Random Fact Sheet #55 – 35 Facts You Never Knew Were Out There

A Roman soldier once farted, causing a riot that lead to the deaths of 10,000 people.

2. After analyzing losses over North Vietnam in 1968, the US Air Force invested in upgrades for its F-4 jets while the Navy created an advanced combat school for its pilots: TOPGUN. The Navy saw kill ratios climb to 13:1 while the Air Force saw no improvements.

3. The official definition of 1 second is based on a quantum mechanical phenomenon, namely "the duration of 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a Caesium 133 atom's outermost electron".

4. Apple reportedly paid U2, $100 million as part of a deal to install their album "Songs of innocence" for free, automatically onto Apple User's Devices which caused an outrage amongst the users.

5. In 2002, a study found that the sun provides the Earth with more energy in one hour than humans can use in a year.

According to Johnny Cash's autobiography, he got addicted to painkillers after one of his ostriches challenged his authority. He attempted to discipline the bird with a large stick, but failed; the ostrich broke five of his ribs and slashed into his stomach, almost disemboweling him.

7. Before his execution, the Marquis de Favras (French aristocrat), upon reading his death warrant stated, "I see that you have made three spelling mistakes".

8. The area code for Cape Canaveral in Florida is 321 to mimic the countdown sequence of spacecraft launches.

9. The Koopas in Super Mario are based on Japanese myth creatures who hid in toilets to fondle women's butts while they went to the bathroom.

10. The Mormon church has a vault (able to withstand a nuclear attack) that stores genealogical history.

It takes thousands of years for light to escape the sun, then 8.3 minutes to reach earth. The sunlight we see is thousands of years old.

12. A "Lifetime Warranty" only covers an estimated lifespan of a product (which can just be a couple of months or years) and does not necessarily equal an actual human lifetime.

13. Margaret Wise Brown, the author of Goodnight Moon died at the age of 42 while showing a doctor how healthy she was feeling. She kicked up her leg, dislodging a blood clot which then traveled to her heart and killed her.

14. George Lucas made sure R2D2 saves the day at least once in every Star Wars movie (Episodes 1-6).

15. Prince was Prince's real name (Prince Rogers Nelson), but after a contractual dispute with Warner Bros., he changed his stage name to an unpronounceable symbol earning himself the name "The Artist Formally Know as Prince" and "forcing a mass mailing of floppy disks with custom font."

During their expedition Lewis and Clark brought packs of "thunderclappers," ridiculously strong laxatives made of 60 percent mercury. Due to the strength of the laxatives and the longevity of mercury, scientists can track the route of the expedition by following deposits.

17. Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn was a baseball pitcher and Hall of Famer who, in 1886, became the first person to be captured on camera giving the middle finger.

18. In Washington State, you can be charged $1025 for throwing a lit cigarette from your vehicle.

19. An unnamed Chinese man was constipated for 22 years and looked 9 months pregnant. Surgeons removed 13kg/29lbs of poop from his abdomen. He suffered from a rare congenital disease known as Hirschsprung, which causes constipation due to missing nerves inside the colon.

20. Sea shanties can be grouped into three types: short haul shanties, for tasks requiring quick pulls; halyard shanties, for heavier work requiring more setup time between pulls; and capstan shanties, for long, repetitive tasks.

9th November is known as the ‘day of fate’ in German history- on the same day, Robert Blum was executed in 1848, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated in 1918, Hitler’s Munich Putsch occurred in 1923, Kristallnacht occurred in 1938, and the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

22. Charlie Chaplin's youngest child, Christopher Chaplin, is only 55. By comparison, his oldest child, Norman Chaplin, would have been 98 this year.

23. President Jefferson and James Madison fought pirate wars in the 1800s against the Barbary Pirates in the Mediterranean Sea.

24. In 1903, Frank Nelson Cole received a standing ovation after an hour-long presentation during which he did not utter a single word and just did calculations on a chalkboard to prove that 2^67 - 1 is a composite number.

25. After Germany's openly-gay Foreign Minister called the president of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko "Europe's last dictator", Lukashenko responded that it was "better to be a dictator than gay".