Random #455 – 50 More Facts To Enjoy With Your Coffee

1 Sleep Activates Brain Waste Clearance

Sleep triggers a wash cycle in the brain, according to a 2013 study involving live mice. During sleep or anesthesia, the interstitial space in their brains expanded by more than 60%, increasing the exchange of cerebrospinal fluid and interstitial fluid. This increased flow cleared beta-amyloid faster than during wakefulness, suggesting that sleep helps remove potentially harmful waste from the brain. Therefore pulling an all-nighter stops this waste from clearing can cause brain fog.

2. Japanese television journalist Toyohiro Akiyama became the first Japanese person in space when he flew aboard Soyuz TM-11 to the Mir space station on December 2, 1990. Akiyama had quit a four-pack-a-day smoking habit during training, and he battled cigarette cravings and severe space sickness while delivering live reports from orbit. His nausea became so extreme that his fellow cosmonauts later said they “hadn’t ever seen a man vomit that much.”

3. The famous “London Fog” of Victorian novels was not merely natural weather. Smoke from soft bituminous coal burned in homes and industry mixed with ordinary fog and became trapped beneath still air, producing the thick, toxic “pea-soupers” that plagued the city. The five-day Great Smog of December 1952 became so dense that cinemas closed because audiences could not see the screen from the fourth row. The disaster killed thousands and helped bring about the Clean Air Act of 1956.

4. On August 29, 1973, the two-man submersible Pisces III was laying transatlantic telephone cable 150 miles southwest of Ireland when a fouled towline opened its rear machinery hatch, flooding the compartment and sending the craft 1,575 feet to the seabed. Inside, a 35-year-old engineer named Roger Mallinson and a 28-year-old pilot named Roger Chapman remained cold and wet in darkness, speaking and moving as little as possible to conserve oxygen. A 76-hour international rescue effort overcame broken ropes, leaks, and electrical faults before lifting Pisces III to the surface on September 1. When rescuers finally opened the hatch after 84 hours and 30 minutes, only 12 minutes of oxygen remained. It remains the deepest successful submarine rescue in history.

5. In 2005, a University of Northern British Columbia graduate student named David Radies was conducting random sampling for a lichen diversity study when he found logging tape tied around a red cedar he estimated to be at least 2,000 years old. The tape revealed that he had stumbled upon an ancient inland rainforest scheduled for logging, one of the rare biodiversity pockets covering only about 1% of the Robson Valley. The timber licence no longer covered that particular forest by 2008, sparing it from logging. In 2016, British Columbia protected 11,190 hectares as Ancient Forest/Chun T’oh Whudujut Park.

6 Simpson Jurors Endured 265-Day Sequestration

During the 1995 murder trial of O.J. Simpson, the jury remained sequestered for 265 days, the longest jury sequestration in history. The court isolated the jurors to shield them from intense media coverage and other outside influences. Guards supervised them around the clock as officials restricted television and news access, monitored their mail, and limited contact with their families. The extraordinary confinement reportedly cost about $2 million.

7. Nearly 70% of Americans play video games for at least one hour each week, according to the Entertainment Software Association’s 2026 report. The ESA and YouGov found that 67% of Americans ages 5 to 90, or 212.3 million people, met that threshold, an increase of 7.2 million from 2025. Weekly gaming included more than 80% of Gen Alpha and Gen Z, 50% of Boomers, and 32% of the Silent Generation.

8. The story behind Cinderella may predate Christianity by centuries. Its earliest known variant follows a Greek slave girl named Rhodopis, whose historical inspiration lived during the 6th century BC. Greek geographer Strabo recorded the tale in his Geographica sometime between about 7 BC and AD 24. In the story, an eagle steals Rhodopis’s sandal and drops it into an Egyptian king’s lap, prompting him to search for her and make her his wife.

9. Actress Ariana Richards, who played Lex Murphy in Jurassic Park, auditioned by recording herself screaming as if a Tyrannosaurus rex were attacking her. Steven Spielberg reviewed the audition tapes late at night while his wife, actress Kate Capshaw, slept on the couch. Ariana’s scream jolted Capshaw awake and sent her running into the hallway to ask whether their children were okay. A few days later, Spielberg invited the 12-year-old actress to his office and gave her the role.

10. Brazil nuts contain so much selenium that a single nut can supply 68 to 91 mcg, or about 124% to 165% of an adult’s recommended daily amount of 55 mcg. Because their selenium content varies, five nuts could contain between 340 and 455 mcg. At the high end, that exceeds the adult daily upper limit of 400 mcg. Consuming too much selenium over time can cause garlic breath, a metallic taste, hair loss, brittle nails, nausea, and nervous system problems.

11 Pliny Documented Beer-Foam Bread Leavening

In the 1st century AD, Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote that the Gauls and Iberians skimmed foam from beer and mixed it into bread dough. The foam carried yeast from the brewing process, causing the dough to rise and producing what Pliny called “a lighter kind of bread than other peoples.” Bakers were harnessing yeast fermentation nearly 2,000 years before scientists understood the microorganisms behind it.

12. Nathan Fielder attended Point Grey Secondary School in Vancouver alongside Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Fielder and Rogen performed together on the school’s improv team, which won the British Columbia championship at the Canadian Improv Games. The team advanced to the national competition but, as Fielder later recalled, got “crushed.” Rogen and Goldberg eventually named their production company, Point Grey Pictures, after the school.

13. After Japan lost four aircraft carriers and more than 3,000 men at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy hid the scale of the defeat from the public, the Army, and much of its own Navy. On June 10, the Navy gave a military liaison conference only an incomplete account, while a detailed report submitted five days later remained restricted to the highest levels. Japanese news announced a great victory, and even the Imperial Japanese Army briefly believed the fleet remained in good condition. Only Emperor Hirohito and the highest-ranking Navy commanders received accurate information about the carrier and personnel losses.

