Random Fact Sheet #117 – 40 Facts That Will Keep You On The Edge Of Your Seat

American voice actor Casey Kasem was a devout vegan. He supported animal rights and environmental causes, and was a critic of factory farming. He quit voicing Shaggy in the late 1990s when he was asked to voice Shaggy in a Burger King commercial, only returning in 2002 after negotiating to have Shaggy become a vegetarian.

2. Earl Tupper, the inventor and the founder of the Tupperware Company, sold his ownership interest, bought himself an island in Costa Rica, and gave up his U.S. citizenship to avoid taxes.

3. The SNL Jeopardy sketch was created by Norm Macdonald purely so that he could show off his Burt Reynolds impression.

4. We have three types of tears - basal, reflex and psychic. Psychic tears, the ones we produce when we are sad, have a different chemical make up than the other two and contain a natural painkiller, leucine enkephalin, which is perhaps why we feel better after we cry.

5. One of the most inaccurately named men in history was Charles Coward. While in German captivity, he traded clothes with a Jewish inmate so that he could report to the British on what was happening in Auschwitz, and he later testified in Nuremberg.

Taylor Swift’s father Scott Swift is a wealthy Merrill Lynch banker who purchased a 3% stake ($120,000 ) of the independent label Big Machine Records in 2004, the label that first signed Taylor Swift.

7. The CIA once failed at bribing Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, the then Prime Minister of Singapore, which was relatively undeveloped back then. After he revealed this in an interview, the US denied the incident. In a rage, Mr. LKY revealed a letter he received from then US Secretary of State and threatened to disclose further information.

8. King Sejong invented Korean Script out of a desire for universal literacy. About his script, he said, “A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days.”

9. There is an island in Australia named Rottnest Island that is full of miniature kangaroos called ‘quokkas.’

10. Toilets and drains do not rotate differently in the southern and northern hemisphere.

During the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a second U2 Spy Plane had strayed into Soviet Airspace. When radioing for directions, an unknown voice told the pilot to turn right 35 degrees which would have taken the plane deeper into the Soviet Union. When asked for an identifying code, there was no response.

12. Estonia is developing the world’s first Digital Nomad Visa that will allow people who do the majority of their work online to work and travel in Estonia for up to 365 days.

13. 71% of 17 to 24 year olds in the U.S. don't qualify for military service.

14. When a US Army nurse named Ruby Bradley was captured during World War 2, she was nicknamed the “Angel in Fatigues”. She helped deliver 13 babies and smuggled food to help starving children inside the prison camp. During the Korean War, she refused to leave her hospital until everyone has left, despite surrounded by 100,000 enemy soldiers.

15. During a famous Berlin performance of 'Mack the Knife', Ella Fitzgerald forgot the words to the song after the first verse and ad-libbed the rest. She won a Grammy for the performance.

In 1858, a confectioner in England tried to purchase harmless powdered gypsum from a local pharmacist to make peppermint lozenges, but was accidentally sold 12 pounds of arsenic trioxide. 21 people died and more than 200 others became ill when the poisoned candy was sold to the public.

17. The first recorded weight-loss surgery was performed on D. Sancho the king of Leon, Spain during the 10th century. His morbid obesity made him lose the throne so his grandmother escorted him to Cordoba where a doctor sewed his lips shut. He was then fed with only a straw. He lost half his weight and reclaimed the throne.

18. When American writer Kurt Vonnegut served in World War 2, he was captured by Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was a POW in Dresden and survived the bombing of the city by hiding in a meat locker in a slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. This inspired him to write the anti-war novel Slaughter-House Five.

19. It was only after Mel Gibson personally underwrote Robert Downey Jr.'s liability insurance that his career took off again with Iron Man.

20. Moon rocks are considered a “national treasure” and their sale is illegal in USA.

There is rare genetic variation (SNP rs121912617) in humans that allows people affected by it to sleep 2 hours less a night with no ill effects.

22. The New York City Metro Area has a bigger GDP than all of Mexico, Spain, or Australia. Effectively, this means that New York City makes more money than a first-world continent.

23. The first meal eaten on the moon was bacon, peaches, and grapefruit juice.

24. British author Agatha Christi absolutely detested the fictional Belgium detective Hercule Poirot, a character she created, going as far as to call him, “A detestable, bombastic, egocentric, little creep.” She only kept writing books about his adventures at the behest of her editors, because they sold so well.

25. Jeremiah Hamilton was 19th Century New York's notorious African-American Wall Street millionaire. Blacklisted by the city's insurance firms and Public Stock Exchange, he went on to amass a fortune of $250 million in today’s money and was known as the biggest single rival to the Vanderbilts.