Random #338 – 50 Fascinating Random Facts

The Wright Brothers only flew together on the same flight one time, a six-minute flight on May 25th, 1910. They promised their father, Milton, they would never fly together to avoid the chance of a double tragedy and to ensure that one brother would be alive to continue their flight experiments.

2. The Financial Modeling World Cup is essentially the World Cup for Competitive excel users. Participants solve real-life case studies by building financial models in Microsoft Excel. The competition has a total of $25,000 prize fund.

3. Inventor and theorist Buckminster Fuller was expelled from Harvard twice. He was expelled the first time for spending all his money partying with a vaudeville troupe and the second time for his "irresponsibility and lack of interest."

4. When you see actors smoking cigarettes in movies, they're often smoking "Herbal Cigarettes" which contain other plants materials like lettuce or tea leaves instead of tobacco.

5. There was a plot to kill or kidnap George Washington early in the Revolutionary War. The traitors were from Washington's Life Guards, which is similar to today's Secret Service. One of the traitors, Thomas Hickey, became the first person ever to be put to death for treason in USA. He was executed in front of 20,000 people.

Hans Zimmer deliberately used a broken piano for the score of Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes" to make it sound like something you would hear in a pub.

7. In 1946, the Argentinian government imported 50 beavers in an attempt to start a fur trade. There are now 200,000 beavers there and they are threatening over 39 million acres of forest.

8. The world's supply of Brazil nuts comes almost exclusively from wild trees. Brazil nut trees can't be farmed effectively because the complex symbiotic relationships it depends on for pollination, are too difficult to replicate.

9. Sanrio is the company responsible for Hello Kitty. They started out selling silk in the 1960s, but when they started to sell sandals, the founder noticed that sandals with cuter designs sold better. This caused him to hire cartoonists to create cute characters for his company.

10. Senater Daniel Inouye, who has served 50 years in the U.S. Senate, destroyed 3 German machine-gun nests in a single assault during the World War 2 Italian Campaign. The third nest was destroyed after Inouye grabbed a live grenade from his severed right hand and threw it through the firing slit with his left hand.

The Dutch secret service set up a fake pro-China communist party to gather information on the Chinese government. The party's leader, secret agent Pieter Boevé, developed warm relations with the Chinese government and even met Mao Zedong himself.

12. When his film Uncut Gems began to receive critical acclaim, Adam Sandler threatened the world with making "the worst movie ever" if he did not receive a nomination for Best Actor at the Oscars. He was not nominated.

13. ‘The Red Cell’ is a special forces team led by the original commander of SEAL Team 6, Richard Marcinko. Their main objective is to test the security of government installations of USA. They often sneak into military bases, steal classified information, kidnap high-ranking officers and admirals, and once even planted bombs near Air Force One.

14. The Empire State Building, built-in 1930 was designed with the ability for an Airship/Zeppelin to dock at the very top of the skyscraper, overlooking all of NYC.

15. The Pope is the head of two separate and distinct sovereign entities. The first one obviously is the Vatican City, a sovereign city state, and the second one is the Holy See, a sovereign juridical entity that acts as the Universal Catholic Central Government.

The reason Hawaii has the union jack on the top of its flag isn't because they were colonized by the UK, but rather because the Hawaiian king at the time liked the design of the British flag when they arrived.

17. Approximately 7.7% of men and 4.8% of women in the general population have narcissistic personality disorder, a mental illness characterized by grandiosity and a general lack of empathy.

18. One of the earliest recorded variations of the classic dad phrase "Women: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em" is found in a speech from 102 B.C. by Roman Censor Q. Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, in a speech that would be repeated by Caesar Augustus nearly a century later.

19. One of the original ingredients for a Milkshake was Whiskey.

20. In 1997, Corporal Courage II, the wedge-tailed eagle mascot of the Australian Army 2nd Cavalry Regiment, refused to cooperate with handlers during a training session, flew away, and could not be found for two days. He was charged with being AWOL and demoted to trooper.

Neuticles are implantable fake dog testicles invented by Gregg Miller, a man who believed that neutered male dogs miss their balls a lot. The first commercially implanted Neuticles went into a dog in 1995. Since then he has sold over half a million pairs at an average cost of $310 per pair.

22. 1.6% of the general population has Borderline Personality Disorder, a disorder that is characterized by hypersensitivity to rejection and resulting instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, affect, and behavior.

23. The American Dental Association supports chewing sugarless gum since it increases salivary volume and flow, thus protecting against cavities.

24. USS Nautilus was the first nuclear submarine used wooden bearings for its propeller. It used lignum vitae, which is the hardest traded wood, the fourth hardest wood ever discovered, and is "self-oiling."

25. Prior to the advent of city parks, it was quite common for people to picnic in cemeteries.