Random Fact Sheet #111 – 40 Facts That Will Make You Realize How Little You Know

Denmark saved 99% of Danish Jews by sending them to Sweden once they realized that the Germans were going to begin rounding Danish Jews up, and send them to camps.

2. Because nobody had thought to put a diaper inside Alan Shepard's spacesuit during his Freedom 7 mission, he was forced to relieve himself directly into his suit after being in it for more than 8 hours, shorting his medical electrodes.

3. Serhii Koroliov, before he became the head engineer of the soviet space program, was sent to a GULAG in 1939 as part of the Great Purge, where he was imprisoned and tortured for 6 years. He was instrumental in sending Yuri Gagarin to space. The other rocket scientists he was arrested with were executed. His death in 1966 was related to injuries/illness caused by his time in the Gulag. It set back the Soviet space program enough that USA beat them to the moon.

4. John Wilkes Booth's brother, Edwin Booth, was once considered the greatest American actor. He once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln. The incident took place on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey.

5. NASA is planning to send a submarine to explore the depths of Kraken Mare in the methane sea of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.

Judy was a hero dog of World War 2, who saved her fellow soldiers on multiple occasions. She was captured by the Japanese and spent years in the POW camps. She survived multiple ship sinkings and was eventually freed and given the Dickin Medal in England.

7. The infamous 18-1/2 minute gap in the Nixon tapes was not one gap, but five to nine separate erasures. The tape is preserved in the National Archives in the hope that we may someday recover what was erased.

8. The Hubble Space Telescope consumes less power than a kitchen kettle.

9. Israel is considered a global leader in medical cannabis research and innovation. Citizens caught using cannabis in public aren’t arrested but face fines, with the money collected from these fines going towards education and rehabilitation programs and it does not result in a criminal record.

10. Sesame Street introduced Julia, the first Sesame Street muppet with autism, to raise awareness about autism among children.

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. knew about defective RV tire that had caused deaths and continues to cover up the fact 20 years later using protective court orders.

12. Even though it's set in Detroit, the Robocop movie was actually filmed in Dallas. The only real shot of Detroit in the entire movie is the aerial shot in the opening, and that was a stock footage.

13. Cheese is high in tyramine, an amino acid linked to migraines. Monterey Jack and mozzarella have low tyramine, making them preferable substitutes for migraine sufferers.

14. In 1937, English novelist George Orwell fought in the Spanish civil war and was shot in the throat. There is now a square in Barcelona named after him called 'Plaça de George Orwell'. Ironically, the square was once one of the heaviest surveilled places in Spain.

15. Early Antarctic explorers used cocaine to cure snow blindness. Diarrhea was treated with "chalk ground up with opium." Colic (severe pain in abdomen) called for "tincture of cannabis" mixed with "tincture of chili pepper."

Big Bird is a Golden Condor. During an episode in the 11th season of Mr. Rogers, Big Bird was asked if he was related to a cassowary, and Big Bird noted to Mr. Rogers that he was a Golden Condor.

17. Once in 2009, a Northwest Airlines Flight 188 flew unresponsive for 100 miles past its destination because the pilots were busy with their laptops and didn’t hear air traffic controller’s radio calls.

18. In the Soviet Union, it was common for people to take their window wipers with them when they parked their car. Otherwise there was a chance of them being stolen because there were severe shortages of auto parts in USSR.

19. Small packets of beef jerky don’t have moisture absorbers, but are packed with iron particles which react with oxygen, removing the oxygen from the sealed jerky package, to prevent oxidation of fat.

20. Since February 23, 2016, the Bank of Canada has no gold reserves and is the only G7 nation that does not hold at least 100 tonnes of gold in its official reserves.

The Necco Wafers (formerly called ‘Hub Wafers’), are so old that they were carried by Union soldiers in the civil war as well as American soldiers in World War 2. Necco claims to be the oldest American candy company.

22. The largest known star in the existence of the universe, UY Scuti, is so big that if it swapped positions with our sun, it would easily engulf the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter.

23. In 1983, before they were famous, John Goodman and Megan Mullally were both in the same McDonalds commercial.

24. Many of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of the female reproductive system are anatomically wrong. Due to the rarity of female cadavers, he extrapolated from animals, with the resulting drawings of the female reproductive organs resembling those of animals more than humans.

25. Donkey Kong was not developed by Nintendo but rather a subcontracting company named Ikegami Tsushinki that also made Sega's Congo Bongo and Zaxxon. They successfully sued after Nintendo used their source code later to create Donkey Kong Jr. without them.