14. The earliest known written mention of a Rock, Paper, Scissors-style game came from Ming-dynasty writer Xie Zhaozhe around 1600. He called the Chinese hand game shoushiling and claimed it dated back to the Han dynasty, which lasted from 206 BCE to AD 220. Chinese hand games later reached Japan, where the familiar rock, paper, and scissors version emerged during the late 19th century.

15. During New York’s 1929 skyscraper race, the Chrysler Building secretly assembled a 27-ton, 185-foot steel spire inside its unfinished crown. Workers joined its five sections within a seven-story shaft, then hoisted it into place in just 90 minutes on October 23. The surprise raised the tower to 1,046 feet, overtaking the 927-foot 40 Wall Street, then known as the Bank of Manhattan Company Building. Chrysler held the title of the world’s tallest building until the Empire State Building surpassed it in 1931.

16 Journalists Planted Occult Hand Phrase

A secret society of American journalists called the Order of the Occult Hand spent decades slipping variations of the phrase “It was as if some occult hand had…” into print as an inside joke. The prank began in 1965 after a Charlotte News police reporter named Joseph Flanders used the line in an article, inspiring his amused colleagues to form the group. A Chicago Tribune journalist named James Janega exposed the Order in a 2004 investigation. In 2006, its members chose a new secret phrase and resumed their campaign.

17. Spider-Man: The Animated Series (1994-1998) followed a no-punching rule for its hero, but network censors did not impose it. Series producer John Semper Jr. said he created the restriction because he did not want children to learn to “solve problems through simple violence.” He instead made Spider-Man defeat enemies through more tactical methods.

18. The dinosaur Utahraptor ostrommaysi nearly received the name Utahraptor spielbergi because it resembled the oversized Velociraptors in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming Jurassic Park film. A paleontologist named James Kirkland planned the tribute to attract publicity, and a museum had already printed hundreds of shirts bearing the proposed name. Less than two weeks before publication, his employer ordered him to change it after Universal Studios threatened museums using “Jurassic” in their exhibit titles. Kirkland instead named the species after paleontologist John Ostrom and Dinamation president Chris Mays.

19. Oglethorpe University in Georgia sealed the room-sized time capsule named “Crypt of Civilization” in 1940 and scheduled its opening for 8113 CE. Its creators filled it with records and artifacts from 20th-century life, including electric microfilm readers and picture projectors. They also included a small windmill that could generate power for those devices if electricity was no longer in general use by the 82nd century.

20. In 2023, Scientists revived a microscopic nematode worm found in a fossilized gopher burrow about 130 feet below the surface of Siberian permafrost, where it had remained frozen for roughly 46,000 years. After researchers thawed it, the worm started moving and eating bacteria, then reproduced without a mate through parthenogenesis. It had survived through cryptobiosis, a dormant state that slows metabolism to undetectable levels. Researchers identified it as a previously unknown species, Panagrolaimus kolymaensis, and raised more than 100 generations of descendants.

15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History

21 Isaac Davis Deposited Stolen Money

On the night of August 31, 1798, two thieves carried out America’s first major bank robbery by stealing $162,821 from the Bank of Pennsylvania at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia. Officials instead jailed a man named Patrick Lyon, the blacksmith who had fitted the vault locks, even though he had left the city before the crime. A man named Isaac Davis exposed himself as one of the real robbers when he deposited the stolen money into several banks, including the one he had robbed. Davis confessed and received a pardon after returning the money, while Lyon spent three months in jail, contracted yellow fever, nearly died, and was later cleared.

22. Manufacturers began making waterbeds for dairy cows in the late 1990s. By the early 2000s, a two-chamber design had become common, with one chamber supporting the cows’ vulnerable knees. University of Missouri researchers found that 1,500-pound cows took 8.5 minutes to lie down on a standard mattress but less than five minutes on a waterbed. Longer resting time correlates with greater milk production, while blood flow to the udders increases by 20 to 30 percent when cows lie down.

23. A man named Abduwali Muse, the Somali pirate later portrayed in Captain Phillips, helped hijack the American cargo ship Maersk Alabama in April 2009 and held its captain, Richard Phillips, hostage. US Navy SEAL snipers killed Muse’s three accomplices during the rescue, while authorities captured Muse and transported him to New York. After he pleaded guilty to hijacking, kidnapping, and hostage-taking, a federal judge sentenced him in 2011 to 33 years and nine months in prison.

24. Italian-American inventor George Sperti, best known for creating Preparation H, also invented an ultraviolet lamp and the first practical method for freeze-drying orange juice concentrate. His lamp added vitamin D to milk without altering its flavor, and General Foods bought the invention for $300,000. Sperti donated the entire payment to the University of Cincinnati and later donated most of the money from his 127 patents to research institutions. He never married and lived with his unmarried sister, Mildred, who worked as his assistant until her death in 1987.

25. After Rockdale County High School in Conyers, Georgia, won the state basketball championship, a coach named Cleveland Stroud discovered that an ineligible player had appeared for 45 seconds in a postseason game. The student had failed a required class, so Stroud and a principal named Henry Gibbs reported the violation despite knowing the state could revoke the title. Officials stripped the school of its championship, but the town supported Stroud and raised so much money for a replacement trophy that organizers returned some donations. Stroud later received an International Olympic Committee Award, and the school named its new gym after him.

Please leave this field empty

Sign up to our Newsletter & get

FREE!! 1000 Facts E-BOOK

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.