50 Random Facts List #63

In 2008, Microsoft proposed to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion, but Yahoo rejected the offer. In 2016, it was sold to Verizon for $4.8 billion.

27. It is possible to checkmate an opponent in chess in two moves.

28. Some Native American Indian nations believe in a mysterious man, a handsome brave who wears white buckskins and brings gifts to Indian children. His name is 'Handsome Fellow'.

29. The Megalania, a venomous 23-foot long species of giant monitor lizard, was hunted to extinction by early human inhabitants of Ice Age Australia.

30. Jerome of Sandy Cove was an unknown man who washed up on the shore of Nova Scotia on September 8, 1863. Both his legs were amputated above the knees and he couldn't (or refused to) understand French, Latin, Italian, or Spanish. He died 49 years later and no one ever figured out where he came from.

Winston Churchill had so much respect for the American Constitution that he called it the best constitution ever written in English.

32. The largest fire in American history was the Peshtigo fire in 1871 in Wisconsin. It was on the exact same day (October 8) as the great Chicago fire so it was largely forgotten. There were 2,000 casualties.

33. There's a new state of matter called "Time Crystals" that is different from solids, liquids, gases, and plasma.

34. Ramin Djawadi, the composer of the Game of Thrones theme music, was shown the title sequence and was so inspired that he composed the music within 3 days.

35. In medieval manuscripts, there are many depictions of knights fighting giant snails. There's no solid reason why.

A Baltimore school was evacuated and hazardous materials crews were called due to a strange odor. The source of the odor was a pumpkin spice air freshener.

37. The movie 'The Blues Brothers' had a cocaine budget.

38. Angel by Sarah McLachlan (the sad song in the ASPCA commercials), is actually about Jonathan Melvoin- the Smashing Pumpkins touring keyboard player who passed away from a heroin overdose in 1996.

39. In China, someone set up a fake branch of a geniune establishment and it operated "normally" for more than 1 year. All the money that customers put in (~$32 million) was gone.

40. There are over 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe and that up until 1924, the common knowledge was that the milky way was itself the whole universe.

The first time the Flash raced Superman, they made sure the race ended as a tie so that none of the gangsters that had bet on the race made any money.

42. "Son of Sam" laws are designed so that criminals are unable to take advantage of the notoriety of their crimes. Such laws often authorize the state to seize money earned from deals such as book/movie biographies and paid interviews and use it to compensate the criminal's victims.

43. Janet Jagan is the first American woman to become president of a country. She was born in Chicago, moved to Guyana, and was elected president there.

44. US President's annual salary is $400,000 per year. Adjusted for inflation it’s the lowest it’s been since 1789.

45. Operation Cottage was a military operation during the World War 2, where the Japanese won with no troops present and the Allies suffered 313 casualties.

Ethiopia is likely to be the birthplace of modern Homo sapiens based on radioactive dating.

47. Roughly half of the antacids produced are fed to cows to offset the effects of a forced corn diet.

48. Wind turbines are painted white to help them both blend in and to stand out. White or light grey helps them ‘blend’ into the background when the sky is cloudy. From the air, the white color helps them stand out to planes. The same color has two strikingly opposed purposes.

49. The law of the ancient Babylonians stated that anyone who watered down beer should be executed.

50. For more than 50 years, there was an operational telephone booth in the Mojave desert, in the middle of nowhere.