50 Random Facts List #139

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1Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

When Benjamin Franklin was a kid, he used a kite to drag himself across ponds. He said it gave him "the greatest pleasure imaginable."


2. Cats cannot taste anything sweet. Instead, they can taste ATP, the biomolecule that supplies energy within living cells.


3. All humans have a magnetic bone (Ethmoid bone) in their upper sinus, at the point thought of as the third eye.


4. In the 17th century, pirates operated democracies (before any traditional western powers) and even had a system of checks and balances. Also, they had a form of disability insurance.


5. A Norwegian rockslide (approximately 8000 years ago) is believed to have created a tsunami so powerful that it turned Britain from a European peninsula into an island.


Latest FactRepublic Video:
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6Big Mac sauce recipe

Big Mac sauce recipe

McDonald's Canada published the Big Mac sauce recipe and other secrets on their Youtube channel and even teaches how to replicate their flagship burger.


7. An Eagle Scout who joins the US Army is automatically promoted to Private First Class.


8. Stand-up comedian Demetri Martin worked as a White House intern during the Clinton administration.


9. There are thought to be 100,000 uncharted mountains under the sea.


10. Pope Francis worked briefly as a chemical technician and nightclub bouncer before entering the seminary.


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11B.A.S.E. jumping

B.A.S.E. jumping

It isn't "base jumping", but rather B.A.S.E. jumping. It refers to the four categories of fixed objects from which one can jump: building, antenna, span, and Earth (cliff).


12. In 1929, a tower named Sugarloaf Key Bat Tower was built in Florida Kеys to control mosquitos. It was filled with bats, which promptly flew away, never to return.


13. The only difference between Tylenol Cold and Tylenol Flu is the box. They have exactly the same medical ingredients.


14. Hall of fame boxer, Sugar Ray Robinson once backed out of a fight because he had a dream that he was going to kill his opponent in the ring. After a priest and a minister convinced him to fight, Robinson went into the ring and killed his opponent, Jimmy Doyle in the fight.


15. The chains that you can see hanging under school buses and trucks are there to provide traction in snow. With the flip of a switch, the chains will lower automatically and the centrifugal force sends the chains into action.


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16Netflix

Netflix

Netflix monitors what is being illegally downloaded on BitTorrent and other pirate sites in order to work out what shows they ought to try and purchase.


17. Nicolas Cage won China's 'Best Global Actor' award in 2013.


18. A Bosnian man named Amir Vehabovic faked his own death including forging a death certificate and bribing undertakers, just to see who would come to his funeral. Only his mother showed up.


19. A Japanese stock trader named Takashi Kotegawa turned $13,600 into $156 million over 8 years and he still "eats cup ramen for almost all of his meals."


20. The waffled style ice cream cone, hamburgers, hot dogs, iced tea, cotton candy, and Dr. Pepper, were all first introduced to mass audiences or popularized at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.


21Jams

Jams

Jams are made from fruit, while jellies are made from juice. Preserves have chunks of fruit, conserves have dried fruit or nuts, and marmalades have peel and pulp. Fruit butter is slowly cooked to a smooth consistency.


22. Yang Yuanqing (Lenovo's CEO) received a $3 million bonus as a reward for record profits, which he in-turn redistributed to about 10,000 Lenovo's employees. He did the same thing again in 2013.


23. John Swartzwelder, a writer for the Simpsons used to write episodes while sitting in a booth at a coffee shop, "drinking copious amounts of coffee and smoking endless cigarettes." When California passed an anti-smoking law, he bought the diner booth and installed it in his house.


24. "Strawberries" and "peaches" in Quaker Instant Oatmeal are actually flavored dehydrated apples. The "blueberries" are flavored dried figs.


25. A Colombian drug trafficker named Carlos Lehder bought himself an island in the Bahamas where he put an airstrip which controlled the drugs coming in from South America and entering the United States. He became so wealthy that he offered to pay Colombia's foreign debt for amnesty.

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Number three is incorrect. There is no magnetic bone in the human body. If the ethmoid bone was magnetic then it would vibrate and move during an MRI. Possibly sucked out from the high magnetic force.

    886
  2. I think this is what they’re referring to in this excerpt from a 1983 issue of Nature magazine:

    “Such magnetic material, often identified as magnetite, has been discovered in bees, homing pigeons, dolphins and various other organisms, including man. A variety of hypotheses for the use of magnetite in magnetic field detection have been proposed. We report here that bones from the region of the sphenoid/ethmoid sinus complex of humans are magnetic and contain deposits of ferric iron.”

    I think they just mean there are magnetic deposits in the bones in the sinus region.

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