Random Fact Sheet #107 – 40 Facts That Will Make You Challenge Your Assumptions

Hard Rock Cafe is entirely owned by the native American Seminole Tribe of Florida.

2. While the CIA is by and large the most well know US spy agency, there exists a second equally large American espionage agency called the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). The DIA produces approximately one-fourth of all intelligence content that goes into the President's Daily Brief.

3. Lottery winners’ neighbors have a higher chance of going bankrupt because they try to keep up with the winners' increased rate of spending.

4. Scientists have recently discovered that a new drug developed for and trialed to treat Alzheimer’s disease is able to promote new dentine production and promotes natural tooth repair.

5. In Japan, it takes up to 20 years of studying in a culinary school to become a sushi chef, which is years longer than it takes to become a doctor.

The Easter Bunny had pagan roots. As Christianity spread, it was common for missionaries to place pagan tradition within the context of their faith and turn pagan festivals into Christian holidays. The word “Easter” even comes from the Eostre festival, which was a pagan celebration.

7. In 2017, a man named Richard Vallières was fined $9.4 million and sentenced to 8 years in jail for stealing 3,000 tons of maple syrup from the Quebec maple syrup reserve in 2012.

8. In 2013, American actor George Clooney once gave 14 of his close friends $1 million each as a surprise gift.

9. The punk band Offspring’s lead singer, Dexter Holland, worked on his Ph.D. in molecular biology while touring and recording music.

10. In 2002, after an 84-year-old man named Joseph Newton Chandler III committed suicide, police discovered that for decades he had been living under a false identity (of a dead 8-year-old boy) of someone who died in a car accident. His co-workers claim he never spoke, and he had no friends.

The mascot of Vlasic pickles was conceived by merging the mythology of a child-bearing stork with the notion that pregnant women have an above average appetite for pickles.

12. Mississippi is the only state to allow drivers to drink alcohol while operating a motor vehicle as long as the driver's blood alcohol content stays below the state’s legal limit of 0.08%.

13. Great white sharks do not mistake human divers for pinnipeds (seals and sea lions). Attacks on people occur because sharks are sharp-sighted, curious animals, prone to taking "taste tests" of unfamiliar objects that catch their eye.

14. During the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Navy cook named Doris Miller manned anti-aircraft guns, (despite having no formal training in their use), and attended to the wounded. He was awarded the Navy Cross and Purple Heart. Despite his heroism, he was assigned as a cook on USS Liscome Bay and was killed by a Japanese torpedo.

15. Before he became President, Grover Cleveland had an affair with a woman named Maria Halpin which resulted in her becoming pregnant, and in order to cover up the scandal, he had her committed and her child sent to an orphanage.

Even though the wheel is often cited as man's original invention, it wasn't invented until after flutes, baskets, woven cloth, and even boats.

17. There is only a single known surviving European major architectural drawing from the 700 year span between the fall of the Roman Empire and the end of the Middle Ages. It is the Plan of St. Gall.

18. There was a famous best-selling novelist of the early 20th century named Winston Churchill, who has partly been forgotten due to being overshadowed by ‘the’ Winston Churchill.

19. An Indian will spend one-fifth of their life's earning on a wedding ceremony.

20. Victor Klemperer was a Jewish KZ inmate and post-war professor of German literature who wrote a book which analyses how Nazis introduced a nearly Orwellian kind of German language. Examples of this language are “crisis” for defeat, “connection” (Anschluss) for annexation, and “enhanced interrogation” for torture.

Psychologically, people prefer avoiding losses than gaining wins. It is better to not lose $5 than to find $5. This is called Loss Aversion. Some studies even have suggested that losses are twice as powerful psychologically than gains.

22. The ancient Romans used concrete with volcanic ash mixed in, which allowed for much stronger crack-resistant concrete.

23. Marketing to children, such as commercials and toys based on kids shows, was illegal in the United States until Ronald Reagan took office. He changed that law, which started the “Dark Ages of Animation.” This lasted until 1991 when Nickelodeon changed to focus on animators and storytelling.

24. New Zealand spent $17.4 million searching for a new flag and they ended up using the old one.

25. Sony inscribed a wavy groove at a certain frequency at the start of all PlayStation 1 CDs. This was taken as an imperfection and unnoticed by most CD readers, except the PlayStation 1's, which used its specific frequency to detect the CD region and that it wasn't a copied disc.