50 Random Facts List #31

On the night of the first script read through for The Princess Bride, Andre the Giant got so drunk he passed out in the hotel lobby. Staffs were unable to move him so they set up velvet ropes around him and told the maids not to vacuum.

2. If Johnny Depp's filming schedule didn't allow for him to be in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dwayne Johnson would have played Willy Wonka.

3. The first leaf blowers were insecticide misters that workers were misusing to blow leaves instead.

4. Russian President Boris Yeltsin's first words to the U.S. President upon meeting in 1995 were, "Do you think O.J. did it?"

5. A think tank at Oxford University believes that the prison industry may begin exploring psychoactive drugs that elongate the perception of time, either reducing actual incarceration times or making sentences for heinous crimes feel like an eternity.

The first king of Belgium (Leopold I) was German, fought in the Russian army, married an English princess (Charlotte of Wales) and had previously turned down the chance to become king of Greece.

7. Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" only reached #9 on the US charts when the song was first released in 1976, but reached #2 in 1992 after Wayne's World came out.

8. In 2011, Anthony Carleo stole $1.5 million worth of casino chips but never got to trade them in for the money because the chips were immediately nullified by the casino, so he just had a bunch of useless disks and soon got jailed for 3-11 years.

9. Over 100 million sharks per year are killed to fuel the shark fin industry. This has caused the populations to drop 60-90% over the last 15 years.

10. If the Netherlands stopped all water management 40% of the country would be flooded within weeks.

All of the actors in "Pirates of the Caribbean" learned how to work with cannons and swords in Pirates School, which included getting trained by the late famed swordsman Bob Anderson, who also was the lightsaber master who fought battles as Darth Vader in Star Wars films.

12. After undergoing eye surgery, French impressionist painter Claude Monet allegedly developed the ability to see certain ultra violet wavelengths, which was also reflected in some of his paintings.

13. Two mafia families almost went to war in 2012 over the sauce made by Brooklyn's best pizzeria.

14. China has cities that were made to look like Paris, London, Venice and much more.

15. Wild parrots actually name their children, and that name sticks for life.

Heinz Heydrich, the younger brother of Reinhard Heydrich (the architect of the Holocaust), who helped Jews escape Germany by forging identity documents.

17. There is a movement known as Cascadia, whose purpose is to create a nation from British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon becoming the 20th largest country in the world.

18. When Ken McElroy was murdered with at least two different guns, the residents of Skidmore, Missouri refused to identify the shooters. For decades he was known as the 'town bully' due to multiple crimes throughout town, and at that time was on trial for shooting an elderly grocer in the neck.

19. Most of the modern global poultry industry relies on a single breed of chicken (Arbor Acres) from a farm in Connecticut that won the national "Chicken of Tomorrow" competition in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

20. There's a Mediterranean plant (Cistus plant) that can spontaneously self-combust (i.e., a burning bush).

The US Embassy in Moscow caught fire in 1977. Sensitive information was stolen by several firefighters who were also KGB agents.

22. In the 19th Century, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided that tomatoes were vegetables.

23. In 2012, a cat named Orlando beat top investment bankers in a year long investment competition, which he chose by throwing his favorite mouse toy at a grid to select companies to invest in.

24. There is an 82-foot tall aquarium that holds more than 1,500 fishes and has a glass elevator that runs up and down the center of the tank. It has to be cleaned by divers 3 or 4 times each day. The German AquaDom is the largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium in the world.

25. In Greek mythology, Zeus thought that the Earth is overpopulated and Trojan War was instigated to depopulate the Earth.