Fact Cards

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7141. Brian Scalabrine Destroys Amateur Challengers-In 2013, former NBA player Brian Scalabrine, who averaged just 3 points per game over his career, responded to critics who mocked his bench role by organizing a 1-on-1 challenge. Four volunteers who claimed they could beat him met him on the court to prove it. Scalabrine treated the event seriously and dominated every matchup. By the end, he had won all the games with a combined score of 44–6.

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7142. Well Behaved Women Historian Ulrich-In 1976, American historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich coined the phrase “well behaved women seldom make history” in a scholarly article about Puritan funeral services. She used the line to argue that historians largely ignored ordinary, virtuous women and should pay more attention to their lives and work. Over the next decades, the quote escaped academia and began appearing on T-shirts, mugs, greeting cards, and bumper stickers as a popular slogan. Ulrich later returned to the idea in her book Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, which explores how women have shaped history in ways traditional narratives often overlook.

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7143. Quicksilver Renamed Mercury By Alchemists-In medieval Europe, alchemists worked with seven known metals: gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, iron, tin, and lead, and they matched each one to the seven classical planets. They associated gold with the sun, silver with the moon, quicksilver with Mercury, copper with Venus, iron with Mars, tin with Jupiter, and lead with Saturn. Because of this planetary pairing, quicksilver took on the name of its celestial counterpart, and people now call the element mercury.

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7144. Soviet Doctor Discovers Hepatitis E-In the 1980s, a Soviet physician investigating a mysterious hepatitis outbreak among soldiers in Uzbekistan suspected it was not hepatitis A. To prove it, he deliberately ingested fecal samples from 22 infected soldiers and waited. Thirty-six days later, he developed hepatitis himself and then had his stool examined under an electron microscope. The images revealed a new pathogen, now known as the hepatitis E virus.

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7145. Tonka Beans Banned In America-Since 1954, the United States has banned tonka beans as a food ingredient because they contain coumarin, a chemical that can be toxic in high doses. Chefs still prize the beans for a complex flavor that tastes like a mix of vanilla, licorice, caramel, and cloves. In the US, authorities have raided restaurants caught using tonka beans in defiance of the ban. Some chefs have even relied on smugglers to bring the beans into the country so they can use them in their dishes.

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7146. Philip Pullman Undermining Christian Belief-In 2001, English novelist Philip Pullman told an interviewer that he was “trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.” In 2002, Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens seized on that remark and branded him “the most dangerous author in Britain.” Pullman had written his His Dark Materials trilogy as a deliberate rebuttal to what he saw as the heavy Christian message in C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia.

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7147. Mark Hunt Funds Human Cloning-In 2001, West Virginia attorney Mark Hunt, whose infant son Andrew died at 10 months old after surgery for several birth defects, secretly funded a human cloning laboratory in hopes of replicating his child. Hunt and his wife Tracy enlisted a French biochemist and formed a company called Bioserve to finance the project. Their plan copied animal cloning techniques: scientists would extract DNA from Andrew’s tissue, place it into a human egg with its own DNA removed, and implant the reconstructed egg into a surrogate mother. After ABC News exposed the secret lab, Hunt said he would not start another facility, but he also admitted he still hoped that future cloning technology might give his son's genetic makeup a chance to continue.

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7148. Wayne Gretzky Skips Hall Wait-After retiring from the NHL in 1999, Wayne Gretzky became the rare player whose Hall of Fame induction did not follow the usual three-year waiting period. On June 23, 1999, the Hockey Hall of Fame selection committee approved him for immediate induction by reason of outstanding preeminence and skill, and he entered the Hall that November. He remains the most recent player to have that waiting period waived. In 2000, the NHL honored him further by retiring his jersey number 99 across the entire league.

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7149. 1945 German Mass Suicides Panic-In the final weeks of World War II in 1945, thousands of Germans took their own lives in panic as the Red Army advanced into Hitler’s collapsing Reich. Families killed themselves together, often using poison or gunshots, because they feared Soviet occupation and believed Nazi propaganda about what awaited them. In Berlin alone, authorities recorded around 7,000 suicides during this period. In several places, including entire towns, large groups chose mass suicide instead of surrender.

