Random #306 – 50 Random Facts Very Few People Know

Woodworkers or machinists who align all their screw heads call it "clocking."

27. Margot Robbie was nominated for an award called "Actress Most in Need of a New Agent" by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists in 2016 for her work on Tarzan and Suicide Squad.

28. The powder you see when you touch a moth is actually tiny scales, like on a fish or lizard. These scales give butterflies and moths their scientific name Lepidoptera (from the Greek Lepido = scale, and ptera = wing).

29. Cher is the only artist in history to have a Number One song on the Billboard Music Charts for six consecutive decades.

30. In 2015, as a prank, a science journalist and others set up a study which showed that eating chocolate could help you lose weight faster. The study was published in a scientific journal and widely reported in the media.

During the Second Opium War (1860), French and British troops reached the Imperial Palace in Peking, China. The troops proceed to loot everything in sight, including five Pekingese dogs. The dogs were taken back to England and one of the dogs was given to Queen Victoria. She named the dog “Looty"

32. The Olympics have only been postponed or canceled six times since 1896. Most of these postpones or cancellations were due to war, specifically World War 1, World War 2, and during Covid19.

33. After an All-Star professional sports career in both football and baseball, Bo Jackson completed his Bachelors degree in Family and Child Development to fulfill the promise he made to his mother.

34. Over 200 years after the HMS Bounty sank due to a mutiny led by Fletcher Christian, a reconstruction of the same ship sank, taking the life of Claudene Christian, a descendant of Fletcher.

35. For many years prior to the Crusades, Muslims, Jews, and Christians worked together to translate and reproduce Ancient Greek texts, like Aristotle, to reintroduce lost literature to the world.

You aren't supposed to store potatoes beside onions. Onions give off gas to age potatoes faster.

37. In 1948, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game used surplus parachutes from World War 2 to drop threatened beavers into a nearby protected area. After some careful calibrations, 76 beavers made the skydive and all but one survived the drop.

38. Flowers are physically growing with darker colored petals nowadays due to their rapid adaptation to combat the sun's radiation from the thinning ozone layer.

39. The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in the UK has a £1 million award for the first person who creates a product that is 100% chemical-free.

40. The Johnson Treatment was a strategy used by Lyndon B. Johnson to get legislation passed. Johnson, who was 6'4", would invade the personal space of the target and issue a disorientating stream of flattery, threats and persuasion that would leave the target unable to counter.

Peter Molyneux was operating a baked bean export firm when a confused tech salesman mistakenly gave him 10 free computers. This event jumpstarted his career in video game design and he would go on to create many notable games such as Dungeon Keeper, Fable, and Black & White.

42. Your body will dissolve loose pieces of bone in your body after a fracture.

43. The Python programming language was not named after the snake, but was actually named after “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, a British surreal sketch comedy series because the creator wanted to give his programming language a name that was “unique, mysterious and short.”

44. There is a folk-punk band named “This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb”. On three separate occasions, stickers for the band affixed to bicycles resulted in police evacuations and bomb squad responses.

45. In English and German culture, Death is typically portrayed as male, but in French, Spanish, and Italian culture, it is not uncommon for Death to be female. In the Netherlands, Death is sometimes referred to as 'Uncle Hendrik'.

Julian Carlton who was one of the servants of architect Frank Lloyd Wright killed several members of his family with an axe in 1914.

47. Scrat from Ice Age (2002) was not based on a known mammal. However, in 2011 fossilized remains were found in Argentina resembling Scrat.

48. In 1216, Prince Louis of France invaded England and was proclaimed King of England with the support of many English nobles. Eventually the English changed their minds and paid him to agree that he had never actually been king, so Louis doesn't appear in any official list of Kings of England.

49. The Roman Empire mined so much silver that at peak production they were mining 200 tonnes per year. This was 5 to 10 times larger than the combined amount of silver available to Medieval Europe and the Abbasid Caliphate around 800 A.D.

50. Putting spaces between written words wasn't a thing until the 7th Century and didn't become popular in Europe for another few hundred years.