1 Clint Eastwood’s Uncounted Children
Clint Eastwood has at least eight children with six women, but he has refused to confirm how many offspring he really has, and some sources say the number is considerably higher. His biographer Patrick McGilligan describes the true total as indeterminate and notes that only about half of Eastwood’s eight known children were publicly acknowledged at the time, with at least one child dating back to his high school years. In a 1997 60 Minutes interview, Eastwood shut down the topic by replying only that he has “a few” children and generally tells reporters he will not discuss his families because, as he puts it, he can protect himself but they cannot.
2. A man named Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was given absolute power as dictator to save Rome from an invasion by the Aequi, and he crushed the threat in just 16 days before resigning and going back to his small farm. According to Roman tradition, he left his plow in 458 BC when officials told him of the crisis, took command, surrounded the enemy on the Algidus, and forced their surrender.
3. In 2017, a Chinese woman named Yan from Nanjing bought a new iPhone X and discovered that her coworker could consistently unlock it using the phone’s facial recognition feature, even though the device was registered to Yan. Apple gave Yan a refund and she then bought a replacement iPhone X, but her coworker could again unlock it the same way, and Apple issued a second refund after confirming the same faulty Face ID behavior.
4. In December 2019, Leonardo DiCaprio and his friends were on his rented boat in the Caribbean when he helped rescue a man who had been treading water for about 11 hours after drunkenly falling overboard a cruise. After hearing an emergency call about the missing passenger, DiCaprio, his crew joined the search, and they spotted him in rough water about an hour before sunset and a heavy rainstorm.
5. In December 2012, Sandy Hook teacher Victoria Leigh Soto hid her first grade students and tried to redirect gunman Adam Lanza away from her classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. When Lanza entered, she had several children concealed in a closet, told him they were in the gym, and was shot while reportedly trying to shield her students as some of them ran from their hiding places. She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2013, and musician Paul Simon performed “The Sound of Silence” at her funeral.
6 Last Official Smallpox Stocks
After the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated in 1980, the sole official remaining specimens of the variola virus were preserved in two high-security laboratories. One repository sits at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, and the other at the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR in Koltsovo, Russia.
7. In 2024, a 2-year-old girl’s blood test in California revealed a blood alcohol content of 0.12 after a restaurant mistakenly served her cooking wine that staff had poured from a bottle mislabeled as apple juice. Her parents noticed she seemed unusually wobbly, had glassy eyes, and slurred her words after drinking from the to-go cup, then rushed her to the emergency room, where doctors confirmed alcohol poisoning and monitored her overnight.
8. When gymnast Simone Biles executed the Yurchenko double pike on vault at the 2023 World Championships, she willingly took a half-point deduction so her coach could stand on the landing mat, ready to step in and redirect her if she was headed for a scary landing. The move is so difficult and risky that Biles and her team prioritized her safety over the score.
9. Disney is the only major studio to never win an Oscar for Best Picture (as of Jan 2026), even though Walt Disney Pictures has received multiple nominations for the award.
10. In Norse myth, long before J. R. R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, a cursed ring called Andvaranaut brought doom to its owners. The dwarf Andvari originally owned the ring, but after the god Loki seized his hoard, Andvari laid a curse on Andvaranaut so that anyone who possessed it would suffer misfortune and death. In later Volsung legends, the ring passed through royal hands and repeatedly fulfilled that curse, turning wealth and power into tragedy for every new bearer.
11 Last Kmart In Continental America
Only a single Kmart store currently exists in the continental United States (as of Jan 2026), even though during its peak in the early 1980s almost 2,100 Kmart stores were operating across the United States and Canada. After Kmart closed its last full-sized big-box mainland store in 2024, only a smaller location in Kendale Lakes, Florida, remained as the lone surviving Kmart in the continental U.S.
12. The Witness Protection Program claims a 100 percent success rate for subjects who have followed its guidelines, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Since its creation under the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, the program has protected witnesses and their family members whose testimony put them at risk from organized crime, drug traffickers, terrorists, and other violent offenders.
13. In 1953, Isaac Asimov wrote the short story “Everest,” predicting that climbing Mount Everest was impossible and that the first human to reach its summit would have to be parachuted in. He completed the story only a month before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay successfully reached the summit on 29 May 1953. When “Everest” finally appeared in print seven months later, its central claim had already been spectacularly disproved.
14. During World War II, the U.S. Navy submarine USS Grayback was sunk with 80 sailors aboard and then remained undiscovered for 75 years because of a single mistranslation in wartime Japanese records. Researchers later realized that an error in transcribing the coordinates had placed the wreck in the wrong location, and once they corrected the entry in 2019, searchers found the submarine within days.
15. The rabies virus has a genome that codes for only five genes, yet it has an almost 100 percent fatality rate once clinical symptoms appear. After an infected animal transmits the virus, it travels through the nervous system to the brain, where it causes acute encephalitis and characteristic neurological symptoms. At that stage, effective treatment is virtually nonexistent, and documented survivors are extremely rare, which is why post-exposure vaccination must occur before symptoms begin.
16 Bond Star Saves Co-Star
While filming a love scene for the James Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, Halle Berry began choking on a fig and could not breathe. Pierce Brosnan stepped in and performed the Heimlich maneuver, dislodging the fruit.
17. Most missing children are runaways, and about 99 percent of abducted children are taken by relatives, typically a noncustodial father, rather than by unknown predators. In response to these statistics, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children shifted away from its old campaign that focused on “stranger danger.”
18. In the United States, height distribution data show that only 11 percent of women are taller than 5’7″. Just 1 percent of women reach 6’0″ or above.
19. In October 2013, street artist Banksy secretly set up a stall in New York City and sold his authentic spray art canvases for $60 each, even though their estimated value at the time was about $20,000. The first customer even negotiated a two-for-one deal, walking away with two original Banksy pieces for just $60 total.
20. In Hawaii, scientists have discovered a new carnivorous caterpillar that scavenges weak or dead insects trapped in spider webs and then wears their body parts as camouflage. This grisly covering hides it from both spiders and other predators while it raids the webs for more trapped prey.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Three Female Giant Stick Bugs
In all of recorded scientific history (as of Jan 2026), observers have seen only three female giant stick bugs in the wild.
22. Researchers analyzing changes from 2003 to 2023 found that Americans spent nearly 90 minutes less per day, on average, outside their homes in 2023 than they did in 2003. Time-use data show declines in activities like going to work, shopping, and socializing in public spaces, with more of daily life shifting indoors.
23. In the 1920s, Cuban chess master José Raúl Capablanca, then one of the world’s best players and a former world champion, tried to promote his own variant called Capablanca Chess because he believed top-level games were becoming too repetitive and drawish. His version enlarged the board and added new pieces with unique moves.
24. On rafting trips where you are granted access to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, you have to take your own poop out instead of burying it or leaving it behind. Regulations require river runners to use portable toilet systems so all human waste can be carried out and disposed of properly after the trip. This rule keeps beaches, camps, and the river corridor clean for other visitors and protects the canyon’s limited, fragile environments.
