Collection of 35 Entertaining Random Facts About Everything | Random List #228

In 1719 prisoners in Paris were offered freedom at the condition that they would marry a prostitute and move to Louisiana.

27. In the 1970s, a 15-year-old girl named Mary Vincent hitched a ride with a stranger. She was then brutally assaulted in the van, had both of her arms chopped off, and was then thrown over a cliff to die. She miraculously survived and later faced her attacker in court.

28. Bill Nye originally got his break into the entertainment industry after 4 times of being rejected to join NASA’s astronaut training program in the late 1970s and stumbled into a new career path by winning a Steve Martin look-alike contest in 1978 that launched his career into stardom.

29. Ancient Romans held mock sea battles known as naumachia for entertainment. In some cases, whole amphitheaters like the Colosseum would be flooded and the ship battles would take place within them while spectators would watch from their seats.

30. The first successful artificial insemination was performed in 1884 on a Philadelphia housewife without her knowledge. The doctor anesthetized the woman and took sperm from his “best-looking” student and impregnated her. The doctor and the woman’s husband never revealed the truth to her.

In 1891, Tesla made a risky demonstration to discredit Edison company’s claims on the safety of AC. During the demo, for a moment, 250,000 volts raced across the surface of his body, causing him to be surrounded by what one newspaper called “the Effulgent Glory of Myriad Tongues of Electric Flame.”

32. In Ancient Rome, bestiarii or gladiators who fought animals often killed themselves rather than fight. In one instance, 29 prisoners strangled each other to death rather than to fight in the arena.

33. In April of 1997, the internet faced a blackout due to a single bad router in Florida. The bug spread like a plague across the world, crashing networks everywhere.

34. Hitler privately expressed great admiration for Mussolini; however, Mussolini had little regard for Hitler. Mussolini said that the Germans were the descendants of those who were illiterate when Rome had Caesar, Virgil, and Augustus.

35. More than half of American adults still have their childhood stuffed animals.