Random #85 – 46 Random Facts From Around the World

The ancient city of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey built in 10,000 B.C., is twice as old as Stonehenge, and completely disrupts our ideas of human development and agriculture.

27. Between the 14th-19th centuries, due to their early invention and love of ceramics, no glass was produced in China. Due to this, they were left behind in the progression of sciences and didn’t have things like glass windows and mirrors.

28. Richard Wagner, the 19th-century opera composer, once faked a homosexual attraction to a gay German king in order to get money from him.

29. South Korea has the fastest global average internet connection speed while the United States ranks 10th.

30. The reason why Cashews are sold without shells is that the shells are poisonous. The Cashew tree is in the same family of plants as Poison Ivy. Eating the shell would cause a similar reaction to eating a Poison Ivy plant.

Dogs may have domesticated themselves. Historically, humans hunted wolves almost to extinction. This only changed when the boldest and friendliest scavenger wolves approached humans. Only then did the benefits of canine companionship become apparent.

32. A Swedish couple was fined for naming their child Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116.

33. French actor Marcel Marceau first used mime during World War 2 to keep Jewish children quiet while he helped them escape from occupied France to neutral Switzerland.

34. 34% of all the Prime Ministers of England since 1721 went to the same boarding school, Eton.

35. It only took 1 year and 45 days to build the Empire State Building.

Sacha Baron Cohen, known for playing brainless idiots, has a degree in history from the University of Cambridge.

37. South Korea once captured nine North Korean spies and a North Korean submarine using only a fishing net. Four of the captured senior officers killed the rest of the crew before killing themselves.

38. We use a blanket at night to keep ourselves warm because our bodies can't thermoregulate when asleep.

39. In 2012 a German civil servant, in an email announced his retirement to his colleagues, admitting that he had done zero work for the last 14 years.

40. Cats are attracted to squares taped on the ground because they think of them as cozy, safe boxes.

In 2000, the Sheriff of Dekalb County, Georgia, had his political rival (Derwin Brown) murdered after losing to him (Sidney Dorsey) in the Sheriff's election.

42. Coffin Torpedo is a small shotgun secured inside the lid of a coffin to “prevent the unauthorized resurrection of the dead.” The shotgun fired lead balls at whoever pried the lid open and were used as an experimental deterrent to the rising tide of body snatchers in the late 1800s.

43. Johnathan Swift wrote a satirical essay in 1729 where he proposed that poor Irish should sell their children as food for rich people to eat.

44. Nuxalk is an indigenous Canadian language, which has the word clhp'xwlhtlhplhhskwts' that features no vowels and means "Then he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant." Nuxalk is believed to challenge the very notion of a syllable.

45. Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe got a job at QVC to win a bet and was subsequently fired 3 different times.

Roughly 10,000 shipping containers are lost at sea every year. Most end up on the ocean floor, while a few end up washing ashore.