25. In the Middle Ages, pilgrims heading from London to Jerusalem could deposit their money at London’s Temple Church with the Knights Templar and receive a written letter of credit instead of carrying cash. As they traveled, they could redeem this document for funds at other Templar houses along the route, which reduced the risk of theft or loss on the dangerous journey. This network of deposits and withdrawals effectively created an early form of international banking centuries before modern financial institutions.
RE: Fact #32 (Harrison Hides First Dakota State) – The Arizona delegation went the other way and pushed for New Mexico to be signed first so Arizona could be the 48th state.
RE: Fact #37 (Crashing Saturn Stages Into Moon) – Jim Lovell later said the only thing that went right on Apollo 13 was crashing the S-IVB into the Moon.
RE: Fact #41 (When Parasites Make Hosts Giant) – Damn, Frank, you got swole! Have you been working out?
Parasite ate my balls. That patch of flesh that used to define me as a man is now just constantly shedding more parasites that want to eat other people’s balls. Should I hook you up?
…I don’t think we should hang out anymore, Frank.
RE: Fact #25 (Templars Invent Medieval Travel Banking) – On January 13, 1129, at the Council of Troyes, the Knights Templar got officially recognised by the Catholic Church. That made them one of the first transnational military and financial groups in medieval Europe. From places like London’s Temple Church, they protected pilgrims going to Jerusalem and set up a secure way to deposit money and send letters of credit that could be cashed at Templar houses across Europe. One of the first forms of international banking. Then there is stealing or altering those letters—they weren’t actual cash. My guess is they were sewn into clothes, which made it hard to detect or steal. They were only redeemable at a Templar house, often hundreds or thousands of miles away. The amounts were fixed when you deposited them, likely sealed and written in Latin with Templar marks that were tough to fake or tamper with without it showing. Most robbers wanted coin they could spend right where they were. A piece of parchment you’d have to carry across Christendom and then explain yourself to armed monk-knights wasn’t exactly something you’d want to loot. As for killing a pilgrim and cashing in the money yourself—you’d still have to convince a Templar house you were the real depositor. Those letters weren’t anonymous bearer cheques. They included names, places, maybe witnesses or verbal countersigns. And pilgrims usually travelled in groups, so your identity didn’t depend on one piece of paper. Honestly, the biggest thing holding people back? Trying to defraud the Templars wasn’t a low-risk move. These were organised, armed, well-connected professional killers who took fraud against them seriously. A local bandit might get away with robbing a merchant. But crossing the Templars? That was a fast track to death and excommunication, something people in that era actually cared about deeply.
RE: Fact #6 (Last Official Smallpox Stocks) – there’s this crazy thing about the smallpox vaccine – the one that was used until smallpox was eradicated in 1980? it’s not actually cowpox, it’s some other pox virus and nobody knows where it came from
the vaccine was modified a ton over the years, so by 1980 it wasnt really the same thing anymore
RE: Fact #15 (Five Gene Virus, Virtually Fatal) – When a virus is really lethal, it paradoxically spreads less. Most viruses actually evolve to keep us sick but alive, so we can cough, poop, or whatever to spread them more. But then some viruses get truly wild – they start messing with our proto-oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. That’s when things get incredibly intense!
RE: Fact #38 (Math Behind Fading Irregular Verbs) – Words can go all weird too. Like proved turning into proven.
Those are used differently, right? I proved it, I’ve proven it.
RE: Fact #14 (Submarine Lost By Translation Error) – Got some real questions here: if the hull stayed intact and could handle the deep-sea pressure, would those sailors in a sunken sub just end up sitting there at the bottom, slowly starving or running out of air?
When a sub’s hull gets damaged, it’s really tough for it to withstand a lot of pressure. Now, if you manage to seal off compartments and stay watertight, you’d definitely use up all your air long before you ever started starving.
RE: Fact #46 (Dog Cancer That Spreads Directly) – It’s also so genetically different from the dog it came from that it’s basically its own species of obligate parasite, single-celled, dog that only lives off other dogs.
This is one of those cases that shows why it’s impossible to come up with a consistent definition of “species.” Genetically, this is a dog. There’s a clear line back to a common ancestor shared by all modern dogs. But nobody would call this cancer a dog.
RE: Fact #10 (Cursed Norse Ring Before Tolkien) – Take Wagner, for instance, one of the most famous composers ever. Can you guess what he based ‘The Ring of the Nibelung’ on? Or where ‘Ride of the Valkyries,’ that super famous classical piece, actually came from?
RE: Fact #23 (Capablanca Tries To Fix Chess) – He was pretty spot on. Most top players aren’t drawing at will yet, but a few are getting close, and that number’s gonna go up with the next wave of grandmasters.
What does this mean, and why does the draw rate go up?
It’s basically like playing X’s and O’s for regular folks. You only win when someone makes a mistake, and most people just know how to never lose.
Both players know most of the best moves in every good opening and nobody makes a big mistake in most games, so they end up losing the same amount of pieces and neither one really gets a real edge.
Rote memorization of play lines is actually at the heart of high-level strategy. Winning moves come when the board hits a state that at least one player hasn’t memorized a response for, and both players are trying to avoid game situations they don’t know. Notably, advanced chess computers have been unbeatable against top players for over 20 years and can push games into brand-new states nobody’s seen before, then figure them out super fast. Humans don’t draw against each other because they’ve solved chess — they draw because everyone’s memorizing the same lines, and both sides just keep trying to stay in familiar territory
If you think you can outcalculate your opponent, wouldn’t it make sense to switch to a calculation-based game? So does that mean all the top players just see each other as equals and don’t want to play a calculation game with anyone?
Small correction: the simplest chess computers that can run on a wristwatch CPU beat the best of us 100% of the time, even with a big disadvantage. People totally underestimate how much better computers are at playing chess.
RE: Fact #2 (Farmer Dictator Saves Rome) – Just so you know, this story is a bit overblown and wasn’t all that unusual back in the early Roman Republic. The “dictator” role came with total power, but only within its specific mission. Like, if there was a military crisis, they had full control over military stuff, but nothing else. And the job automatically ended after six months. So, there was a lot of good standing to be had by stepping down early, and not much to gain from just trying to cling to the full term. Also, there wasn’t really a chance to use that office to grab lasting power as long as society’s rules held up. The two guys who really broke the republic – Sulla and Caesar – did become dictators, but they both forced the senate at sword point to give them the title. They grabbed power first, then got the office. They didn’t use the office itself to get powerful. There’s no period in the republic where a dictator, legitimately appointed for an emergency, ever failed to step down when their term was up.
Just to add a little more info, Sulla was actually named “Dictator de facto,” which meant there was no time limit. But then he resigned to try and keep the position honorable. Caesar later got the title “Dictator Perpetuo,” meaning dictator for life, and that’s why we still use that phrase today, and well, he ended up getting assassinated.
RE: Fact #34 (Eight Days Buried Under Snow) – She made it for almost five months after that, and then passed away at the end of July 1799.
