Fact Cards

7301. Andrew Lyne’s Applauded Exoplanet Retraction-In 1991, British radio astronomer Andrew Lyne had electrified astronomy by announcing what he believed was the first planet found orbiting another star, a supposed world circling the pulsar PSR 1829-10. After rechecking his team's calculations, he realized the apparent planetary signal was just an artifact of improperly accounting for Earth's motion around the Sun. At a 1991 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, he walked up to the microphone, publicly retracted the discovery, and explained the mistake in front of his peers. Instead of criticism, he received thunderous applause for his honesty, and his retraction became a classic example of scientific integrity in action.

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7302. Zooey Deschanel Becomes Backup Jovie-When the Christmas comedy Elf went into production, Zooey Deschanel was not the first choice for the role of Jovie and originally came in as a backup. She walked into her initial meeting for the film with dyed blonde hair, a look that surprised the team. The filmmakers liked the contrast and asked her to keep the blonde hair for the shoot, so Jovie's look in the movie came directly from that moment of chance casting.

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7303. Shania Twain Singing For Survival-Growing up in Timmins, Ontario, singer Shania Twain began her singing career in bars at the age of 8, often performing until 1 a.m. to support her family financially through tips. In 1987, her parents died in a car accident, and at 21, she suddenly became the legal guardian of her younger siblings. She put her music career on hold to raise them and keep the family together before eventually returning to pursue the country music stardom that later made her world famous.

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7304. Fujio Masuoka’s Underpaid Flash Invention-Japanese engineer Fujio Masuoka invented NOR and NAND flash memory while working at Toshiba, creating the non-volatile storage technology that is widely used in microprocessors today. Instead of a major payout, the company gave him only a few hundred dollars as a bonus and even tried to demote him. Meanwhile, Intel made billions of dollars in sales on related flash memory technology.

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7305. Neanderthals Invent Birch Tar Adhesive-Archaeologists have found that Neanderthals deliberately heated birch bark in underground, low-oxygen pits to produce birch tar, the earliest known synthetic material. This tar does not form on its own in nature, so making it required planning, controlled fires, and an understanding that heat and smoke could transform raw bark into a sticky substance. They used the resulting birch tar to attach stone tools to handles.

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7306. AT&T Once Dominated U.S. Market-In 1960, AT&T was so dominant that its stock alone made up about 13% of the entire U.S. equity market. That single company carried roughly twice the market weight that Nvidia holds today.

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7307. McDonald’s Japan MP3 Trojan Giveaway-In 2006, McDonald's Japan ran a promotion that gave away 10,000 USB stick MP3 players preloaded with 10 free songs to customers who bought certain value meals. The devices also carried an unpleasant extra: the QQPass Trojan, a program designed to steal login data from Windows PCs when users plugged the players into their computers. Once the infection came to light, McDonald's apologized publicly, set up a dedicated helpline, and urged winners to stop using the devices and run antivirus checks.

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7308. Richard Gatling’s Humane Machine Gun-In 1862, American inventor Richard Gatling patented the Gatling gun, one of the first successful rapid-fire weapons, while the Civil War raged in the United States. He believed that a faster-firing gun would allow smaller armies to fight wars, which in his mind would reduce the number of soldiers who died from disease and battle. Gatling argued that his gun could actually save lives by shrinking the size of armies required for modern warfare. Instead, his design became a prototype for later automatic weapons and helped usher in a new, more lethal era of industrialized combat.

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7309. Dickens’ Lavish Christmas Carol Losses-In 1843, Charles Dickens released

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7310. Temple Houston’s Soiled Dove Plea-In 1899 in Woodward, Oklahoma, Temple Lea Houston, a former gunslinger turned lawyer, stood up in a makeshift courtroom to defend a prostitute named Minnie Stacey, who had no money and no attorney. Speaking entirely off the cuff, he delivered the

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37 COMMENTS

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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.

    11
    • 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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  4. 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.

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  5. 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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  6. 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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  7. 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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  8. 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.

    1270
  9. 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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  10. 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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  11. 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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