Random #329 – 50 Fascinating Random Facts

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26Tas' Appearance

Tas' Appearance

The Tasmanian Devil only appeared in 5 out of the original 1,002 Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoon shorts.


27. Some states in the USA have "Dead Red" laws, according to which if you're on a motorcycle or a moped that is too light or not large enough to trip the sensor that changes the light from red to green, you're legally allowed to run the red light after waiting for a reasonable amount of time.


28. During the French occupation of Vietnam, the city of Hanoi had a huge rat problem. The colonial French government wanted the rats exterminated from the sewer system, so they set a bounty for each dead rat tail. So began the Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902. Thousands of tails were submitted per day by the rat catchers, but the rat problem only grew worse. Investigation found that the hunters were breeding, not hunting, rats for their tails.


29. The 2010 Vancouver luge gold medallist Felix Loch had his medal melted into 2 discs and gave one to the parents of a deceased competitor who died in a practice run on the day of the opening ceremony.


30. The US-Canada border is the longest international border in the world. Alaska's border alone contributes to 38% of it.


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31Gestapo's Agent Toht

Gestapo's Agent Toht

In 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', Steven Spielberg wanted gestapo agent Toht to be a cyborg with a metal arm that could transform into a flamethrower and machine gun. George Lucas rejected these ideas as being too far-fetched.


32. In 1997, David Bowie sold asset-backed securities, dubbed "Bowie bonds", which awarded investors a share in his future royalties for 10 years.


33. Cher is often credited as being the first artist to use auto-tune in a song with her 1998 hit "Believe."


34. Paul McCartney is the only artist to have reached the top of the UK charts as a solo artist, duo, trio, quartet, quintet, and musical ensemble.


35. The term 'patient 0' is based on a misunderstanding. An early HIV patient was named 'patient O', standing for 'patient OUT of California'. People misinterpreted this letter as the numeral 0, leading to its widespread usage today.


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36Grown Cat

Grown Cat

A grown cat can jump between 5-8 times its height. That would be the equivalent of a human being able to jump from the ground up to the 3rd or 4th floor.


37. Even though humans are on average getting taller for the past several thousand years, we're still not as tall as we used to be pre-civilization.


38. The Mummy (1999) helped Universal studios gross over $1 billion in home video sales.


39. The village of Tryweryn, which is now lost, was a Welsh village and one of the last predominantly Welsh-speaking communities. The village was forcibly vacated, destroyed, and purposely flooded by the British government in 1965 in order to create a reservoir to provide water for the English city of Liverpool.


40. When Charles Darwin was sent some flowers from a friend, he noticed that one of the flowers was extremely long and he bet some kind of moth with a really long mouth must exist to pollinate it. A few years later Morgan's sphinx moth was discovered which had a really long proboscis.


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41Willie O'Ree

Willie O'Ree

Willie O'Ree, the first black man to play in the NHL, was blind in one eye. It was caused by a ricocheting puck that hit him in the face when he was 18 and he kept it a secret for his entire 21-year career.


42. The average NBA player has a wingspan-to-height ratio greater than the diagnostic criteria for Marfan syndrome; a disorder that results in abnormally long limbs.


43. Catacomb saints are skeletons exhumed from Roman catacombs and decorated with gold and jewels to serve as "replacement relics" for those destroyed during the Protestant Reformation. It is unlikely that any of those skeletons are actually of the people they are reputed by tradition to be.


44. Emerson Romero was a silent film actor who was deaf. When movies with sound were invented, deaf actors got fewer roles and the intertitle text was removed. This led him to make an early form of movie captioning in 1947 so that movies would still be accessible to deaf people.


45. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin decided on his frosty prefix because his then English wife once told him to drink his tea before it got “stone cold.”


46Sleeping During Church Service

Sleeping During Church Service

During the early day's American colonies, if you fell asleep during a Puritan church service you would be poked by a Tithingman. It was a long wooden pole that on one end had a hard knob or point and the other a bit of fur. When men were caught nodding off, they were given a tap on the head, and women who dozed got a tickle with the fur.


47. Ritz crackers were first released during the Great Depression, choosing the name ‘Ritz’ (as in the Ritz hotels) so people would perceive the crackers as high class and fancy, but available at an affordable price.


48. Most of North America's earthworms are not native. America's native earthworms were killed off by an ice sheet around 10000 years ago. Most earthworms in North America today are descended from those introduced by settlers in the 18th century.


49. An Alaskan husky in an Iditarod trail sled race will burn about 9,666 calories each day. This is about 3.5 times that of a human Tour de France cyclist. The aerobic capacity of a typical Iditarod dog is three times that of a human Olympic marathon runner.


50. More than 30 million viewers in Britain tuned in to watch the BBC "Royal Family" documentary in 1969. During the intermission, the flushing of toilets all over London caused a water shortage.

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