Another site, the Histon and Impington Village Society, says: “she was badly frost bitten. Gangrene set in. She died, bed bound, six months later.” It also seems she liked a drink—her burial notice mentions: “her death was accelerated by spirituous liquors afterwards taken, procured by the donations of various visitors.”
Shit, if I’d been half-frozen for a week and got gangrene, I’d probably turn to the bottle too.
RE: Fact #2 (Farmer Dictator Saves Rome) – Yeah, George Washington got the nickname “American Cincinnatus” because he just wanted to head back to his farm after the war.
He did it twice, maybe even three times! Washington willingly gave up so much power, and that’s probably his biggest contribution to the US. He set a great example of letting go of control, a peaceful shift in power. And just so nobody thinks I’m glossing over things, yeah, he absolutely owned slaves and deserves criticism for it. We should acknowledge our historical figures completely, flaws and all. Don’t ignore their huge shortcomings or their positive qualities.
That’s actually where Cincinnati, Ohio got its name, though it was through the Society of the Cincinnati, a group for veterans from the US Revolutionary War.
So, Jimmy Carter left his peanut farm to be President. What does that say about him?
RE: Fact #38 (Math Behind Fading Irregular Verbs) – Also, that fact has a cool chart showing verbs in the upper-right corner that have already regularized, and verbs in the lower-left corner that probably never will.
I checked those: blest means blessed, clomb is climbed, stript is stripped, blent is blended, vext is vexed, clapt is clapped, throve and thriven both mean thrived.
There’s a reason most languages have irregular “be,” “have,” and “do” verbs—it’s because they’re such foundational parts of human communication. They’re used so often that there’s no room for these verbs to fade away due to “ignorance drift.”
Most languages have something like that, but a fair number don’t have a verb for ‘have’ at all. Instead, they use phrases like ‘a book is to me’ or ‘a book is by me’ or ‘a book is mine’. A lot of languages don’t actually have irregular verbs either, since they don’t have verb forms that change based on grammar. I think you might be taking features from Western European or at least Indo-European languages and applying them to all languages worldwide.
RE: Fact #20 (Caterpillar Wears Corpse Camouflage) – Just found a new kids book — The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Totally cute.
One day, the caterpillar dreamed, I’ll grow up to become the moth from FactRepublic’s fact about Silence of the Lambs.
RE: Fact #47 (Finland’s Tiny Historic Tatar Community) – They’re the second largest ethnic group in Russia after ethnic Russians. A mix of people from Europe and Asia, pretty diverse.
How close are they really to the Chuvash people?
Kazan Tatars are pretty close to Chuvash, Mishar Tatars are more distant.
RE: Fact #34 (Eight Days Buried Under Snow) – Snow’s an insulator, she had water, cold slows down metabolism.
She probably had like a dozen layers on.
RE: Fact #41 (When Parasites Make Hosts Giant) – Trematode parasites are super common—pretty much every animal ends up with one. But here’s the thing: every trematode needs a snail to reproduce asexually. Inside the snail, the parasite moves to the gonads and eats them, which lets it produce thousands of asexual stages called cercariae. Those cercariae get shed and go out looking for the next host. Since the snail’s gonads are eaten, the snail gets castrated. Now, in the snail world, most of a snail’s energy goes into making babies once it hits sexual maturity. So when a snail gets infected and loses its gonads, it actually grows bigger—a phenomenon called parasite gigantism. There are a few theories about why this happens. Some think the snail grows bigger so if the infection ever clears, it can produce more babies. Others suggest it benefits the parasite because a larger host is safer.
The ones that infect humans are schistosomes and they cause schistosomiasis, which is one of the most common parasitic diseases in the developing world.
For fu*k’s sake, what the hell, Mother Nature?
RE: Fact #12 (Witness Protection’s Perfect Record) – It talks about protection “while they are in a high-threat environment including pretrial conferences, trial testimonials, and other court appearances.” And it says, “No Witness Security Program participant, following program guidelines, has been harmed or killed while under the active protection of the U.S. Marshals Service.” The problem is, this doesn’t include life *after* all that. And I’m pretty sure that’s most of the time you’d actually spend in witness protection.
RE: Fact #12 (Witness Protection’s Perfect Record) – They’re not trying to hide you from some global criminal organization like Spectre. It’s usually just some Brooklyn gangsters who’d find you in Queens. If you move someone to Oklahoma City, that’s way less probable. Most people facing that kind of danger are dealing with local problems, or maybe regional ones at most. Just “Get gone and stay gone” works pretty well to stay out of trouble.
RE: Fact #36 (Madonna Turns Ban Into Platinum) – I learned in a college class that this was a genius bit of marketing. They made it too racy for censors and had millions of units ready to go on VHS. They were sitting in warehouses a month before Christmas and dropped it on MTV at the perfect time to be “banned”. Cha ching.
Snoop Dogg’s Gin & Juice was basically a marketing move. They put Seagram’s Gin in the lyrics to charm Edgar Bronfman Jr, since his family owns Seagram’s. Before that song dropped, no one was drinking gin—it was the kind of drink your old aunt would have. After it came out, suddenly everyone was drinking it. I wish people knew how fake the recording industry really is. The Madonna thing was on purpose, playing off the PMRC hearings, which was also just a corporate scam to control how music got distributed.
RE: Fact #6 (Last Official Smallpox Stocks) – some stuff was found unsecured just outside dc in 2014
stories like these pop up now and then, usually just lost files or people forgetting stuff in the back of a freezer. samples like these often get destroyed out of caution, without even being investigated
we were cleaning out our freezer at the lab and found a brain from over 10 years ago. i had to figure out what to do with it. fun times
i love when people find old bottles of weird stuff and have no idea what it is. this kinda thing happens way more often than you think
i remember when we had to check our lab storage to make sure we didnt have any smallpox or other dangerous stuff
thats why they keep vials secured. it could be some old medical sample that got forgotten, and who knows what kinda disease it could be
RE: Fact #32 (Harrison Hides First Dakota State) – ND’s Wikipedia says it’s the 39th state, and South Dakota’s says it’s the 40th. Does South Dakota know that? Lol
Turns out it was decided by alphabetical order.
A couple of years ago when I last looked, South Dakota’s page said “39th/40th” while North Dakota’s said “39th”.
RE: Fact #17 (Why Stranger Danger Faded) – It really bothers me how much anxiety gets pushed around concerning kids who go missing. Especially groups like McGruff, who totally freak out in their commercials about 45,000 Canadian children vanishing annually. What they leave out is that almost all of them, like 44,985, show up again super fast. Their reasons for being gone are usually stuff like forgetting to tell their parents where they were headed, or running off, or even just being with a family member or another parent. Whenever I see these facts, I make sure to share what’s actually true.
Yeah, I often feel the same way about break-ins at homes. It’s really tough for me to accept the idea that gangs of burglars are just cruising around constantly, checking out houses to find families on vacation. I also don’t buy into the stories about strangers slipping drugs or dangerous stuff into children’s trick-or-treat candy. News outlets go to great lengths to persuade everyone that they’re constantly at risk and that tons of random bad things are happening all the time. I just don’t believe things are quite so straightforward.
