50 Random Facts List #97

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1 Potholes

Potholes

An anonymous Brit drew penises around potholes in Manchester to force authorities to stop delaying fixing them and it worked.


2. An NGO named Bidyanondo in Bangladesh sells over 10,000 meals daily at only 1 Taka ($0.012) per meal instead of giving it for free, so that people don’t feel like they are begging.


3. Donald Lau, who was the chief fortune cookie writer at Wonton Foods for over 30 years retired in 2017 due to writer’s block.


4. As of 2018, China has a so-called “Ghost driver” problem, in which many Uber drivers over there change their profile photos to those of ghosts and zombies so that when potential passengers see these pictures they would cancel the ride they had just booked, thus earning the driver cancellation fee without any effort.


5. Actor Kenny Baker who operated R2-D2 (from inside) in Star Wars franchise hated the actor (Anthony Daniels) who played C-3PO, calling him “the rudest man I’ve ever met.”


6 Saguaro National Park’s cacti

Saguaro National Park's cacti

Saguaro National Park’s cacti have ids with microchips implanted in them to prevent theft.


7. Michael Buffer, the “Let’s get ready to rumble” guy had the phrase trademarked and as of 2009 it has generated $400 million in revenue for him.


8. Road damage mostly results from trucks and buses. The damage a vehicle causes is proportional to the axle load raised to the fourth power, so doubling the weight an axle carries actually causes 16 times as much damage.


9. The fake cocaine actors snort on film is vitamin B powder, a common cutting agent for real cocaine.


10. Chicago has a large pack of coyotes that patrol the city, hunting rats.


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11 Dr. Robert Liston

Dr. Robert Liston

A doctor named Robert Liston once performed a surgery with 300% mortality rate. In 1846, during an amputation, Dr. Robert Liston accidentally cut his assistant’s fingers off and later slashed an observer’s coat. The observer, thinking he’d been stabbed, dropped dead of shock, and the patient and assistant died afterward of infected wounds.


12. In 2014, English drummer Phil Collins donated the world’s largest private collection of Alamo artifacts to the state of Texas. It included a fringed leather pouch and a gun used by Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie’s legendary knife.


13. The London 2012 Summer Olympic Committee contacted ‘The Who’ manager Bill Curbishley about Keith Moon performing at the games, 34 years after his death. Curbishley said “I emailed back saying Keith now resides in Golders Green crematorium, having lived up to the line ‘I hope I die before I get old’.


14. Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” is about a red-headed clerk who had a crush on her husband, but the song is named after one of her fans. Dolly told her, “That is pretty. That sounds like a song. I’m going to write a song about that.”


15. SETI scientists believe that the chances for finding intelligent extraterrestrial life is far greater than initially expected since Earth developed two intelligent species, i.e., humans and dolphins.


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16 Annie Smith Peck

Annie Smith Peck

The first two women to climb the Mount Matterhorn in Europe did so in skirts and the third woman, Annie Smith Peck, was nearly arrested as she was the first to do so in pants.


17. A man named Arturo Alva Moreno worked at the restaurant at the top of World Trade Center. After 9/11, they never saw him again and presumed he died in the towers. In 2003, the government removed his name from the 9/11 memorial. He might have used the tragedy to start a new life without telling his family.


18. Mozart had a pet starling, which he bought after hearing it sing an excerpt from one of his pieces. After the starling died, Mozart wrote a humorous poem, which he read at its elaborate funeral.


19. One of America’s first patent trolls was George Selden, who was granted a U.S. patent for an automobile in 1895. He proceeded to sue anyone else who attempted to produce one, while never manufacturing a car himself.


20. The US Army does not keep any record of “confirmed kills”. Servicemen routinely report successful hits to their superiors and personally keep track.


15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History


21 Joseph Pilates

Joseph Pilates

Joseph Pilates was a German working in England when World War 1 broke out. While interned in a prison camp, he developed a method of exercise prisoners could perform in confined space using just their own body weight. He named it Pilates. It worked well and was a hit, and he eventually moved to US in 1926.


22. Oxford University Professor Sir Andrew Wiles was awarded the Abel Prize and $700,000 in 2016 for solving a 358-year-old math problem known as “Fermat’s Last Theorem.” Fermat himself claimed to have found proof for the theorem, but the margins of his notes weren’t wide enough to contain it.


23. The production of Def Leppard’s album “Hysteria” was so expensive that guitarist Phil Collen estimated they needed to sell around 5 million copies to break even. They ended up selling 25 million.


24. Food Allergies are now 2-3 times higher compared to 1997. We have also seen diagnosed anaphylactic (life-threatening) food reactions rise 377% from 2007 to 2016. As of 2011, one out of 13 kids has a food allergy. To this day, scientists are still dumbfounded over this epidemic.


25. The Aquatic Ape Theory suggests that early hominids lived in water part of the time, which might account for our hairless bodies (streamlined for swimming), our upright two-legged walking (making wading easier) and our layers of subcutaneous fat, which made us better insulated in water (similar to whale blubber).


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1 COMMENT

  1. Dolly Parton’s Jolene was written for a young, red headed little girl that asked Dolly for an autograph. Dolly asked her name and when she told her it was Jolene, Dolly said, “That is about the prettiest name for a little girl I ever heard. I am going to write a song using your name.”
    Not a clerk

    35

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