50 Random Facts List #188

When Robert Ballard (professor of oceanography) announced a mission to find the Titanic, it was really secret a cover story for a classified mission to search for lost nuclear submarines. They finished before they were due back, so the team spent the extra time looking for the Titanic and actually found it.

2. An elderly man gained the trust of a Belgian bank by bringing the workers chocolates. He was eventually given VIP access to the bank vault. In 2007, he stole $28 million worth of diamonds and vanished.

3. Morgan Freeman wears his earrings because they are just worth enough to pay for a coffin in case he dies in a strange place.

4. “Shots to roughly 80% of targets on the body would not be fatal blows” and that “if a gunshot victim’s heart is still beating upon arrival at a hospital, there is a 95% chance of survival.”

5. A UK man named Lee Beaumont found a way to earn money off telemarketers who were constantly calling him. In 2011, he set up his own personal 0871 line - so to call him now costs money to the caller. Every time a bank, gas or electricity supplier asked him for his details, he submits it as his contact number.

Ed Sheeran never sells front row seats in order to see the real fans right in front of him. He gives them away to random fans outside so the front row isn't always just wealthy people.

7. In 2017, a team of thieves stole $18,000 worth of high-tech equipment from a warehouse in California. Unfortunately for them, about 100 GPS tracking devices were among the items taken, so they were tracked down within hours.

8. In 2010, an unlucky airline passenger was arrested in Ireland after Slovak security officials placed explosives in his luggage for training, then forgot to remove them before the plane took off.

9. Dionne Quan, best known as the voice of Trixie Tang from Fairly Odd Parents and Kimi from Rugrats, is legally blind and all her acting scripts are written in Braille.

10. Christian Bale, who has a British accent, did all of his promotional interviews for Batman Begins in an American accent because he felt Batman was "such an American character" and he did not want audiences asking "What the hell is going on? Why do we have an English Batman?"

Australia's first cops were all criminals. Their first police force was made up of 12 of the best-behaved convicts.

12. Aretha Franklin required that she would be paid, in cash, prior to any performance, often carrying the money in a bag, on stage during the show.

13. Harvard student and seminarian Jonathan Daniels traveled to the south to aid the civil rights movement. He was walking with a black girl when a deputy pointed his shotgun at her. Daniels jumped in front of her, sacrificing his life so that she could live.

14. In 2006, a 14-year-old girl named Elizabeth Shoaf was abducted and held captive in an underground bunker for 10 days. To survive, she befriended her captor and outsmarted him to obtain his phone. She texted her family and police were able to trace the number to a nearby phone line.

15. During World War 2, the Japanese military used plague-infected fleas and flies, covered in cholera, to infect the population of China. They were spread using low-flying planes and with bombs containing mixtures of insects and disease. 440,000 people died as a result.

The last victim (David Gunby) of the 1966 University of Texas at Austin shooting died in 2001 after having to undergo dialysis for 35 years, 3 times a week, 5 hours each time. His death was ruled a homicide.

17. An Australian bird, called the rainbow lorikeet, routinely gets drunk from spring to summer. The small birds drink the fermented crimson flower nectar from the Weeping Boer-bean tree. When intoxicated these birds make loud drunken noises which many people find bothersome.

18. Märket is a tiny island divided by the Finnish-Swedish border. When the Finns inadvertently built a lighthouse on the wrong side of the border, the Swedes agreed to trade it for an equal spot of land on the other side, causing the border to zig-zag.

19. American singer Gwen Stefani wrote "Hollaback Girl" in response to Courtney Love calling her a cheerleader in an interview.

20. Heinz ketchup became so popular because Heinz invented a way to keep commercially produced ketchup red, which allowed him to package it in clear glass bottle and look more appealing. Before it, commercially produced ketchup was brown.

Astronauts returning from space report higher concern with universalism, spirituality, and references to “values orientated toward the collective good.”

22. Walt Disney wasn’t cryogenically frozen. He was cremated and his ashes interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. The rumor that he wanted to be frozen was started in 1972 by the president of the California Cryogenics Society and has since been denied by Disney’s family.

23. On the set of "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter" the stunt double for Milla Jovovich was so badly injured that her arm was amputated. Olivia Jackson had performed stunts in several hit films including Star Wars, Mad Max, Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy.

24. President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated that if the atomic bomb had been ready in time, he would have ordered the military to drop them on Germany.

25. Tennis player Roger Federer has spent roughly $13.5 million on 81 pre-schools in Malawi, hoping to improve the lives of over 150,000 Malawian children by 2021.