50 Random Facts List #28

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1Speyer wine bottle

Speyer wine bottle

The oldest unopened wine bottle was unearthed from a 4th century Roman tomb found near Speyer, Germany.


2. The word "Afghanistanism", which means the practice of concentrating on problems in distant parts of the world while ignoring controversial local issues, is almost 70 years old.


3. If you have served in the military, regardless of the branch of service, regardless of where you were deployed, and regardless of whether you served during a time of peace or a time of war, you are at a 60% greater risk of dying from ALS (motor neuron disease) and nobody knows why.


4. A recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond is called a "ha-ha".


5. A bridge built in 2003 in northern Costa Rica is colloquially known as 'Backstab Bridge'. It was paid for, designed and built by Taiwan only for Costa Rica to cut off ties with Taiwan in favor of China.


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6Neelimkumar Khaire

Neelimkumar Khaire

A man named Neelimkumar Khaire set a world record in 1986 by spending 72 hours in a cage with 72 of the most venomous snake species in India; to spread awareness and to prove that snakes don't bite unless provoked. He came out of the cage, unharmed and without a single bite.


7. Penn Jillette said in an interview that a big part of Penn & Teller's success and longevity is due to their never having been close friends.


8. The 1992 US Olympics basketball team (the "Dream Team") has been called "the most dominant squad ever assembled in any sport". Magic Johnson said "I look to my right, there's Michael Jordan ... I look to my left, there's Charles Barkley or Larry Bird ... I didn't know who to throw the ball to!"


9. After the first 4 episodes of Seinfeld aired in the summer of 1990, NBC took a leap of faith and ordered 13 more. Larry David said, "I don't have any more stories to tell, Jerry turn the order down." Jerry didn't listen and said "Yes" to the pickup.


10. 80% of American toys are made in China's Pearl River Delta, employing 3 million people in 8,000 factories.


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11The Room film

The Room film

In the original script for 'The Room,' there was a subplot which would reveal that Tommy Wiseau's character Johnny was, in fact, a vampire.


12. In 2004, a customer in Las Vegas walked into an In-N-Out and ordered a 100x100. That's 100 beef patties and 100 slices of cheese, which the restaurant obliged as until then they accommodated orders of any size at extra cost. Since then In-N-Out changed its rules and capped the burger at 4x4.


13. An empty tomb or monument erected in honor of a person whose remains are elsewhere is called a "Cenotaph." For example, there are Cenotaphs all over the world for victims of the RMS Titanic, whose bodies were not recovered after the sinking.


14. The first monkeys in South America likely drifted from Africa on a floating island of vegetation.


15. A Scottish psychiatrist named Ewen Cameron ran experiments on humans in the 50s, which involved giving several electric shocks a week, taping blacked out football helmets to their heads and playing repetitive messages in their ears for months at a time. Some patients apparently forgot who they were and how to talk.


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16Jerusalem

Jerusalem

Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.


17. NASA pilots routinely intercepted and defeated U.S. Navy Phantom IIs in mock dogfights, until complaints from the Navy put an end to the harassment.


18. When Luxembourg was liberated from Nazism in 1944, the returning government was so impressed with some regulations and laws concerning tax and employment the Nazis had made, that it decided to simply keep them.


19. The Forbidden City, built in 1420 in China, was so well-designed that it withstood over 200 earthquakes and can withstand one with a of magnitude 10.1 on the Richter scale.


20. In 2014, a family in Missouri had to leave their $450,000 home after it was infested with 4,500 - 6,000 brown recluse spiders and exterminators were unable to get rid of them.


21John Harrison

John Harrison

John Harrison is the only person to be both the child (William Henry Harrison) and the parent (Benjamin Harrison) of U.S. Presidents.


22. Banner blindness is a phenomenon where web users sub consciously ignore information on web pages from ad-like banners.


23. Deborah Sampson who disguised herself as a man to fight in the U.S. Revolutionary War served in an elite Light Infantry unit and was wounded in battle. After her secret was discovered, she was honorably discharged but had to fight to receive her veteran's pension.


24. Simon Cowell praised Rebecca Black's song "Friday": "the fact that it's making people so angry is brilliant". He advised her to not "listen to anyone over the age of 18. I'm being deadly serious. Whatever she's done has worked ... she's the most talked-about artist in America right now".


25. Moths make up a large portion of Yellowstone bears' diets, and they can eat up to 20,000 calories worth of moths in a day.

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