RE: Fact #15 (Five Gene Virus, Virtually Fatal) – About 15 years back, I got that vaccine. Honestly, it was the nastiest reaction I’ve ever had from any shot. It was a few doses, like three or four total, one each week. For nearly a whole month, I barely ate anything. Maybe a couple of bites per meal. Food just seemed completely unappealing. Imagine a 200-pound dude living on roughly 600 calories daily for a month – it was brutal. I’d be totally wiped out after just 15 minutes of trying to exercise.
So, how much weight did you end up losing?
Doctors absolutely despise this one weird trick.
Someone’s definitely gonna read this and go looking for a raccoon to try and pet, I swear.
RE: Fact #35 (Forest Hermit Before Gojira Fame) – Wait… so was he really the “L’enfant Sauvage”?
Definitely inspired by his time as El Das, the l’Enfant Sauvage, yeah.
RE: Fact #3 (Face ID Fails Twice) – I actually used to be able to unlock my mom’s phone, even with a 40-year age difference and us being opposite sexes.
RE: Fact #10 (Cursed Norse Ring Before Tolkien) – Jim Jarmusch basically said being totally original isn’t a thing; authenticity is what truly counts. Then, if you consider Jean Luc-Godard’s take – that it’s not where you pull ideas from, but what you make of them – then it all just clicks, doesn’t it?
Tolkien openly drew from existing folklore and mythology for his creations. A significant part of his academic career centered on myths, things like Gawain and the Green Knight, and notably, Beowulf.
Tolkien absolutely adored the Sagas and the Eddas. He and his pals, including CS Lewis, even formed a group called Kolbitar – that means ‘coal biter,’ for people who sit by the fire telling tales. They actually did some translating from original Icelandic texts. Later on, in the 1930s, his family hired an Icelandic au-pair, and she told his kids lots of Icelandic folk stories. Funny enough, there’s a British author, Michael Ridpath, who wrote detective novels set in Iceland. His first one is about a lost Saga detailing two Icelanders taking a cursed ring to Hella’s peak and tossing it into the crater.
Tolkien would have absolutely loved talking about these kinds of things, especially how folklore influenced his writing. He truly wanted to keep those old mythologies alive and continue traditions that might have been lost, not claim everything for himself. While a massive amount of what he created was original, it’s interesting because I’ve since learned that elves in folklore actually match up pretty closely with the ones in Middle Earth. I used to think they barely resembled each other!
RE: Fact #22 (America’s New Homebody Nation) – It’s because they took away those Nickelodeon ads.
RE: Fact #45 (Giant Virus That Builds Proteins) – Yeah that one really blew my mind when I first heard about it, because it totally messes with the clean, simple definition of a virus we all learned in school. Things like tupanvirus really show how messy and wild biology can be compared to what textbooks say.
Yeah it makes sense. If bacteria and viruses are related evolutionarily, then at some point there must have been things that were virus-like or bacteria-like. Now that we see some viruses showing a few traits we usually think of as bacterial, it’s not super surprising.
RE: Fact #50 (When Carrots Count As Fruit) – I got onion jam in the European Union yesterday!
Was it jam or chutney, like they usually do?
We don’t say “jam” in Danish, neither do any of the other EU countries. It’s called “Rødløgsmarmelade” — red onion marmelade.
RE: Fact #30 (Elizabeth I’s All Win Lottery) – The modern U.K. lottery is a mess compared to what it used to be. I can’t even pull off that one free crime anymore.
RE: Fact #36 (Madonna Turns Ban Into Platinum) – By 2025, that video would be totally normal, no surprise at all.
RE: Fact #9 (Disney’s Missing Best Picture Oscar) – But their other companies actually did snag some Best Picture awards.
Yeah, this isn’t quite right. Miramax got all four of its Best Picture wins back when Disney owned it. Disney actually used Miramax and Touchstone specifically to put out movies for grown-ups during that time.
Hollywood Pictures was another one of those. The Santa Clause, for example, was initially going to be a regular movie for adults, coming out under the Hollywood Pictures name. But it tested so incredibly well with kids that they quickly switched things up and put it out as a main Disney movie instead.
Back in the 90s, I recall my dad always talking about Disney owning Touchstone, almost like it was some big secret plot. He’d say things like, ‘Disney acts all family-friendly, but guess what? They own Touchstone! They’re putting out all kinds of films that totally clash with their main ideas for movies, just hoping nobody catches on. This is going to be a massive scandal when everyone finally finds out!’ He genuinely believed he had some special inside scoop and was about to expose the whole thing by telling everyone.
RE: Fact #50 (When Carrots Count As Fruit) – That’s like when the Louisiana state Supreme Court said tomatoes are vegetables. It was about the same kind of thing.
Nix v. Hedden, US Supreme Court — the Court said unanimously that tomatoes should be called vegetables instead of fruits when it comes to tariffs, imports, and customs. In 2005, folks in the New Jersey Legislature used that case to back a bill making the tomato the official state vegetable.
Okay, there’s no official definition of “vegetable,” so if something’s made of plant matter and you can eat it, it’s basically a vegetable.
RE: Fact #43 (What Sell By Dates Mean) – Yeah and “best by” dates on most dry and frozen stuff are about quality, not health. Like, eating Poptarts that had a “best by” date three months ago won’t make you sick — it’s just gonna taste stale.
I’m trying to explain to my wife that “sell by” and “best buy” aren’t the same as expiration date.
RE: Fact #21 (Three Female Giant Stick Bugs) – This is just one of at least 1,400 species of stick bugs. And this one’s endangered, so folks haven’t seen much of either sex in the wild. Some species have been spotted even less. This fact isn’t really that impressive with that background. Hope I’m not killing the fun of learning cool stuff like this, but it’s kind of misleading.
RE: Fact #49 (MGM Lion Roars Like Tiger) – You’ve totally messed with my head. I don’t even know what’s real anymore.
Wait till you hear what actually makes the sound of galloping horses. It’s not even an animal.
RE: Fact #26 (Grant’s Two Year World Tour) – The 8 years he spent in the White House is actually the longest time he’s ever lived in one place. He moved a lot as a kid and again when he joined the army. The National Historic Site in Missouri that’s named after him? That’s actually his wife’s dad’s house where he worked between army jobs.
Just like Grant, his log cabin “Hardscrabble” moved around a lot too. It stayed on the White Haven property for years after the Grants left, but eventually got moved to Webster Groves where a real estate company used it for business. By the early 1900s, though, it started falling apart. Cyrus F. Blanke, a coffee salesman who wanted to save the cabin and boost his business, bought it for $8,000 and started moving it piece by piece to Forest Park in downtown St. Louis, ahead of the 1904 World’s Fair. They put it just east of where the St. Louis Art Museum is now, and the Blanke Coffee Company sold coffee to fairgoers and proudly celebrated Grant’s link to the place. After the fair, though, questions came up about what happened next because the Blankes didn’t plan on keeping or moving it. It stayed in Forest Park for a few years before the Busch family bought it in 1907 and moved it to where it is today.
