Random Fact Sheet #167 – 35 Facts That Will Captivate Your Mind

Charles Manson tried out Scientology and subsequently declared it as "too crazy."

2. Smoky the Yorkie was a pet dog to soldiers in the south pacific, weighing 4lbs, who kept operational 40 United States fighters by running a wire tied to her collar through a 6in pipe, completing a 3-day construction job in minutes. He also had 10 recognized combat flights and 8 combat stars.

3. Penguin poop will change Antarctica's ecosystem. For the last 5,000 years, penguins have delivered roughly 16 million pounds of nutrient-rich poop on the rocks of Antarctica. This poop can one-day support plants and animals which currently can't survive in Antartica.

4. Charles Darwin, while working on a book about orchids, was frustrated and wrote in a letter to his friend “But I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.”

5. Electricity was first installed in the White House in 1891. It was such a new concept that President Benjamin Harrison and his wife both refused to touch light switches due to their fear of electrocution so the White House staff had to follow them around and turn the lights off and on for them.

A Hungarian-born United States Army soldier Tibor Rubin survived the Holocaust, fought for the US Army during the Korean War, became a POW, and had to wait 55 years to receive his Medal of Honor, all because his sergeant was an anti-Semite.

7. Former Prime Minister of Norway Jens Stoltenberg once went incognito as a taxi-driver in Oslo because he wanted to "hear from real Norwegian voters and that taxis were one of the few places where people shared their true views."

8. Pencils historically never had lead in them, they in fact always had graphite. When graphite was discovered, it was thought to be a form of lead, hence calling it "lead" in the pencil.

9. An Iraqi named Hussain al-Shahristani was forced into solitary confinement in prison for 8 years under Saddam Hussein. He kept his sanity by “making up mathematical problems, which he then tried to solve.” He later became Iraq’s minister of higher education and scientific research.

10. In Victorian London, mail was delivered to homes 12 times a day. "Return of post" was a commonly used phrase for requesting an immediate response to be mailed at the next scheduled delivery. It was quite common for people to complain if a letter didn't arrive within a few hours.

The second officer (Charles Herbert Lightoller) of the Titanic stayed onboard till the end and was trapped underwater until a boiler explosion set him free. Later, he volunteered in World War 2 and helped evacuate over 120 men from Dunkirk.

12. A female Giant Pacific Octopus can lay 50,000 eggs. She quits eating and spends 6 months slowly dying as she tends to and protects them. On average, only 2 out of the 50,000 baby octopuses survive.

13. Soviet tank driver and mechanic Mariya Oktyabrskaya, whose husband was killed in 1941, sold her possessions to fund a T34 tank, piloted the said tank, called it ‘The Fighting Girlfriend’ and received Soviet military honors for killing Nazis.

14. There is a grizzly bear in Banff, Canada who is named Boss. He has been hit by a train 3 times, eats smaller black bears and elks, lives in a town and has never caused any harm to people.

15. A Swedish radiologist named Anna Bagenholm survived the lowest body temperature ever recorded at 56.7°F (13.7°C). She had been skiing when she fell through a frozen stream and became stuck for 80 minutes. Despite being clinically dead, she made a full recovery and is now working at the same hospital that saved her life.

Henry Ford's intense hatred of Jazz drove him to pump tons of money into promoting country music, which was then called "old-time music" and helped establish country music culture as we know it today.

17. Bhutan, Wales, and Malta are the only countries in the world whose flags have dragons on them.

18. To avoid traumatic brain injury, woodpecker's tongue wrap around their skulls in a small empty cavity, which helps to cushion the blows.

19. Many African countries are against the importation of second-hand clothes as it's destroying their local textiles industry.

20. Franklin D. Roosevelt made an agreement with the press that they wouldn't take photos of him walking or getting in and out of cars, so as to avoid publicizing his disability due to polio.

The infamous Great Seattle Fire of 1889 also killed 1 million rats, which completely eliminated the town's major rodent problem.

22. Americanitis, a condition caused by too much stress, too little sleep, rushed meals and the fast-paced advance of technology - was “cured” by the Great Depression.

23. Alpaca, llama, and camel "Spit" isn't always just saliva. When very upset, the spit comes from their first stomach, and is green and has a very powerful stench.

24. Sir David Attenborough always wears a blue shirt and khaki pants to help with continuity when filming months and sometimes thousands of miles apart.

25. Paul Robeson, the third black student at Rutgers, was valedictorian, two-time All-American in football, got a law degree from Columbia while playing in the NFL, was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance, an international recording, stage, and film star, and a civil rights activist.