1 Fight Club Premiere Audience Reaction

When “Fight Club” premiered at the 1999 Venice Film Festival, the audience booed it heavily. Ed Norton recalled that, during the commotion, Brad Pitt turned to him and said, “That’s the best movie I’m ever going to be in.”
2. After Stan Lee’s death, it was revealed that the famous Marvel Comics writer had suffered elder abuse at the hands of various handlers and family members. They isolated him from other family members and dismissed his long-serving accountants, lawyers, and caretakers.
3. During the Apollo 13 mission, astronaut Jack Swigert realized he had forgotten to file his tax return. NASA reached out to the IRS, who granted him a deadline extension due to his status as “out of the country.”
4. In 2017, a 71-year-old Australian man named Bernard Gore was supposed to meet his wife and daughter at a mall in Sydney after running some errands. Instead, he exited through a door that led to a labyrinth of stairwells and was found dead three weeks later after failing to find his way out.
5. In 2016, Edgar Latulip, a man missing for nearly 30 years, was found alive and living just 80 miles from where he had disappeared. Latulip helped solve his own case by telling a social worker that he had a flashback and remembered his name. He had disappeared in 1986 at the age of 21, reportedly suffering from major memory loss due to a head injury.
6 Teen Escapes Serial Killer’s Captivity

Serial killer Richard Evonitz kidnapped, assaulted, and subjected 15-year-old Kara Robinson from South Carolina to an 18-hour ordeal in 2002. She escaped his captivity by manipulating him into lowering his guard. She subsequently helped police identify him by memorizing key details of her surroundings.
7. A single direct shell from a North Korean 155mm gun battery struck the USS Wisconsin in 1952. Although the damage was minimal, Wisconsin retaliated with all nine of its Mark 7 16-inch guns, completely obliterating the North Korean battery. A nearby escort ship humorously signaled, “Temper, temper.”
8. Iceberg lettuce consists of 96% water, giving it virtually no nutritional value and providing only trace amounts of vitamins and minerals.
9. The 2nd-century Roman Emperor Hadrian, during a fit of rage, once stabbed a slave in the eye with a pen. After calming down and feeling remorseful, he called the slave and offered him anything as compensation. The slave replied, “I just want my eye back.”
10. Jack Black didn’t learn to play the guitar until he was 23 years old. His friend Kyle Gass taught him in exchange for food, mostly from the fast-food chain Jack in the Box.
11 Disney Tried Trademarking “Seal Team 6”

The Walt Disney Company attempted to trademark the name “Seal Team 6” the day after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
12. Early TV remotes operated with a spring-loaded hammer that struck a solid aluminum rod, emitting an ultrasonic frequency. These devices required no batteries.
13. Mozart, who died at 35, composed 800 pieces of music, averaging 22 pieces per year throughout his life.
14. In Austin, Texas, it was legal to build apartments without windows until April 2024, and landlords frequently neglected to mention this in advertisements.
15. Male peacocks create fake mating calls to appear more popular and therefore increase their chances of attracting females.
16 Accidental Invention of DJ Scratching

When Grand Wizzard Theodore was playing records loudly in 1975, he invented DJ scratching. His mother scolded him, causing him to accidentally hold the record still and move it back and forth. He liked the sound and developed it into scratching.
17. In 2001, King Mswati III of Eswatini imposed a ban on sex with girls under 18. Two months later, he married his ninth wife, who was 17, and fined himself “one cow” for breaking the law. In 2005, he repealed the law to marry another 17-year-old, and three months later, he married an 18-year-old.
18. A study found that women’s pockets across 80 pairs of jeans are generally half the size of men’s pockets for the same brand. Only 40% of them can comfortably fit an iPhone X, and only 10% can fit a full hand, while 100% of men’s jeans can fit either of them.
19. Japan’s monarchy is the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world, recognizing 126 monarchs and dating back to February 11, 660 BCE, with mythical beginnings. However, the current dynasty lacks a family name and is simply known as the Imperial House.
20. Randy Savage, a.k.a. Macho Man, died from a heart attack while driving with his wife. An autopsy revealed that his coronary artery was 90% blocked.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Kevin Costner Tried “Tombstone” Blacklisting

After Kevin Costner declined the lead role in Tombstone to develop what became the film Wyatt Earp, he attempted to “blacklist” Tombstone by commandeering every Western costume in Hollywood. Despite this, Tombstone was better received and made more money than Wyatt Earp on a smaller budget.
22. The codes that allow the President of the United States to authorize a nuclear attack are printed on a plastic card nicknamed “the biscuit.” The president is expected to carry the biscuit at all times.
23. Due to a dysfunction of the ABCCII gene, the majority of Asians produce significantly less body odor than other populations.
24. Chinstrap penguins take more than 10,000 micronaps a day, each lasting an average of 4 seconds, resulting in over 11 hours of daily sleep.
25. In 2021, an organization called The Tip Project attempted to introduce American tipping practices into Japanese culture. The plan received severe backlash from locals, who considered the practice “un-Japanese,” leading to the project’s abandonment in early 2023.
RE: Fact #25 (Failed Tipping Project in Japan) – I really dislike tip culture. I don’t understand why people try to make it a thing.
I bet some big group was pushing this, like a Chamber of Commerce, or whatever they call it in Japan.
I was living in Japan when Uber Eats was just starting to blow up. They pushed tipping hard, trying to get their drivers to accept really low pay by promising big tips. It didn’t go over well.
The Ministry of Finance, and yeah, a lot of Japanese people I’ve met really don’t like them.
RE: Fact #26 (Bruce Lee’s Death from Hyponatremia?) – Or maybe it was the Equagesic he got from a friend that night, like everyone’s been saying all along.
Who’s “everyone”?
He was taking steroids for his back, which didn’t help.
Just had surgery to get rid of those sweat glands under his arms.
Aspirin and meprobamate together are way less likely to cause a brain swelling than low sodium levels.
Bruce Lee, he’s the one who died from Equagesic, but tons of people die from low sodium. It’s super common in athletes, like marathon runners.
It’s crazy, I saw this lightweight rower die. He was just drinking water, not eating anything, and had a heart attack right at the finish line. He actually won the race, though.
This team seems to be looking into a thing that happens when you drink way too much water. They wanted to show how common it is in people, and I guess they thought using Bruce Lee’s death as an example would get attention. Like, “Bruce Lee died from drinking too much water” – that’s a pretty wild idea, but it’s definitely gonna get people talking, right?
Hyponatremia is a real deal problem, not some rare thing. It’s super common and has been a killer for a bunch of athletes. That’s the big reason why chugging water without electrolytes during a long workout is risky. We already know it’s widespread, they don’t need to prove anything.
RE: Fact #35 (Alcohol Banned on International Space Station) – Guess space hotels and casinos aren’t happening anytime soon.
Engineers will figure out how to make booze in space, I’m sure of it.
Buzz Aldrin took some wine to the moon for a communion ceremony.
It’s not a huge deal, just a precaution, you know? The Russians let them drink on Mir.
RE: Fact #41 (Naked Defender Stuns Goths in 378 A.D.) – He totally outdid the Goths! And it worked, because they never captured the city.
Gotta give him credit.
RE: Fact #33 (De Gaulle Told of D-Day Two Days Prior) – So, was it just the British and US leaders who didn’t believe him, or were there other French folks who weren’t telling him the whole story?
There were actually a bunch of other French leaders, but by the time of D-day they were either kissing up to de Gaulle or had been bumped off. Roosevelt and Churchill kept trying to put someone else in charge, hoping for someone easier to deal with. They were also freaked out that the French government had basically crumbled and some random colonel had just declared himself the boss. Once the Allies invaded France, they put a lot of pressure on de Gaulle to hold elections right away, even while some parts of the country were still under Nazi control. He was really ticked off about that.
They just weren’t happy with how things were. The government had gone kaput and this Colonel, a pretty low-ranking officer, had just declared himself the boss of France.
He was actually a brigadier general, and also the Under-Secretary of State for National Defence and War, working closely with the British.
The British and Americans didn’t really care about his rank, they just thought de Gaulle was a pain to deal with. He was all about France, not the Allies.
