Random Fact Sheet #23 – 35 Amazing Facts Difficult to Believe

Hitler's Third Reich awarded a gold, diamond-engraved Cross of the German Mother to women upon the birth of their thirteenth child.

2. The U.S provides GPS service worldwide for free, while U.S taxpayers pay $2 million a day to keep it operating.

3. Clothes are exempt from sales tax in New York if it's under $110.

4. An estimated 50% of all gold ever mined on Earth came from a single plateau in Witwatersrand, South Africa.

5. In 2007, Scotland spent £125,000 devising a new national slogan. The winning entry was: ‘Welcome to Scotland.’

Plants of the Fenestraria genus produce optical fibers made from crystalline oxalic acid to transmit light to subterranean photosynthetic sites.

7. The historical Buddha was not obese, and the image we commonly associate with Buddha is actually a completely different person.

8. In addition, Fire Department red and Police red and blue, some states reserve purple lights expressly for funeral procession escort vehicles.

9. In 1998, Nestle trademarked the tubular packaging of Smarties. It later sued Masterfoods Denmark which marketed M&Ms in a similar package. The Supreme Court of Denmark later ruled that a basic geometrical shape couldn't be trademarked, and ordered the trademark to be removed.

10. In 1842, Queen Victoria had a pistol aimed at her while she was riding a carriage, but the gun misfired and the assassin escaped. The next day she deliberately took the same route to bait the assassin, who subsequently caught.

A 2004 marketing study described Generation X as “the least parented, least nurtured generations in U.S. history.”

12. All of the chainmail in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was made by hand, link by link.

13. Iran's Air Force Flies American made F-14 Tomcats.

14. Mexico has succeeded in eliminating trachoma, a disease which is the leading cause of blindness worldwide.

15. Bruce Willis was forced to sign a three picture deal with Disney after he pulled out of 'The Broadway Brawler', a romantic comedy about a hockey player. The three movies he made were 'Armageddon', 'The Sixth Sense', and 'The Kid.' The movies combined to gross an estimated 1.3 billion worldwide.

The USSR sent so many scientists and engineers to the gulag prisons that the government set up labs for them. While workers in the 'Sharashka' facilities did not have to perform hard labor like other inmates, their work was published under the names of more famous Soviet scientists.

17. Edith Head has won 8 Oscars for best costume design and was the inspiration for Edna Mode in The Incredibles.

18. While developing the 1994 hit game "Donkey Kong Country," programmers found that real-life gorillas moved too slow for a fast-paced game. Instead, Donkey Kong's movements were based off a horse's gallop.

19. Red cup plungers are not toilet plungers; they are designed for use with sinks. Real toilet plungers have an additional flap that fits in the bottom of the toilet bowl.

20. More than 90% of Greenland sharks are blind, due to a parasite called ' Ommatokoita elongata' that lives exclusively in the eyes of the sharks, damaging their corneas.

Soviet scientists have been genetically breeding a species of fox since the 1950's and have created the only known tame species of fox in the world in just over 50 years.

22. Hay Bales that are too wet have a higher chance of spontaneously combusting, and "excessive moisture is the most common cause of hay fires."

23. In the 1940s, the Idaho Fish and Game Department relocated beavers into the wilderness by dropping them out of airplanes with parachutes.

24. If a submarine is downed and there is no submarine rescue vehicle nearby, the crew put on special pressurized suits which float them to the top and act as a one-man life raft.

25. Snow is actually considered a mineral, along with naturally occurring ice. Water, however, is not a mineral.