Random Fact Sheet #191 – Get Your Daily Dose of Trivia: 35 Facts

A beggar was caught outside a mosque in Kuwait telling worshipers that he badly needed cash and that he had no home. Since it is illegal, he was arrested and police discovered he had over 500,000 Kuwaiti Dinars in his bank account ($1,650,000).

27. Fearing invasion during the Cold War, Albania’s leader Enver Hoxha forced his country to build 750,000 bunkers. Today, many of those bunkers have been converted into a variety of uses, like turning them into pizzerias, espresso bars, and makeshift bars.

28. John Von Neumann was a mathematician polymath who invented computers (the architecture in every digital computer today), a precursor theory of DNA without having been a biologist, played a pivotal in creating the atom bomb and laid out the mathematical framework for quantum mechanics.

29. Jen Bricker, a gymnast who was born without legs grew up idolizing an Olympic gold medalist. Later in her life she discovered that the Olympic gold medalist she idolized was her long-lost sister.

30. American film actress Jayne Mansfield died in a car crash in 1967 at the age of 34. Her car hit a tractor, killing her instantly. After her death, the NHTSA recommended requiring an underride guard on all tractor-trailers. In America, the underride guard is sometimes known as a "Mansfield bar."

In 2017, doctors in Japan discovered a tiny brain and skull inside of a 16-year-old girl's ovarian tumor while they were removing the growth.

32. Henry Winkler's parents escaped Nazi Germany on the last day Jews were allowed to leave. Since they were given only a six-week visa, Henry's father hid his mother's jewelry inside pieces of chocolate to covertly take as much wealth with them as they could without being detected by the Nazis.

33. Bill Niman, the founder of Niman Ranch and pioneer of humane animal farming, stopped eating Niman Ranch products after his farm was bought out by a corporation that dropped his humane treatment and sustainability standards in order to make a profit.

34. Garter snakes will retain poisons they eat in their liver, making themselves temporarily poisonous to their predators. They are also technically venomous but have long lost the ability to practically use the venom they produce.

35. In 2011, Nicolas Cage sold a copy of the first appearance of Superman for $2 million, rescuing him from bankruptcy.