RE: Fact #43 (Caligula Made Senators Run Miles) – He’s been reincarnated as every high school gym teacher.
RE: Fact #9 (Hadrian’s Slave Requests Eye Back) – Hadrian was a good emperor, right? Makes you wonder what the bad ones were like!
RE: Fact #27 (Couple Survived 117 Days at Sea) – The more I read about survival situations like this, the more I’m convinced I’d be the first to go. I’d probably be all, “Go ahead and eat me,” and everyone would be like, “Dude, we just got on the raft! We can totally see the beach!”
Seriously, I wouldn’t want to live like that.
RE: Fact #14 (Windowless Apartments Legal Until 2024) – I stayed in this Airbnb once, it was in a converted warehouse. They’d crammed every bit of space into rentals, long and short term, with the regular tenants along the outside walls. All the short-term stays were stuck in the middle with no windows. It felt like a fancy jail.
RE: Fact #28 (Zombie Fires Burn Underground in Winter) – It’s probably because of the ember. My grandma used to cook with wood, and after she was done, she’d cover the embers with ashes. Then, the next day, she’d just brush off the ashes, and the embers were still good to go! She’d use those to start a fire again and repeat the whole process.
Sometimes the fire doesn’t really go out, it just keeps smoldering. A tree might burn up completely, but its roots can be huge, even bigger than the tree’s branches. Those roots can keep smoldering underground for months, and then they can spark a new fire in another tree’s roots, or even in some brush or grass. That’s how you can get a new fire popping up out of nowhere.
By the way, don’t even think about walking through a forest that just burned down. You could easily fall into an ash hole. That’s a hole where a tree used to be, and it’s made because the roots burned up. They’re really hard to see because everything looks like a giant pile of ash. You won’t even know they’re there! And they can stay hot for weeks, so if you fall into one, you’re going to get burned.
That’s what happens when people build bonfires on the beach at night – someone always gets hurt the next day.
It’s kind of dumb to have a bonfire on the beach at night. You have all that water right there to put it out!
I tossed some logs and kindling into a fire pit at Dockweiler Beach in L.A. early one morning, and whoosh! They lit up right away because the sand was still super hot from a bonfire the night before.
Something similar happened near me, except they were grilling illegally on the beach and left hot coals lying around. A kid stepped on them and ended up in the ICU.
RE: Fact #47 (Darker Skin Requires More Sunlight) – That’s like choosing between two races in a game. One gets energy super fast from the sun, but gets a bad rash if they’re out too long. The other one can handle the sun way better, but takes longer to get energy.
It’s kinda funny how role-playing games are like real life, huh?
It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, isn’t it? How can we know for sure which came first?
RE: Fact #48 (Aretha Franklin’s Will Found in Couch) – It’s definitely smart to get a formal will, even if you’re not super wealthy. Those handwritten ones can be okay, but a real will will make things way easier for your family later on.
RE: Fact #18 (Women’s Pockets Size Disparity) – I’ve seen jeans where the pockets were just painted or stitched on.
It’s like they sewed a pocket shut, even though it’s a normal size. 😭
RE: Fact #38 (Black Teeth Custom in Japanese Paintings) – They just used black teeth to represent… black teeth, right? Like in the picture?
RE: Fact #15 (Peacocks Use Fake Mating Calls) – This peacock bragged about having a ton of supermodel girlfriends in Canada.
RE: Fact #20 (Macho Man Randy Savage’s Death) – That’s not good, but lots of people have really clogged arteries and never know it. It only becomes a problem when the main artery gets totally blocked really fast, instead of slowly over time.
RE: Fact #42 (Tossing Puffin Chicks Vital in Iceland) – Imagine a tourist seeing a bunch of people throwing baby birds off a cliff into the ocean – they’d be totally freaked out!
I moved to Iowa a long time ago, and apparently, there’s this fish that’s not supposed to be there, so people catch them and just toss them on the side. They’re not even good to eat! I didn’t know that and tried to save one, but the person didn’t speak English, so we were both confused. I was like, “Why are you being so mean to this little fish?” and they were like, “Why is that lady crying and trying to throw that dead fish back in the water illegally?” 😂
Do you think it’s always gotta be an underhand toss, or can some people throw it like a football?
As long as they aren’t just kicking the ball away, we’re good.
RE: Fact #8 (Iceberg Lettuce’s Nutritional Shortcomings) – My dog goes nuts for this stuff, she’d steal it right out of your hand! She loves how crunchy it is.
That’s way better for them than bread crumbs.
A vet told me ages ago that you shouldn’t feed rabbits this, even though people think it’s okay. Apparently, it can give them really bad diarrhea, bad enough to kill them.
A good wedge salad is seriously the best, that crunch is amazing!
RE: Fact #36 (Cold War Paratroopers Carried Nuclear Bombs) – It’s crazy how we made it through the 50s without a huge nuclear disaster, right?
RE: Fact #38 (Black Teeth Custom in Japanese Paintings) – Seriously, you wouldn’t believe it, but women used to stain their teeth black with coal to look better! It’s wild they left that out of Shogun.
RE: Fact #46 (Pizza Elite Food in North Korea) – Is that what they eat in North Korea? Like, fancy stuff?
Stuff like tomatoes and cheese are hard to come by, since most of it has to be brought in from other countries. And on top of that, it’s against the rules to send most food to North Korea because of American sanctions.
RE: Fact #36 (Cold War Paratroopers Carried Nuclear Bombs) – My dad was on one of those Green Light teams, carrying these things and jumping with them. He totally hated training for those missions. They used keypads and electronic detonators instead of the old mechanical ones, so you never knew how much time you had to get out of there. Plus, they split the teams in half, so he always thought they would just go off right away.
My dad was a pilot in Vietnam, he flew A10s… or maybe A4s, I can’t remember. He used to tell this story about tactical nuclear training. He’d say it was like “drop, fly almost straight up, and pray you get away.” But none of them thought anyone could actually survive it. Of course, they never tested it out, because, well, here I am!
The “Idiot’s Loop”.
They would’ve gotten rid of it right away, no question. They weren’t about to let a nuke just sit there without protection. It was a suicide mission, and the soldiers weren’t even told about it.
RE: Fact #4 (Lost in Mall: Tragic Death) – He had dementia, but still. How weird is it that a building would have one-way locking doors that trap you in a stairwell? You’d have to go up to the roof or down to the basement, and there weren’t even any emergency exit signs to help you out.
The article says Mr Gore turned down a tracker his son offered. His son was worried, because his dad had vanished for six hours a few months back. I don’t know if the tracker would have helped in the stairwell, but I bet his son feels bad about it.
My uncle had Alzheimer’s and lived alone. I was worried about him, so I hid a couple of trackers in his wallet and shoe. He was pretty far gone mentally, but still stubborn and wouldn’t give up his independence. The trackers helped us keep an eye on him in case he wandered off.
It’s really sad, but unfortunately happens a lot. My grandma has dementia too, and she’s the same way. She wouldn’t wear any trackers, and if we tried to put one in her pocket, she’d just take it out. We even tried sewing those little trackers into her jackets, but she’d take those off too. My grandpa and I were cleaning upstairs and left her in the living room to watch TV. We’d check on her every 5-10 minutes, but she managed to sneak out while we weren’t looking. We had to call my parents and neighbors to help search for her. We ended up calling the police because we couldn’t find her. They found her two miles away! The whole thing happened in just 30 minutes. After that, we had to hire people to watch her 24/7. Sadly, she’s gotten a lot worse since then. She’s been in bed for the last year and a half, and she doesn’t recognize anyone anymore. She turned 77 yesterday. I held her hand while she just stared at the wall. It’s awful, this disease.
Check out this awesome bracelet I got for you! It totally worked for my mom.
RE: Fact #29 (AT&T Once Blocked Non-AT&T Phones) – Back in the 80s, we used to pay a monthly fee just to *have* a phone!
My grandparents were still paying a monthly fee for their landline when they moved into assisted living back in 2005.
It’s crazy how many older folks got ripped off by “rental” fees for their phones. Some people paid for their phones 100 times over, even 1,000!
My dad passed away about the same time, and AT&T sent mailers to collect the phones. It seemed kind of funny, but I guess they were picking them up to get rid of them properly.
