Random #243 – 50 Incredible Facts about Everything

The Pentagon has no marble within it. This is because the Pentagon was built during World War 2 and the source of marble for the government which was Italy was considered an enemy nation.

27. Sergei Krikalev is a Russian astronaut who was stranded aboard the Soviet “Mir” Space Station during the collapse of Soviet Union. The mission ended up being twice as long as planned, and he is referred to as “The Last Soviet Citizen.”

28. The commonly cultivated strawberry does not occur in nature. It is a hybrid of the Virginia wild strawberry and the Chilean beach strawberry, invented in France in the 18th century.

29. The underwater wreckage of Titanic will disappear by 2030. It's being 'eaten away' by a microorganism "Halomonas titanicae". Also known as the "steel-munching bacteria', they have a special liking towards metals.

30. In 2002, in Georgia, the scandal involving "Tri-State Crematory" revealed that the owner would just dump the corpses all over his ranch instead of cremating them. Investigators found over 300 decomposing bodies on his property.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators of the Game of Thrones TV series had no prior experience in television and had only limited experience writing movie scripts. Their original pilot episode was so poorly received at test screenings that HBO demanded that they re-shoot 90% of it.

32. Vladimir Lenin spoke English with an Irish accent. According to a Russian diplomat, "Lenin said that his tutor in English was an Irishman and that was why he was speaking with an Irish accent."

33. Whiskey was originally a medical drink distilled by monks. When King Henry VIII started closing monasteries in 1536, those monks began distilling and selling to anyone, starting the consumption of spirits as a pastime.

34. In 1968, a group of Star Trek fans cornered William Shatner as he left 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and attempted to rip his clothes off. It is likely that this event stopped Shatner from attending Star Trek conventions for over a decade.

35. One of the reasons why Northern Cheyenne reservation traditionalists oppose coal mining on the reservation is that the 1700s Cheyenne mystic Sweet Medicine prophecized that mining the "black rock" would change the tribe forever. 

The Slow Movement which started in 1986 advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life’s pace. It sought to “do everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible.” It began with a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome.

37. The Parliament of New Zealand keeps an official list of "unparliamentary language", which lists insults/obscenities its members have used through the years that were not considered appropriate, such as “His brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides.”

38. Raw milk is responsible for nearly three times more hospitalizations than any other food-borne disease source, making it one of the world's most dangerous food products.

39. Ho Chi Minh, the former prime minister of Vietnam could speak conversational Esperanto, a language which was constructed by a Polish ophthalmologist with the intent to create a universal language that is easy for anyone to learn.

40. Egyptian Arabic is the first language of 92 million Egyptians and the most widely spoken Arabic dialect. It is understood by almost all of the 300 million Arabic speakers in the world, thanks to the Egyptian cinema and media industry.

Super Saiyans in Dragonball Z has blonde hair because the author didn't want his assistant to waste so much time coloring their hair black.

42. A man named Brandt Kuykendal created his own ISP after discovering that he could not get reliable and fast internet in his town. He mainly built the ISP because his daughter needed fast internet to excel in school.

43. Cities used to have 'ugly laws.' People were fined $1 to $50 per day if they were deemed 'too ugly' to go out in public. The last Ugly Law wasn't rescinded in Chicago until 1974.

44. "The Mandalorian" is shot primarily inside 'The Volume', a large array of LED screens that allow the CGI backgrounds to be filmed live, creating realistic settings and shadows.

45. In 2005, Mikhail Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, fired the country's entire traffic police force of around 30,000 officers due to widespread corruption.

The Wanggongchang explosion in 17th-century China killed 20,000 people, released roughly the same amount of energy as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and contributed to the eventual fall of the Ming dynasty. Survivors reported broken rocks, timber, body parts of men and animals raining down from the sky for hours, with the bodies of victims all naked with their clothes mysteriously stripped off. The cause of the explosion has never been conclusively determined.

47. An estimated 8 million war horses were killed in the conflict during World War 1. They were used to help carry food, water, ammunition, and medical supplies. More than a million dogs were also killed. They were used as messengers, sentries, rescuers, and small beasts of burden.

48. Koreans eat about 600 million chickens per year and Korean fried chicken (or KFC) and beer are so popular that its fascination has spread to China via Korean soap operas. A Chinese company once flew all 4500 of its employees to Korea so they all can have KFC and beer.

49. Fast-food chain KFC temporarily closed some branches in the UK due to a shortage of chicken supply. As an apology, they ran an ad that rearranged the letters on their chicken buckets to FCK.

50. Snails need their own train ticket if you take one on a train in France. According to French law, when taking any animal under 6KG (~13lbs) one must pay 7 Euro (~$7.5) for the ride. Law requires you to stay with your snail and keep it and the other passengers safe for the whole ride.