Random Fact Sheet #211 – Wonders of Random Knowledge: 35 Facts

Jimi Hendrix’s contract for Woodstock stipulated that no act could play after him. The scheduled performance times went so far off that he didn’t take the stage until 9 am Monday morning. Most people had already left, and only about 10,000 people actually saw him play.

2. Iron Man was considered such a minor character when Marvel Studios began developing the 2008 movie that about 30 writers passed on writing the script, and Marvel produced three animated "advertorials" to introduce the character and show audiences that he wasn't simply a robot.

3. If you took out all of the empty space from between and within the atoms making up each human being, the entire human race would fit into the volume of a sugar cube.

4. Raymond Washington, the Crips main founder was appalled to find his organization escalating from fist-fights of his era to gunfights and hoped to build a truce with the Bloods before distancing himself and ultimately dying in a drive-by.

5. Animal life in Chernobyl is thriving, not because the radiation is gone (there’s still a lot of it), but because there are barely any humans living in that area.

After TJ Miller got accused of sexual misconduct and called in a fake bomb threat, Dreamworks hired an impersonator to dub over his lines in How To Train Your Dragon 3 to match his performance exactly (it had already been animated) in order to not change the film but still dissociate him from it.

7. In 1923, a dog named Bobbie was separated from his owners and lost. Six months later, Bobbie appeared on their doorstep mangy and scrawny with feet worn to the bone; he walked over 2500 miles (4000 km) of plains, desert, and mountains an average of approximately 14 miles (23 km) per day.

8. The Guy Fawkes mask used by a number of activist groups (including anti-capitalist groups) is copyrighted and owned by Time Warner. Every time a mask is purchased, Time Warner get paid.

9. In World War 2, a few engineers wanted to reinforce the (returned) fighter planes where most of the bullet holes were. Mr. Abraham Wald then said: Let's reinforce them where no bullet holes are instead - because apparently, airplanes hit in these spots did not return.

10. The Japanese usually leave out most of their history from the early 1900s to World War 2 from their high school curriculum.

Florida passed a bill in1967 which would allow Disney to build their own nuclear power plant at Disney World. That law still stands.

12. "Celebrity psychiatrist" Dr. Isaac Herschkopf (left) manipulated a patient into cutting off his family, giving him his home, signing over his bank account, and amending his will to leave everything to the doctor's wife. Yet, Dr. Herschkopf still maintains his medical license in New York City today.

13. During World War 2, Gilbert Seltzer led a secret platoon of men within a unit dubbed the 'Ghost Army'. It was made up of artists, creatives and engineers. Their job was to outwit the Germans and create deceptions from inflatable tanks to scripted bar conversations. This unit's work led to the big US wins.

14. We call people with red hair "redheads" as opposed to "orange heads" because the phrase has been around longer than the color orange. The color orange was described as red up until the 1500s when the first reference of orange in the English language can be found.

15. The concept of a soulmate was originally put forth by Plato. According to his story, humans originally had 4 arms, 4 legs, and 2 faces. The Gods feared humans were too powerful and so Zeus split them in two, condemning them to spend their lives searching for the other half of their soul.

Charles B. McVay III, the captain of the USS Indianapolis was court-martialed for its' sinking in 1945. In 1996, a history project by a sixth-grader named Hunter Scott cleared his name.

17. In 1974, a lawyer wrote to the Cleveland Browns threatening to sue if their fans kept throwing paper airplanes at games, and got the reply “Attached is a letter that we received on November 19, 1974. I feel that you should be aware that some as*hole is signing your name to stupid letters.”

18. The practice of playing music for callers on hold began with a faulty phone line connection. A loose wire touching the steel frame of an office building caused it to act as a giant radio receiver, allowing callers to hear music from local radio stations while they waited on hold.

19. Wallabies in Australia have been observed eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around “as high as a kite.”

20. To promote “The Room”, Tommy Wiseau personally spent $5,000 a month on a highway billboard advertisement for 5 years. This is in spite of the fact that the film only played for 2 weeks in the summer of 2003. Wiseau kept promoting it for years after it closed.

The London Underground is getting hotter because the clay that the tunnels are dug into spent decades absorbing heat and has now reached maximum capacity, so it is now insulating the tunnels. So essentially London underground clay is no longer cold enough to absorb local heat, so the heat generated by tunnel usage just stays in the environment. When the tube was first built it was much cooler than the city above.

22. The day Jimi Hendrix died, Eric Clapton had bought a left-handed Fender Stratocaster as a gift for him. He intended on presenting it during a Sly Stone concert at the Lyceum that night, but Hendrix never showed up. The next day, Clapton learned why.

23. The common chicken does not exist on the wild, they are the result of the domestication of another species of bird called the "Red Junglefowl" that lives in South Asia. They look like chickens except they live on trees and can actually fly.

24. The only Mexican to die on the Titanic was a politician named Manuel Uruchurtu Ramírez. He gave up his seat on a rescue boat to a woman who wanted to see her child and husband. She had lied to him about her family and survived.

25. POCD, or pedophilia OCD is a condition in which a person gets high anxiety from being around or thinking of children for fear of being sexually attracted to them, despite having no actual attraction or urges.