Random #264 – 50 Interesting Random Facts

An average silverback can deadlift 1800 lb and their grip can crush a crocodile's skull. They are 4 to 9 times stronger than an average human male.

2. Dave Grohl wrote and recorded an entire album by himself, singing and playing each instrument in the studio. He chose the name Foo Fighters to hide his identity. After a record label picked it up he needed to recruit members to perform the songs live. Thus the Foo Fighters were created.

3. Queen Elizabeth II specifically asked to be in a James Bond skit with Daniel Craig for the Olympics, breaking royal protocol. When asked if she would like to say something she said, "Of course I must say something. After all, he is coming to rescue me."

4. Since 2007, all of McDonald's delivery trucks in the UK have been fueled by used cooking oil from their restaurants.

5. Goats are completely immune to poison ivy, oak, and sumac. They love the stuff and can eat several pounds a day.

In 1967, Paul McCartney forgot his passport when traveling to France to shoot a music video. He told the agents, ‘You know who I am so why do you need to see a photograph of me in a passport?’ And was let through.

7. A California man named Scott Amos found an unopened copy of a 1987 Nintendo game called Kid Icarus in his mom's attic. It was still in the original shopping bag along with a receipt showing it cost $38.45. He later sold the game at auction for $9,000.

8. DNA evidence shows that groups in the Amazon are more closely related to indigenous Australians than Native Americans.

9. The infamous Shirts against the Blouses basketball game in Chappelle’s Show actually happened and Prince was as good as Charlie Murphy says he was. Prince also had blueberry pancakes served after the game.

10. Keanu Reeves was the last choice for the role of "Neo" from The Matrix. Brad Pitt was first to accept before declining. Leonardo DiCaprio later accepted before declining. Others considered were Will Smith, Nicolas Cage, Sandra Bullock, Johnny Depp, Kevin Costner, David Duchovny, and Tom Cruise.

Chad Pregracke, who, when he was 23, after witnessing immense levels of trash on the Mississippi River in Illinois, started a nonprofit to address it. Since then, they have removed 5,000 tons of trash from the Mississippi and its tributaries.

12. Canada's Northwest Territories launched a process in 1996 to find a new name. They dropped the matter when "Bob" emerged as a frontrunner.

13. Roman busts sometimes had removable "hair" so that you could update it later on with the current fashionable hairstyle.

14. During the Warlord Era (1916-1928) in China there was a woman named Shi Jianqiao whose father was a warlord. He was defeated and executed by his rival, Sun Chuanfang when she was 19. Shi spent her 20s tracking Sun down, killing him in 1935. The Chinese society was so moved by her act of revenge that the court pardoned her.

15. The 1959 film "The Tingler" was about a parasite that causes tingling sensations in victims. The film's producers rigged surplus World War 2 aircraft motors to random theater seats, so viewers would "feel the tingler" when it attacked. Some viewers were also paid to pretend to scream and faint.

In 1906, a man named Joe Munch in Seattle was sentenced to one minute in jail for drunkenness and disorder. The original sentence was 30 days, but after an appeal and 6 months of litigation, it was shortened to one minute. He was kept in jail until the second hand of the jailer’s watch completed a circle.

17. A top-level Dutch football club signed up an 18-month old named Baerke van der Meij for a ten-year contract after his father posted a video of the boy kicking a ball into his toy chest 3 times in a row. After scribbling his signature for the club, the toddler celebrated with a glass of orange juice.

18. In 2003, the mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, illegally bulldozed the runway of a downtown airport in the middle of the night to create a park. This stranded 16 planes on the ground and required an inbound flight to be diverted. The FAA fined the city $33,000, the maximum allowed at that time.

19. Erotomania is a delusional disorder in which a person believes another person, often famous or important, is in love with them. The person suffering from this delusion might think the person of interest is sending them subliminal messages. This disorder is most often seen in women.

20. Whitesnake’s 1987 no. 1 hit song, ‘Here I Go Again’, was actually a re-recording of their 1982 version that never charted. There is only one-word difference in the lyrics between the songs. They changed “hobo” to “drifter” to ensure it was no longer mistakenly heard as homo.

President Andrew Jackson once held an open house party at the White House at which he served a 1,400 lb block of Cheddar cheese. The White House is said to have smelled of cheese for weeks.

22. New Zealand author Janet Frame was scheduled for a frontal lobotomy when it was announced that she had won a national literary prize. The procedure was canceled.

23. In 2007, a Chinese company sold a sofa model with an inappropriate label after their translation software translated the Chinese characters for “dark brown” as “nig*er brown.”

24. Golden Age movie star Grace Kelly's film career as a leading lady lasted four years ('52 - '56), during which she made 4 all-time classic movies. She retired at the age of 26 and never made another movie despite Hitchcock begging her to.

25. Cristina Zenato is a professional diver in the Bahamas, who is known as the “Shark Whisperer”. She likes to nuzzle sharks as if they were dogs or cats. She has so far removed over 300 hooks from sharks’ mouths.