Random Fact Sheet #121 – 40 Facts to Make Your Friends Jealous

President Kennedy's family repurchased the house where he was born in after his assassination. His mother restored the house to her recollection of its 1917 appearance and wanted to restore the home to the hour of his birth. She donated the home to the National Park Service in 1967.

27. Humpty Dumpty was originally a cannon, which fell off its wall during a siege in the English Civil War.

28. Canadian musician Geddy Lee was so inspired by his tour of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City that he bought at auction over 400 baseballs signed by Negro Leagues players and donated the entire collection to the museum.

29. Sylvester Graham invented graham crackers as part of a radical vegetarian diet meant to curb the desire to masturbate.

30. Some IKEA products have had to be renamed in English speaking countries, due to its original Swedish names having weird and unfortunate connotations. Examples of these include Jerker desk, Faktum kitchen legs, and Fartfull workbench.

Grapefruit got its name because they grow in clusters similar to grapes.

32. Everest climber Lincoln Hall was presumed dead and was abandoned at 8700 meters. The next morning a group of climbers found him changing his clothes, alive, awake, and almost naked.

33. Wilhelm II, leader of Germany in World War 1, sent a telegram to Hitler in 1940 congratulating him on invading the Netherlands, and hoping the German monarchy would be restored. Hitler, upon reading the telegram, said to his valet, "What an idiot!"

34. During Eurovision 1978, the Jordanian broadcaster censored the Israeli performance, instead showing pictures of flowers. When it became apparent that Israel would win, the broadcast was cut off and it was announced that Belgium had won instead.

35. The demand for human teeth for dentures was so high in the early 1800s that after the battle of Waterloo, looters scavenged teeth from the dead soldiers on the battlefield. The teeth were stolen in such high numbers that sets of these dentures became known as "Waterloo Teeth."

Toasters cause nearly 800 deaths annually due to electrocution and fires.

37. Cheese making is ancient and predates recorded history. The earliest evidence of cheese making is 5500 B.C.E., in Kujawy, Poland, where fat molecules were found on ancient strainers.

38. Paul McCartney is credited for chewing celery as percussion in a Beach Boys song.

39. American actress Tippi Hedren was traumatized while filming Hitchcock’s "The Birds". He told her mechanical birds were to be used during the famous bedroom scene. Instead, she endured 5 days of prop men flinging dozens of live gulls, ravens, and crows at her. One of the birds gouged her cheek and just missed her eye.

40. Ants farm and milk insects called aphids. Ants protect the aphids from predators and bring them food, then "milk the aphids to produce a sweet substance known as honeydew" which the ants then store and eat.