Random Fact Sheet #266 – 35 Weird Facts That Will Expand Your Mind

Bill Nye had worked alongside Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future: The Animated Series, where he played Doc Brown's assistant and demonstrated several experiments. These segments later led to Nye getting his own show.

27. A recent study found that the size of a lottery win subsequently increases borrowing and bankruptcies among neighbors of the winner.

28. The first book to be banned in USA was the “New English Canaan” which was banned in 1637. The author lampoons and criticizes the Puritans and compares their leadership to crustaceans because Puritans believed that Indians were wild men that needed to be suppressed (among other thing). A first edition copy of the book was recently sold at an auction for $60,000.

29. Hoatzins are the only birds born with claws on their wings, a trait exhibited in dinosaurs like archaeopteryx.

30. Many famous people have claimed to have seen Abraham Lincoln's ghost in the White House, including Winston Churchill, President Lyndon Johnson, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, First Lady Grace Coolidge and Theodore Roosevelt.

20th centuries physicist and Nobel laureate J.J. Thomson had 9 students who later won the Nobel prize in physics or chemistry. Robert Oppenheimer was also one of his students.

32. We call lions "King of the Jungle" even though they don't live in the jungle because of a translation error. The original phrase in Hindi was "King of the Wasteland" but their word for Wasteland sounds like the word jungle.

33. Battle of Bowmanville was a 1942 revolt in the Bowmanville prisoner of war camp, where approximately 100 Canadian soldiers quelled a rebellion of German POWs using only hockey sticks and water cannons.

34. Andy Warhol’s failed assassin, Valerie Solanas was a radical who called for the elimination of the male sex to create a Utopia for women. She shot Warhol in the liver, spleen, lungs, and stomach and he was required to wear a corset for the rest of his life.

35. Mary Anderson was the inventor of the windshield wiper. She got a 17-year patent for it in 1903. She tried to sell the rights in 1905 but was rejected by a firm saying "we do not consider it to be of such commercial value as would warrant our undertaking its sale."