Fact Cards

37 Comments
7591. Phillies Owner’s Fishing Trip Consequence-In 1980, National League owners met to vote on adopting the designated hitter rule that the American League had used since 1973, but Philadelphia Phillies owner Ruly Carpenter was away on a family fishing trip and had simply instructed vice president Bill Giles to vote for the change, with the Pittsburgh Pirates set to follow the Phillies’ lead. When the discussion turned to delaying implementation and Giles could not reach Carpenter, he chose to abstain, the Pirates did the same, and the proposal ended with four votes in favor, five against, and three abstentions, short of the needed majority. Because the motion failed, the National League did not permanently adopt the designated hitter until 2022.

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7592. Sarin Attack Thins Japan Trashcans-In 1995, members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult carried out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, hiding containers of the toxic nerve agent in public spaces, including trash cans. In the aftermath, authorities removed many public trash bins as a security measure to make it harder to plant hidden weapons or explosives. That policy was never fully reversed, which is why trash cans are still relatively scarce in Japan today.

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7593. Elijah Wood Hasn’t Finished LOTR-In a 2021 interview with Esquire marking the 20th anniversary of The Lord of the Rings films, Elijah Wood admitted that he still had not finished reading J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. He said he had read The Fellowship of the Ring but never completed the entire trilogy, even after playing Frodo Baggins in all three movies.

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7594. Davis And Young Choose Kamehameha-In the 1790s, Welsh seaman Isaac Davis and English boatswain John Young arrived in the Hawaiian Islands as shipwrecked or detained captives and fell into the orbit of King Kamehameha I. Kamehameha turned them into trusted military and political advisors, and they taught him Western tactics and weapons that helped him conquer and unify the islands, later serving as high chiefs and even a royal governor. When Captain George Vancouver offered to return them to Britain in 1793, both men chose to stay and spent the rest of their lives in Hawaii.

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7595. Yard Sale Ming Bowl Windfall-In 2020, an antiques enthusiast browsing a yard sale in New Haven, Connecticut, bought a small white porcelain bowl with cobalt blue flower designs for $35, not knowing it was a 15th-century Chinese piece from the early Ming dynasty. Experts later identified it as an “exceptionally rare” imperial bowl from the reign of the Yongle Emperor, one of only seven such examples known in the world. When it went to auction at Sotheby’s in March 2021, the bowl sold for nearly $722,000.

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7596. Mike Boit’s 3:28 Downhill Mile-On April 9, 1983, Kenyan middle-distance star Mike Boit ran a downhill road mile called the Molenberg Mile on Queen Street in Auckland, New Zealand, finishing in 3:28.36 on an asphalt course with a significant net drop. Because the course was too steep to qualify for record status, his time did not count as an official world record, but it remains one of the fastest mile performances ever recorded by a human.

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7597. Adopted Captives And Captivity Narratives-Facing population loss, many Indigenous American tribes used warfare raids not only to take goods but also to capture people who could be adopted into their families to replace lost relatives and maintain their numbers. In this system, a captive’s fate rested with the household that received them, and hundreds of white captives ended up fully adopted into Native communities. Some of those adoptees later wrote first-person “captivity narratives,” which have become important historical sources on Native warfare and cross-cultural life.

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7598. Havana Silver Helps Win Yorktown-In 1781, as George Washington’s Continental Army and French commander Rochambeau struggled to pay troops and finance the Yorktown campaign, Spanish official Francisco Saavedra turned to the people of Havana, Cuba, for help. Havana’s residents quickly raised hundreds of thousands of silver pesos and shipped the money north, giving the Allied forces the funds they needed to keep soldiers supplied and moving. That emergency cash infusion helped Washington and his allies carry out the siege of Yorktown, the decisive victory that effectively ended the American Revolution.

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7599. Catalina Island’s 25-Year Car Wait-On Santa Catalina Island off the coast of Southern California, strict limits on private vehicles mean residents face a waitlist of around 25 years if they want to bring a car over by ferry. The island’s narrow roads and focus on protecting its environment and small-town feel have led authorities to cap the number of autos, so most people rely on golf carts, bikes, and walking instead.

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7600. Canada’s Banks Avoid Depression-Era Runs-During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the United States saw waves of bank failures and panicked customers rushing to withdraw their money, which deepened the economic crisis. In contrast, Canada experienced no major bank runs, largely because its banking system used nationwide branch banks and tighter regulations that discouraged the kind of fragile, small local banks common in the U.S. As a result, Canadian banks remained stable throughout the period, and the financial shock never spiraled into the same sort of banking collapse seen south of the border.

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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.

    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.

      10

  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.

    1270

  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.

    1

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