50 Random Facts List #96

In 1988, a US Senator named Robert Byrd invoked an obscure rule to allow the Sergeant-at-Arms (Henry K. Giugni) to arrest absent Senators and bring them into the chamber for a vote. One Senator (Bob Packwood) attempted to escape but was caught and carried feet-first into the Senate chamber by three officers.

2. The moon has "moon-quakes" and because the moon has a smaller core than earth, this causes it to ring like a bell.

3. People sentenced to death by beheading were advised to give the headsman a gold coin to ensure he did not botch the beheading and cause a painful death by multiple strokes.

4. Deceased Tibetan Buddhists are given a “sky burial” in which the body is folded in half, walked to the burial site on someone’s back, and then dismembered and fed to vultures. There is no wood for a cremation, and the ground is too hard to dig due to the high altitude they live in.

5. Although Tic Tacs are almost 100% sugar, FDA regulations allow them to be advertised as 0 grams of sugar per serving due to their size.

Before elections, Jimmy Carter promised that if he became president, he would release all information the government had on UFOs to the public. Once elected, however, he decided not to due to "national security concerns".

7. Those "baby on board" signs hanging in car windows serve a purpose of alerting first responders that there is a person in the vehicle that's unable to unbuckle themselves in the event of an accident.

8. The former dictator of the Central African Republic, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, forced the nation's school children to buy expensive uniforms from a company he owned. When the children protested, he had 100 of them executed as an example.

9. Between 1990 and 2007, robots took the jobs of an estimated 670,000 US workers.

10. Mr. Robot actor Rami Malek has an identical twin named Sami Malek, who works as a teacher. They occasionally swap places.

Though his music career famously sank, Vanilla Ice has kept himself afloat nicely with his home improvement show, “The Vanilla Ice Project.” He now has an estimated net worth of $18 million.

12. In many old Westerns, since nobody in charge was able to translate Native languages, many Native American extras would ad-lib or make jokes in their own language.

13. In 1920, The New York Times ridiculed Robert H. Goddard and claimed that rockets could not function in space. On July 17, 1969, a day after the Apollo 11 launch, New York Times formally acknowledged their error.

14. Free services like Craigslist have decimated the classified advertising departments of newspapers, some of which depended on classifieds for 70% of their ad revenue. Research has shown that Craigslist cost the newspaper industry $5.4 billion between 2000-2007.

15. Despite his lady's man reputation, Elvis Presley avoided intercourse with most if not all of his early girlfriends, even Priscilla before they were married. One biographer suggested that The King developed an extreme fear of STDs during his military service.

Rhnull is the rarest blood type on Earth. In 49 years, Rhnull has only been found in about 43 people around the world.

17. Edward Dickinson Baker was serving as a U.S. Senator when the U.S. Civil War broke out. He therefore re-joined the Army as a colonel. He was killed in battle and remains the only sitting U.S. senator ever to have been killed in a military engagement.

18. Naturalist William Buckland spent much of his life trying to eat every animal possible to see how it tasted. He grew fond of eating mice on toast, while his least favorite meals were that of mole and bluebottle flies.

19. After being fatally shot in 1996, Tupac Shakur’s last and only words to assisting police were “f*ck you”. He refused to say anything else.

20. China/Taiwan renamed Guardians of the Galaxy as: "Interplanetary Unusual Attack Team".

Finland trains elite soldiers in Lapland in preparation for a future war with neighboring Russia. The two countries share an 833-mile border and were in conflict during World War 2.

22. The Rock band Sum41 named the album "Chuck" after the man who got them out of a hotel in the Congo near a war zone.

23. A critical mass of uranium assembled itself in what is now the Central African state of Gabon, forming the first and only natural nuclear reactor in history. It fissioned for hundreds of thousands of years before fizzling out.

24. An island was christened a warship by the British Navy during a French blockade. The HMS Diamond Rock was fortified with cannons and spent 17 months hammering any passing French ships, and to this day anyone in the British Navy is required to salute the rock when they pass it.

25. There are 33 Shakespeare gardens in the world that only cultivate plants which were mentioned in the works of the English poet William Shakespeare.