RE: Fact #18 (Women’s Pockets Size Disparity) – Phones are getting huge, so JNCOs are totally gonna be back in style.
I just use a phone clip. It looks kinda cool when I spin my phone back in, like a holster. At least, I think so. Or maybe I just look like a goofball. But hey, I probably look like a goofball anyway.
JNCO is back and they’re HUGE.
I got a pair a few months back, and I can fit a huge iPad in each of the back pockets. Awesome!
Hey people!!!
HAVE A NICE DAY
RE: Fact #8 (Iceberg Lettuce’s Nutritional Shortcomings) – My friend’s allergic to a ton of stuff, even lettuce. She told a botanist about it, and he said, “Lettuce? That’s just crunchy water!”
RE: Fact #12 (Early TV Remotes Without Batteries) – My grandparents had this old remote, you had to squeeze it and it made this really high-pitched whistle. When I was little, I learned how to make that sound with my mouth, so I thought I could control the TV like I had superpowers! Grandpa wasn’t too happy about it.
Our old Zenith TV was super weird, like it would act up if you shook some change near it.
That’s how they hacked the first phone lines to get free calls. I think it was called phreaking. They used a special frequency that tricked the system into thinking it was getting a real signal.
They used whistles from Cracker Jacks or cereal boxes to copy the sounds.
RE: Fact #1 (Fight Club Premiere Audience Reaction) – They totally edit movies after people see them at festivals, right? I wonder if that’s what happened here.
The movie ended up pretty close to the book, so either the people who booed didn’t read it, or the earlier version wasn’t true to the story and that’s what got people upset.
As someone who read the book, I was really happy with how the movie turned out.
The book is amazing, but I actually think the movie is even better! I wonder if they made any changes after people didn’t like it at first.
Maybe folks just didn’t dig it, you know?
RE: Fact #23 (Less Body Odor in Asians) – This gene thing also explains why most East Asians have dry earwax. My brother’s half Korean, and he got the gene – his sweat doesn’t smell much and he has dry earwax, but mine does and I have wet earwax.
Dry earwax?
It’s more crumbly than sticky. You know, in China, they have these ear cleaning tools that are like mini shovels.
I had no idea people’s earwax could be wet.
Turns out I have this gene! I knew about the body odor thing, but I had no idea about the earwax until I had a baby.
I told the pediatrician about the “liquid/orange puss” in his ear—she looked at me like I was crazy! I’d never seen “normal” earwax before.
Same! I have the gene too, and I knew about the dry earwax thing and how it’s linked to less odor.
But I had no idea what wet earwax even looked like until my kid came along. Poor thing got the other parent’s genes there.
It’s not like it’s a bad thing or anything, a lot of people have the wet earwax gene, but it seems like it would be a pain to have to wear deodorant all the time.
Funny thing, I lived in Japan for a while and people kept saying I smelled better than most Americans they’d met.
I didn’t get it at first, but then I found out about the gene.
I’m so sorry about your baby.
I never got why people used those cotton swabs. I tried cleaning my ears with them when I was younger and only got some flakes out. I was like, “Why isn’t washing with soap enough?”
I never knew about the no odor connection, but that kind of explains why I only ever buy deodorant because you’re supposed to wear it in the summer. I was always so happy with my deodorant purchases because I thought, “Wow, it’s 30+ degrees out, and I only had to apply it once, and I still smell good!”
Huh, earwax is usually wet? I never knew that.
I had no idea about earwax until I was married and was like, “Whoa, why is your earwax so yellow and gross?” I’m white and I have the dry earwax, no body odor thing going on. I don’t know how common it is in white people, but my daughters didn’t get it from me.
Yeah, it usually gets all wet and gooey in people without that mutation. That’s why they call it “wax.”
RE: Fact #47 (Darker Skin Requires More Sunlight) – So, I’m brown, right? I was reading something and it hit me – I need to take my vitamin D. Took the pill, and guess what? My mood lifted. I’m actually feeling pretty good now.
Does vitamin D actually make you feel less depressed right away?
Took a while, but it was a game-changer for me.
It’s definitely noticeable going from less sunlight to more sunlight when you’re pale and live up north.
It took me like two weeks to feel better after starting vitamin D. It happened a couple of winters ago, I was in a real slump that January. I didn’t want to do anything, I just wanted to stay inside. I’d heard about vitamin D for years and used to take a multivitamin… but for some reason I hadn’t been taking it. As soon as I remembered, I started taking the chewable vitamin D I’d bought for my daughter. Two weeks later it was like a weight lifted and I was happy again.
RE: Fact #17 (Eswatini King’s Questionable Marriages) – Monarchy is totally bogus! – Oliver Cromwell, George Washington, and Lenin.
RE: Fact #38 (Black Teeth Custom in Japanese Paintings) – Denis Villeneuve’s Dune has Feyd-Rautha with black teeth. Austin Butler was totally surprised by it, but then he read that some cultures think it’s a cool look.
Do the Harkonnen women do that too?
That movie is seriously amazing.
I devoured the books, and the movies are just incredible! Villeneuve totally nailed it – those are some serious masterpieces. He lifted lines straight from the books and brought the scope of Dune to life on screen. He took some pretty heavy stuff and made it easy to understand without making it any less disturbing. He explained concepts in a flash that took whole paragraphs in the books. The actors, costumes, and art are all perfect. He wisely left out some of the really detailed stuff, but he kept the main story completely intact.
It’s just brilliant, the best movie adaptation ever! As a Dune fan, I’m beyond impressed.
RE: Fact #12 (Early TV Remotes Without Batteries) – My parents were all, “Switch the channels!” before we got a TV with a remote.
A couple times when we were kids, my mom would hide the remote on the TV and wouldn’t let my dad use it. She said it would make us lazy. I didn’t have a TV with a remote until I was grown up.
Are you just being lazy?
Thanks to all the little brothers.
I remember watching Obama get elected on one of those old TVs where you had to turn the dial to change channels. I had to hit it a few times to get a clear picture. Right after that, I flipped over to TMZ and probably saw something about Lindsay Lohan.
RE: Fact #28 (Zombie Fires Burn Underground in Winter) – So, when you see those government wildfire maps in winter, especially in places like northern BC, remember that some fires still showing active might not be zombie fires. The fire department there said they won’t declare a fire officially out until they can actually get out there after the thaw to check in really remote spots. They believe in zombie fires but think they get way too much hype up north, where it’s more about paperwork than reality.
Yeah, we’ve seen stuff like that up in Northern California. We call them sleepers or ground fires. Most of the time they’re just hanging out in old burn areas, no big deal. But the other 10%… let’s just say we try to keep those under wraps.
RE: Fact #18 (Women’s Pockets Size Disparity) – Women should probably stop buying those.
RE: Fact #50 (Airplane Doors Impossible to Open Mid-Flight) – I’ve been doing push-ups.
RE: Fact #40 (Jaws Actor Robert Shaw’s Sudden Death) – He was a total alcoholic and had trouble staying sober on the set of Jaws.
It’s kinda sad how we often forget that people’s bad decisions can sometimes lead to their death. It’s super important to think about how many people would be devastated if something happened to us, you know? We’re not alone in this world.
He probably wasn’t having any trouble being drunk on set, but I bet Spielberg and the rest of the cast weren’t too happy about it.
RE: Fact #4 (Lost in Mall: Tragic Death) – Hey Aussies, what’s with all the crazy stairwell mazes under your shopping centers? Are you hiding Aussie Minotaurs down there?
Imagine an Aussie Minotaur. Would it be half-man, half-emu? Or maybe a koala, bearded dragon, perentie, platypus, or wombat?
Picture a head of a man on a kangaroo’s body. You see its shadow on the brick wall as it hops, hear its tail slapping the concrete, and the sound of sharp claws scraping as it gets closer and closer.
Imagine a cassowary, but with a human head stuck on top – scary, right?
RE: Fact #34 (Commotio Cordis: Deadly Heart Failure) – That was a scary moment for Hamlin.
RE: Fact #17 (Eswatini King’s Questionable Marriages) – Fines only hurt people who don’t have much money.
You can get away with it if you pay enough.
That thing you did to make ten million bucks? Yeah, that was illegal. So, you’re looking at a $25,000 fine.