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7150. Spectre Destroys Aston Martin Fleet-For the 2015 James Bond film Spectre, producers commissioned ten custom Aston Martin DB10 sports cars built exclusively for the movie. The crew used several of these cars for high-speed chases and stunt work, especially during the Rome night sequence. By the end of filming, crashes and effects work had destroyed or heavily damaged multiple DB10s. The total value of Aston Martins wrecked for the production reached about $37 million.

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37 COMMENTS

  2. Would you mind if I started to post these facts on iFunny? I really think people would love them and I would of course credit and link your website.

    1094

  4. Your page (re)numbering makes it almost impossible to find something on your site. The search option doesn’t seem very helpful.. I tried to search for Harris Rosen or Fact #62 after seeing it on Bored Panda, but had to do a brute force search to find this page…

    1096

  6. I just went through all the facts pages. A few things I’ve noticed:
    1. #451-#470 (pgs 46 & 47) have images that are broken.
    2. #841-#1140 (pgs 85-114) are complete duplicates of earlier pages.

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    • Thank you for your valuable feedback. Last night we implemented a new page numbering system for our fact cards. I really messed up with facts #451-#470 which I have fixed now. I have fixed the other problem too.

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  7. Just stumbled onto your site via an Imgur post. Cool stuff.

    Re. one of the citations above: “The oldest D20 dice was uncovered in Egypt…”

    One “die,” many “dice.” The headline in the source given had it right; “Ancient d20 die emerges from the ashes of time.”

    Credibility is always enhanced by proper grammar.

    18

  10. I really enjoy your site. I visit it regularly at this period of my life to use up time, while entertaining myself, and increase my awareness of life through the amazing insights into stories behind what we often overlook. It is almost therapeutic I would think! For one thing, I feel grateful not to be one of the warped personalities you often report on, but on the other hand, I feel sorry for the suffering that is really behind so many people you note through our shared history, who have the apparency of many successes, but are in fact imperfect and suffering souls like all of us, on the road to something better we hope eh?

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    • History gives us an opportunity to look into the mistake our ancestors made, but also the feats they achieved. The lives they suffered, so that the future generations could have the freedom. I am happy to have been part of such an important part of your life, Stuart.

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  13. I’m sure it’s like asking a magician how his tricks are done, but I would love to know the workings of the research you have to go through to find/verify everything I’ve read on your site. To say they are entertaining would be an insult. I read several pages daily. I have found them to be fascinating, educational, informative, and downright important.

    When I was a child and went on long road trips with my parents, my Mom would would bring a box of Trivial Pursuit cards to read and ask questions to pass the time for everyone in the car…My Wife now reads these to our kids on our vacations.

    Do you take fact submissions, or do you rely on your own people to research and present them to your team/site? The only thing I can say about your site, is some click ads could be modified or even done away with. Political opinion polls, etc…I would sooner see and ad for shaving cream that some of those useless and probably biased ads (not you, just the people conducting them) But, I love what you do and am so glad that your site exists!

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    • Thank you Ryan. It’s the readers like you who keep us going. It gives us immense pleasure to know that you love reading facts on our site. We do take submissions. About 10% of our facts come from submissions. You too can submit facts by filling out this form Contact Us. The ads are what keeps the servers running. We don’t take any donations, use patreon or sell merch on our site so ads are how we generate income. Though, we will take your advice to tone down the ads (we can’t really see what kind of ad our readers see as it’s decided by Google).

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  17. 1454: She wasn’t found “shortly” after, which might imply that 911 had tried to help and just didn’t arrive in time; she was found HOURS after.

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  19. Each of these pages of facts should have its own page for commenting instead of many fact pages and only one place to comment. I’d also delete my post about each fact having its own page since the aforementioned idea is better, but I can’t.

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  23. I love this website I use it all the time and it allows me to attain info that I have been able to use irl all the time. Keep up the great work!

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  24. Also Rickinator for 610 killing bears is not a good thing due to most species of bears being endangered it is just a fact/statistic

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  26. Your fact card is WRONG! You state Queen Elizabeth II is related to George Washington (which is correct), however, then you all say “Their last living common ancestor is Augustine Warner, Sr. who died in XX.”

    That’s incorrect! i am related to both Col. Augustine Warner, Sr. and George Washington and I’m very much alive as are my family members and 1 uncle and his 2 sons.

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