50 Random Facts List #147

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26Kal Penn

Kal Penn

Kal Penn, the comedian that played “Kumar” in the “Harold and Kumar” movies became the Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Engagement in 2009.


27. Geoffrey Tandy, a cryptogamist (algae specialist) who was mistakenly hired by Bletchley Park, significantly contributed to breaking the Enigma cipher, utilizing his expertise to preserve otherwise unsalvageable codebooks from a torpedoed U-boat.


28. Due to alcohol's faster evaporation rate, the famous Drinking Bird Toy will eagerly drink whiskey twice as fast as water.


29. Saint Nicholas, the basis for Santa Claus, was the patron saint of prostitutes, sailors, and repentant thieves, among other things.


30. American actress Cher donated 180,000 bottles of water to Flint residents after their water was discovered unsafe due to lead contamination.


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31Scooby Doo

Scooby Doo

The phrase "And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids!" Was never said throughout the entire original run of Scooby Doo. Also, the phrase "Meddling kids" was only used 3 times.


32. A button-up shirt refers to any shirt that buttons up the front. A button-down shirt refers to the collar of a button-up shirt. If the collar can be fastened to the shirt via buttons, then it’s a button-down shirt.


33. J. K. Rowling wrote a short 800-word prequel to Harry Potter for a charity auction in 2008. 13 authors were asked to write an original work for the auction, and Rowling's piece sold for more than all the other writer's works combined at 25,000 pounds alone.


34. The Two Towers musical score wasn't even nominated for an Academy Award because of a rule prohibiting scores to sequels that re-uses themes from the previous film, a rule that was then specifically changed to allow Return of the King to be nominated (and win).


35. Prolonged exposure to felt containing high levels of mercury would cause mental dysfunction in 18th-century hat makers, ushering in the phrase "As mad as a hatter."


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36White Castle bun

White Castle bun

In 1921, White Castle changed the Nation's perception of beef from "low-grade meat likely to be richer with E-coli than nutrients" by creating a logistics system having fresh beef delivered twice a day and on display in the front of their shops, as well as inventing the hamburger bun.


37. Bertha Benz became the first person to drive the car over more than a short distance when she took her husband's new invention without his knowledge and drove up to her mother's house to prove that the invention will be successful once it's shown to be useful.


38. 300 million years ago insects could get really big. Millipedes and centipedes could get larger than humans, dragonflies as big as eagles, the beatles were the size of a large dog. The leading theory is that ancient bugs got big because they benefited from a surplus of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.


39. In 2000, author J.K. Rowling gave her father (Peter Rowling) the first edition of 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' for Father's Day and signed it: "Lots of love from your first born." Three years later, he sold it for £27,500.


40. There are so many water-filled caves under Florida that divers can swim between sinkhole-created lakes, under highways, businesses, schools, and houses.


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41MLK Jr. & Gandhi

MLK Jr. & Gandhi

Both Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi tried to kill themselves during adolescence and both suffered severe bouts of depression later in life.


42. Human’s trophic level (or place on the food chain) is a mere 2.2 on a 1-5 scale, with apex predators such as lions and great white sharks at a 5. We rank even with pigs and anchovies.


43. All butterflies, given the opportunity, will happily drink your blood.


44. The band Phoenix once played a secret concert at a high school in Austin. To attend, the students needed to have perfect attendance.


45. The British government once accidentally published classified information about their nuclear submarines in a “redacted” report. The classified information had been "blacked out" in a digital document, but anyone who opened the document could copy and paste the “blacked-out” text in order to read it.


46Nike sneakers

Nike sneakers

The type of Nike sneakers worn by members of the Heaven's Gate cult in their 1997 mass suicide is highly sought after by sneaker collectors.


47. A young Indian girl named Sehmat Khan got married to a Pakistani Army Officer during the Indo-Pak war of 1971. She was actually an Indian spy who married him to gain confidential information and ended up saving thousands of lives by providing information about a Pakistani naval attack to the Indian authorities.


48. Slip 'n Slides are for ages 5 to 12. One teenager and seven adults become paralyzed or received neck injuries before they were taken off. They reappeared back in the market in the 2000's with the age-restricted warning label.


49. The Hoover Dam was made with enough concrete to build a highway from New York to California.


50. The Laotian rock rat was thought to be extinct for 11 million years until it was discovered in a meat market in Laos.

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