It also shows how many cows a crime is worth.
So, underage marriage? One cow. Murder? Eight cows. Talking at the movies? Sixteen cows.
RE: Fact #48 (Aretha Franklin’s Will Found in Couch) – My buddy, who couldn’t stand his dad, told us he was gonna leave us everything. Then, a few months later, he suddenly died, right after his mom passed away and left him everything she had. And guess what? All of it went to his dad. His stuff, his mom’s stuff, the whole shebang.
So yeah, write a will, people. You never know.
That first sentence was so long, it was like a giant jumble of words!
His mom passed away. He got everything. Then he died, no will. And his dad, who he didn’t get along with, got it all.
RE: Fact #18 (Women’s Pockets Size Disparity) – I don’t buy the purse theory. I think women’s pants have smaller pockets because it’s all about the look, you know? It’s like why women wear thongs or seamless underwear—it just makes the outfit look smoother.
You’re not totally wrong. My sister’s a fashion designer, so she knows her stuff. Women’s clothes are often designed with smaller pockets to fit better around hips. Same goes for shirts, they have to fit around the chest and shoulders. Sometimes it’s a fashion choice, but most of the time it’s just about making clothes fit right.
And those S, M, L sizes? They’re totally made up! Designers make clothes, then put them on a model and decide what size they’ll call it. My sister even used to be a fit model for a clothing company.
Wait, are people actually serious about dress and jean makers making pockets small to make purse companies richer? I thought that was just a funny meme, not a real theory.
RE: Fact #11 (Disney Tried Trademarking “Seal Team 6”) – They even tried to trademark “Dia de los Muertos” back in 2013.
Maybe this is for Coco?
They were going to name the movie “Dia De Los Muertos,” but they couldn’t trademark it, so they ended up calling it “Coco.”
Someone really needs to give those lawyers a reality check.
It was either Marvel or Disney, but they also tried to trademark Thor and Loki, the actual Norse gods.
Trump wanted to own the rights to “You’re fired” and Paris Hilton wanted to own the rights to “That’s hot.”
RE: Fact #8 (Iceberg Lettuce’s Nutritional Shortcomings) – My grandpa, bless his heart, would wear iceberg lettuce in his hat when it was hot. He said it kept him cool, and it fit better than any old cloth hat.
My uncle was a real tinkerer, you know? He sewed a sponge into one of his hats and made it longer. He’d dip it in a bucket of cold water to stay cool while he worked. He even had a solar shower before they were common! He taught himself how to be a mechanic and engineer.
That guy came up with the craziest inventions to solve problems. I still remember him helping me build a potato gun, it was awesome! He was working at the local hardware store at the time, and I was trying to be sneaky and just ask for certain parts. He was like, “Sounds like a potato gun. You’re better off using…”
Miss you, Uncle. Thanks for the inspiration and laughs!
That’s how people did things back then.
RE: Fact #31 (Natasha Richardson’s Fatal Ski Accident) – So, you or someone you know got a bump on the head? You gotta go to the ER right away if they:
– Passed out or got confused/lost after the injury.
– Got hurt going fast, are throwing up or feel sick.
– Have trouble keeping their balance.
– Can’t remember anything about the injury.
– Had a seizure.
– Started bleeding.
Also, in the hours and days after the head injury, get to the ER ASAP if they:
– Have a headache that won’t quit.
– Act strange, have mood swings, or can’t focus.
– Can’t speak clearly or have trouble reading or writing.
– Feel numb, dizzy, or weak.
– Have trouble sleeping or waking up.
– See blurry or have trouble moving their eyes.
– Have fluid coming out of their nose or ears.
Dr. Emerman says, “When in doubt, head to the ER.”
My wife, who’s a doctor, says a big problem is what they call the “lucid interval”. That’s what I think happened to her. After she first had these issues, she seemed to get better for a bit, so people might not go to the ER because they think things are improving, but it’s actually a sign they’re bleeding in their brain.
It’s best to go straight to the ER, not urgent care, since you’ll need a CT scan to check for a head bleed. And call 911, too, because they can take you to the right hospital. They know which ones are trauma centers, and you’ll need to be at one of those to get treated for a head bleed.
RE: Fact #26 (Bruce Lee’s Death from Hyponatremia?) – Hyponatraemia? That’s when you’ve got too little sodium in your blood.
So, “hyponatremia” basically means you have low salt in your blood. It comes from Greek words: “hypo” for low, “nat” for salt, and “aemia” for blood.
Sodium is called Natrium in Latin, and “Haem” is the medical term for blood, while “aemia” is a suffix used to describe blood conditions.
The second I saw “hypo,” I heard his voice in my head.
My buddy ended up in the ER.
It means “low sodium” – hypo means low and natraemia means sodium.
RE: Fact #4 (Lost in Mall: Tragic Death) – Loretta Feeney, a woman from Sydney, was trapped in a Westfield stairwell on Boxing Day. The doors locked behind her, and she couldn’t get out. She eventually managed to call a security guard, who helped her find a way out. Apparently, the doors locked automatically and there weren’t any signs warning people about it. She and her mother were stuck for a while and tried to get someone’s attention by banging on the doors.
That happened to me in Sydney when I was a kid! My family and I got stuck in the parking garage stairs, the door locked behind us and every level was locked from the inside. We finally found a door on the bottom floor that was open. It was terrifying, my parents were freaking out, we were yelling and banging on the doors and nobody could hear us.
That’s a serious fire hazard!
Security already knew the stairwell was a bit of a trap, so why wasn’t it checked out right away when the old guy disappeared?
So I used to work at one of those giant Westfield malls in Sydney. Let me tell you, their security is pretty bad. I saw this lady get knocked over and hit her head on the wall. It took security like half an hour to even show up with a first aid kit. When they finally got there, I had to basically explain what a concussion was to convince them to call an ambulance.
The thing is, if you work in a shop at Westfield, you’re supposed to call security first so they can deal with emergencies. The mall gives everyone instructions for what to do in emergencies, and they’re supposed to be the first aid people for the whole place.
When you’re just a minimum wage worker and something like that happens, you just follow the rules, right? You can’t go panicking around. But it really depends on security being halfway decent, which they weren’t in this case.
RE: Fact #30 (Solitaire Developer Received No Royalties) – The guy who made the “format disk” screen just whipped it up one night because they were in a hurry. He never thought it would be used for so long! Some of the weird limits in the menus are just random choices he made on the fly.
It’s funny how temporary fixes always seem to stick around forever.
JavaScript… ugh.
Haven’t you ever accidentally released some temporary code into production? You’re not a real software engineer if you haven’t!
That TODO is always there, bugging you every time you look at that code.
That’s how you make it to senior developer. You write code as an intern and it just keeps running for years, so you’re off the hook for it.
RE: Fact #9 (Hadrian’s Slave Requests Eye Back) – Oops, my bad! Freedom and land, that’s what we were looking for.
That’s a real missed chance.
Being a slave for the Roman emperor? That would have been a pretty sweet gig for most people back then, in terms of security and wealth.
The emperor called the slave over and said he could ask for anything to make up for what he’d lost. The slave just stood there, so Hadrian asked him again, but the poor guy just wanted another eye. It makes me sad to think he might have been a kid.
Hadrian’s kinda tricky to work around, but it’s likely that slave was already doing alright with money and land. Slaves could get paid, which was basically like a wage they could save up. The slaves who worked with the big shots in Roman government were totally different from the ones who worked on farms or in houses. They often ended up freed and owned lots of stuff and even slaves of their own.
RE: Fact #35 (Alcohol Banned on International Space Station) – Sounds like space travel calls for gummy bears.
RE: Fact #29 (AT&T Once Blocked Non-AT&T Phones) – So they use the same excuse when your phone isn’t on their list. It’s crazy, right? You can have a phone that works perfectly fine on the same network, but if ATT is the provider they block it. Then you complain and they try to sell you one of their phones.
It’s like when they got rid of 3G and blocked a ton of phones that still worked. They made their approved list and offered a free $50 phone to replace your $900 phone. They really pushed you to buy an ATT phone. Doesn’t that sound like extortion to you?
