Random Fact Sheet #16 – 40 Amazing Facts You Should Know

The Washington Generals broke a 2495-game losing streak by accidentally beating the Harlem Globetrotters 100-99.

27. Genius mathematician, philosopher, and logician Kurt Gödel starved to death after his wife was hospitalized because he did not trust eating food prepared by anyone else.

28. Trey Parker was convinced the South Park episode "Make Love Not Warcraft" would do poorly and lamented having to air it. The episode instead became one of the most well regarded of the series.

29. Astronomer Carl Sagan was denied membership in the National Academy of Sciences, reportedly because his media activities made him unpopular with many other scientists.

30. Cats have evolved to mimic the sound of an infant crying to attract our attention.

Tic Tacs are labeled in the US as containing zero sugar because US federal regulations state that if a single serving contains less than 0.5g of sugars it is allowable to express the amount of sugar in a serving as zero, and each Tic Tac weighs just under 0.5g.

32. The Namib Desert Beetle drinks water from the fog, as it moves across the desert. The droplets collect on the beetle's shell & trickle down to its mouth. It shells architecture is being studied by scientists to improve water harvestation.

33. The Ket language is spoken by 200 people in central Siberia is considered to be in the same language family as Navajo. That would make Ket speakers the only remaining members in Eurasia of the original population that colonized the Americas.

34. The dinosaurs far pre-date Betelgeuse, one of the brightest and most famous stars in the night sky. In fact, the star was born around the same time as pre-humans walked the earth.

35. Under Southern Africa, there's a geographical anomaly where Earth's magnetic field is reversed. This might indicate that the entire planet's magnetic field might reverse again sometime in the future.

Sudan had approximately 255 pyramids, twice the amount in ancient Egypt.

37. MGM studio placed 16-year-old Judy Garland on a diet of chicken soup, black coffee, cigarettes, and amphetamines to keep her appetite under control

38. Lola Montez was an Irish woman who passed herself off as Spanish, had affairs with Franz Liszt, Alexandre Dumas and the king of Bavaria (who made her Countess, triggering a popular uprising and his own abdication), and later lived in Australia and the US Far West, all before dying at 40.

39. Major Harold Hering was discharged from the Air Force in late 1973 for asking the question "How can I know that an order I receive to launch my (nuclear) missiles came from a sane president?" under Richard Nixon.

40. During the California Gold Rush, the distinct lack of women in San Fransisco caused the gay culture to flourish. Men would often pay for "female impersonators" to be prostitutes.