50 Random Facts List #67

The saying “when one door closes, another opens" is an Alexander Graham Bell quote which he then followed by saying "but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”

2. John F. Kennedy ordered 1200 Cuban cigars just a day before declaring the Cuban trade embargo.

3. It's estimated that for every baby chimpanzee sold by traffickers, 10 adults were killed in defense of that 1 infant.

4. The Hershey's Kisses Holiday Commercial has aired every season since 1989.

5. Johnny Appleseed wasn't spreading delicious apple, he was spreading apple cider booze.

American singer Trent Reznor felt his song "A Warm Place" was too good to be his own work. After the song had been released, he was horrified to discover that he had indeed copied the melody from a piece by David Bowie called "Crystal Japan", written for a Japanese gin advert. Bowie found this hilarious.

7. The Burj Khalifa is so tall that inhabitants above the 80th floor have to wait 2 additional minutes to break their Ramadan fast compared to people on the ground, while people above the 150th floor have to wait an additional 3 minutes.

8. Hong Kong's independence has an expiration date. China can, based on the deals signed in 1997, reunite Hong Kong in 2047.

9. In Peru in 2007, a meteorite impact caused a "mystery illness" that turned out to be widespread arsenic poisoning from the meteorite evaporating contaminated groundwater.

10. Nostalgia takes us back around 30 years, which is why there are so many 80's references these days. This is because a critical mass of people who were consumers of culture when they were young are the creators of culture in their adulthood.

In 2008, the Municipality of Florence officially apologized for expelling Dante Alighieri (Italian poet) 700 years earlier.

12. After she wanted to marry a lawyer whom her mother disapproved of, a woman named Blanche Monnier was locked by her mother in her room for 25 years. She was discovered and rescued by the police in 1901.

13. Apophis (named after the Egyptian God of death and darkness) is an asteroid that will pass earth closer than our own satellites orbit on Friday 13th, 2029. It will touch our atmosphere, and we will be able to see it, wiz, overhead. There is a debated chance of it impacting Earth when it returns in 2036.

14. The majority of North Korean clothes are made from Vinylon, a synthetic fiber made of coal and rocks. It is the only country in the world to do so.

15. Timothy Evans was a Welshman who was tried, convicted, and hung for the murder of his daughter. Throughout the trial, he blamed his downstairs neighbor for the murder. Three years later, his downstairs neighbor confessed.

David Bowie's real name was Davy Jones, which he changed due to the success of The Monkees (Rock Band). His next name was Tom Jones, which had to be changed again.

17. Physicist Leon Lederman wrote a book about the Higgs Boson, which he named "The Goddamn Particle" but his publisher didn't like it and shortened it to "The God Particle", and the nickname stuck.

18. Scientists were able to use a spinach leaf as scaffolding to build a mini working human heart.

19. The first speeding ticket for an automobile driver was given by a policeman in Dayton, Ohio, in 1904, to Harry Myers for going 12 miles per hour on West Third Street.

20. In 2016, a gang of five men were jailed for stealing £25,000 worth of Jammie Dodgers (British biscuit) from a factory in Torfaen, Wales. As they were being led away from the docks, one of the defendants called out "Does anyone want a biscuit?".

Issac Newton and Robert Hooke were bitter rivals, and Newton’s famous quote “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants”, was most likely a passive-aggressive attack on Hooke, who stood significantly shorter than Newton.

22. Throughout the 1970’s the Grateful Dead (American Rock band) used a 32 feet tall PA system that could deliver perfect sound 600ft away. It had to be hauled in caravans of semi trucks and took 4 hours to assemble. They called it “The Wall of Sound”.

23. Mehmed the Conqueror requested his father, who had abdicated earlier, to come back and claim the throne in the time of trouble by saying: "If you are the Sultan, come and lead your armies. If I am the Sultan I hereby order you to come and lead my armies."

24. In 2014, after North Korea banned Choco pies, South Korea airlifted 10,000 of them across the DMZ with balloons.

25. In Brazil, it's so common to get robbed in the streets that a lot of people carry an extra cellphone (they call it the "thief's phone") so they can give it to the robber when the crime happens.