Random Fact Sheet #175 – Get Ready to be Impressed With These 30 Facts

A farmhouse in Gettysburg was used as a field hospital. There was so much blood on the floor, that there is still dried blood between floorboards. When under a blacklight, large bloodstains are still visible.

2. King Richard the Lionheart of England forgave and freed his killer, a young French boy whose father and brothers had been killed by Richard; the boy said he shot Richard with a crossbow as revenge, and Richard was so impressed with his bravery that he sent him off with 100 shillings.

3. Maria Daume, the first female marine to go through the traditional training process was born in a Siberian prison and orphaned at the age of 2.

4. In 1508, Autun, France pressed charges on rats for destroying barley crops. The lawyer representing the rats argued that the court's summons wasn't specific enough to his clients and that Autun's cat population made it unsafe for his clients to come to court. The rats were acquitted.

5. John Lennon repeatedly denied that the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is about LSD and that he got the inspiration for the song when his son brought home a drawing of his friend Lucy who was in the sky with diamonds.

Filming Star Wars in Tunisia was hindered by the first major rainstorm in 50 years, and The Empire Strikes Back filming in Norway was hindered by the worst winter storm in 50 years.

7. After a Hell's Angels member threw a tire iron at Evel Knievel during a stunt show, he and a majority of the spectators fought back, sending 3 of the 15 Hells Angels members to the hospital.

8. To this day, the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Antony has not been found.

9. During the Jim Crow era in the U.S., the turban was used by people of color for "confounding the color lines"—in other words, if you could pass yourself off as something other than black, you might circumvent some amount of discrimination.

10. Peanuts characters Snoopy and Woodstock´s fifty two year friendship began when Woodstock and his brother hatched from eggs in a nest that their mother made on top of Snoopy´s belly, a year later in 1967, Woodstock came back to perch on Snoopy´s nose, thus beginning their long fellowship.

Particle physicist John Ellis lost a bet and had to include the word "penguin" in his next scientific paper. After struggling to find a way to include the word, he "smoked some illegal substance" which gave him the inspiration for the now important penguin diagrams.

12. The Sydney Opera House is considered one of the worst project management failures of our time. It was 10 years late, 14 times over budget, the architect never saw it completed and the project manager never worked on another project in his career (he became a lecturer at Hawaii University).

13. In Ancient Egypt, the penalty for killing a cat was death.

14. The Kingdom of Semien was a Jewish kingdom in Africa that was effectively independent for over 1000 years and was the second most powerful African empire for 300 years.

15. The noble gas Xenon can be used as a near perfect general anesthetic. It works fast, has minimal side effects, protects your brain, is environmentally friendly, and can be used at normal air pressure. The only downside is it's expensive and can't be synthesized.

Slot machines make more money in the United States than baseball, movies, and theme parks combined.

17. Singer Helen Kane sued Fleischer Studios for basing Betty Boop's singing style on her and demanded royalties. She lost because Fleischer lawyers proved that Kane stole the style from African American singer Esther Jones.

18. A woman named Edith Roller kept a journal of her life in the religious movement Peoples Temple until she died with 918 other Americans during a mass suicide in Jonestown.

19. Frank Herbert's sci-fi book " Dune" got rejected by 20 book publishers and then it became the best-selling sci-fi book of all time.

20. 6’4” Michael Phelps legs are the same length as 5’9” marathoner Hicham El Guerrouj. It is Phelps short legs and long torso that help make him such a great swimmer.

Leatherback turtles eat an average 800 to 900 lbs of jellyfish every day.

22. An Austrian Diplomat named Heinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi wrote an antisemitic book about the evilness of Jews but he came to a different conclusion before it was published, declaring that “antisemitism amounted to nothing more credible than fanatical religious hatred.”

23. Microsoft executives originally disliked the Xbox's name, and only left it on the prospective name list during focus testing to show how unpopular it would be. However, it ended up being much more popular than all the alternatives.

24. In China, people don’t recognize the name Elvis Presley, and only know him as ‘Maowang’ which translates to ‘The Cat King.’

25. The US Mint used to produce a silver three cent coin between 1851 to 1872 known as a “trime.”