

2. Mohamed Bzeek, a Libyan-born Muslim living in Azusa, California, is a foster father who takes in only terminally ill children. Bzeek, who has been fostering such children since 1989, is the only foster parent in Los Angeles County who does this.

3. President Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder and refused to recognize Haiti after the Haitian Revolution. He imposed a trade embargo on them to ensure their economic failure, for fear that a successful slave revolt in the West Indies would inspire slaves in the United States.

4. Huy Fong Foods, Inc. which makes the Sriracha sauce is a billion dollar company, and one of the most recognizable hot sauce brands, has never advertised its products, instead relying on word of mouth.

5. In 1986, American singer Ray Charles started a foundation to help those with hearing disorders because while he did not believe his blindness was a handicapping, he believed it was handicapping to not be able to hear music.

In 2014, the company which makes the card game 'Cards against humanity' bought a remote island in Maine to preserve wildlife, which they named “Hawaii 2.”

7. The Atari 2600 console which was released back in the 1970s would now cost around $790 per unit when adjusted for inflation.

8. Hippies get their name from Hipsters, who were sarcastic, pot smoking 1940s jazz fans.

9. In 2017, a company in India dumping illegally waste into the Mumbai's Kasadi River was caught when the waste was making the local stray dogs turn blue.

10. Swiss company Algordanza takes cremated human remains and — under high heat and pressure that mimic conditions deep within the Earth — compresses them into diamonds. They have created up to 9 diamonds from a single person's remains.

Photons do not experience time. They "hit" something the same instant they are created, regardless of how far they travel, from their own perspective.

12. Neanderthals are often depicted as degenerate because the first Neanderthal skeleton found happened to have arthritis.

13. A cow can be tricked into nursing a calf not her own, by skinning her dead baby and putting the skin on another calf. This practice is called “grafting.”

14. Sideburns get their name from Ambrose Burnside, a former Union general and U.S. senator, who had extravagant whiskers.

15. Astronaut Christa McAuliffe was gifted with a $1 million life insurance policy a week before the Challenger disaster in honor of her being the first teacher in space.

Playing "pink noise" - the sound of uniform static - while sleeping has been found to improve sleep quality and also help memory.

17. There was a pigment used in early days of wallpaper making called Scheele's Green. If the wallpaper got moldy or damp, it released poisonous arsenic into the air. It is speculated that this was the cause of Napoleon's death as green was his favorite color and his walls were lined with green wallpaper.

18. Helen Keller wrote in favor of refusing life-saving medical procedures to infants with severe mental impairments or physical deformities, stating that their lives were not worthwhile and they would likely become criminals.

19. During the Winter War, the Finns used mannequins posing as officers to draw fire from Soviet snipers. The Finns would then return fire with the Lahti L-39, a 20 mm anti-tank rifle.

20. Black Bart was an outlaw of the 1800s who successfully robbed 28 stagecoaches and left this poem in one of them: “I’ve labored long and hard for bread / For honor, and for riches / But on my corns too long you've tread / You fine-haired sons of b*tches.”

Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical studies were completely illegal. During his time, dissection was completely outlawed unless one was a physician, which da Vinci was not.

22. Irish monks invented spacing between written words.

23. When the Malaysian Exploding Ant’s head explodes during its suicide attack, it spreads a poisonous and corrosive glue like liquid that entangles and immobilizes any nearby victims.

24. To pep herself up, Queen Victoria was addicted to cocaine infused chewing gum.

25. The average Mexican citizen works an average of 2,255 hours a year, while the average Danish citizen works only 1,410 hours per year.