Random Fact Sheet #146 – Get Your Brain Buzzing With these 40 Facts

There is an all-female anti-poaching combat unit in Zimbabwe called Akashinga ("the brave ones").

27. The Shaggs was an all-female rock band, whose members were three teenage sisters who were forced to play in a band by their father. Almost completely musically inept, their album failed to gain any traction until years after Frank Zappa claimed it was one of his favorite albums of all time.

28. Alan Alda met his wife Arlene Alda at a dinner party on the Upper West Side, when a rum cake accidentally fell onto the kitchen floor and they were the only two guests who did not hesitate to eat it.

29. Dwayne Johnson a.k.a The Rock charges movie companies $1 million to Tweet or Instagram about his movies.

30. There is no national minimum drinking age in the United States. Instead, a law called the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 punishes states that allow anyone under 21 to purchase alcohol by cutting their federal highway funds by 10%. The last state to comply was Louisiana in 1987.

Bill Burr who originally came up with password practices such as changing them every 90 days, using caps/special characters, recanted most of his advice in 2017.

32. Mel Gibson made more than $395 million from “The Passion of The Christ”, an epic biblical film he self-financed by $30 million.

33. As of September 2018, the virtual currencies of games like RuneScape are worth more than the currency of Venezuela.

34. As of April 2018, Swaziland has been renamed as Eswatini. One of the reasons behind the King's decision to rename the country was that “… abroad, people refer to us as Switzerland.”

35. Singer Tina Turner relinquished her US citizenship in 2013 and is now a citizen of Switzerland where she has been living since 1994.

On August 24, 1919, Ray Caldwell who was pitching for the Cleveland Indians was struck by lightning after playing for 8-2/3 innings. He then got up from the ground, checked himself, finished pitching to get the last out and they won 2-1 over the Athletics.

37. Mosquitoes cause more deaths in a single day than sharks have in the past 100 years.

38. The most difficult and rare score to get in 10-pin bowling is not 300, but 292. This requires hitting the first 11 strikes, then rolling exactly 2 pins on your final roll, which is extremely difficult.

39. The members of the “Queen” band were friends with Michael Jackson. He was the one who suggested they release “Another One Bites the Dust” as a single.

40. Sir James Dyson started his vacuum company in his 40s when he had three young kids and was in debt by putting up his home as collateral on a loan. He now owns 100% of his company and has a personal net worth of over $7 billion.