RE: Fact #46 (Dog Cancer That Spreads Directly) – Tasmanian devils have the same problem. They spread it through scratches and bites, which isn’t great since they fight all the time.
RE: Fact #39 (Britain’s One Penny Mail Revolution) – So based on the Bank of England’s calculator, a penny in 1840 would be worth £0.89 today. That’s a massive 8786.1% increase in value, with an average annual inflation rate of 2.44%. Edit: So a penny back then was actually 1/240 of a pound, not 1/100 like now, which means it’d be worth 37p today. I didn’t realize the Bank of England’s calculator only works for amounts over £1.
A second class Royal Mail letter only costs 87p, so the rise isn’t even keeping up with inflation.
RE: Fact #11 (Last Kmart In Continental America) – Wow, so the Kmart in Miami, which is the last one in the US, apparently got shrunk down in March 2023. It’s now just the size of a CVS or Walgreens, and they’re running it out of what used to be its garden center. They only have a small choice of apparel, appliances, and things for the house. The bigger, original part of the store is actually rented out to an At Home outlet. The picture of this on the wiki is both funny and really sad at the same time.
I wonder if they’re just keeping this place open so they don’t lose the trademark.
Or maybe there’s some kind of tax trick. That way, they can sell items online and still get the perks from having a physical store, instead of just being an internet retailer.
Kmart is pretty popular in New Zealand. We actually have lots of them around the country. Our local equivalent, which used to be huge but then closed, was known as Deka.
I actually went to that Kmart in the past couple of years. It was incredibly depressing inside, but my friend did manage to find a rare Aquaman action figure there.
RE: Fact #5 (Teacher Who Faced Gunman) – Mentioning her name? Totally fine. His name? Absolutely not, big nope.
Remember Victoria Soto? When her time came, she didn’t value her life over theirs. She just focused on doing what was right, even if it cost her everything. She knew exactly what to do in circumstances none of us can even comprehend. Thanks to her, kids lived, they grew up, and those children will never forget her sacrifice. Neither should we.
Consider watching the two Alex Jones civil trials. You’ll learn about the people who were lost and how his false claims hurt the surviving families.
If you’re not a big details person, the Knowledge Fight podcast provides immense detail. It even includes tons of depositions by Jones and others. Roger Stone’s is also present as a bonus, and he’s really catty throughout the whole thing.
RE: Fact #30 (Elizabeth I’s All Win Lottery) – Okay, so even though the English had been playing raffles and games of chance for a while, the first official lottery ever recorded was actually approved by Elizabeth I back in 1566 and ran its first draw in 1569. Around 40 than tickets were sold, each costing 10 shillings — about three weeks’ wages for a regular worker — with a big prize of around £5,000. The whole thing was meant to raise money for public projects, like fixing ports and supplying ships for the royal fleet. Back then, it was described as funding “the reparation of the havens and strength of the Realme, and towardes such other publique good workes.” Everyone got something — either cash or cool stuff like silver plate, tapestries, or fine linen. And to sweeten the deal, ticket holders got immunity from one arrest, as long as it wasn’t piracy, murder, felonies, or treason. The lottery was advertised all over the country using illustrated scrolls showing the prizes. In reality, it was kind of like an interest-free loan to the Crown — tickets were sold over years, “without any Blankes.” Since not everyone could afford a full ticket, brokers started selling shares — labeled “Sixteenth” or “Third Class” — which basically laid the groundwork for modern stockbroking. English state lotteries kept going for over 250 years, and finally ended in 1826, when the last draw was mocked as “the last struggle of the speculators on public credulity for popularity to their last dying lottery”
Yeah, if the Crown was getting a luxury gift or cash, wouldn’t that have wiped out any income they’d make from the ticket? Especially if the gift cost more than the 10 shillings ticket price. How much did a silver plate actually cost back then?
That’s why it basically functioned like a loan to the crown.
The lottery was basically like state bonds, but without interest—instead, they paid out prizes over time. Those prizes were released gradually, which gave the government an incentive to earn enough to repay the funds and keep society stable. Back in the medieval days, it was a low-cost way for the state to get financing without raising taxes. No interest to pay, and it was all voluntary. Probably the profits were solid enough that this model ended up shaping the foundation of today’s capitalist system.
RE: Fact #31 (Astronaut Bumped Onto Challenger) – If anyone feels better, Garn didn’t have a great time — the space sickness he got during the trip was so bad that a scale for space sickness ended up being based on him, with “one Garn” being the worst level of sickness.
Man, imagine being in those first five minutes of a spaceflight, suddenly feeling like the worst hangover spins, then realizing you’ve got to deal with that for a whole week. I’d probably just head to the airlock and say, “I’m outta here.”
RE: Fact #17 (Why Stranger Danger Faded) – The Amber Alert got its name because of a 9-year-old girl named Amber. She was kidnapped from a grocery store in Texas, and sadly, her remains were discovered four days afterward. Her abductor was never apprehended. People then agreed they needed an alert system to inform everyone about child kidnappings, so they named it in her memory. Later on, it was also turned into an acronym: America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.
That’s exactly why it shouldn’t be for kids who just run away, even though their parents might get really upset about it. Using it that way would just make the Amber Alert system pointless. Sure, they’re kind of annoying on your phone, but imagine how dumb it would be to see the same kid constantly showing up as an Amber Alert on the nightly news every few weeks.
Here’s another detail about Amber Alerts: it’s not just a general phrase for any missing person. An Amber Alert gets activated only under really particular conditions. Pretty much four things need to be accurate for one to go out: it must be a definite kidnapping, the person taken has to be a child under age, there has to be a good reason to believe the child is in immediate danger, and there HAS to be enough clear details about the situation for people to know what to look for – this means info on the child and any vehicle the kidnapper might be driving. Some places might have more relaxed rules for sending them out, but most stick to those points. If we sent an Amber Alert every time a kid was late from baseball practice, or whenever a parent popped out for ‘cigarettes,’ people would stop paying attention really fast. That’s exactly why they have to keep them for cases where the public truly can help rescue a child from harm or worse.
There are actually other kinds of alerts for different groups of people who disappear too. I’m aware that some areas use something called Silver Alerts for seniors who are missing and at risk.
Oh, that’s cool to know! I live in Canada, and we actually use the name Amber Alert up here as well.
Yeah, a ‘Cmber Alert’ just doesn’t sound quite right, does it? I even checked some popular Canadian girl names; Chloe is #9 and starts with C. So, how about a ‘Chloe Alert’? Maybe ‘Canada’s Helpline for Little Ones in an Emergency’? Just spitballing here. Or, thinking about it more, you could use a ‘Celine Alert,’ honoring our Canadian singer and national icon, Celine Dion. Something like ‘Canada’s Emergency Line Intermission Notifying Everybody’? I’m sure someone smarter could fine-tune that. Though, on reflection, I’m not sure how thrilled she’d be to have her name on a child abduction warning system.
RE: Fact #47 (Finland’s Tiny Historic Tatar Community) – Didn’t know that. They’re actually the oldest continuous Muslim community in Finland, and they started the first Islamic congregation back in 1925.
