Random Fact Sheet #5 – 35 Beautiful Facts That’ll Leave You Stunned

Stan Lee is the highest grossing actor of all time. His 39 films have taken in $7,748,462,823 to date.

2. Although "The Dark Side of the Moon" was the #1 album for only one week, it remained on the Billboard top 200 for 741 weeks straight, from 1973 to 1988.

3. The captain of a United flight had a heart attack mid-flight, and so an off-duty air force captain, Mike Gongol, had to help land the plane, saving 160 lives. He knew he had to help when he heard the PA announcement "are there any non-revenue pilots on board, please ring your call button."

4. One of Tokyo's busiest train stations, a rail line was converted from an above-ground line into a subway. There were zero service interruptions. The lowering of the rail line's tracks into its subway position was done in one night, during its normal service off hours lasting ~4 hours.

5. From 1902-1907, a group of 12 scientists regularly ate dangerous, common food additives that had previously been untested, such as formaldehyde, and documented how they reacted to said additives. They were known as "The Poison Squad," and helped spur the creation of the FDA.

The Japan Air 123 accident, the deadliest single aircraft crash of all time. The crew could not control the plane so they used thrust to go up and down and differential trust to turn. It crashed after 32min. No simulation reconstruction held out as long as the crew did.

7. In 1984, a 1-year-old named Baby Fae received a heart transplant from a baboon but ended up dying 21 days later due to rejection. When questioned with why a baboon and not a primate more closely related to humans, the surgeon said he didn’t believe in evolution.

8. Rutka Laskier, a Jewish girl from Poland who died in Auschwitz at the age of 14, wrote a diary describing her experiences under Nazi occupation. Her diary was published in 2006 and she has become known as the "Polish Anne Frank."

9. For the Apollo 11 moon landing conspiracy theory to be true, over 400,000 people would need to be part of the secret.

10. The Sydney Opera House actually has terrible acoustics. Edo de Waart, the former chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, once threatened to boycott the building. There is a $202 million project to renovate and improve the acoustics.

A frog has been discovered in 2015 that looks like Kermit

12. Sandra Bullock speaks fluent German, as she was raised in Germany and Austria for 12 years while her father worked for the U.S. Army in Europe.

13. The Matrix is based on the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard. However, after watching it he replied: "The Matrix is surely the kind of film about the matrix that the matrix would have been able to produce."

14. A German explorer/soldier named Hermann Detzner became famous for evading capture by British forces in New Guinea during WWI. Hermann Detzner's book 'Four Years Among the Cannibals' detailed his exploits and remarkable scientific discoveries. He made everything up, and just hid in one place for four years.

15. Stone castles were very, very effective against the Mongols. They sustained heavy casualties trying but were never able to take a single one in two invasions of Hungary.

Microsoft once sued Mike Rowe, a high school student who registered MikeRoweSoft.com for his part-time web design project. Eventually, a settlement was reached, with Microsoft purchasing the domain in exchange for an Xbox console.

17. 76% of all known serial killers in the 20th century were from the United States.

18. In Thai, the number 5 is pronounced "ha" so instead of saying "hahahahaha," Thai speakers will sometimes write "55555."

19. When Tupac Shakur first started rapping, he was attending the Baltimore School for the Arts, where he studied theater, ballet, and other forms of art. He loved his classes and would have graduated if he hadn't been evicted due to his mom being a member of the Black Panther Party.

20. All presidents and first ladies have secret service protection for life, and further that any children of former presidents get secret service protection until they turn 16.

The only photographs showing the moment Robert Kennedy was shot were not used in court but sealed for twenty years. When the photographer asked to have them back he was told they were accidentally burned. Reappearing after a lawsuit they were then stolen from the courier transporting them.

22. All of the images we've seen of Bugs Bunny eating carrots were actually misleading. Carrots should not be fed to rabbits. Rabbit's natural diets do not include roots, fruits, or iceberg lettuce, and that carrots can cause tooth decay and digestive problems.

23. There is a secular alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous known as the SMART recovery that is based more on Contemporary therapeutic techniques.

24. Buckethead, the guitar virtuoso, has released TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-SEVEN full studio albums and 171 under aliases and with other bands. In 2015 after the death of his parents he released an average of 1 studio album every 3 days.

25. Pentagon freaked out in the 1980s when they realized Finland had, against their expectations, managed to build two Mir submarines capable of diving to 6000 meters. They went on to shut down the whole Finnish submarine industry by privately threatening the country with heavy sanctions.