50 Random Facts List #71

The Common Swift can stay in the air for up to 10 months without landing. They can even sleep and mate while flying.

2. The famous female pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny discovered each others' real genders (they were disguising themselves as men) when Bonny told Read that she was attracted to her, causing Read to reveal herself as a female as well.

3. Scientists have been able to store an operating system and a film on DNA and recover it without any errors.

4. Futurama's Philip J. Fry was named in honor of Phil Hartman, who had been slated to play Zapp Brannigan before his death.

5. Hawaiian Airlines is the oldest US carrier that has never had a fatal accident or a hull loss throughout its 88-year history.

A research study led by the University of Oxford found out that atheists and highly religious people are the ones least scared to death.

7. Alaina Mathers, Eminem's adopted daughter, whom he calls "Lainey" in many of his songs, is actually the biological daughter of his ex-wife Kim's twin sister, who died in 2016 of a heroin overdose. Eminem received legal custody of her daughter in the early 2000's.

8. NFL lineman Chris Long donated his entire 2017 N.F.L. season salary to educational charities in three cities.

9. Uruguay flight 571 crashed in the Andes in the 70s. The survivors waited 2 months for help, all while being forced to eat the raw flesh of dead passengers. Two men walked 10 days and 40 miles through the mountain to safety.

10. Irina Margareta Nistor is a Romanian woman that dubbed banned Western films during Romania's Communist regime, and by doing so, voiced Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Tom Cruise (among others).

More people died fighting on the Eastern Front than in all other fighting across the globe during World War 2.

12. A massive and nearly-mythical Native American city (Etzanoa) in Kansas has been recently found.

13. American singer Barry White was a gang member in South Central Los Angeles and after his brother's murder, doing time in jail and listening to an Elvis song, he left the gang life and began singing love songs.

14. The term "Sushi-grade" is a marketing term which means little to nothing about safety or the quality of the fish. In fact, previously frozen fish is often safer than fresh fish to eat raw due to parasitic destruction during the freezing process.

15. The flag of Hawaii has the Union Jack in it, despite never being part of the British Empire. It was put there by King Kamehameha as a symbol of friendship after being presented the British flag by Captain George Vancouver.

A Chinese zookeeper named Zhang Bangsheng licked a rare monkey's butt for over an hour to help it pass a peanut that was endangering its life.

17. Four-legged animals like horses and dogs don't have backward knees. Those joints are actually their ankles, which bend in the same direction as our ankles do.

18. A man ran naked through Anchorage, Alaska, naked, climbed up a 30-foot flagpole, jumped off and died. 29-years later, he has still not been identified.

19. During the filming of Breaking Bad, actress Julia Minesci who played a meth-addicted prostitute was legitimately propositioned for sex during the shooting of a scene.

20. A wellness blogger named Belle Gibson who faked brain cancer was fined $410,000 for a scam involving her claims that her cancer was cured through nutrition and alternative therapies.

There is a position in the House of Lords called Black Rod. Their job is to summon the House of Commons and have a door slammed in their face, showing the people's power over the monarchy.

22. Studies suggest that top students are more likely to smoke pot and drink alcohol.

23. The Pentagon banned Furbys because they were worried they would repeat top secret information, even though Furbys had no means to do so.

24. In addition to being the NBA's leading scorer with 38,387 points, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is also a professional writer who contributes to Time Magazine, The Washington Post, and has also written books which are New York Times bestsellers.

25. Yea and Nay don't mean exactly the same as Yes and No. They were for questions posed in the positive whereas yes and no were for questions in the negative. So answering "yes" to "don't you like it?" always meant you did like it. This removes ambiguity.