50 Random Facts List #94

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1Joey Warchal

Joey Warchal

A 13-year-old named Joey Warchal called out the Eastern State Penitentiary for having the wrong radio on display in a recreation of Al Capone’s cell. The radio wasn’t available until 1942 and Capone was imprisoned from 1929-1930, resulting in the museum replacing it and giving the teen the inaccurate radio.


2. Adam Rainer was born a dwarf (measuring 4'8" at the age of 19) and died a giant (measuring 7'8'' at the age of 51). He is the only known person in history to have been classified as both.


3. Until 1948, 7-up contained lithium citrate, a mood stabilizer used to treat manic states and bipolar disorder.


4. In 1856, an American clipper was approaching Cape Horn when its captain collapsed, leaving his 19-year-old wife named Marry Ann Brown Patten to navigate through one of the world's deadliest sea passages. She commanded for 56 days, faced down a mutiny, and navigated the clipper ship into San Francisco.


5. During the opening ceremony of Ottawa International Airport’s new terminal in 1959, a USAF F-104 Starfighter did a supersonic flypast. The resulting sonic boom shattered nearly all the glass in the airport and caused significant structural damage, delaying the opening for another year.


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6U.S. Half-Cent

U.S. Half-Cent

When the U.S. Half-Cent was discontinued in 1857 for not having enough buying power, it was worth about the same as a modern U.S. Dime.


7. The Cult Awareness Network (CAN), once a leading anti-cult hotline is now owned by the Church of Scientology.


8. A litter of kittens can have separate fathers due to multiple mates during the mother's heat.


9. Travelers with a Buddha tattoo will be immediately deported if seen in Sri Lanka.


10. The water speed record is one of the deadliest competitions with an 85% fatality rate. The current record of 317 mph was set in 1978 by an Australian, Ken Warby, using a vessel built in his backyard with an engine purchased for $69.


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11Alcoholic beverages

Alcoholic beverages

There were at least seven types of alcoholic beverages in America before European contact. One of them is made from pineapple, and another is made from the honey of a domesticated stingless bee.


12. Trillions of oysters once surrounded New York City, filtering bacteria and acting as a natural buffer against storm surges. But pollution and other environmental changes killed off that helpful oyster population. Now, forward-looking landscape architects are bringing them back.


13. In the 1950s, a Soviet geneticist began an experiment of fox domestication. He selectively bred foxes for 'friendliness'. After a few generations, the foxes had other surprising traits like better social skills, larger litter sizes, curlier tails, droopier ears and showed skeletal changes (making them look 'cuter', like dogs).


14. Swedes can find out each other's salaries with just one phone call to Swedish equivalent of the IRS. The person whose information is accessed is also informed who accessed it.


15. The flag of Papua New Guinea was designed by a 15-year-old school girl named Susan Karike who won a nationwide competition to design the national flag.


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16Mike Myers

Mike Myers

The character of Austin Powers was created by Mike Myers as a persona for his faux 60s rock band Ming Tea. His then-wife loved the persona so much that she encouraged him to write a film about the character.


17. 52 Hertz is the loneliest whale on our planet. It roams the world's deepest oceans looking for a mate but it's unable to find one because no other whale is capable of understanding it's 52 Hertz call.


18. In 2002, Snoop Dogg officially announced that he was done with marijuana, however, by 2013 he admitted to smoking around 80 blunts every day.


19. Cellophane, the clear plastic used to wrap food, is biodegradable and produced from wood pulp.


20. The location of the Teletubbies set was so secret that visitors had to be blindfolded.


21Taylor Muhl

Taylor Muhl

A woman named Taylor Muhl has Chimerism, a condition in which she's a fraternal twin who fused together with her sibling in the womb. Now she has 2 different immune systems and 2 different bloodstreams. Her immune system is constantly fighting off her twin sister’s cells, as it recognizes them as foreign, causing autoimmune issues.


22. A marathon runner named Rosie Ruiz was the first woman to finish the 1980 Boston marathon. After winning, reporters noticed she wasn't that sweaty and didn't seem that tired at all. It turned out she took the subway the majority of the route and simply snuck back into the race to win.


23. Jennifer Lawrence dropped out of middle school and holds neither a high school diploma nor a GED.


24. Marrie Currie's notebook is so radioactive that it has to be stored in a lead box and visitors have to sign a waiver before they can see it.


25. The unit of measurement, "smoot", is named after an MIT prank on Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity pledge, Oliver Smoot, whose body was used to measure the Harvard Bridge in 1958. One smoot is 5 foot 7 inches and length of the Harvard Bridge is 364.4 smoots.

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