Random Fact Sheet #222 – 35 Facts That Will Captivate Your Attention

Serial killers are more likely to have suffered a head injury as a child than non-serial killers.

2. A blind lady named Suzanne O'Connor in Ireland was brought to court twice for not having a TV license, despite blind persons being exempt from requiring one.

3. The song “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins was supposed to be a ballad, but during a recording session, Hawkins “screamed and grunted” through the whole song because he was drunk. It was his most-successful recording and is in The Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

4. In 1929, W. Forssmann performed the first human heart catheterization on himself. He tricked the OR nurse, put himself under local anesthesia, inserted a catheter into his arm, then walked to the X-ray room to see if it reached his heart. He was fired from the hospital but was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1956.

5. In 2012, Mountain Dew asked the internet to name their new apple drink. Before the poll was shut down, the top four names were: "Fapple", "Gushing Granny", "Diabeetus" and "Hitler did nothing wrong."

Elephants are known to take a great interest in the bones of their deceased and to mourn for dead relatives and Magpies have been observed burying their dead under twigs of grass.

7. Jimmy Carter's family were all farmers for 350 years and no member of his father’s family had ever finished high school. Carter's childhood dream was "to go to the Naval Academy, get a college education, and serve in the U.S. Navy."

8. In 2013, a petition requesting that the United States Government build a Death Star reached 25,000 signatures, the threshold requiring the White House office to make a response. One part of the response was, "The Administration does not support blowing up planets."

9. American writer Kurt Vonnegut adopted his sister’s three sons after she died of cancer two days after her husband died in a train accident.

10. The Royal Navy once saved 5 million pounds in training by having personnel shout "bang" instead of firing live rounds.

Meme of DMX crying is from an interview done with VH1, where he admits that his mother never told him that she loved him. " You know what I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that no matter how strong you are as a man no matter how tough you are we all need to be somebody's baby."

12. A black cemetery in Florida disappeared 100 years ago. The local newspaper started looking for it and through old documents learned that maybe a public housing complex had been built over it. An archaeologist used ground-penetrating radar to see what was in the ground. He found 120 coffins.

13. The chemical element Berkelium is named after the University of California, Berkeley, which is named after the city of Berkeley, which is named after the philosopher George Berkeley, who, ironically, believed that the physical world does not actually exist.

14. A camel by the name of Douglas was killed by a Union sharpshooter at the Siege of Vicksburg. A team of 6 Confederate snipers was assembled and tasked with avenging his death.

15. The Orangutan birth rate of once every 9 years is one of the slowest among mammals, hindering their survival but also creates one the strongest mother-child bonds in nature as kids stay close to their mother during that whole period and nurse for most of it.

Elvis Presley stopped a mugging 53 days before he died. He had been passing by a gas station in his limo when he saw two men beating up a teen. He got out, assumed a karate stance and challenged the fighters to take him on. They were so thrilled that they stopped immediately.

17. The racehorse Sham ran the Kentucky Derby, “The Fastest Two Minutes in Sports”, in under two minutes at 1:59.90. It was a time good enough to win any Kentucky Derby past or present, except the one he was in. He lost to the legendary Secretariat by about 2 ½ lengths.

18. Even horses get nervous when they are about to participate in a race, and the jockeys bring goats that calm the horse down.

19. Fez's name in 'That 70's Show', was in the script as F.E.S. as in "Foreign Exchange Student."

20. There is a Japanese phrase “kuchi sabishii” which translates to – ‘when you are not hungry, but you eat because your mouth is lonely.’

Doritos were originally Disneyland trash. In the early days of Disneyland, a restaurant named Casa de Fritos invented Doritos by repurposing stale tortillas they bought from a local vendor. The chips proved to be so popular they were eventually rolled out nationally by Frito-Lay in 1966.

22. Andrew Johnson is the only tailor ever to be president. As president, he would typically stop by a tailor shop to say hello. He would wear only the suits that he made himself.

23. Hatshepsut was the first female ruler of ancient Egypt who acted as a full pharaoh. In art, she had herself depicted as a male ruler; she wore a false beard, had her breasts reduced and deemphasized, and her shoulders portrayed as broad and manly. She brought Egypt into a period of prosperity.

24. The United States has had a Vice President who was Native American. Charles Curtis served as Vice President under Herbert Hoover from 1929-33. His mother was of mixed Native heritage, and he grew up with his maternal grandparents on the Kaw Reservation in Kansas.

25. There is a plane that flies above Los Angeles every single day releasing thousands of sterile fruit flies from 2,000 feet in the air to combat the invasive Mediterranean Fruit Fly. Up to 125,000 flies per square mile are released each week in what’s called “biological birth control.”