Enrich Your Mind With these 45 Random Facts – Part 201

In one of the 13th-century version of the King Arthur myth, Merlin is the spawn of a demon and a mortal woman and was intended by Satan to be the Antichrist, but was baptized by a priest shortly after birth which nullified Satan's plan, and now uses his demonic powers of magic and prophecy for good.

2. Team Negative One is a group of Star Wars fans that scanned their own 35mm negatives and digitally restored the movie to its pre-Special Edition glory.

3. Bill Murray hired an assistant who 'was profoundly deaf and spoke only in sign language' to make communication as difficult as possible between him, the director and the studio during the filming of 'Groundhog Day.'

4. Henry Ford allowed injured laborers to continue work from their hospital beds; screwing nuts on small bolts without getting out of bed. It was optional but allowed employees to receive their normal salary while hospitalized. Ford believed that this kind of little work would hasten their recovery.

5. The last thing on BBC Television before it was switched off on the eve of the Second World War was a Mickey Mouse show which was aired at around 12.35pm on 1st September 1939. Seven years later BBC Television returned with a repeat of the same Mickey Mouse program.

During the initial release of Doom, so many people tried to download it at once that it crashed the entire University of Wisconsin's network.

7. In 1969, American actor Samuel Jackson was expelled from Morehouse College for holding the board of trustees hostage along with MLK Sr., demanding reform in the school's curriculum and governance. His mother, afraid of him becoming a person of interest for the FBI, sent him to LA where he began acting.

8. American-Canadian actor Dan Aykroyd has Tourette's and Asperger's and was born with webbed toes and two different colored eyes. He also has strange obsessions with law enforcement and ghosts, which later led to the idea for Ghostbusters.

9. Voles comfort each other when mistreated. Also, the comforting voles have the same level of stress hormone of the mistreated one, suggesting that voles are capable of empathy.

10. Blowing out birthday candles increases bacteria on cake by 1,400%.

North Korea filmed a movie named Silver Hairpin in Japan in 1985, aimed at showing the oppression of Koreans in Japan. North Koreans, instead, drew the conclusion that Koreans were better off in Japan.

12. In 1964, British Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home was almost kidnapped by two students with political motivations. He persuaded them not to by pointing out that his kidnapping would ensure a Conservative victory in next election, gave the two a case of beer, and bid them goodnight.

13. In order to supply water to the parks of the Palace of Versailles, Louis XIV ordered the construction of the Machine of Marly to pump water from the Seine located 10 km from the castle with an ascend of 150 meters. This machine was considered one of the most complexes pieces of engineering of its time and worked for 133 years.

14. There are only 8 species of bears in the world: brown bears, Asian black bears, American black bears, sun bears, sloth bears, spectacled bears, polar bears, and giant pandas.

15. Architect Edmund Bacon (Kevin Bacon's dad) illegally skateboarded across Philadelphia's LOVE Park, the plaza he helped design, to protest the city's skateboard ban.

A Borderlands fan named Michael Mamaril died at 22 before Borderlands 2 came out. When his friends asked Gearbox if they would have Claptrap read a eulogy, they instead made a character in the game based off of Michael himself.

17. In the 1930s, Warner Bros. was looking for an effective way to promote their music catalog. They settled on making animated shorts set to their music — calling it “Looney Tunes.”

18. Half of the European men share King Tut's DNA (haplogroup R1b1a2) as opposed to less than 1% of modern Egyptians. It's suggested that the common ancestor lived in the Caucasus about 9,500 years ago.

19. During World War 2, Steinway & Sons airdropped pianos with large parachutes and complete tuning instructions into the battle for the American troops. Called the Victory Vertical or G.I. Steinway, the pianos were to provide a bit of relaxation. The pianos came in olive, blue, and gray drab.

20. Goldfinger was banned in Israel after it was reported that the actor playing Goldfinger, Gert Fröbe, was a former member of the Nazi party. The ban was lifted when it was discovered he helped to hide two Jews in his basement during the war.

The Romans had a "door to the underworld" in modern day Turkey where animals would appear to mystically drop dead. The eunuch priests that brought them there for sacrifice were left unscathed because they stood above the lethal cloud of carbon dioxide gas.

22. From the ages of 1 to 44 you are most likely to die from an accident. From the age of 45 on, you are most likely to die from cancer or heart disease. Under 1, you are most likely to die from a birth defect.

23. Two nuns named Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper and Sister Lana Chan teaching at a California Elementary School embezzled approximately $500,000 from their employer over a ten year period to fund their trips and casino visits. No charges are being pursued.

24. The normal intelligible outdoor range of the male human voice in still air is 180 m (590 feet 6.6 inches). The silbo, the whistled language of the Spanish-speaking inhabitants of the Canary Island of La Gomera, is intelligible under ideal conditions at 8 km (5 miles).

25. Water in the town of Puerto Williams has been tested to have the world's purest fresh water. The town of Puerto Williams located at the southern tip of Chile was found after numerous scientific studies to have only two chemical parts per million, making it the world's cleanest water.