50 Random Facts List #92

Arnold Schuster was a private citizen who appeared on television in 1952 to discuss how he assisted the police in catching a bank robber. He was later gunned down in the same year by an unrelated mobster who saw him on TV and hated "squealers" (informants).

27. American stand-up comedian George Carlin recorded a comedy album called "I Kinda Like It When a Lotta People Die" 2 days before 9/11. After 9/11, he decided not to release it. It was ultimately released in December 2016.

28. Martin Lawrence is permanently banned from hosting SNL. The comedian hosted once in 1994 and performed a monologue where he criticized the vaginal hygiene of women. The rant, in which he went into detail about what he felt was a drop in feminine hygiene standards, will never be re-aired.

29. In 2011, a man suffered a fatal stab wound from a knife-wielding chicken while watching an illegal cockfight in California.

30. Dogs can become afflicted by Happy Tail, a syndrome where the tail is wagged so hard that it hits walls, furniture, and people until it begins bleeding. Because of the wagging, that blood is then flicked onto walls, ceilings, and anything else in the vicinity.

Chinese folklore's "Pixiu" was a creature that was banished from the heavens for being unruly. It was spanked by the Jade Emperor so hard that its butthole was sealed, leaving it cursed to a diet of gold, silver, and jewels but unable to expel any of it.

32. In the Sack of Rome in 390 B.C., after the Romans were routed and the city was all but destroyed, the Romans figured their only option was to pay the invaders to leave. It worked.

33. When American composer Sun Ra played a gig at a mental hospital, it prompted a patient to talk for the first time in years. She got up in the middle of the set, stood next to him at the piano, and a few minutes later leaned over and almost screamed, "Do you call that music?!"

34. Potato chips cause more weight gain than any other food.

35. Tiny ocean plants called phytoplankton contribute 50% to 85% of the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere.

The Torch Lake which is often compared to the Caribbean is located in Michigan and is one of the clearest lakes in the world.

37. Bamboo is the fastest growing plant in the world and can grow roughly 0.9 meters in a day if presented with the appropriate conditions.

38. Like Smallpox, Polio is on its way out with only 22 cases worldwide in 2017.

39. The idea for the Tenacious D song "Tribute" came about after Jack Black showed Kyle Gass the Metallica song "One" and claimed it was the best song in the world.

40. Up to 1 billion birds are killed per year in collisions with buildings. It is the second greatest human-caused source of bird deaths (pet and feral cats kill more).

In 1997, a physics student demonstrating the Leidenfrost effect by holding liquid nitrogen in his mouth accidentally swallowed the substance, resulting in near-fatal injuries. This was the first case in the medical literature of liquid nitrogen ingestion.

42. In the "The Last of the Meheecans" episode of South Park, the couple that takes in Butters Scotch as an immigrant worker name him "Mantequilla", which means butter in Spanish.

43. One of the key differences between monkeys and apes is how they sleep. Monkeys sleep in an upright position and have a light sleep. Apes like to lie down and enter into a deep sleep. The deep sleep in apes is believed to have improved cognitive ability in them.

44. English pirate Blackbeard and his crew would lock themselves in the hold of the ship and light pots of sulfur to see who could last the longest without suffocating.

45. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche criticised antisemitism and German nationalism, believing in his final years he was "a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German". He claimed he and Germany were great thanks to "Polish blood in their veins" and wanted "all antisemites shot".

The BBC used the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony during World War 2 because it simulated the Morse Code "V" for Victory.

47. Texas is the only state in USA with its own power grid, the Texas Interconnected System, which is therefore not subject to federal interstate regulations.

48. The fact that there are seven days to the week, internationally, and that the Sun day is followed by the Moon day, happened thanks to ancient Mesopotamia or Egypt passing it on to Greece, Rome, India, Japan.

49. The world record for highest CPU frequency ever achieved was set in 2011 by a team of engineers at AMD. They overclocked an AMD Bulldozer-based FX-8150 chip to 8.805 GHz using liquid helium.

50. Pepsi's biggest demographic is 65 years old and over, while politically soda brands are split with Republicans preferring Coke and Democrats preferring Pepsi.