50 Random Facts List #66

When Dolly Parton went to a Dolly Parton look-alike contest she lost to a man dressed like her.

2. According to one story of his last words, Voltaire's response to a priest at his deathbed urging him to renounce Satan was "Now is not the time for making new enemies."

3. A 17-year-old girl named Tia Skinner hired two teens to murder her parents. She appealed her convictions on the grounds of being a minor interviewed by police without parental consent.

4. The patent for toilet paper (1891) features an illustration that would imply the correct way the roll should be placed would be so the paper hangs over, and not under.

5. In 2015, a Montana State University Professor Gilbert Kalonde sued Wal Mart because they put his occupation as "Toliet Cleaner" on his fishing license.

The Rhinoceros Party of Canada was a satirical, federally registered political party in Canada which received 1.01% of the popular vote in the 1980 federal election campaigning to repeal the law of gravity and provide higher education by building taller schools, among other promises.

7. While shooting The Princess Bride, Andre the Giant racked up US$40,000 at the bar Hyatt in London, where he was staying. According to some estimates, his average daily consumption of alcohol was a case of beer, 3 bottles of wine, and a couple of bottles of brandy.

8. North Korea has a VHS copy of Space Jam enshrined in a museum.

9. A shark helped another shark give birth at an Auckland, New Zealand aquarium in 2009. The first shark bit the abdomen of the second, freeing the pups inside. One aquarium staff member said, "It had to bite a certain part to let them out and do it without killing the babies or her."

10. A group of guys made a to-scale model of the solar system in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. They felt that pictures online couldn’t capture the size of our solar system and they wanted to give an accurate example.

Dogs develop bite inhibition, the ability to control the strength of a bite, as puppies after learning that too harsh of bites often interrupt play.

12. American musician Tom Morello was a stripper after graduating from Harvard. He went by the name Tom "Meat Swinger" Morello.

13. Keanu Reeves turned down an $11 million offer to reprise his role as Jack Traven in "Speed 2: Cruise Control" in favor of playing the main role in "The Devil's Advocate" opposite to Al Pacino.

14. Fake Xmas trees have to be used for 20 years to be more environmentally friendly than using real trees.

15. The US has a 200-year-old pending Amendment which would strip citizenship from any citizen who accepts a title of nobility from a foreign country.

Singer Lorde has sound-to-color synesthesia, a unique condition where sound blends with sight to create certain colors. This greatly contributed to the creative process of "Melodrama", where she wrote music to the "violets and blues" that appear on the album's cover.

17. Michele Miscavige, the wife of the leader of the Church of Scientology, hasn't been seen in public since August 2007.

18. Chocolate for most of its 4,000-year history was actually consumed as a bitter beverage rather than as a sweet edible treat.

19. Wearing of the Fez hat is illegal in Turkey, having been banned in 1925.

20. Actress Rebel Wilson pursued an acting career after she contracted malaria and hallucinated that she was a famous actress winning an Oscar.

Communist leader Vladimir Lenin spoke English with a strong Irish accent.

22. A solar plant in the Mojave Desert generates so much heat it incinerates birds in mid-flight.

23. The Harvard Jail House was put on sale by accident. Robert Pinckney bought the jailhouse for $1.50 and successfully sued the town for rent when they continued putting criminals in there. He then sold the place to Charlie McCarthy, a ventriloquist’s dummy, for $10,000 in war bonds.

24. Prince Yasuhiko, the perpetrator of Nanjing massacre was never charged after the war because of he was a member of the Imperial family. General Matsui was executed despite forbidding his men to loot and expressed grief in his diary when his order was disobeyed.

25. The law of urination states that all mammals take roughly 21 seconds to empty their bladders regardless of size.