Fact Cards

8251. Primula Niven Died Playing Sardines-In 1946, 28-year-old Primula Rollo Niven, wife of British actor David Niven, died after suffering a fatal accident while playing a game of sardines, a form of hide-and-seek, at the Beverly Hills home of actors Tyrone Power and Annabella. She opened a door believing it led to a closet, but instead stepped onto a stone staircase leading to the basement and fell, fracturing her skull.

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8252. Britons Can Donate To Government-Members of the British public can voluntarily donate money directly to HM Treasury without giving a specific reason, with the funds going toward general public spending. In 2005, the total amount donated this way was £5.

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8253. Henry Every Vanished With Treasure-In 1695, English pirate Henry Every captured the Mughal treasure ship Ganj-i-Sawai and seized an enormous fortune in precious metals and jewels, with modern estimates placing the haul at around £108 million in today's money. The raid nearly triggered a diplomatic crisis between England and the Mughal Empire, with Emperor Aurangzeb closing East India Company factories and detaining English officials in India. The English government placed a £500 bounty on Every, which the East India Company later doubled to £1,000, launching what has been described as the first global manhunt. Every was never captured, and both his ultimate fate and the whereabouts of his fortune remain unknown.

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8254. Swiss Husbands Controlled Marital Assets-Before Switzerland reformed its marriage law in 1985, a husband could sell the family home or cancel a tenancy agreement without his wife's approval, manage assets she had brought into the marriage, and even forbid her from working. The government moved to change these rules, but a conservative committee forced the new marriage and inheritance law to a national referendum. In September 1985, only 54% of voters supported the reforms. Had only men voted, as was still the case nationally until 1971, the old marriage law would have remained in place.

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8255. NASA Cleanrooms Hid Unknown Bacteria-Researchers discovered 26 previously unknown bacterial species living in NASA spacecraft assembly clean rooms despite stringent efforts to keep the facilities biologically clean. Scientists sequenced 215 bacterial isolates collected during the Phoenix spacecraft mission and found that 53 strains belonged to novel species capable of surviving conditions shaped by rigorous cleaning, low humidity, radiation, and limited nutrients.

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8256. Yoda Uses Rarest Word Order-One of the unusual speech patterns associated with Star Wars character Yoda is object-subject-verb, or OSV, as in

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8257. Strategic Petroleum Reserve Uses Caverns-The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve does not keep its emergency crude oil in surface tanks but in 60 massive underground salt caverns spread across four sites in Texas and Louisiana. A typical cavern is about 200 feet wide and 2,500 feet tall, and one is large enough to fit Chicago's Willis Tower inside with room to spare. The caverns were carved into salt formations using water and can hold between 6 million and 37 million barrels of oil each. The Department of Energy says underground salt storage can cost up to 10 times less than above-ground tanks while also providing strong natural protection against leaks.

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8258. Latvia Gender Gap Fueled Rent-a-Husbands-Latvia has a striking gender imbalance, with about 0.85 men for every woman overall, and among people over 65, women outnumber men by nearly two to one. The gap has helped fuel a

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8259. Tokyo Suicide Hotline Charges Callers-Tokyo's suicide prevention hotline uses Japan's 0570 NaviDial system, meaning callers must pay for the call instead of reaching the service toll-free. From a mobile phone, 0570 calls cost 33 yen per minute, including time spent on hold or navigating automated menus, and unlimited-calling plans generally do not cover them. The same paid-number system is also used by some other public services in Japan, including labor and human-rights hotlines.

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8260. Japanese Couples Must Share Surnames-Under Japanese law, married couples must legally use the same surname, so a Japanese couple generally cannot register a marriage while each spouse keeps a different legal family name. Article 750 of Japan's Civil Code allows the couple to choose either the husband's or the wife's surname, although in practice the husband's name is chosen in the overwhelming majority of marriages. Japan's Supreme Court upheld the same-surname requirement as constitutional in both 2015 and 2021, leaving any change to lawmakers.

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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.

      10
  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.

    18
  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?

    5
    • 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.

      6
  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!

    1224
    • 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).

      7
  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.

    1182
  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!

    5
  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.

    1

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