50 Random Facts List #20

In 1939, a 36-year-old carpenter named Georg Elser from a small town in southern Germany, spent 30 nights hollowing out a pillar in a German beer hall in order to plant a bomb. Acting in secret and without the help of anyone else, he had a meticulous plan to kill Adolph Hitler. He almost succeeded.

2. Portland drained 38 million gallons of treated water because a drunk teen urinated in it.

3. When a plane crashed on Rikers Island in 1957, prisoners were released from the prison building to help pull people from the wreckage. Some had their sentences commuted or reduced for acts of heroism during the incident.

4. US Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and Dwight Eisenhower all had red hair.

5. Dogs have two noses. The second, which humans don't have, is called Jacobson's Organ and is located at the back of the nose. This double smelling system allows some trained dogs to sniff out bladder, kidney and prostate cancer with a 95% accuracy.

At the annual North American Wife Carrying Championship, winners receive the wife’s weight in beer, five times her weight in cash and an entry into the World Championship in Finland.

7. In the UK ballpoint pens are called biros after their inventor, Laszlo Biro. He fled to Argentina in 1938 to avoid Nazi persecution and made pens for the Royal Air Force during World War 2.

8. King George V of England had a dragon tattoo on his arm.

9. Narcissistic personality disorder is a personality disorder in which there is a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of understanding of others' feelings.

10. Queen Elizabeth II was one of the first heads of state to send an e-mail. The year was 1976. Her username was "HME2" or Her Majesty, Elizabeth II.

The worst maritime disaster in US history. On April 27, 1865. 3 of the 4 boilers on the steamboat Sultana exploded, killing 1196 people. The boat was 1779 people over capacity. The disaster is mostly overlooked due to John Wilkes Booth being killed the previous day.

12. Seattle has so few African Americans downtown due to racially restrictive covenants which lasted well into 1960 preventing minorities from owning homes in certain neighborhoods.

13. In 1959, nine ski hikers died mysteriously in the Ural mountains after fleeing their camp. Their deaths were never solved, and theories for the cause range from bear or yeti attacks to avalanches and military testing.

14. The first woman millionaire in the US was Sara Breedlove. In the 1890's she made her fortune by selling hair products designed and marketed for black women.

15. A man named George with severe OCD and a phobia of germs attempted to commit suicide at the age of 19 via a gunshot wound to the head. Instead of killing him, the bullet eliminated his mental illness without any other brain damage.

Gandhi often slept and bathed naked with other women including a grandniece and the wife of his grandnephew, who were both 18 when they started sleeping in the same bed as Gandhi, who was 77 years old at the time.

17. In 1860, 1 out of every 7 Americans were slaves to another American.

18. Scotland Yard was originally built upon the location where body parts of an unsolved murder of a woman were found, whose uterus was expertly removed, a particular trait of the depraved killer Jack the Ripper.

19. Popcorn kernels that don't pop are called "old maids" because they lack the necessary moisture to pop.

20. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas did not grow up speaking English. Instead, he spoke a creole language known as Gullah that began among coastal slave communities. Thomas has said the reason he rarely speaks publicly because he does not want any traces of it to come out in his speech.

Native Americans have Three Sisters Soup from their Three Sisters Agriculture from growing squash, climbing beans and corn together. The corn grows up, the climbing beans grow up the stalks, and the squash grows across the ground, covering all the roots and protecting them.

22. The allies used a ghost inflatable army to trick Hitler's forces.

23. Amish businesses have a 95% success rate at staying open at least five years.

24. Central Park's estimated real-estate value is over $500,000,000,000.

25. Apple made retailers buy iMacs in "five-packs, one in each color," so that Apple wouldn't get stuck with the unpopular colors.