Their whitelist is just plain awful. I’ve had a few different phones that worked fine at first, but then they suddenly lose service, completely or just partially. And the weird thing is, when you mess around with the settings, it works fine for a little while… like 10 minutes tops. It’s obvious they’re blocking things on their end.
Your phone’s been flagged as stolen. They let it connect for a quick check-in, then shut it down after a bit.
Seriously, how is that even allowed?
RE: Fact #24 (Chinstrap Penguins Take 10,000 Naps) – Chinstrap penguins are seriously grumpy – they’re known for being the meanest penguins around.
Just like people with chins.
Let them rest, they’re always waking up from a nap.
They’re basically just constantly freaking out, with a few naps thrown in.
RE: Fact #12 (Early TV Remotes Without Batteries) – That’s why they were called “the clicker.” A lot of folks still call remotes that.
That’s what we called it back home in Georgia. When I got to Florida, I was totally thrown off because everyone called it a remote control.
Or to Georgia, where they call it a Coke.
Alan Wake still calls it that.
That wasn’t a remote, just a tiny light switch.
RE: Fact #6 (Teen Escapes Serial Killer’s Captivity) – The same thing happened to Lisa McVey Noland when she was 17. She was kidnapped and assaulted, but she managed to talk her attacker into letting her go.
Before that, she’d been abused by her grandmother’s boyfriend. And after the kidnapping, people didn’t believe her story.
That’s the case I was thinking about, I wasn’t sure if it was the same girl. I remember watching a Lifetime movie about it.
I just looked it up and the actress who played Lisa McVey in that movie, Katie Douglas, also played Kara Robinson in the 2023 movie about that case. Funny coincidence, right? Maybe the casting director for the second movie saw the similarities between the two cases and wanted to cast her when he watched that movie.
That’s a really tough role to be stuck with.
RE: Fact #39 (Alcatraz Escapee Reached Shore in 1962) – He was supposed to find a beach to swim at, but all he found were rocks and cliffs. Weeks later, a guard showed him a picture of the beach. He had just gone to the wrong side of the bridge! He was only 200 feet away from the beach.
I was at Alcatraz last month and heard this crazy story. Apparently, he swam from the only part of the island he could get to, and then the current just took him. He took longer to start swimming than he thought, so he didn’t expect it. He had to swim to shore where he did because otherwise, the current could have pulled him out to sea and he would have died.
Open water swimming is all about figuring out where you are and how the tides are moving. When I swam from Alcatraz, I aimed for the Transamerica building, but ended up about two miles west of it.
RE: Fact #42 (Tossing Puffin Chicks Vital in Iceland) – Puffin chicks are supposed to follow the moon to get to the ocean, but city lights mess them up. So people help them out by taking them to the water, where they were headed anyway.
That’s way less depressing than I expected, whew.
It’s kind of sad, but some bird moms eat their weak chicks. They can’t waste resources on them, or the whole brood could die.
Nature’s a tough place, but there’s a reason things work the way they do. It’s all about balance.
We’re trying not to mess things up too much, you know? Like, the lights messing up their navigation.
So, it’s good and bad, I guess.
It’s the same with sea turtles, so when they’re hatching, people get together to protect the nests on the beach. If a little turtle comes near them, someone picks it up and takes it to the ocean.
I bet some of them were itching to go to the city.
We’re keeping these puffins from going out, man? That’s messed up.
Puffin rumspringa.
RE: Fact #4 (Lost in Mall: Tragic Death) – The two cops looked all over the place for hours. Daniels said they asked the security guards to check the fire escapes, which turned out to be ridiculously long, like, 14 whole kilometers!
Who even designs a mall with backrooms that long?
14km? That’s crazy! What on earth would you need that for?
Security totally missed the mark on the search. The police later said they should have done it themselves, and they were right on the money.
Mr. Ballen talked about this on his podcast. Apparently, it used to be the security guards’ job to check the backrooms, making sure nobody got lost, but they quit doing it after a while.
14km, dude, seriously? That’s like, way back there, man.
That place is cursed. Seriously, a guy went nuts and started shooting up the mall earlier this year. And to top it off, I used to work there. I’m done with that place.
RE: Fact #49 (Neutron Star Spins 716 Times Per Second) – That’s seriously fast, like way faster than a Dremel, more like a dentist’s drill.
RE: Fact #7 (USS Wisconsin’s Fiery Retaliation) – That’s a pretty epic comeback.
Each gun shoots a projectile that’s pretty heavy, between 1,900 and 2,700 pounds. So when all 9 guns fire together, it’s like unleashing about 10 tons of firepower.
RE: Fact #31 (Natasha Richardson’s Fatal Ski Accident) – Liam Neeson’s wife
Yeah, Dennis Quaid’s her hubby, always will be. It was a Parent Trap thing, people!
With their two little girls
Maybe that’s why he started doing action flicks. Romantic comedies and dramas were too much for him.
RE: Fact #32 (White Unit Liberated Paris in WWII) – It’s weird to think Europe had to team up with a regime that discriminated against people to fight against another regime that did the same thing.
RE: Fact #39 (Alcatraz Escapee Reached Shore in 1962) – The craziest thing about that wiki page is that channel is now part of two triathlons every year.
People heard about this guy and were like, “Yeah, I’ll try that.”
Triathletes are a whole different level, though.
Wetsuit and months of training sounds way better than heavy cotton, a prison diet, and not having swam in years.
But seriously, none of this sounds fun, no matter how much prep I do.
I went to Alcatraz last year, and the food wasn’t bad at all. The warden thought a good diet was important for keeping things under control. The prisoners ate pretty well, for what it’s worth.
RE: Fact #24 (Chinstrap Penguins Take 10,000 Naps) – This is the kind of thing you’d see a crypto bro bragging about on LinkedIn to show how productive he is.
Taking a quick power nap every couple of minutes, bro. My crypto is gonna blow up! Get in now!
I’m doing these tiny leg lifts, they’re so small you can barely see ’em. I call ’em hummingbirds.
Can you go from limp to stiff in a flash?
RE: Fact #21 (Kevin Costner Tried “Tombstone” Blacklisting) – Before “Wyatt Earp” hit the screens, Costner was offered the lead role in “Tombstone” but turned it down to make a miniseries about Earp. Back in ’93, Entertainment Weekly wrote about how this decision caused a whole lot of drama. Coming off the disappointment of having his “Dracula” script shelved, Jarre was really upset when a rival Wyatt Earp movie started getting made. He said it was “an attempt to crush my picture.” In the early ’90s, Costner was a huge star, fresh off a few big hits and two Oscars for “Dances with Wolves.” When he and his agency, CAA, started flexing their muscles, the survival of “Tombstone” looked pretty shaky. “Tombstone” producer James Jacks told Entertainment Weekly that CAA was telling people in the business that the film was dead. “Wyatt Earp” producer Jim Wilson said, “Because of the crazy way things work in this town, they won’t let two Earp movies get made. If I were a gambling man, I’d bet ‘Tombstone’ doesn’t happen.”
Once both “Wyatt Earp” and “Tombstone” were in production, and a lot of it was happening at the same time, they had a problem with the costumes. According to True West, Costner had managed to get every Western costume in Hollywood for himself. Russell wasn’t worried though. He said, “It forced us to go to Europe, which is actually where the rich folks in Tombstone bought their clothes in the first place.” For “Wyatt Earp,” most of the problems were with what ended up on the screen, not how they were making it. The three-hour-plus movie bombed at the box office, only bringing in $25 million in the US on a $63 million budget. It even got nominated for five Razzies, the worst movie awards. Even the cast wasn’t happy with the result, especially Michael Madsen, who played Virgil Earp. In 2017, he told Empire, “It’s long, it’s stupid and boring. It’s a giant close-up of Kevin for three f***ing hours.”
That’s a really dumb move. They’re basically trying to make things more accurate by buying expensive stuff from Europe, but they’re only hurting themselves.
The costumes in Tombstone were awesome, but Costner looked like a bum. He clearly didn’t get the whole historical fashion thing. Back then, everyone wore their best clothes to show how well off they were.
Madsen missed out on playing Vincent Vega and Mickey Knox because of those reshoots, right? Imagine how awesome his career would have been!
