Random Fact Sheet #214 – The Quirky Side of Life: 40 Facts

Christopher Reeve bulked up over 40lb of muscle mass to play Superman with the help of David Prowse. Superman and Darth Vader were gym buddies.

2. The maximum power that can be produced by one horse is 15 Horsepower.

3. George Lucas made the working title of Star Wars Episode II "Jar Jar's Great Adventure" to troll the cast and crew, even labeling the script as such in the original drafts.

4. The New Zealander singer Wing sent Trey Parker of South Park a letter of thanks as a result of the boost of sales of her records after she was featured in a South Park episode.

5. Cleopatra, while born Egyptian, traced her origins to Greece. She may have been more renowned for her intellect than her appearance. She spoke as many as a dozen languages, was well educated and was later described as a ruler “who elevated the ranks of scholars and enjoyed their company.”

American attorney Fred Phelps was excommunicated from Westboro Baptist Church before his death for having a change of heart about his religious beliefs and acknowledging the "Equality House," a local LGBT support organization, as "good people."

7. In 2018, scientists observed Proxima Centauri releasing a superflare so powerful that it scorched its “habitable” planet Proxima Centauri b, therefore eliminating any chance of habitability.

8. At least 43 buildings in New York City actually have their own zip code, due to their size, or amount of people who work there, or money they generate.

9. In 2009, a Californian politician named Michael D. Duvall accidentally left his microphone on during a meeting break and was caught graphically boasting about two different affairs he was having. He resigned less than 15 hours after the story broke.

10. Paul Warner Powell, a convicted killer had his death sentence thrown out when it couldn’t be proven that he had assaulted a girl he had murdered. Believing he was now immune, he sent a taunting letter to the prosecutor, admitting the assault. It was used to successfully re-convict him to death.

Queen Elizabeth II was immune from prosecution, could drive without a license, and could fire the Prime Minister of Australia or Canada as she pleased.

12. Costco purposefully designed their store without signs to force people to wander through all the aisles and find things to buy.

13. During the Erfurt latrine disaster of 1184, a party of nobles gathered in a room within the Church of St. Peter in Erfurt, right above the latrine pit of the monks. Due to the weight of the party, the floor of the room collapsed and up to 100 nobles died plummeting into the fecal pool.

14. Bill Watterson never licensed Calvin and Hobbes. Anything sold with Calvin and Hobbes on them, such as the Bumper stickers depicting Calvin urinating on something are unlicensed knock-offs. He once said: "Only thieves and vandals have made money on Calvin and Hobbes merchandise."

15. Garfield phones have been washing up on a beach in France for over 20 years. They have been washing up after shipping container full of them fell off a cargo ship during a storm and the locals can do nothing about it.

John Lennon was so fed up with people trying to over-analyze Beatles lyrics and trying to find a hidden meaning in them that he started purposefully putting in meaningless nonsense into songs like "the Walrus was Paul" just to confuse them.

17. An Iranian director named Jafar Panahi made a documentary about his life as a dissident under house arrest and had it smuggled out of the country on a USB stick hidden inside a birthday cake. He also defied a 20-year filmmaking ban to make the movie.

18. In 1924 the KKK tried to move into South Bend before the Irish Catholic students of Notre Dame drove them out by throwing potatoes.

19. In Frasier, many of the callers to Frasier's show were celebrities who phoned their lines into the studio without having to appear in person. Celebrities who called in include Christopher Reeve, Eddie Van Halen, Jay Leno, Matthew Broderick, Timothy Leary, Macauley Culkin, and Kevin Bacon.

20. Plebeians from the Roman Empire abandoned the city in a form of protest, known as Secessio plebis, leaving the streets completely empty and the wealthy unable to enforce their power.

The Co-founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, bought 28,100 acres of land in the U.S. for $23 million. His long term plan is to retire to the region. And his short term plan - to stop the logging operations and preserve the country.

22. According to the EPA, handling most receipt paper (aka thermal paper) is likely dangerous to your health, due to the high levels of BPA, and using hand sanitizer before handling a receipt exponentially increases the amount of the chemical you absorb into your body.

23. Researchers played nonstop loops of Led Zeppelin, A Tribe Called Quest and Mozart to cheese wheels to find out how sound waves impacted flavor. Cheese wheels that were exposed to hip hop music had the strongest flavor.

24. Georges Cuvier, the father of paleontology, established the idea of species becoming 'extinct' as a fact. Until the late 18th century, 'extinction' of species was unthinkable because God would not wipe out the entire species he created for his divine plan.

25. A neutron star is so dense that a matchbox-sized portion of one would weigh 3 billion tons.