RE: Fact #40 (Jewish Officer Who Backed Hitler) – Yeah, Hugo Gutmann recommended Hitler for the Iron Cross first — the one he wore all the way until he died. After the Nazis took power, Gutmann got some limited protections and eventually moved to the US, same as Eduard Bloch, a Jewish doctor who treated Hitler’s mom for cancer. Another Jewish officer, Ernst Moritz Hess, was also protected at high levels after the Nazis rose to power, but by 1941 his privileges were taken away and he was sent to a labor camp — he mostly avoided death camps and lived into the 1980s. Samuel Morgenstern, a Jewish businessman, was one of the few people who paid for Hitler’s art during his time in Vienna, buying his paintings to display at his frame shop. He tried to get financial help to leave in 1939 but failed, and ended up being deported to a ghetto in occupied Poland, where he died in 1943.
RE: Fact #22 (America’s New Homebody Nation) – A lot of people work from home now. You don’t have to go to the bank to cash a check or get cash anymore. Takeout can be delivered straight to your place. You can shop from your couch. I think most of those 90 minutes is just because of the internet, and honestly, it’s not a bad thing at all.
Totally agree, and those are all solid points. The big issue though is people just aren’t socializing anymore. I’m really glad I grew up before social media and dating apps got so over the top. It was way easier to make friends back then, and people were actually more willing to hang out and do real stuff in person.
There’s a Kurt Vonnegut quote from about 20 years ago that’s exactly about this — how computers and convenience are automating us out of the everyday stuff. Like, how we used to actually interact with the world. He said, “I once told my wife I was going out to buy an envelope. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘well, you’re not a poor man. Why don’t you just go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?’ And I pretended not to hear her. I went out and bought that one envelope. And honestly, I had a great time doing it. I met all sorts of people. I saw some cool babies. A fire engine went by. I gave them a thumbs up. I asked a woman what kind of dog that was. And I don’t know. The point is — we’re here on Earth to just goof around. Of course, computers are going to take that away from us. But the people who make computers don’t get it, or don’t care — we’re dancing animals. We love to move around. And it’s like we’re not supposed to dance anymore. Let’s all get up and move around a bit right now… or at least dance.”
Our modern tech-driven economy really believes that all friction should be taken out of life. That means you don’t need to talk to people on the phone, don’t have to travel, don’t have to go to stores, don’t have to hang out in places where you meet strangers — everything can just happen online from your phone or computer. I think people are finally starting to wonder if a totally frictionless life is actually good, or if it’s making us more isolated and mentally strained. In a way, humans evolved to deal with obstacles and challenges, and connecting with other people is a big part of that. I know some folks will say zero human interaction is the best thing ever and I get that — I’m an introvert too. Sometimes it’s actually good to be pushed out of your comfort zone.
RE: Fact #1 (Clint Eastwood’s Uncounted Children) – I used to be at a call center for an insurance company. Clint Eastwood, or whoever, crashed his golf cart all the time. Every single crash, his agent would ring us up to file a claim. We always got told to code celebrity claims a special way and keep it quiet. But honestly, Mr. Eastwood had so many claims, it wasn’t even worth whispering about anymore. Just another ordinary day.
Was he fu*king around in that golf cart?
Knowing this just makes that Rango scene way funnier, the one where the Eastwood character’s driving a golf cart.
Never actually watched that movie, but yep, totally sounds like an inside joke, haha.
RE: Fact #23 (Capablanca Tries To Fix Chess) – So Capablanca thought chess theory was way too dependent on memorizing moves and he predicted it would stall out pretty quick, like top-level games would just end up being endless draws. His solution? Expand the board from 8×8 to 10×8, tweak how the pieces move, and add two new ones—the Chancellor and the Archbishop—each with their own special rules. [link]
Chess has kinda gone all memorization now, and draws happen way too often. It feels like the way tournaments are set up and the time controls matter more than anything, just to push players to actually try and win.
Bobby Fischer made the same argument about chess relying too much on memorization. That’s what led him to create his own chess variant with randomized starting positions.
RE: Fact #12 (Witness Protection’s Perfect Record) – Just imagine totally cutting everyone off, leaving your old identity behind, and moving to some random spot for a quiet new start. That idea is really something… but I bet it has its own bad parts too.
Oh no, my lobster’s too rich, my steak’s too juicy…
My drinking water is just too clean.
RE: Fact #26 (Grant’s Two Year World Tour) – Didn’t he also die nearly broke and homeless? I think he was basically coach surfing when he passed.
Lol, not exactly but kinda. They weren’t homeless, just lost all their money to a ponzi scheme run by a real narcissist scum bag. When he died, he knew his book would set his wife and kids up financially. He got a decent advance on the autobiography so they weren’t broke, but they definitely weren’t living the high life either.
The original deal he got for his autobiography was kinda rough, just 10% royalties. But Mark Twain offered him something better with much bigger royalties. Twain came up with a sales plan that skipped bookstores and publishers entirely. It involved door-to-door salesmen, a bunch of them in Civil War veterans’ uniforms, pre-selling the book directly to people. They’d get paid before the book even got printed, so they didn’t have to work with publishers.
He was broke until Mark Twain convinced him publishing his memoir would be a good idea. Grant was dying from throat cancer, so Twain did most of the work. The memoir sold right after he passed and went crazy fast—set up his family.
RE: Fact #3 (Face ID Fails Twice) – There’s about a 1 in 50,000 chance of a false positive, so yeah, it happens. Technology isn’t magic. If you make it harder for false positives to occur, then you’ll get more false negatives instead, which totally bugs people. It’s not designed to be totally bulletproof. Its main goal is just to stop nosy folks, and most of the time it works really well for that. I actually work with face recognition stuff, and the systems I deal with usually have errors less than 1 in 10,000,000, but that’s for a completely different kind of application.
I think it even warns you when you first set up Face ID that identical twins could potentially unlock your phone. It’s kinda like how my own kids are always getting jumbled together in photos because their faces look so much alike. I suppose their age difference is probably the only reason they can’t unlock each other’s devices.
RE: Fact #7 (Toddler Served Wine As Juice) – A worker in that kitchen had some ‘apple juice’ as well, I bet.
RE: Fact #27 (Spy Golfer Behind Waffle House) – Waffle House has this weirdly solid logistical system and is famous for surviving storms. Because of their top-down structure, they can cut back on menu items depending on which utilities are still working.
I’ve always been into Waffle House and HEB—both are seriously resilient during natural disasters. HEB even has their own emergency management team. It’s kind of cool how they build loyalty when you’re stuck in a crisis and they’re the only ones with warm food or water.
By the way, that’s why I love Jack in the Box. They’re always open, got the full menu all day. I work nights, so when I get home, I grab egg sandwiches. McDonald’s only sells them after 4 AM, and most other chains are closed. But Jack’s always there with the full menu.
RE: Fact #49 (MGM Lion Roars Like Tiger) – Lion roars sound kinda like wheezy, and tigers have a tighter roar.
