50 Random Facts List #79

Henry Ford's wife Clara drove an electric car and refused to drive the Ford Model T.

27. Pope Leo XIII outlined the rights of workers to a fair wage, safe working conditions, and the formation of labor unions while affirming the rights of property and free enterprise, opposing both Atheistic Marxism and laissez-faire capitalism.

28. Qian Xuesen was a Chinese aerospace engineer who was a founding member of Jet Propulsion Laboratory. When he was stripped of his security clearances during the Red Scare despite protests by his colleagues, he moved back to China where he became well known as the "Father of Chinese Rocketry".

29. The Nintendo's classic arcade game "Donkey Kong" (1981) is so hard that in 2007, only 2 people were known to have completed it. Today, that number is still under 100.

30. When the Mars 'Spirit' Rover needed a reboot, scientists arranged for the rover to awake to the song "Where Is My Mind?" by the Pixies, in honor of its new software.

In 8 million years, the two LAGEOS satellites' orbits will decay, and they will re-enter Earth's atmosphere, carrying with them a message to any far future descendants of humanity, and a map of the continents as they are expected to appear then.

32. In the 1990s, USAF developed MARAUDER, a plasma toroid rail gun that theoretically could fire plasma projectiles at 10,000 km/s which is equal to 3% the speed of light. In the mid-1990s results were classified due to its success.

33. The average $1 bill has been contaminated with vaginal bacteria, microbes from mouths, DNA from pets and viruses and drugs.

34. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails once released an entirely free album under a Creative Commons license with the message "this one's on me".

35. The 1985 movie ‘Young Sherlock Holmes’ was the first feature film to have a completely CGI character: the knight emerging from the stained glass window. The effect was created by Pixar’s John Lasseter, who was working at Lucasfilm at the time.

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, would bike 70 minutes from his home to an International Hotel when he as 13. He did this to give free tours to tourist and converse with them, in an attempt to improve his English. He did this for 9 years.

37. Kryptos is a sculpture outside of the CIA headquarters with four cryptographic puzzles on it, only three of which have been solved in almost 30 years.

38. Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte, onetime King of Spain, abdicated the Spanish throne and fled to southern New Jersey, where he claimed to encounter the mythical Jersey Devil while hunting alone in the woods.

39. Patrick Stewart went bald at 19 years old.

40. The song American Woman was made by accident. While playing at a show in Ontario, Randy Bachman broke a guitar string. While tuning his guitar he came up with a great riff and he implored Burton Cummings to sing something. The first words out of his mouth were, "American woman, stay away from me."

The FBI and J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director at the time, refused to acknowledge the existence of the Mafia. It was only when a local state trooper watched the home of mobster Joe Barbara on a hunch, that he stumbled onto a meeting of around 100 members, confirming their existence.

42. The land in Finland is rising faster in the coastline than further East, causing rivers to tilt and flood towns, since the rivers flow from the east to the coast.

43. Laika is not the first animal to travel into space. The title actually goes to a bunch of fruit flies aboard a V2 rocket launched in 1947. They were later recovered alive.

44. Goldilocks was originally an old woman and the three bears were originally all bachelors living together instead of a family.

45. Zombie worms are deep sea worms that eat the bones of a whale fall, and the microscopic males live inside the females to save themselves the trouble of searching for a mate. One female zombie worm was found with 111 males living inside her.

A single serving of cooking spray is considered to be so small that it can be called “fat-free”. That implies that an entire can filled with nothing but oil has no calories.

47. An early purchaser of the Zamboni was worried about profits because people were watching the machine resurface the ice instead of going to the concession stand.

48. An obscure Chinese company has become the top smartphone seller in Africa, largely because they adjusted their phones to work with darker skin tones.

49. All Quiet on the Western Front movie was banned in Poland for being pro-German and in Germany for being anti-German.

50. Deep-sea exploration vehicle Alvin was once attacked by a swordfish 2000 feet below the surface. The swordfish, with the sword stuck in Alvin's skin, was brought to the surface with the submarine. The crew then cooked it for dinner.