Random Fact Sheet #113 – 45 Facts That Will Make You Appreciate The Complexities of Life

Bookkeeper (or bookkeeping) is the only English word with 3 consecutive double letters.

27. The word 'avocado' comes from an Aztec word that means testicle.

28. In 1945, the nurse being kissed by the sailor in the iconic Victory over Japan photo went unidentified for 20 years, when she self-identified and explained she "had stepped outside to see what the commotion was when I suddenly found myself in a sailor's embrace." The two had never met, and the photo was caught by luck.

29. The Apollo 11 crew Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins didn't add their names to the mission patch because they wanted the patch to represent everyone involved with the mission.

30. Grand Central Terminal in New York City is radioactive due to the massive amount of granite used in its construction. Full-time workers at the terminus are exposed to more radiation than what is permitted for nuclear plant workers.

The average time between a girl's first period and when she got married was 5 years in the 19th century, but in the 21st century it has grown to 15 years.

32. Fire fighters and anyone else who inhaled the toxic air from ground zero in the aftermath of 9/11 essentially lost 12 years of lung function.

33. Walt Disney was a confidential informant for the FBI for the last 26 years of his life.

34. In 1958, Canada set off one of the largest intentional non-nuclear explosions in history to remove a rock in the middle of a shipping lane between Vancouver Island and the mainland. A tunnel half a mile long was dug out under the ocean and filled with 2.75 million pounds of explosive.

35. Domesticated and wild dogs scavenge human remains in different ways: pet dogs tend to eat their owners' faces, while wild dogs prefer to eat the nutrient rich organs located in the abdomen.

There is an ongoing public art project in Germany called the Time Pyramid (Zeitpyramide). It is supposed to consist of 120 concrete blocks, but only one block is placed every 10 years. So far, 3 blocks have been placed. It is scheduled to be completed in the year 3183.

37. A nuclear weapons accident occurred on March 10, 1956, when a B-47 Stratojet carrying two plutonium cores was lost over the Mediterranean Sea. Despite an extensive search, the plane and its cargo were never located and its fate remains unknown even today.

38. The Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea has created an ecological oasis where otherwise rare or extinct species are thriving.

39. American actress Candice Bergen’s ventriloquist father left $10,000 to his dummy, Charlie McCarthy, and $0 to her. Charlie also had his own bedroom, which was bigger than hers. She also recalls "A gentle squeeze on the back of my neck was my cue to open and shut my mouth so he could ventriloquize me.”

40. Digital VHS tapes from 1998 could store 50GB of 1080i on a normal sized tape, the only way to get HD commercial films until Blu-ray technology was developed in 2004.

Hajime Isayama, the creator of the “Attack on Titan” manga, came up with the idea for the Titans after of an encounter with a drunken customer in an internet cafe he worked at.

42. Heavy metal band “Megadeth” was given $8000 to record their first album. After spending half of it on drugs and food, they proceeded to fire the original producer and finished the album on their own.

43. In 2017, Sony and IBM produced a new tape system that could store nearly 3 times the total number of books ever published in all of history. It is capable of storing 201 gigabits of data per square inch, for a max theoretical capacity of 330 terabytes in a single palm-sized cartridge.

44. Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to go into space. In 1963, she spent almost 3 days in space and orbited Earth 48 times in her space capsule, Vostok 6.

45. In 2006, a man in Sudan was forced to marry a goat by his local council of elders after being caught in the act with it by the goat's owner. He also had to pay a $50 dowry to the owner. It is not clear if they are still together.