Random Fact Sheet #210 – 45 Strange but True Facts That Will Make You Think

Before a key battle in Alexander the Great's campaign in Persia, the Persian king offered Alexander generous terms for peace. One of Alexander's generals is said to have remarked: "I would accept the terms, if I were you". Alexander responded: "So would I, if I were you". He won.

27. In the 90s, Tina Turner left America and started living in Switzerland. She now is a Swiss citizen, lives permanently in a village in the Alps, and has stated: "I could not imagine a better place to live."

28. Latchkey incontinence is the phenomenon where the closer that one gets to the restroom, the more urgently one has to use the restroom.

29. A study concluded that when humans forbid dogs to eat foods, dogs are 4 times more likely to steal the food in the dark when they think humans can’t spot them. Dogs based their stealing strategies on their belief that humans can’t see in low light conditions.

30. Charles Vance Millar, a rich Canadian financier, made his will one giant practical joke. In it, he left three men who hated one another a joint lifetime tenancy in a villa, some protestant ministers $700,000 in Catholic beer stock, and anti-horse racing advocates $25,000 in a Jockey club.

Before the advent of reliable and affordable alarm clocks, British and Irish workers were woken up by human alarm clocks, who made sure they could get to work on time. The knocker-up used a baton to knock on clients’ doors or a long and light stick to reach windows on higher floors.

32. Walt Disney gave his housekeeper, Thelma Pearl Howard, stocks of the company during holidays and birthdays every year, instead of cash. The stocks were valued very little at the time, but by the time she was in her 70s, they were worth $9 million.

33. In the movie "Home Alone" the producers thought it would be too mean to use a real girl for the pic of Buzz’s unattractive girlfriend so they used the art director’s son.

34. As part of the “Hundred Flowers Campaign” of 1956, China allowed and encouraged people to speak freely and openly express their opinions about the communist regime. A year later the campaign was withdrawn and the Chinese government imprisoned those who spoke critically about them.

35. Diphenhydramine is marketed as both Benadryl (an allergy pill with a side of effect of making on sleepy) and also Sominex (a sleeping pill with the side effect of helping one's allergies).

In 2011, billionaire Oprah Winfrey found out she has a sister she never knew existed and now takes care of her financially because Oprah was so impressed by her sister's loyalty. She spent 4 years trying to contact Oprah with no luck and never once tried to sell the story to the press.

37. Hockey goalie Clint Malarchuk’s throat got slashed by a skate during a live NHL game. The injury was so bad that 11 fans fainted, two people got heart attack and at least 3 players vomited on the ice. The wound was so bad that it needed 300 stitches. Clint was back on the ice just a week later.

38. In 1930, a lawyer named TM Zink tried to leave $50,000 in trust to build a Womanless library. “No Woman Admitted” signs were to be posted at each entrance and no works by women were to be allowed on the premises. His family successfully challenged his will after his death, and the plans were scrapped.

39. The first recorded use of Forensic Entomology was by Chinese detective in 1200s AD. In a murder investigation in a village, detective Song Ci put every scythe in the village for inspection and found the culprit when flies - attracted to trace amounts of blood- kept landing on his scythe.

40. The VLC media player uses a traffic cone for its icon because the students who created it drunkenly started a traffic cone collection.

The reason Phoenix can exist in the middle of the desert is because in 1868, Jack Swilling discovered the ruins of a 27,000 square miles canal system built by the Hohokam. He restarted the canals and today that infrastructure, with modern expansions, waters the city of over a million in the hot desert.

42. The dragonfly is one of the most skilled predators on the planet, being absolutely lethal to other insects, missing only one prey in twenty.

43. When it snowed for the first recorded time in Miami in 1977, a meteorologist initially thought it was a coke-drop that had gone wrong, until realizing that the flakes were snow.

44. 70% of the world’s Macadamia Nuts came from one tree in Australia. All of Hawaii’s macadamias share distinctive markers with a tiny wild grouping of trees in Gympie, suggesting that all of the state’s modern crops were likely cloned out of a single Australian tree.

45. Frank Sinatra regularly tipped waiters, busboys, and chefs $100-200 each. However, he had a fearsome temper in restaurants. He would throw food against the wall if he didn’t like how it was prepared and would throw drinks if he didn’t like how he was treated.