Random Fact Sheet #116 – 40 Facts That Will Open Your Eyes To A New World

The "Five stages of grief" model has no factual or scientific basis and its creator Elizabeth Kubler-Ross said that the stages are not a linear and predictable progression and that she regretted writing them in a way that was misunderstood.

2. Approximately 300 people live in the tunnels under Las Vegas in order to do drugs or be alone in general.

3. English writer Charles Dickens only worked 9 am to 2 pm and wrote his 28 books and over 200 essays without working longer than 5 hours a day.

4. Redheads produce more Vitamin D compared to people with other hair colors, meaning that they don't suffer as much from not being in the sun.

5. In 2002, two brothers from a set of triplets fooled a Russian prison when one brother swapped places with the other to give him a brief taste of freedom. Rather than returning, the freed brother ran off with his brother's girlfriend. It took years for the authorities to realize that they had been duped.

A woman named Sarah Marquis walked 10,000 miles by herself through Asia and Australia. She only carried underwear, a pocketknife, antibiotics, tea-tree oil, a solar-powered charger, a beacon, a BlackBerry, a satellite phone, Crocs, a compass, an emergency stash of amphetamines, and pink pajamas with her.

7. The creator of “Jaws” dedicated the last decade of his life to preserving sharks after witnessing horrific abuse and to make up for the anti-shark hysteria the movie caused.

8. Fast food chains are banned in Bermuda under the Foreign Restaurants Act of 1977, with the exception of one KFC that was grandfathered in.

9. Han Solo was supposed to die in the 'Return of the Jedi'. George Lucas was afraid that would affect toy sales, so he changed it to an Ewok party.

10. David Bowie ripped into MTV for not embracing black artists in 1983 but Michael Jackson's Thriller likely saved the network.

An electric car named “The Phoenix” holds Guinness world record for the longest driven distance on a single charge which is 1600 kilometers. It was built almost exclusively out of recycled parts and cost less than $14,000.

12. Upon the death of the greatest racehorse of all time, Secretariat, scientists discovered that the horse had a heart twice the size of the average horses.

13. If you convince yourself that you slept well (even though you didn’t), you can trick your brain into thinking that you did sleep well. This phenomenon is known as Placebo sleep.

14. On average, British have healthier teeth compared to their American counterparts.

15. During a game of backgammon in the year 480 A.D., the Byzantine Emperor Zeno had a dice roll that was so unlucky that he had it recorded and we still know it to this day.

Octopuses have a sucker-proof coating on their skin to make sure that they don't grab and tangle their own tentacles.

17. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux once said that “Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.”

18. During World War 2, a B-17 bomber named Old 666 survived being attacked by 20 Japanese fighters for 40 minutes. The pilot and a gunner earned the Medal of Honor, the rest of the crew each received the Distinguished Service Cross. To this day, they're the most decorated American aircrew in history.

19. If the genealogy of the early Germanic chroniclers is true, Queen Elizabeth II is descended from the Norse God Odin.

20. In 2014, shareholders of the fast food restaurant chain Olive Garden voted to replace the company's entire board of directors after investors got into a disagreement over the promise of unlimited breadsticks.

There was an episode of 'The Twilight Zone' in which three astronauts survive a crash landing and wander through the desert until the last man alive realizes he never left earth. Rodd Serling would use a lot of this plot for a film he helped write called "Planet Of The Apes"

22. In 1924, an English mountaineer named George Mallory may have been the first person to reach the summit of Everest. He was last seen 800 feet from the summit but never returned. He carried a picture of his wife with him that he said he would leave at the summit which he did not have when his body was found 75 years later.

23. The best man’s original purpose was to serve as an accomplice in case the bride needed to be kidnapped from disapproving parents.

24. The Spanish Flu, which killed 5% of the world’s population, was especially lethal to healthy adults. This happened because their strong immune reactions ravaged the body, whereas the weaker immune systems of children and middle-aged adults resulted in fewer deaths among those groups.

25. The very last Peanuts comic strip, in which creator Charles Schultz ended the story of Charlie Brown and said farewell to his fans, was drawn by Schultz in November 1999. He would die in his sleep three months later, the night before the final comic was published.