50 Random Facts List #5

Sandra Bullock speaks fluent German, as she was raised in Germany and Austria for 12 years while her father worked for the U.S. Army in Europe.

27. The Matrix is based on the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard. However, after watching it he replied: "The Matrix is surely the kind of film about the matrix that the matrix would have been able to produce."

28. A German explorer/soldier named Hermann Detzner became famous for evading capture by British forces in New Guinea during WWI. Hermann Detzner's book 'Four Years Among the Cannibals' detailed his exploits and remarkable scientific discoveries. He made everything up, and just hid in one place for four years.

29. Stone castles were very, very effective against the Mongols. They sustained heavy casualties trying but were never able to take a single one in two invasions of Hungary.

30. Microsoft once sued Mike Rowe, a high school student who registered MikeRoweSoft.com for his part-time web design project. Eventually, a settlement was reached, with Microsoft purchasing the domain in exchange for an Xbox console.

76% of all known serial killers in the 20th century were from the United States.

32. In Thai, the number 5 is pronounced "ha" so instead of saying "hahahahaha," Thai speakers will sometimes write "55555."

33. When Tupac Shakur first started rapping, he was attending the Baltimore School for the Arts, where he studied theater, ballet, and other forms of art. He loved his classes and would have graduated if he hadn't been evicted due to his mom being a member of the Black Panther Party.

34. All presidents and first ladies have secret service protection for life, and further that any children of former presidents get secret service protection until they turn 16.

35. The only photographs showing the moment Robert Kennedy was shot were not used in court but sealed for twenty years. When the photographer asked to have them back he was told they were accidentally burned. Reappearing after a lawsuit they were then stolen from the courier transporting them.

All of the images we've seen of Bugs Bunny eating carrots were actually misleading. Carrots should not be fed to rabbits. Rabbit's natural diets do not include roots, fruits, or iceberg lettuce, and that carrots can cause tooth decay and digestive problems.

37. There is a secular alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous known as the SMART recovery that is based more on Contemporary therapeutic techniques.

38. Buckethead, the guitar virtuoso, has released TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-SEVEN full studio albums and 171 under aliases and with other bands. In 2015 after the death of his parents he released an average of 1 studio album every 3 days.

39. Pentagon freaked out in the 1980s when they realized Finland had, against their expectations, managed to build two Mir submarines capable of diving to 6000 meters. They went on to shut down the whole Finnish submarine industry by privately threatening the country with heavy sanctions.

40. After the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, the yakuza sent hundreds of trucks filled with food, water, blankets, and sanitary accessories to aid the people in the affected areas of the natural disaster.

Meth is so common in North Korea that suited elites in Pyongyang restaurants offer each other a “nose” after dinner, the middle classes take it as a cold cure or remedy for back pain, and the poor take it to ease the emptiness in their stomach.

42. When an aggressive schizophrenic man became so violent that formal psychological testing couldn't be done, doctors performed a CT scan, discovering a brain tumor. They surgically removed it, and he was schizophrenia-free two weeks later.

43. An 11-year-old boy was suspended for a year for possession of a "marijuana leaf" that tested negative for marijuana three times.

44. In the 18th century, John Harrison claimed that he could build a clock to keep time to within a second over 100 days; it triggered widespread ridicule at his time. The clock had been built to his exact specifications in 2015; it was declared the "most accurate mechanical clock"

45. Due to its frequent name changes it's entirely possible a Russian was born in St. Petersburg, went to school in Petrograd, got married in Leningrad and died in St. Petersburg without ever having moved.

A McDonald's Caesar Salad has more calories, fat, and salt than a Double Big Mac burger

47. As the third man (Pete Conrad) in history stepped onto the moon he said "Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me"

48. There's a version of "The Tortoise and the Hare" where everyone dies in a forest fire because the tortoise, having won the race and therefore seen as the fastest, is given the job of warning everyone.

49. After Michael Jackson's hair was accidentally set on fire during the shooting of a Pepsi commercial in 1983 he chose not to sue but instead asked Pepsi to fund the creation of a burn center.

50. In 2013, Taco Bell failed to pay the men (Thomas Rinks and Joseph Shields) who pitched the idea of the Taco Bell Chihuahua and later were court ordered to pay $42.1 million.