RE: Fact #8 (Biles Chooses Safety Over Score) – Man, I really wonder if folks who aren’t into gymnastics can actually get how ridiculously good she is. It’s more than just her winning all the time, though that’s a big part of it. She’s got five different moves named after her! That happens when you’re the first person to pull it off perfectly in a competition. Her creativity is just mind-blowing.
From what I remember, at least one of her moves ended up with a lower technical score than it really should have. The thing is, she might literally be the only one on Earth who can do it. They just don’t want to encourage other gymnasts to try it and hurt themselves badly.
Yeah, that’s pretty much true for all of her signature moves, not just one. Every single one of them honestly deserves a higher difficulty rating, especially her dismounts. I think the biggest gripe was that her beam dismount might have actually been marked down two whole levels from where it should’ve been.
Sure, other gymnasts might have more skills named after them, but what really sets Simone’s apart is that four of them have literally never even been tried by anyone else in a competition. Plus, three of those are the absolute hardest skills you can do on those specific pieces of equipment. Like, The Biles II is the toughest on vault, The Biles for beam, and The Biles II for floor is not only the highest difficulty there but also the very first J-rated skill in women’s gymnastics! She basically completely changed what everyone thought was even possible in women’s artistic gymnastics. And what’s even crazier is how easy she makes it look – her full-full beam dismount looks way better than most people’s full-in pike. Seriously, the sport won’t be the same without her, and I’m ready to argue that point with anyone.
RE: Fact #4 (DiCaprio Rescues Drifting Passenger) – That must have been wild, going from ‘I’m about to die’ to ‘Hey, I’m sharing a boat with Leo DiCaprio’ in almost no time at all.
Seriously, if that happened to me, I’d totally think I had already kicked the bucket.
Yeah, I’d assume I was gone for sure. Sharing a boat with Leo DiCaprio is a long shot, but hey, it’s not impossible. Especially if you’re a young woman, say 18 to 25.
I mean, the whole crew was probably just a bunch of models under 25, right?
RE: Fact #39 (Britain’s One Penny Mail Revolution) – Like the 19th-century version of unlimited texting. Once texting got cheap, society just went full speed ahead.
Except you’re still paying a premium for unlimited texting.
Sure, but it’s way cheaper than it used to be. I remember paying 25 cents per text back in the early 2000s, 50 cents to start a call, and I can’t remember how much per minute now. A $10 a month plan gets you unlimited texts and calls.
RE: Fact #38 (Math Behind Fading Irregular Verbs) – So I’m getting that the original yeet-yote-yoten didn’t have a chance to survive and got yeeted because it wasn’t common enough, right?
RE: Fact #18 (How Rare Tall Women Are) – I’m 5’6″, but I always wear heels, usually two or three inches tall, for my job. So, it’s pretty funny how people instantly crack up or make remarks the very first time they catch sight of me in sneakers or flat shoes!
RE: Fact #15 (Five Gene Virus, Virtually Fatal) – So, back in mid-20th century India, my dad’s dog got rabies – probably from a jackal or a stray. That dog ended up biting everyone in the family. What’s wild is how quickly they reacted. They did an autopsy right away to confirm it, then put the entire family on a daily injection schedule, adjusted for how exposed each person was. From what I hear, those shots were pretty rough. But luckily, no one ever got sick from it. My dad tells the story like it’s just some funny old memory, but I bet it was absolutely terrifying. Especially for the grown-ups who knew exactly what would happen if those treatments didn’t work.
RE: Fact #46 (Dog Cancer That Spreads Directly) – Hey, isn’t this the same cancer that has its own unique DNA, from an ancient dog? That one’s basically one of the oldest living organisms out there.
RE: Fact #35 (Forest Hermit Before Gojira Fame) – The weirdest thing about Gojira is they’re one of the heaviest bands on Earth, yet they’re all about peace and environmental stuff, like true hippies.
RE: Fact #44 (Accidental Birth Of Salton Sea) – The valley used to be a dried-up inland sea. So when the Salton Sea formed, it was a saltwater lake where investors wanted to build lakeside homes and do saltwater game fishing. But after they fixed the levees, no new water started coming back in, and it’s just been drying up ever since. Now it’s getting saltier every day, and it’s basically caustic now.
RE: Fact #49 (MGM Lion Roars Like Tiger) – This reminds me of how they use a red-tailed hawk for the sound of an eagle in movies.
Or kookaburras for every jungle scene, no matter where it is
RE: Fact #21 (Three Female Giant Stick Bugs) – I’d bet they were seen way more times than that, but nobody ever realized they were stick bugs.
Sometimes I wonder how many species people have seen but just didn’t realize it’s never been officially discovered before.
I heard a joke from an entymologist that if you shake a tree in the Amazon, you’ll find a dozen new insect species. Then he made it clear it wasn’t a joke. The Amazon is literally overflowing with life, and insect species are super localized. There’s even beetles that only exist in a tiny patch of soil around one tree.
RE: Fact #32 (Harrison Hides First Dakota State) – I wish I’d done this with my twins, but the one who’s two minutes younger ended up with a tiny bit of an inferiority complex.
Yeah, in Nigeria there’s this belief about twin ages. The second child is seen as older than the first. So the one born later is basically like the one who kicked the first one out.
My twins are like 40 minutes apart…yeah. The boy popped the amniotic sac and I think he kicked my wife’s cervix like he was Team Rainbow Six breaching a bunker. From what the second one is acting like now, she was probably just sleeping through it, and the doctor had to go in and grab her out.
RE: Fact #47 (Finland’s Tiny Historic Tatar Community) – There are several Turkic ethnic groups in Europe. And separately, Islam was practiced in Europe way before some people want you to believe.
RE: Fact #6 (Last Official Smallpox Stocks) – its pretty depressing to think that we could never eradicate a disease again because misinformation spreads so fast now. it would be impossible to get everyone on the same page
eradicating smallpox was a one time thing, it’s not like we’ve ever done it before or since. it was a huge achievement
RE: Fact #16 (Bond Star Saves Co-Star) – “Why Jinx, I didn’t take you for a woman who has trouble… swallowing.”
RE: Fact #29 (Teen Fugitive Who Crossed Oceans) – If you’re into learning more, check out “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself.” It’s a memoir with real firsthand accounts of the horrors of the slave trade and slavery. He played a big role in ending the Atlantic slave trade.
RE: Fact #29 (Teen Fugitive Who Crossed Oceans) – You might wanna check out Nat Love’s autobiography. He was a former enslaved person and lived an amazing life—widely considered the greatest cowboy of all time.
RE: Fact #13 (Asimov’s Everest Bet Implodes) – So in his book, ‘Caves of Steel,’ Earth apparently has a catastrophic overpopulation problem with only 8 billion folks living on it.
Plenty of older science fiction stuff just hasn’t held up over time. But, man, predicting something wrong only a month out, that’s rough.
That guy published so much, like in nine out of ten Dewey Decimal sections. He was seriously brilliant. I figure he can totally handle being wrong about one thing in maybe five hundred different stories he wrote.