They weren’t reshoots, both films were shooting at the same time. Too bad we never got that Vega brothers prequel in Amsterdam, that would have been awesome.
He totally got Free Willy, and no one can take that away from him.
Wow, Costner’s a real jerk. Thanks for the summary.
He’s totally obsessed with westerns. The new movie was a terrible idea, he should have stuck with Yellowstone.
Now baseball movies? Those he does pretty well.
RE: Fact #40 (Jaws Actor Robert Shaw’s Sudden Death) – I mean, respect to the guy, but I never knew he was just in his forties when he played Quint. He made that character seem like he’d lived a hundred years on the ocean, you know? Really great performance.
Jaws is set in 1975, right? So if Quint was twenty when the Indianapolis went down in ’45, he’d be playing a fifty-year-old in the movie.
Totally, I’d buy that. He’s so great in that movie.
RE: Fact #27 (Couple Survived 117 Days at Sea) – After they were rescued, they decided to stop eating meat. “We just didn’t want to kill any more animals,” the woman said. They were out at sea for a long time, and a bunch of boats passed by but didn’t see them. They were so far out in the Pacific that they were drifting further and further away from land. Their raft was starting to fall apart, too. At first, they’d read books and play cards, but by the end, they were too weak and the weather was too bad to do much of anything. After four months, they were found by a South Korean fishing boat, way out there, 2,400 kilometers from where they started.
It’s really sad to read about how lonely Maurice got after Maralyn passed away.
RE: Fact #49 (Neutron Star Spins 716 Times Per Second) – Fastest known.
It’s tough to say what the fastest thing out there is that we don’t know about.
RE: Fact #22 (President’s Nuclear Codes: The Biscuit) – That part about Roger Fisher and the nuclear codes is pretty wild, huh? He thought the president should have to literally kill someone to launch the weapons.
It’s so messed up. Sacrificing someone innocent? It’s just plain wrong, especially during a nuclear crisis. But, it’s also kinda smart, in a twisted, psychopath way. What if the person they planned to sacrifice was gone?
A tyrant wouldn’t care. A normal president would just get held up in a real emergency. It’s dumb.
So I was reading about this idea Roger Fisher had, and I’m not sure if he was being serious or just thinking out loud. Anyway, here’s what he said: “What if we put a little capsule with a code number near the heart of someone who volunteered, and they carried a big knife with them? Then, the President would have to kill this person with his own hands to launch nuclear weapons. He’d have to see the blood, the reality of what death means. When I told people at the Pentagon, they said it was a horrible idea because it might make the President too scared to use the weapons.”
We’ll be working shifts, and if someone’s out sick, we’ve got someone else ready to take over. It takes a bit to get things rolling anyway, so adding a few minutes for the sacrifice won’t really make much difference.
That’s a pretty strange idea.
President: Get the Gimp.
Chief of Staff: But he’s asleep.
President: Guess you’ll have to wake him up then, huh?
Imagine some poor guy shelling out a fortune for that implant, but he’s stuck living in the White House, constantly waiting for the phone to ring.
He’d probably get a big fat paycheck, right? It would be some soldier who doesn’t get to decide anything.
RE: Fact #46 (Pizza Elite Food in North Korea) – I just saw a North Korean tour video and the Dear Leader even let the pizza chef travel to Rome!
RE: Fact #34 (Commotio Cordis: Deadly Heart Failure) – My teammate died playing hockey years ago. He went to block a shot and got hit right in the chest. Doctors said the puck hit at a bad time and messed up his heart so badly it just stopped. His mom was a nurse and tried to save him, but it was too late. They said the only chance he had was if he got shocked with a defibrillator right after the puck hit him. I still think about him sometimes, even after all these years.
My dad played hockey in high school, and let me tell you, he got a real nasty hit one time. A puck flew right into his chin, and knocked out his middle tooth! His mom, seeing what happened, ran down from the stands yelling at everyone to stop the game so they could find the tooth.
Believe it or not, they found it on the ice! A few hours later, he was at the dentist’s getting the tooth put back in. It was dead at that point, but he didn’t care. He kept that tooth, which you could tell was dead because it had this black ring around it, for forty years! He finally got it replaced with a dental implant a few years ago.
My front teeth got chipped when I was 7, and my twin chipped hers when she was 10. It’s weird, but you always want to find the tooth, even though there’s nothing you can really do with it.
His middle tooth went flying out of his mouth.
That’s just heartbreaking. I can’t even imagine how awful she must feel. She probably saved so many lives working in a hospital, but couldn’t save her own sons. Man, I need a break from factrepublic for a bit.
Man, that’s seriously creepy! I almost had something similar happen in high school. This dude, he was a total jerk, punched me in the chest when I just asked what he was doing in art class. I got all dizzy and tried to sit down, but ended up falling off the stool and having a seizure. Luckily, I only passed out for like 30 seconds. They called an ambulance, but everything checked out fine.
My friends told me something similar happened before, but it was just us three at my locker, so I figured they were messing with me. Now I’m wondering if they were actually telling the truth, since they had also slapped me in the chest that time.
Good thing I haven’t had anything like that happen since!
RE: Fact #17 (Eswatini King’s Questionable Marriages) – I feel like a total dummy for not realizing Eswatini is Swaziland – it was renamed 6 years ago! Man, I need to pay more attention to maps.
So, Eswatini is basically the same as Swaziland. The people there are called Swati, which some folks call Swazi, but they prefer Swati. The “-ni” bit at the end means “place of,” and since it’s a proper noun, it has to start with an “E.” That’s why it’s Eswatini, the name they’ve always used. They just asked everyone else to use it too, six years ago.
They just asked everyone to do the same, no matter what language they spoke. It’s like if Germany asked everyone to call them Deutschland, right?
RE: Fact #28 (Zombie Fires Burn Underground in Winter) – A summer bushfire is just like a fire getting ready for a long winter sleep.
RE: Fact #23 (Less Body Odor in Asians) – My mom’s pretty lucky when it comes to body hair. It’s super thin and almost like golden fuzz, you’d have to really look to see it on her arms and legs. She doesn’t even need deodorant, she just doesn’t sweat much. Some people just have it good!
RE: Fact #15 (Peacocks Use Fake Mating Calls) – I can relate to that.
So, is that joke about girls noticing you more when you have a girlfriend actually true? Isn’t it like, in our genes or something?
RE: Fact #20 (Macho Man Randy Savage’s Death) – It’s a bummer that Macho Man was at the doctor for a checkup just a few days before he died.
They finished the exam and the doctor suggested a scan that would have found the problem, but they both decided to do it another time.
My grandpa dropped dead from a heart attack during his yearly checkup, the day they said he was in perfect health. Crazy, right?
I guess everyone’s fine until they’re not, depending on the tests they run. Kind of creepy, huh?
Don’t put off going to the doctor – you never know when it might be too late.
My dad got a full checkup, including a coronary artery calcium score, and it was super high, like 1800. So he did another test and found blockages of 90%, 80%, and 70%! He ended up having a bunch of bypass surgery.
Crazy thing is, he had zero symptoms before all of this.
He’s doing great now! He was always really fit and healthy, and you wouldn’t even know he had major surgery just a couple weeks ago.
Hopefully, he can learn from this and we can all do better.
RE: Fact #49 (Neutron Star Spins 716 Times Per Second) – I had to read that twice. Wow…
Imagine that:
You’d get squashed so flat your insides would spread out like oil. You wouldn’t be able to stand taller than a single atom. But if you could somehow stay conscious, you’d see every star in the sky zip across the whole sky in less than a blink. It’d look like a bunch of solid lines. Studying space would be pretty tough.
Think about what would happen if you squeezed your whole body into a tiny film. The energy released from that would be like a pretty big nuke going off.
Now, imagine taking just a tiny bit of this stuff, like a grain of sand, and lifting it just a little bit and letting it fall back down. The energy released would be like all the nukes in the world going off at once.
RE: Fact #45 (Medallion Fund’s Secret Success) – Medallion’s just the star fund for Renaissance Technologies, this fancy investing firm that’s basically a bunch of super smart math and science brains. They’ve hired these folks from their own fields and put them to work figuring out ways to make money in the market. RenTech has some other funds open to investors, but Medallion has done so well for so long that they kicked out all the outside folks and now it only invests money from their own employees.
