50 Random Facts List #188

Smoking areas existed in public high schools back in the 1980s. Students could smoke cigarettes on school grounds between classes in designated lounges.

27. The band Joy Division is named after the group of Jewish inmates in concentration camps, that had to fulfill sexual demands of the guards.

28. In 1937, a French celebrity named Angelo Hays was declared dead and buried 3 days later. 2 days after that, an insurance investigation exhumed him and found him in a coma. He made a complete recovery. He later invented a coffin complete with upholstery, a food locker, chemical toilet, library, and radio transmitter.

29. The English word “weird” originally meant 'having the power to control fate', which is why Shakespeare named his witches in Macbeth “The Weird Sisters.” Later depictions of them dressed in odd and strange ways led to the current definition of the word.

30. Since 2017, when Waymo, began testing self-driving vans in Chandler, Arizona, police have responded to dozens of calls regarding people threatening and harassing them. People have thrown rocks at Waymos, slashed a tire, chased them, tried to run them off the road and aimed a gun at one of them.

In 2004, nearly one-third of the adult male population of the Pitcairn islands was convicted of child sex assault, even the mayor. His son, the current mayor is also a convicted sex offender. Another mayor who served in between them was convicted for possession of child pornography.

32. Irish singer Van Morrison recorded 31 nonsense 'revenge' songs to get out of a bad contract including one where he is telling the listener they have ringworm over his out of tune guitar.

33. Surgeons removed 27 contact lenses from a 67-year-old woman's eye. She's quoted to have thought that the discomfort was just a part of aging. After an initial "lump" of 17 lenses was removed during preparation for cataract surgery, 10 more were discovered.

34. In 2015, a pet mouse named snuggles consumed heroin that was left on a table. It was unresponsive and barely breathing when brought into an overdose prevention site in Vancouver, British Columbia. Volunteers at the site administered Narcan and were able to save Snuggles’ life.

35. Domino's Pizza locations in Scotland have the official, registered tartans for employees who would prefer to wear a kilt.

An American serial killer named Nannie Doss is responsible for the deaths of 11 people between the 1920s and 1954. Also referred to as the “Giggling Granny,” it was revealed that she had killed four husbands, two children, her two sisters, her mother, a grandson, and a mother-in-law.

37. Before the Battle of Pratapgarh, Shivaji met with the enemy general Khan; prepared for treachery. He wore an armor under his clothes which saved him from being stabbed during a hug, to which he retaliated by disemboweling the general with Wolverine-style claws. The battle was won.

38. On Saturday night (31 March, 2012), the Chief of the Israeli Navy (Major General Ram Rothberg) gave a surprise order for 3 ships to prepare to leave for a 10-day exercise; the men on the ships worked all night only to learn the next morning that it was all an April Fool's Day joke.

39. There is a European custom of “telling the bees,” wherein bees would be told of marriages, funerals, and other important events in their keepers' lives.

40. A “Box Social” is a tradition in the U.S. state of Vermont where women fill a box with a meal and men bid on the box with the expectation to share the meal with the woman whose box it is. It is typically used as a fundraiser.

Chinese students can rent fake parents to meet their teacher to avoid embarrassment.

42. During World War 1, artist Norman Rockwell tried to enlist into the U.S. Navy but was refused entry because, at 140 lbs, he was eight pounds underweight for someone 6 feet tall. To compensate, he spent one night gorging himself on bananas, liquids, and doughnuts and weighed enough to enlist the next day.

43. Paris Hilton was pranked by an Egyptian TV Host Ramez Galal in 2015, where she was in a fake plane crash that left her screaming hysterically. She proceeded to sue for emotional distress.

44. Difficulty in hearing in noisy places is a real medical condition called "cochlear synaptopathy" or "hidden hearing loss" and it is undetected in most hearing tests.

45. Submarine Commander Eugene B. Fluckey is credited with the most tonnage sunk in World War 2, including a Carrier. He also led his men on land to blow up a train. He got 4 Navy Crosses, the Medal of Honor, his boat got several Presidential Unit citations and not one of his men got a Purple Heart.

Apples are generally red, green, yellow, but if the right geographical conditions are met, they can apparently grow dark purple, almost black, as well. These rare apples are called Black Diamond and they are currently only grown in the mountains of Tibet.

47. Winston Churchill once said that one of life's four essentials was cold champagne and so he drank over 42,000 bottles of champagne during his lifetime(about two bottles a day). The other three essentials were hot baths, new peas, and old brandy

48. A 22-year-old woman Hilda Clayton, an Army combat photographer and visual information specialist with 55th Signal Company, captured her last photo, and the moment of her death when a mortar shell exploded in the launch tube during a training exercise with Afghan soldiers.

49. MRI is actually NMRI - Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Nuclear is dropped because people would be less likely to trust the technology.

50. Shepherds in Gascony, France traditionally wore stilts called tchangues (“big legs”) that allowed them to walk rapidly on marshy ground.