The best example I can think of is how The New York Times, back in October 1903, printed an editorial saying it would be millions of years before people could fly controlled aircraft. Then, just over two months later, the Wright Brothers made their first successful flight, making the paper seem completely off.
Honestly, if we hadn’t had all those huge breakthroughs in genetic engineering back in the 70s, we’d be looking at a lot more famine right now.
Yeah, that’s fair. But basically, you’re just pointing out that if Asimov’s initial ideas had been accurate, then his outcomes would’ve been accurate too. That’s kinda the simple bit, though.
And also, at the start of his book The Foundation, Asimov mentions Trantor, the galactic empire’s capital world, is this huge city hundreds of levels deep where folks hardly ever see the sky. Yet, he says it only has about 40 billion residents. If you do the math, assuming Trantor is roughly Earth-sized, that’s actually a lower population density than even a typical suburb. For his description to really make sense, the number should have been in the trillions.
RE: Fact #14 (Submarine Lost By Translation Error) – When you hear stuff like this, it just makes you think about how incredibly huge the ocean is, and how amazing it is at keeping things secret. They really had to be basically sitting right on top of it to even have a shot at discovering it. There’s just so much tucked away deep under the water.
It’s pretty mind-blowing when you look at a map and compare different countries to how big the Pacific Ocean actually is. The oceans are so gigantic that there are likely whole underwater areas that nobody will ever visit or even explore.
RE: Fact #25 (Templars Invent Medieval Travel Banking) – So why wouldn’t a bandit just steal a letter of credit and show up at the next templar house to cash it in?
A piece of paper’s way easier to hide, and the bandit probably couldn’t read it anyway. Plus, traveling back then was a lot tougher, so a random local bandit wouldn’t have much chance of getting all the way across the continent to find the templar house. Pilgrims also traveled in groups, which made it even less likely. But the thing is, carrying paper is way simpler than carrying a pile of coins, though both could be stolen.
RE: Fact #19 (Banksy Sells $20K Art Cheap) – And when Stephen King wrote under the name Richard Bachman, nobody bought his books. Until people found out Richard Bachman was actually Stephen King. That proves his original reason for doing it—people only buy the books because of his name, not the content. Whether it’s a bad horror story or just a splash of paint on paper, the value sticks to the name, not the actual work.
RE: Fact #18 (How Rare Tall Women Are) – That’s why whenever a really tall lady passes by, people always notice and remember it, like they just spotted a super rare Pokémon, haha.
RE: Fact #28 (Kung Fu Really Means Skill) – Yeah, that’s why making tea the Chinese way is called gongfu tea making.
RE: Fact #19 (Banksy Sells $20K Art Cheap) – We were in the city for his exhibition. I remember walking by that vendor and thinking it was kinda clever to sell knockoff Banksy pieces during the event. Wish I had known back then!
My cousin was in town for a drama festival and also passed by the booth. He knew I was a Banksy fan. Being a teacher, he didn’t have any spare cash to buy one. I still complain to him.
That’s gotta be like one of those “I sold bitcoin at its ATH of $1150 in 2013!” kind of moments, I’d expect.
My friend bought Bitcoin back when it was around $20, just to get on the Silk Road, and the FBI ended up seizing about 20 BTC. It still kinda hurts to think about.
RE: Fact #33 (The Sea With No Shores) – Also, where eels go to mate.
What’s wild is that eels from both North America and Europe migrate to the same place, mate, and lay eggs. The babies from each species end up turning into glass eels, tiny and not great at swimming. Still, somehow they wind up in the right place and migrate back. My point is it’s not one species with babies just floating into any river. Each species’ larvae somehow end up in the right continent.
RE: Fact #43 (What Sell By Dates Mean) – That’s cool, but we still need to know how long a product lasts once it’s opened or stored at home. I’ve got canned, jarred, dry boxed, and TetraPak stuff.
RE: Fact #42 (The Wrong Michael Jackson Star) – There gotta be thousands of people named Michael Jackson in the world.
RE: Fact #25 (Templars Invent Medieval Travel Banking) – Man, if you lost that letter of credit, it’d be a total headache. Absolute nightmare.
It’s insane that for most of human history, just losing something—whether it’s gold, cash, or a line of credit—could mess things up for multiple generations.
Yeah, for sure. But coin pouches can still go missing too. Like, if someone decides they like your coin pouch and starts picking it up.
Why wouldn’t he take the withdrawal slip if you were proven to have no coins?
RE: Fact #3 (Face ID Fails Twice) – My own kids managed to use Face ID to unlock each other’s iPhones, and they happen to be white.
The article mentions that Apple warned against kids younger than 13 using it since their faces might appear too much alike.
Anyway, I got a new phone while I was sick with pneumonia, and I actually had to set up my Face ID again once I put all the weight back on.
Last year, I packed on so many pounds that my phone wouldn’t even recognize me anymore, so I kept having to type in my code. Luckily, it finally sees me again, thank goodness, ’cause that was actually pretty rough on my self-esteem, lol.
RE: Fact #26 (Grant’s Two Year World Tour) – Sounds like a solid way to kick off retirement.
RE: Fact #28 (Kung Fu Really Means Skill) – That’s why the song specifically said they were kung fu fighting.
RE: Fact #45 (Giant Virus That Builds Proteins) – The best theory right now is that those viruses are so big they pretend to be bacteria and use phagocytosis to get in. And since you’re already so big, why not bring some extra genes with you?
RE: Fact #18 (How Rare Tall Women Are) – Picture this: me, a woman who’s six feet tall, visiting Japan. Back home, I’m used to being taller than most folks, but there? I felt absolutely huge, especially since the average lady is only 5’2″. Honestly, it worked as a pretty good way to start conversations, since so many folks were just lovely and wanted to chat. I didn’t even mind if their interest was a bit much; everyone was friendly directly to me. Whatever they might have whispered when I turned away? Not my concern.
I’m 6’1 myself, and visiting Vietnam made me feel like an absolute giant!
Being 6’3″ and traveling to rural Ecuador, where the men usually stood around 5’4″… well, nobody ever struggled to find me in a group, that’s for sure.
RE: Fact #4 (DiCaprio Rescues Drifting Passenger) – It’s wild that he survived 11 hours in such rough waters while totally drunk.
Seriously, nothing will snap you out of being drunk faster than that, huh?
Unless it’s just a couple extra beers and a line with DiCaprio?
RE: Fact #40 (Jewish Officer Who Backed Hitler) – Ever hear what happened to Gutmann and his family?
He started an office furniture shop after the war ended, stayed on the army rolls as a reserve lieutenant. In 1933, he applied for a veteran’s war pension and got it — President Hindenburg had passed some decrees to protect Jewish war veterans from the growing anti-Jewish backlash. In 1935, he lost his German citizenship when Hitler took power and was officially removed from the veteran rolls, but still got his pension, probably because of Hitler’s connections. In 1938, he got arrested by the Gestapo but was released thanks to some SS guys who knew his history. In 1939, he and his family left Germany for Belgium, then moved to the US in 1940. He settled in Missouri, worked as a typewriter salesman, and passed away in California in 1962.
Well, it’s still not great, but it’s better than we thought.