The Acquired podcast has a great episode about RenTech – you should totally check it out. One of the things that’s really interesting is that since a lot of their employees are good at cleaning up data and learning new computer languages, they might be using every piece of information they can get their hands on to look for patterns. They’re probably tracking everything from the stock market to the weather to how people vote, and then investing based on whatever connections they find.
They basically hired all the math whizzes at IBM who were working on predictive text. Then they spent a ton of time and effort digitizing market data from the past, figuring out the best times to buy and sell. Using that data, they got a special deal with an exchange that let them trade over the phone. Then they programmed a computer to make those calls and place the orders. As time went on, they expanded to more markets, made deals with banks to dodge taxes, and trained computers to invest in ways that were really hard to follow so other people couldn’t copy them.
Jim Simons and Robert Mercer both made a fortune doing this.
It’s wild who runs these hedge funds, right? A buddy of mine was a physics post-doc at Stanford and a few years later he’s running Peter Thiel’s hedge fund. I was driving home from work and heard this guy on the business news talking about market moves. His name was the same as my friend, and I was like, “Wait, that’s him?!” He never mentioned it, and our friend group didn’t talk much about work so I had no idea he was running a hedge fund. It was one of those crazy moments where you’re like, “Wait, you’re running a huge hedge fund?” He just never said anything.
Imagine, there are programs that can track rainfall for cornfields from space, and then people use that data to bet on how much corn will be harvested at the end of the season! It’s probably just the tip of the iceberg for that kind of stuff.
It would be awesome to have a program that can tell me how much rain my corn got from Earth. Getting my computer into space would cost a fortune, not to mention paying an astronaut to turn it on once it’s up there! They’d probably charge a ridiculous amount just to press the on button since they have a monopoly on space travel.
They’ve got a limit on how much money they’ll manage, so they just keep paying out because they don’t think they can make enough to justify going bigger than about $15-20 billion. That was a while back, so maybe that number’s a little higher now.
RE: Fact #45 (Medallion Fund’s Secret Success) – What’s their investment strategy?
RE: Fact #2 (Stan Lee Suffered Elder Abuse) – It was common knowledge in the comics community. They were taking blood samples as souvenirs. They’d drag him to conventions, and he had no clue what was happening until the end. People tried to stop it, report it, but by the time anything official happened, he was gone. It was awful.
Apparently, someone at a con saw Stan Lee looking super tired and saying he wanted to go home, but his people just ignored him. Poor guy!
I’m more grossed out by the idea of someone wanting to keep blood as a souvenir. Like, imagine someone showing you a vial of blood and saying it’s from a famous person. That’s just weird.
James Gunn and Kevin Smith said they’d help Stan out, even let him live with them, but Stan’s team told them to back off.
I need some names here, who are these people?
RE: Fact #32 (White Unit Liberated Paris in WWII) – The first French troops to enter Paris in 1944 were actually part of the Leclerc division, and most of them were Spanish soldiers who fought for the Republic. You could even see their armored vehicles with names like Guernica and Guadalajara during the victory parades.
La Nueve, they were heroes. They escaped Spain after Franco won the war and fought the Nazis, thinking the Allies would help them free Spain from fascism. But it didn’t happen.
It’s a shame what happened to the Polish freedom fighters. They fought hard for the allies but got the short end of the stick in the end.
The French government treated Republicans pretty badly back then, they had some concentration camps where people barely got any food.
RE: Fact #16 (Accidental Invention of DJ Scratching) – If you want to scratch, you’ll need a special setup. There are turntables made just for scratching, and if you try it on a regular turntable, you’ll probably break the needle.
You gotta have an expert watching over you if you want to try this.
Funny thing is, he was doing exactly that! Back then, needles weren’t built to last, so I bet records didn’t last long either before they figured out how to make better ones. Most new needles can handle a little scratching without messing things up too badly, but yeah, learn how to use it before you just go wild on your parents’ turntable!
That’s a little late, don’t you think?
My dad had to order a needle from Sears once. It took forever—two weeks!—and then he had to go all the way to the store to get it. The one we had just wasn’t working right.
Or mess up your record, depending on how good the needle is.
It could mess up your turntable if you use a belt drive instead of a direct drive.
RE: Fact #23 (Less Body Odor in Asians) – Give me the CRISPR edit.
I’m all for tweaking our genes. I’ve got some health issues coming my way in a couple of decades.
RE: Fact #11 (Disney Tried Trademarking “Seal Team 6”) – This fall, a team of six adorable seals is on a mission… to take down Osama Bin Laden.
RE: Fact #7 (USS Wisconsin’s Fiery Retaliation) – Nine guns locked on him. Imagine that.
Imagine seeing that and thinking, “Yep, time to take a shot.”
Probably thinking… “That boat doesn’t look very big from here… and this is the biggest gun we’ve seen, let’s take them down!”
RE: Fact #10 (Jack Black’s Guitar Learning Journey) – I really hope I’m wrong about Kyle Gass, but I think he got a raw deal. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime. It would make me so happy to find out I’m actually wrong, not just wrong in the PR sense.
I don’t think what was saved was worth what was lost, but I know I can’t know the whole story.
Jack totally threw him under the bus.
Hollywood Jack lives up on a hill
All fancy and removed
While Rage Kage lives down in the depths of the valley
Way more down-to-earth.
They’re probably just waiting for things to calm down after the election.
RE: Fact #6 (Teen Escapes Serial Killer’s Captivity) – She ended up at a criminal justice lecture and the speaker brought up her case without realizing she was in the room.
You wouldn’t believe this, but every compliance talk I go to is about this one guy who messed up a script and accidentally sent a ton of orders for crude futures. He single-handedly moved the price of crude oil by two dollars in a second! And get this, the guy was sitting right next to me. Every time I hear the story, it gets even more exaggerated. The truth is way crazier than anyone knows.
This happened to me once in college, in a psych class. I had to write about a big memory from my childhood for an assignment. It was really specific and kinda shaped my life. I thought it was just for the teacher, I don’t even remember if he was a professor or not. Then I took the class again a year later and the guy told the same story as an example from one of his clients. He looked at me at the end of the story and I was just like, “Whoa.”
Yeah, a student is basically like a client, you know? He wanted you to know that he actually reads your work.
Think about it, if their class had to write an essay about the event, she’d be the main source of information.
RE: Fact #44 (Largest U.S. Pool Patrolled by Rowboat) – I love that bit about the Moskva Pool – the biggest outdoor pool ever! It was in Moscow, right downtown, and stayed open all year thanks to heated water.
They used fresh water, but it was chlorinated, of course. And the pool was just so huge, so close to other buildings, that the chlorine fumes ate away at them! They basically corroded from the air because of all that chlorine evaporating.
My first thought was, “Wow, how much chlorine would they need every day for this?”
So, I used to be a pool guy, right? The Moskva pool was huge, like 6.6 million gallons. The usual pools I worked on were way smaller, 20-30k gallons. That Moskva pool was over 250 times bigger! And you know, salt pools need salt, right? We’d put in a 40-pound bag every week. With that huge Moskva pool, we were talking about needing over 10,000 pounds of salt a week! And that could easily be double or triple that amount.
It was a saltwater pool.
Okay, so a gallon of chlorine can handle about 10,000 to 12,000 gallons of water, right? That’s to get it to the right chlorine level, about 2-3ppm.
If you have a huge pool, like 6.6 million gallons, you’re looking at about 600 gallons of chlorine every week. It depends on how much it’s used, the weather, how much of the water is exposed to the air, all that stuff.
Someone else said you need 10,000 pounds of salt a week? No way! I don’t think that much salt would even dissolve that fast. Your pool would just be a salty beach!
Back in ’93, I went to Moscow on a college trip. I was looking for a place to swim, and someone pointed me to this crazy pool. It was a total circle, with the locker rooms all around the outside. You wouldn’t believe it, you couldn’t even see the pool from the entrance! They had these timed lines, and since I don’t speak Russian, I had to rely on these grandmas to push me in the right direction. It was totally organized though. When your time was up, you’d go into your little wedge of the pool, change, and then head back to your locker room. You couldn’t swim all the way across, but that was fine, because your wedge was huge! It was such a weird experience. And yeah, it was saltwater. Fast forward to ’98, I was swimming in Taiwan with some Russians, and I asked them if they knew about this round pool in Moscow. They said it was gone! Apparently, it used to be a church, then they built the pool, and then they filled it in and put the church back!
