Random #252 – 50 Cheerful Random Facts

The feeling you get when a storm is coming is really the barometric pressure dropping around you.

27. The band Heart played in Canada instead of the US for the first part of their career. They couldn't play in the US because their manager was hiding from the Vietnam draft in Canada.

28. In the 1990s, Russian mafia and Italian mafia organizations participated in a literal money-laundering scheme, washing and bleaching the ink out of US$1 bills and reprinting them as $100s, for use in the post-Soviet bloc countries, where the bills might avoid detection as counterfeits.

29. In Norway, when a book is published, Arts Council Norway purchases 1,000 copies for distribution to libraries and they purchase 1,500 copies if it’s a children’s book.

30. The 1968 rock song In A Gadda Da Vida was intended to be "In The Garden of Eden". Frontman Doug Ingle, who came up with the song, was hammered on red wine and his bandmates couldn't understand him.

In 1971, as part of an experiment to study the causes and effects of landslides, Japanese scientists watered down a hill using fire hoses to simulate the effect of a torrential rainstorm. The soil on the hill gave way and the resulting landslide killed 4 scientists and 11 observers.

32. Congo's Salonga National Park is the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest national park and the largest in Africa. It is considered to be practically virgin, unaffected by human activities, and largely unexplored.

33. French writer Voltaire teamed up with a mathematician to exploit a loophole in the French lottery that set him up financially for life.

34. Guinness World Records accepts payments (ranging from $12,000 to $500,000) from individuals, organizations, and governments to either find a record that they could break or to create an entirely new record category.

35. When a gypsy boxing champion named Johann Trollmann was put in a labor camp in Nazi Germany, he was forced to fight against a feared ex-criminal and prison guard and won despite being malnourished and exhausted. The still bitter prison guard sought revenge by murdering Johann with a shovel later.

Gremlins were invented by the RAF as mythical creatures who break airplanes, as a way to explain random mechanical failures in reports. An “investigation” was even conducted to make sure Gremlins didn't have Nazi sympathies.

37. The tradition of spraying champagne after winning a championship was started by Dan Gurney (Team Ford) after the 1967 Le Mans 24-hour race. A huge underdog, Gurney thought the "hard-fought victory needed something special" and spontaneously hosed down all gathered, including and the eldest grandson of Henry Ford, Henry Ford II.

38. Poison Ivy doesn't actually spread when scratched and is not contagious. The reason it creates the illusion of doing so is that different parts of the body absorb the oil at different speeds.

39. The red-crested tree rat, thought to have gone extinct 119 years ago, showed up out of the blue at a hotel in Colombia where two conservationists were staying and let them photograph him for a few hours before disappearing again.

40. Rio residents rely on an app called "Fogo cruzado" to keep track of all gun battles happening in the city any given day in order to avoid them.

The roof of some Tesla models appears orange and red when wet due to a protective UV/infrared layer in the glass to reduce heat. Water droplets cause light to bounce around and reflect some of the infrared light (normally not visible to us) in a form that is visible to our eyes

42. You should wait 72 hours after it rains to swim in the ocean. Storm runoff that empties into the ocean carries increased levels of contaminants, like bacteria, fertilizers, and sewage. Swimming in the ocean too soon can increase your risk of various infections.

43. After the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the striking miners feared jail and confiscation of their guns, so many decided to hide their weapons in the woods before leaving Logan County. Collectors and researchers are still finding weapons and ammunition hidden around the site to this day.

44. During World War 2, the UK planned to build 'unsinkable' giant aircraft carriers with 40-feet thick hulls made out of a mixture of ice and wood pulp. The project was canceled, but the scale model took three years to melt.

45. Malawian albinos are murdered for their bones. Albino children are being hunted like animals in Malawi where their bones are sold in the belief that their body parts bring wealth, happiness, and good luck.

Before alarm clocks were cheap or reliable, "knocker-uppers" specialized in waking people up in the morning by shooting dried peas with blowguns at their windows. They would not leave until they made sure that their clients had actually awoken.

47. Abraham Lincoln's assassination helped to popularize travel by train due to the amount of press and exposure Lincoln's funeral train received. Up until then, most Americans had never seen a passenger train.

48. If your kids want to have a lemonade stand in Canada's capital city, Ottawa, the sign must be in English and French, as well 7% of the profits must be donated to charity.

49. Pablo Picasso always carried a revolver loaded with blanks, which he would use to shoot at people who questioned him about the meaning of his paintings.

50. "The Champ" is a jigsaw puzzle that has 44 pieces that can be assembled in 32 different ways with only one of them being correct.