Random #357 – 50 Mind-Blowing Random Facts

Just like in the Tarantino film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," Sharon Tate really did have the habit of going barefoot in Los Angeles. When she went to restaurants with a "No Shoes, No Service" rule, she would frequently put rubber bands around her ankles to pretend that she was wearing sandals.

27. One of Hitler's earliest allies and closest friends, Ernst Röhm, was actually openly homosexual, despite the Nazis' hatred for homosexuality. He was the leader of the SA until 1934, when he was killed during the Night of the Long Knives.

28. The 'Puckle Gun," considered to be one of the first machine guns (1718), had a specialized square-shaped bullet to be used against Turks as a means to "convince the Turks of the benefits of Christian civilization."

29. The ending of "The Bourne Supremacy" was reshot just two weeks before its release. Director Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon came up with a new idea that would cost $200,000 and involve pulling Damon from the set of Ocean's 12. The movie scored 10 points higher with the new ending and made $176 million.

30. James Blunt gave Weird Al Yankovic permission to parody his single "You're Beautiful." But after Yankovic recorded "You're Pitiful," Blunt's record label refused to let it be commercially released. Yankovic didn't include it on his album. Instead, he released it as a free digital download.

In 2001, Disneyland tried to re-theme their aging "Submarine Voyage" attraction around Atlantis: The Lost Empire, but the movie flopped. They tried again with Treasure Planet, but that was a flop too. They finally succeeded with Finding Nemo in 2005.

32. A man suffering from fatal familial insomnia, a condition whereby you become biologically incapable of sleep, attempted vitamin therapy, sensory deprivation, stimulants, and anesthesia to sleep, which only managed to prolong his life by 12 months.

33. In 2021, a man in Spain died inside the leg of a paper-mache Stegosaurus. It was thought the man entered the Stegosaurus to retrieve his phone, and days later he was found by a father and son who noticed a smell coming from the statue.

34. The word "dumpster" wasn't added to the Scrabble dictionary until 2022 due to it being a trademark before.

35. Coca-Cola's Simply Orange Juice is made by an algorithm known as the Black Book. Oranges are divided by source, type, sweetness, acidity, etc. flash-pasteurized, and then combined with flavor packages according to the Black Book algorithm to have a consistent taste countrywide and year-round.

An estimated 50,000 Irish were made into indentured servants by Cromwell after he took Ireland in 1653.

37. Winslow's Soothing Syrup was a medicine used in the early 1900s to quiet infants and teething children. Popular in the US and UK, it took twenty years of doctors' complaints before it was withdrawn from the market for being a "baby killer." Its main ingredient was morphine.

38. A 69-year-old South Korean woman named Cha Sa-soon gave her written driving test 960 times before she finally passed and was given her license.

39. Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian pastor who believed in the power of teaching through example, which he felt would be just as powerful as preaching.

40. Feral cats on Guadalupe Island have been observed stealing milk from elephant seals. The cats sneak up on a nursing pup and bat at them until the pup retreats, at which point the cat licks up the milk from the mother's teat. Some cats have been observed being chased off by elephant seals.

Renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright's houses were famously leaky due to his unconventional design choices and use of materials, which often resulted in moisture issues.

42. Most audio recordings contain a background "mains hum" caused by electric power grid oscillations. This hum can be matched with grid readings to date the clip to the second it was recorded, providing a precise time stamp.

43. Sylvester Stallone is the only actor to have starred in a #1 box office movie across six consecutive decades.

44. The Big Gulp, a popular drink size sold at 7-Eleven stores, was invented in 1976 after Coca-Cola suggested that they use 32-ounce cups. This was much larger than the 20-ounce cups being used by McDonald's at the time. The first regional order of 500 Big Gulp cups sold out in a week, eventually forcing automakers to make cupholders bigger as the drink's popularity grew.

45. Several people have been caught cheating on game shows throughout history. One of the most notable cases involved Charles Ingram, who cheated his way to winning the jackpot on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" by having an accomplice cough to indicate the correct answer.

Beneath the Puerto Rico Trench lies a mass so dense that it has a gravitational pull on the surface of the ocean, causing it to dip somewhat. The Trench is also associated with the most negative gravity anomaly on earth, -380 milliGal, which indicates the presence of an active downward force.

47. Sigmund Freud was addicted to smoking and failed to quit for good throughout a 45-year-long battle that included 33 operations for cancer of the jaw, an artificial jaw replacement, and attacks of "tobacco angina" exacerbated by nicotine. He was known to smoke up to twenty cigars a day.

48. The 1991 Downing Street mortar attack was a failed attempt by members of the IRA to kill then-Prime Minister John Major during a cabinet meeting. Three mortars were launched at No. 10 Downing Street, one of which hit the lawn 30 yards away. It is believed that if this mortar had hit the building, the entire cabinet would have died.

49. A man once blew a hole in his colon by attempting to treat severe constipation with a toilet plunger.

50. The Army of the United States is not the same as the US Army. The Army of the US is one of four components, along with the Regular Army, the Army Reserve, and the National Guard. If you're drafted, you go into the Army of the US, but this component has been dormant since 1973.