Random Fact Sheet #201 – 30 Facts That Will Make You Realize How Little You Know

There are only 8 species of bears in the world: brown bears, Asian black bears, American black bears, sun bears, sloth bears, spectacled bears, polar bears, and giant pandas.

2. Architect Edmund Bacon (Kevin Bacon's dad) illegally skateboarded across Philadelphia's LOVE Park, the plaza he helped design, to protest the city's skateboard ban.

3. A Borderlands fan named Michael Mamaril died at 22 before Borderlands 2 came out. When his friends asked Gearbox if they would have Claptrap read a eulogy, they instead made a character in the game based off of Michael himself.

4. In the 1930s, Warner Bros. was looking for an effective way to promote their music catalog. They settled on making animated shorts set to their music — calling it “Looney Tunes.”

5. Half of the European men share King Tut's DNA (haplogroup R1b1a2) as opposed to less than 1% of modern Egyptians. It's suggested that the common ancestor lived in the Caucasus about 9,500 years ago.

During World War 2, Steinway & Sons airdropped pianos with large parachutes and complete tuning instructions into the battle for the American troops. Called the Victory Vertical or G.I. Steinway, the pianos were to provide a bit of relaxation. The pianos came in olive, blue, and gray drab.

7. Goldfinger was banned in Israel after it was reported that the actor playing Goldfinger, Gert Fröbe, was a former member of the Nazi party. The ban was lifted when it was discovered he helped to hide two Jews in his basement during the war.

8. The Romans had a "door to the underworld" in modern day Turkey where animals would appear to mystically drop dead. The eunuch priests that brought them there for sacrifice were left unscathed because they stood above the lethal cloud of carbon dioxide gas.

9. From the ages of 1 to 44 you are most likely to die from an accident. From the age of 45 on, you are most likely to die from cancer or heart disease. Under 1, you are most likely to die from a birth defect.

10. Two nuns named Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper and Sister Lana Chan teaching at a California Elementary School embezzled approximately $500,000 from their employer over a ten year period to fund their trips and casino visits. No charges are being pursued.

The normal intelligible outdoor range of the male human voice in still air is 180 m (590 feet 6.6 inches). The silbo, the whistled language of the Spanish-speaking inhabitants of the Canary Island of La Gomera, is intelligible under ideal conditions at 8 km (5 miles).

12. Water in the town of Puerto Williams has been tested to have the world's purest fresh water. The town of Puerto Williams located at the southern tip of Chile was found after numerous scientific studies to have only two chemical parts per million, making it the world's cleanest water.

13. Out of thousands of Frog species, only one goes "RIBBIT", but it has become a global cliché of how a frog sounds because that particular frog species reside in the West Coast of the USA, where Hollywood is, and were recorded for sound effects in classic Hollywood movies.

14. Human eyeballs only grow about 8 millimeters from birth to adolescence, making them the only body part that stays relatively the same size throughout your life.

15. Pixar started as a computer division of Lucasfilm in 1979. Then, George Lucas sold the company to Steve Jobs and renamed it to "Pixar" in 1986. Now, both Lucasfilm and Pixar are the sister companies and a part of The Walt Disney Company.

Bone spurs are permanent deposits and do not heal or go away. Over 50% of human population has bone spurs, and if you did you would never know unless you had an x-ray specifically to look for them, as they have zero impact on your life.

17. The musical, Fiddler on the roof, is one of the most popular American musicals in Japan. This is due to its themes heavily resonating with the country; generational conflict, especially among fathers and daughters, whether or not to hold onto tradition or let go of it, and the urgency of change.

18. Few days after the Chernobyl disaster, all children in Poland were given Lugol's iodine. This was one of the few cases, when the Polish communist government, despite official denials of the Soviet side and against their recommendations, took action in the best interest of their own citizens.

19. Blond hair in humans developed only 11,000 years ago as an evolutionary response to the lack of sunlight in Northern Europe to enable more Vitamin D synthesis.

20. Your body automatically stuffs and un-stuffs alternating nostrils so you only use one nostril at a time. This is called the "nasal cycle."

It’s an Australian tradition to eat sausages at polling places on Election Day. They are called Democracy Sausages and for many communities, this is the biggest fundraising event of the year.

22. Queen Elizabeth II retains real powers like the ability to dissolve the Australian and Canadian parliaments.

23. LEGO has a secure, temperature- and humidity-controlled, fireproof underground vault in Denmark that contains every LEGO set ever made.

24. As of Aug. 14, 2012, scientists have discovered that the fighting on D-Day was so heavy that 4% of Normandy's sand was still shrapnel.

25. A ladybug can travel at speeds of up to 37 MPH for up to two hours at heights of up to 3,600 feet.