50 Random Facts List #194

There is a third world trade center tower (China World Trade Center Tower III) in China that looks exactly like the ones in New York.

27. Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia adopted 40 Armenian Orphans from a monastery in Jerusalem in 1924 and trained them to play musical instruments. They became members of Ethiopia's first Official orchestra.

28. The "razor" in Ockham's razor refers to distinguishing between two hypotheses either by "shaving away" unnecessary assumptions or cutting apart two similar conclusions. This means a solution with the fewest assumptions, not the simplest answer, is usually correct.

29. Parents in Zimbabwe who cannot afford school fees can offer livestock such as goats or sheep as payment for tuition fees.

30. "Purple Rain" was remade in the Sahara featuring the nomadic Tuareg people. Since their language has no word for "purple," the title became "Rain The Color of Blue With A Little Red In It."

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch contains around 80 million kg of floating plastic debris of various size and shape, principally made of Polyethylene and Polypropylene, accumulated in an area 3 times the size of continental France.

32. There is a forensic database containing tens of thousands of shoe impressions. It is used to match footprints at crime scenes to specific makes of the shoe. The name of the database is Solemate.

33. A hockey player named Ivan Tkachenko who died in a tragic plane crash in Russia was anonymously giving money to sick kids, and the last half-million ruble payment was transferred to a young cancer patient minutes before the plane take-off.

34. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is being eaten alive by millions of venomous sea stars known as crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS). The scientist has developed a new robot to hunt and kill these sea stars. This murderous, autonomous underwater vehicle has been named RangerBot. It can kill a starfish with a single shot of bile.

35. When glasses for nearsightedness began to appear in the 15th Century because they were unusual and rare, they were seen as having magical powers, and people who wore glasses were thought to be in league with the devil.

The interstate system was meant to run between cities, not through them. President Eisenhower got the highways built, but he said putting them inside cities "was entirely against his original concept and wishes."

37. Studies have shown that people who cry more are seen as warmer individuals who are more approachable. At the same time though, these individuals are perceived by others as being less competent or “stupid.”

38. One of the few references that Leonardo Da Vinci made to sexuality in his notebooks states: “The act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions.”

39. The Stanley cup can only have 5 large rings with winning team names/members. When the cup is fully engraved, the oldest ring is removed and sent to the Hockey Hall of Fame, and a new one is installed.

40. A Jewish parachutist named Hannah Szenes was dropped by the British into Yugoslavia during World War 2 to help rescue Hungarian Jews about to be deported to Auschwitz. Arrested, imprisoned and tortured, she refused to reveal the details of her mission or her transmitter code. She was eventually executed.

Petface dogs with puppy-like features have juvenile traits systematically built into their DNA through centuries of rigorous breeding. Many of the same traits that make these dogs "cute" give them a predisposition to respiratory disorders, skin conditions, reproductive issues, and eye injuries.

42. A single cleaner wrasse fish works removing bloodsucking parasites from up to 2,000 client fish per day. They sometimes cheat their clients by taking illicit bites of the protective mucus covering their skin. If a client gets upset, they try to make amends by offering a complementary fin massage.

43. John Singleton's Boyz N The Hood was shot in total continuity (in the same order as the script), something that is rarely done. Since this was John's first major film you can see the camera work get better as the film progress.

44. Wuerkaixi, the No. 2 most wanted student after the Tiananmen Square protest, tried to turn himself into the Chinese 4 times. The Chinese officials refused to arrest him, and he was even detained by the Japanese police when he tried to force his way into the Chinese Embassy in order to turn himself in.

45. Some densely populated countries use Election ink to prevent double voting. The ink uses silver nitrate which stains the skin and is only removed by shedding of external skin cells, therefore providing a sure way of knowing who has or hasn't voted.

Joseph Paul Jernigan was a murderer who agreed to donate his body to science prior to his execution in 1993. Jernigan’s body was encased, frozen, and cut into 1,851 slices. Images of those cuts are now used by medical students and radiologists as human anatomy correlates for CT and MRI images.

47. When your stomach growls it's just your intestines moving food normally, and usually, the growl is covered up by food in the stomach.

48. One of the moon rocks brought back to Earth from the Apollo 14 mission, was actually a rock formed on Earth 4 billion years ago, making it Earth's oldest rock.

49. German World War 1 ace German pilot Oswald Boelcke was so respected by his peers that the British Royal Flying Corps dispatched an aircraft to drop a wreath over his home airfield. He was so influential that his dogfighting tactics are still used today in modern aerial warfare. 

50. The name of the Royal Navy ship HMS Petard means "HMS Fart". A petard is a small bomb that derives its name from middle French for “to break wind.” Pun-loving Shakespeare probably knew this when he wrote “hoist with his own petard” - or to be blasted with his own fart.