50 Random Facts List #204

When Billie Holiday would perform “Strange Fruit” at gigs, the club owner would order the waiters to stop serving, and the room would be in complete darkness except for a single spotlight on her face. It would close her act and there would be no encore.

27. FDR's White House housekeeper, Henrietta Nesbitt, was a legendarily awful cook. “Of course Henrietta did not personally do the cooking,” wrote a former WH maid, “but she stood over the cooks, making sure that each dish was overcooked or undercooked or ruined one way or another.”

28. In 1922, there were a series of riots in New York over whether it was acceptable to wear a straw hat after 15 September.

29. Brian was a mentally ill Bonobo who was prescribed Paxil to help with his anxiety, but he was taken off of it a few years later after he started sharing it amongst the other apes.

30. Obesity is a rising problem for horses, just like for humans, partly due to a tendency for an owner with a horse of perfectly acceptable body condition to be criticized and accused of not feeding enough.

Crystal radio is a radio receiver that is made with simple parts and needs no external power source. All it needs is a radio signal to produce sound.

32. The Sega Master System and Genesis are still produced under license and being sold in Brazil, where they routinely outsell modern game consoles. This is due to high tariffs making imported consoles very expensive. Almost half of all Sega Master Systems ever sold were sold in Brazil.

33. In April of 2018, scientists at the Gladstone Institutes in California completely erased Alzheimer’s disease damage in human cells by changing the structure of one protein.

34. Queen Elizabeth II was a big fan of the Nintendo Wii. She saw her grandson playing and joined in. She was apparently a 'natural' at Wii Bowling.

35. In Finland, there is an old measurement unit called "poronkusema" which can be translated to “reindeer’s piss.” It describes the distance a reindeer can travel without having to stop to pee which is around 7 - 7.5km. Also, reindeers can't walk and pee at the same time.

Greek Fire was an incendiary weapon developed by the Byzantines in the 7th century, it was deployed on ships, and in handheld tubes, operating similar to a flamethrower. Water didn’t extinguish it. Its precise chemical composition is still unknown.

37. Major orange juice producers add chemical fragrances called "flavor packs" to their juice to provide the signature taste of their brand because orange juice loses its flavor during pasteurization and de-oxygenation.

38. Playboy Hugh Hefner's young son, Cooper Hefner, teaches a course called "New Landscape of Media" at Chapman University. Hefner is also on the Board of Directors for Children Of The Night, an organization that has been dedicated to fighting human trafficking and child prostitution.

39. Henry Rollins became the lead singer of Black Flag after jumping on stage to sing at a concert, but he had to quit his day job as a manager at a Häagen-Dazs.

40. The Southern Pacific Company, while best known for its railroad operations, also owned and operated telegraph and telephone lines under the name Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Networking Telephony, which would later become the telecommunications company known by the acronym “SPRINT.”

Every eclipse belongs to a family of identical eclipses, separated by 18 years, 11 days, 8 hours. There are 40 active eclipse families (saros cycles).

42. A German sailor named Jürgen Kantner was captured along with his wife by militant group Al Shabab when sailing off the coast of Somalia in 2008. After 52 days, they were freed from captivity after a large ransom was paid. Kantner later returned to Somalia and stole his boat back from the militants.

43. The Powerpuff Girls had an episode called the Beat-Alls where almost every line and plot point are lyrics from the Beatles.

44. The flags of many African nations have the colors green, gold and red borrowed from the flag of Ethiopia, which remained outside European control during the colonial era by defeating Italy. As a result, the country drew the admiration of many newly independent states in Africa.

45. 'Greeble' is the name given to the texture applied to Sci-Fi spaceship models to make them appear more complex.

Elton John's smash hit "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" was written by his longtime partner Bernie Taupin and is about Bernie's rejection of fame, high society riches and his desire to go back to a simple way of living. Bernie was raised on a farm without electricity as a child.

47. In 2015, a call center named iQor in New York was infested with bedbugs. The workers unwittingly brought them home. The company demanded the workers pay to have their own homes fumigated and prove it before returning to work. They were also cited by OSHA for conducting fumigation during work hours.

48. There is no such thing as true wild horses anymore. The Western US has a population of free-roaming horses that are descendants of domesticated Colonial Spanish horses and are thus technically feral not wild.

49. Linda Burfield Hazzard, nicknamed the Starvation "Doctor" was an American quack doctor noted for her promotion of fasting as a treatment. She was imprisoned by the state of Washington for a number of deaths resulting from this at a sanitarium she operated.

50. Theatres were among the first air-conditioned spaces available to the public. This is partly why theatres were and still are so popular today.