Random #375 – 50 Quirky Tidbits of Information

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer remains under copyright protection until 2034. He has the rare distinction of being an iconic Christmas character that is not in the public domain. This is why most Christmas art and decorations do not include him due to licensing fees.

27. Virtually all of the ice in the earth's biosphere is known as Ice I. At higher pressures, though, there are 19 known different phases of ice.

28. For decades, different studios in Hollywood have simultaneously released two films with strikingly similar plots, a phenomenon known as 'Twin Films' (e.g., Madagascar & The Wild, Antz & A Bug's Life).

29. Rosalynn Carter sat in on Jimmy Carter's presidential cabinet meetings and took notes, so she would always know what was going on. She was also the first First Lady to have her own office in the East Wing.

30. Alexander Green was one of the last hangmen of the Australian prison colonies, having executed around 250 people. He married a convict and, towards his last years, became a drunkard and started botching public hangings. The public noticed his behavior, leading to his job loss and subsequent placement in a mental asylum.

Sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas is a nuclear bomb research and waste site that has detonated over 1000 nuclear bombs between 1951 and 1992. It is one of the most contaminated places in the US. The site offers monthly public tours.

32. Fletcher Jones, an Australian garment manufacturer established in the 1940s, provided a lifelong guarantee on their woolen clothes, offering free alterations for weight gain or dieting. The locals still wear some of their clothes that have survived generations.

33. The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) may have begun when Czech nobles threw two Habsburg regents and their secretary out of the Prague Castle window onto a huge dung heap.

34. Luftwaffe's Master Interrogator, Hanns Scharaff, hand-created the mosaics at Walt Disney World.

35. Before the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was completely constructed, there were concerns among the public that its high-energy experiments would lead to the formation of microblack holes or strangelets, dark-matter-like particles that could convert all matter they touched into strange matter.

Electronic Arts tried to launch an NBA video game in 2010, but the demo was so glitchy that they canceled the completed game. Experts projected that the failure would result in losses of up to $60 million for Electronic Arts.

37. The Battle of the Porpoises was a military blunder during WWI where the Brazilian Navy slaughtered a herd of porpoises after mistaking them for German U-boats.

38. In 2004, a brawl broke out at an NBA game between the Detroit Pistons and the Indiana Pacers after Pacer Ron Artest had a beer thrown at him. The game ended prematurely, resulting in the suspension of nine players, including Artest, the charging of five players with assault, and the permanent banning of five fans from the venue.

39. All species of octopus are venomous, but only the Blue-Ringed Octopus has venom that can harm humans.

40. Bald eagle nests can weigh around 1 metric ton, and the biggest recorded is 2.7 metric tons.

The US Air Force uses the term "elephant walks" to describe the close formation taxiing of a large number of military aircraft prior to takeoff. These exercises serve a practical purpose-preparing aircrews for conflict operations that require mass take-offs-and also serve as a show of force.

42. Happy Days producers intentionally sought a short actor to play Fonzie. They didn't want his character to overshadow the rest of the cast, who were all under 6 feet tall. Despite their intent, Henry Winkler (5'6") still became the breakout star.

43. Indigenous Indians took over and occupied Alcatraz Island from 1969 to 1971, shortly after its closing, to protest the use of their land for the prison.

44. Perhaps counterintuitively, defibrillators do not shock the heart to get it to beat normally-the shock actually stops the heart from beating altogether. This allows the natural automatic pacemaker of the heart to operate again and restore the heart's rhythm to normal.

45. The fins on the Apollo rockets existed only to provide an additional moment of stable flight so a crew member could reach an abort handle. The fins did not provide stability during normal operational flight.

The common ancestor of all vertebrates had not 3 but 4 cones for detecting color. Most mammals later lost two cones from being nocturnal, and primates evolved one back after that.

47. There was a secret facility in the Swedish archipelago for training seals for the navy during the Second World War. The trainers taught the seals to locate mines, submarines, and torpedoes that had missed their targets.

48. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is the frontman for his own band called Ablinken, with songs such as "Lip Service" published on Spotify.

49. In 1977, Ali Maow Maalin was the last person known to have been infected with the naturally occurring Variola minor smallpox. He fully recovered and later became one of the 10,000 volunteers who participated in the effort to help eradicate polio in Somalia. Ali died in 2013 from malaria.

50. Cordyceps sinesis, or caterpillar fungus, parasitizes the larvae of ghost moths and produces an edible fruiting body. Traditional Chinese medicine values this as an aphrodisiac.