50 Random Facts List #26

Rapper Chamillionaire is a successful tech investor. One of his early investments, Maker Studios, recently sold to Disney for over $500 million. He's currently the "Entrepreneur in Residence" at a venture capital firm.

2. Super Bowl performers have a strict 12-minute time limit so most performers try and squeeze as much as they can in that given time frame, except Michael Jackson. After exploding onto the stage, he stood still, staring at the world for 90 seconds.

3. In 2012, Jose Alvarenga, a Salvadorian fisherman, survived 438 days on a raft in the Pacific Ocean. With no motor or GPS or food, he survived on raw turtle and fish, rain water, turtle blood, and his own urine. He is believed to be the longest surviving castaway.

4. An Herbalife insider admitted on camera the company was a scam.

5. Bowling lanes have a very thin patterned coat of oil that is crucial to consistently landing a strike.

Since 1990, the United States has added more acres of forest than it has lost, with almost 20 million new acres of forest land added in the last 2 decades.

7. Michael Jackson got $2 for every Thriller album sold. Which was one of the highest royalty rates of that time.

8. Comedy film Airplane! is a direct parody of 1957 movie Zero Hour! Many scenes, situations, lines of dialogue, as well as the entire storyline, are redone almost verbatim.

9. In the movie Hook, the scene where Rufio swings his sword close to Peter Pan's face and says the line "You're dead, jolly man" was played in reverse for the movie. The actor had to learn to say those lines backward.

10. When Henry Ford explained his idea of a gasoline powered car to Thomas Edison, Edison encouraged Ford that he "had it". Ford claimed later that "No man up to then had given me any encouragement".

"Cheeseburger Law" is a bill that blocks lawsuits from people who got fat because they ate too much.

12. In 2010, Pauley Perrette, the quirky goth scientist girl from NCIS had the 3rd highest Q Score (likeability) of any actor working, the same as Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman.

13. Victor Hugo slept with so many prostitutes that on the day he died, all the brothels in Paris closed to mourn.

14. In 2010, a crocodile escaped out of a duffel bag onboard a flight in the Congo causing everybody to go to the front of the plane, which caused the plane to crash, killing 20 with 1 survivor.

15. Smoking dead scorpions have become the latest drug craze in Pakistan and India, where it has been discovered to be an intoxicant.

The cast of FRIENDS entered collective negotiations with Warner Bros.' before season 3 and all 6 actors agreed to be given the salary of the LEAST paid cast member. They wanted to be a true ensemble and everyone featured equally. Near the end of the series, they were all paid $1 million/episode.

17. Fiat's original car factory was designed so that each car would progress upwards storey by storey as it was assembled until it was finalized at the top, where it would be tested on a rooftop test track.

18. McDonald's is a worldwide real estate giant who owns the majority of its property. They buy property and lease it back to their franchisees, collecting billions in revenue each year.

19. Classical pianist Joyce Hatto was described as "The greatest living pianist". After her death, it was found out that she and her husband (William Barrington-Coupe) plagiarized over 100 recordings made by other classical pianists of her time.

20. In 1859, Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor of the United States of America and the people of San Francisco went along with it, accepting his currency, paying for his meals, and even got the police to salute him in the streets. Nearly 30,000 people flooded the streets for his funeral.

It's possible to be declared brain-dead falsely because most physicians look at the brain stem, which controls heart and lung functions, but not the cortex, which coordinates consciousness.

22. There is a 99.26% correlation (ratio=0.992558) between divorce rates in Maine and the per capita consumption of margarine.

23. American comedian, Richard Pryor, was raised in a brothel where his own mother worked. He found an escape in watching movies because "you were never in doubt as to why the women in them were screaming."

24. Women used needle and thread to sew their hair in place before modern bobby pins and hair ties was invented.

25. UFC CEO Dana White has been banned from the Palm, The Hard Rock Hotel and other casinos for winning too much at Blackjack. Thus he moves the UFC venues when they ban him.