Random #301 – 50 Random Facts Very Few People Know

The Speyer wine bottle, unearthed from a Roman tomb found near Speyer, Germany, is considered "the world's oldest existing bottle of wine". The bottle has been dated between 325 and 350 A.D.

27. In 1988, CIA paid $2 million to Chad to extract an advanced Soviet attack helicopter (Mi-25) from an abandoned Libyan air base using two MH-47 Chinook transport helicopters, flying a total of 500 miles under the cover of night.

28. Pickles the Dog found the FIFA World Cup in a bush after it had been stolen prior to the 1966 tournament. Pickles became famous - he earned a medal, opened a zoo, and even appeared in a film.

29. The first car ever to break a 100 kmh (62mph) barrier was an electric car. The 1899 speed record of La Jamais Contente held for three years until the reign of combustion engines started.

30. Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana, Mexico, and contained whole lettuce leaves meant to be picked up and eaten with your hands.

While chicken is the most slaughtered animal in the world, the #2 spot is held by ducks. Rabbits are #4 and Cattle is all the way in ninth place.

32. The Amazon river was named by Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana. After skirmishes with a native tribe whose women fought alongside the men, Orellana derived the name from the Amazons described in Greek myth.

33. In the 17th century, Robert Boyle, the "Father of Modern Chemistry," compiled an improbable "wish list" he hoped science would one day accomplish. All but a few have come true.

34. The reason MLB (Major League Baseball) has not faced any competitor leagues unlike the NHL, NFL, and NBA is because of a 1922 Supreme Court case that granted them an exemption from the Sherman Antitrust Act, thus making them a legal monopoly.

35. Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire in the 380s, when Emperor Theodosius banned Pagan rituals and holidays, disbanded the Vestal virgins, extinguished the Sacred Fire, destroyed the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, and put an end to the Ancient Olympic Games.

Wild blueberry bushes grow naturally in rocky terrain via a dense network of underground rhizomes that helps with nutrient extraction. A controlled field burn in the off-season, traditionally practiced by Native Americans on the Maine coast, enriches the soil and provides pest/weed control.

37. During the filming of the 1953 film Beat the Devil, Humphrey Bogart lost several of his teeth in a car accident. Comedy actor Peter Sellers, then not known internationally, but with a talent for imitating voices, was hired to dub some of Bogart's lines while Bogart was unable to speak.

38. Chronic cannabis users can develop Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, which produces cyclical vomiting and abdominal pain (and in some cases, compulsive showering with hot water, which alleviates the symptoms). The condition was first discovered in 2004, and little is known about how it works.

39. There are native penguins in South Africa. The African penguin (also known as the jackass penguin cause of the species' loud, donkey-like bray) is the only wild penguin species that breeds in Africa.

40. In 1612, at the funeral of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, a naked man ran through the crowd of mourners claiming he was the ghost of the recently deceased Prince.

Operation Pluto was an operation to lay submarine oil pipelines under the English Channel in support of the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War 2. Two pipelines, “Bambi” and “Dumbo”, carried 180 million imperial gallons of petrol to the Allied Expeditionary Force in northwest Europe.

42. Some birds of prey (like kestrels and hawks) can see bands of UV light that other animals cannot. Because mouse and rat urine reflects UV light, birds have been observed following trails of rodents pee like a glow in the dark path to their prey.

43. A newly found wasp in the Amazon which has been named Acrotaphus Wasp has been observed to zombify spiders. It lays an egg on the spider’s back and makes the spider weave a web designed for the wasp pupa. After the eggs hatch, the wasp consumes the spider and lives on the web.

44. The deep ocean is heterogeneous and made up of discrete water masses, which can be tracked, measured. Some water masses are up to 1,500 years old.

45. Ancient Egypt’s sun God Khepri was scarab-faced because they believed that in the same way as the beetle pushes large balls of dung along the ground, Khepri moved the newly-born sun across the sky.

The Cravat originated in Croatia. The French army enlisted Croatian mercenaries who tied/knotted cloth around their necks with linen, silks, or other fabric. The word comes from the French mispronunciation of the word "croate", meaning Croatian.

47. Yuri Gagarin did not land back in his Vostok Spacecraft. He ejected at 20,000 feet, parachuting safely to Earth, landing near the Volga River.

48. "Pistol" Pete Maravich, the greatest college basketball scorer of all time, and NBA all-star was born with one coronary artery, while the rest of us have two. He died while playing a pickup basketball game at the age of 40. At death, his heart was scarred and enlarged from oxygen deprivation.

49. The gravity at the International Space Station is approximately 90% as strong as on Earth. The reason why things and people float is that they are constantly falling down, the same way people in an elevator would float if it was falling too fast.

50. The CT scanner was invented by an electrical engineer working for EMI, the record company that signed the Beatles. His name was Godfrey Hounsfield and he performed the first CT in history by scanning his own brain.