Random Fact Sheet #12 – 45 Fantastic Random Facts

Al Capone helped start the trend of expiration dates on bottles of milk.

27. The film 'Vanilla Sky' is a remake of a film made only four years earlier, 'Open Your Eyes'. Penélope Cruz plays the same character is both versions too.

28. Isaac Newton believed colors of the rainbow were analogous to notes on the 7note musical scale. In his diagrams of colors and equivalent notes, he added orange & indigo as half steps on the scale. It is unclear if those colors had been observed or if Newton added them to better fit his analogy.

29. Idaho has no real etymology, it was just randomly made up by this guy named George M. Willing

30. The USS New York's bow stem includes 7.5 tons of steel from the World Trade Center.

The Texas City disaster of 1947 is generally considered to be the worst industrial accident in U.S. history and resulted in nearly 600 fatalities. One of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever, it was thought to have been caused by nothing more than a discarded cigarette.

32. A newspaper editor, Samuel Clemens, challenged a rival editor to a duel. Since he was bad at shooting and he feared death, a friend, and some luck helped him to bluff his way out making the opponent declining the fight. He survived and later became a novelist: his pen name was Mark Twain

33. One attempt to synthesize spider silk consisted of transferring the gene to goats. The goats’ milk then contained the spider silk protein.

34. People who eat spicy foods tend to live longer, according to a 2015 study

35. Anyone can apply for observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope regardless of nationality or academic affiliation. Competition is extremely intense though and people who apply need to prove the value of their "telescope time"

Most of the background characters in SpongeBob have names

37. The reason why the Ancient One from the Dr. Strange movie was played by a Caucasian (Celtic) person rather than an Asian (Tibetan) person was because if it was otherwise, there was a risk the movie would have been banned in China. That's a big market they would lose if banned.

38. Men who work as midwives are called 'accoucheurs.' This is usually only when their gender has to be specified, otherwise, they are also called 'midwives.'

39. Dublin hosts a Women's Mini Marathon annually as a charity event, and men will dress in drag to join the race.

40. In 2016, Sweden officially declared Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat that led many rescue missions during World War 2 dead after being missing for 71 years.

Menachem Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, thousands of visitors would line up each Sunday for a brief word of advice or blessing from him. He would give each person a dollar to give to charity, because of his grandfather's belief that when two people meet, it should benefit a third".

42. Putting a flash drive into water does not render it useless. It is only when the USB is wet and then plugged into any device that gives it power, does it short out.

43. The wife of Communist Romania's leader (Elena Ceaușescu) was barely literate but was able to obtain a Ph.D. in Chemistry from plagiarism.

44. When the historic Plaza Hotel in NYC opened in 1907 a room cost $2.50 per night, the equivalent of $64.26 today. The Plaza now charges over $1000/night.

45. The Russian Empire spent 2.5 million rubles influencing the election for Poland's last king (Stanislaw August Poniatowski) in 1763.