RE: Fact #13 (Mozart’s Astonishing Musical Output) – Weird, right? He’s super famous and everyone loves him, but he never actually hit number one.
RE: Fact #10 (Jack Black’s Guitar Learning Journey) – Look, I started piano and music production pretty late in life, and let me tell you, playing an instrument isn’t some impossible thing.
Sure, I’m never gonna be a concert pianist like someone who’s been training since they were little. But this whole “adults can’t learn anything new” thing is just plain wrong.
You can sign up for Pianote or some other online course, get to work, and in a year you’ll be jamming away. And then you can keep learning from there.
I think everyone should try playing an instrument, if you’re into that kind of thing.
I teach guitar to folks who are, well, let’s just say “mature adults”. They’re usually even older than that 55+ group! It can be done, you just gotta have the drive.
RE: Fact #37 (Type 1 Diabetes Was Fatal Before 1922) – They figured out how to isolate insulin, and immediately started giving it to patients. It was crazy – people who were completely out of it, even kids who were dying, woke up and started walking around while they were still giving insulin to others. It was unbelievable.
But it turns out that part of the story isn’t entirely true. Even so, the real stories are just as incredible. Elsie Needham was in a diabetic coma, practically dead, when she started getting insulin in October 1922. She literally came back to life – it was like she’d risen from the dead! She got better so fast, she was even able to write to her father about coming home soon. She went back to school the next year and lived for another 25 years.
Here’s a photo of Teddy Ryder before and after he got insulin in 1922. He was only a few months away from his sixth birthday, and doctors didn’t think he’d live that long. There wasn’t much insulin to go around, and Dr. Banting didn’t want to include him in the trial at first. He wanted to wait until later in the year. But his uncle told Dr. Banting he wouldn’t live that long, so he gave him some insulin. Teddy ended up getting over 45,000 insulin injections in his lifetime, and he never had any serious problems with his diabetes. He lived until he was 76! That’s 71 years instead of three months! It’s amazing.
They were basically starving those kids just to keep them alive, hoping a cure would come along before they died.
A starvation diet is basically eating way too little food.
RE: Fact #41 (Naked Defender Stuns Goths in 378 A.D.) – Yeah, before they built those massive walls, the city was way easier to take over. It stayed that way for a good thousand years after that.
RE: Fact #14 (Windowless Apartments Legal Until 2024) – I saw a place like that back in the ’70s. It was in this old house that had been added onto a bunch of times. One look at that depressing, windowless room and I was ready to live in my car.
RE: Fact #34 (Commotio Cordis: Deadly Heart Failure) – The legendary death touch is totally real!
The Dim Mak!
RE: Fact #16 (Accidental Invention of DJ Scratching) – “Scratch” is a really cool documentary about turntablism and how it got big. He’s interviewed in it.
RE: Fact #42 (Tossing Puffin Chicks Vital in Iceland) – I’ve played a lot of Mario 64.
RE: Fact #25 (Failed Tipping Project in Japan) – Could Japan bring The NoTip Project to America?
RE: Fact #31 (Natasha Richardson’s Fatal Ski Accident) – I’m a huge fan of skiing, especially pushing my limits on the slopes. But honestly, I think a lot of people don’t realize how easily you can get hurt. You could be on the easiest run and still end up seriously injured with one bad fall. It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing a helmet or a knee brace, you’re always one slip away from a bad time.
RE: Fact #5 (Missing for 30 Years Found) – Lots of people are saying he was never found. My cousin went missing for ten years, and the police just don’t care about looking for adults unless it’s super obvious something bad happened. No crime scene? Not running from the cops? Maybe they just wanted a fresh start, and it’s not like anyone’s business why.
He’s the only one we’ve found after being missing that long, you know?
Makes sense, right? Why bother going through all that hassle when they might just be starting over somewhere new?
RE: Fact #1 (Fight Club Premiere Audience Reaction) – Even Chuck Palahniuk, the guy who wrote Fight Club, thought the movie was actually better than his book.
I’m totally on board with that. The ending feels a lot tighter, and the extra bits fit right in with the rest of the story.
Yeah, totally. This movie and Shawshank Redemption are the only two I can think of where the movie is actually better than the book.
Forrest Gump too.
His direct quotes “I felt kinda silly about the book because the movie made the story way clearer and connected things I never even noticed. Like, there’s this line about “fathers setting up franchises with other families,” and I never thought about how that ties into Fight Club being turned into a franchise. I was kicking myself for not making that connection!”
It totally reminded me of Stardust, you know, with the whole “heart of a star” thing. They really flipped the script, it was so clever! And the best part is, they just came up with it for the movie, it wasn’t even in the book.
It’s awesome when a remake actually turns out better than the original.
The Mist did that with the ending. Remember how the guy shoots his family, even though he only had one bullet left? He knew the Mist was going to get them in a way that was way worse. But then, out of nowhere, the army shows up and starts clearing it all out. Stephen King said he wished he’d come up with that.
RE: Fact #43 (Caligula Made Senators Run Miles) – A lot of what we hear about Caligula is based on what people wrote down later, and they weren’t exactly unbiased. Honestly, we don’t even know if most of the crazy stories are real, especially since he was only emperor for a short time.
You know how there’s that story about him wanting to make his horse a senator? People used to use it to say he was crazy, but now some folks think he was just messing with the senate. His enemies probably just used it to make him look like a nutcase.
So, yeah, Caligula probably did declare war on Neptune and tell his soldiers to stab the waves and collect seashells. But it happened after his whole invasion of Britain went south because his troops mutinied. Seems like he was just trying to make them look like fools, like, “You can’t handle a real war? Here’s something easier for you.”
Wild how much of Roman history hinges on if Plutarch or Appian were on your good side, right?
Imagine in a thousand years, the only thing people know about Obama’s presidency is some crazy stuff from a show like Alex Jones’s.
RE: Fact #33 (De Gaulle Told of D-Day Two Days Prior) – Back in 1966, Charles DeGaulle pulled France out of NATO and told the US to get their troops out of his country. President Johnson asked his Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, to check with DeGaulle and see if that meant the 60,000 American soldiers buried in France from the World Wars were also supposed to be removed. DeGaulle was so flustered by that question that he just got up and left without saying anything.
RE: Fact #44 (Largest U.S. Pool Patrolled by Rowboat) – Freezing in the sunset, but man, those hot days were amazing!
I lived in the Outer Sunset for five years, and I can’t imagine wanting to swim there except on those random warm days in September.
RE: Fact #1 (Fight Club Premiere Audience Reaction) – Man, I haven’t seen a movie like that since I was a kid.
RE: Fact #25 (Failed Tipping Project in Japan) – This US Japanese restaurant had a sign saying they pay their staff properly, so no tipping needed. Any extra cash left on tables goes to charity.
The Ichiran Ramen in NYC is really good, but you’ll definitely have to wait in line and it’s not cheap. The cool thing is they don’t take tips.
RE: Fact #46 (Pizza Elite Food in North Korea) – “Became interested in pizza” is kind of a funny way to put it, even though it makes sense.
This pizza idea you’ve been talking about… it really has me hooked. We gotta bring it to our country! Let’s get our best chef over here, send him to Rome right away!
They probably kidnapped Italian chefs. That’s what they did with movie stars they were into.
They probably killed him for being different when he got back. I mean, after he taught them how to make pizza, of course.
RE: Fact #47 (Darker Skin Requires More Sunlight) – You know, I think people forget how tough things were for those early folks in Europe. With all the dark winters and thick forests, it makes sense why lighter skin evolved. They needed that extra bit of sun to stay healthy.
Here in Australia, we’ve got a lot of white people, and we also have the highest skin cancer rates in the world because of all that sunshine. It’s a real problem.
And less ozone in the south means a sunny day here in NZ will turn you into a lobster in just eight hours.
RE: Fact #11 (undefined) – Has Disney always been this greedy?