Random Fact Sheet #58 – 40 Fascinating Facts: A Treasure Trove of Trivia

It is possible to coat droplets of water with silica, resulting in a dry powder known as "dry water".

27. Potato plants can grow fruit. They look like tiny green tomatoes and are poisonous.

28. English actor John Cleese once defaced his school's grounds "as a prank, by painting footprints to suggest that the statue of Field Marshal Earl Haig had got down from his plinth and gone to the toilet"

29. Despite US denial for 26 years, eight members of the Alabama Air National Guard volunteered to pose as Cuban rebel pilots during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Of these 8, 4 were killed when promised air cover never arrived, with two of the pilots dying in a firefight after being shot down.

30. The Class the Stars Fell On (An expression used to describe the United States Military Academy Class): Of the 1915 West Point Class 36% attained the rank of General. Members included Dwight D. Eisenhower and Omar N. Bradley.

Spiders (Gossamer spider) can fly for miles and have been found 2.5 miles above the earth surface.

32. The military of San Marino still has an active crossbow corps which has existed uninterrupted since 1295.

33. Butterscotch is made with butter and brown sugar. Toffee is made with the same ingredients, but cooked longer.

34. The Holy Roman state of Hesse-Kessel became a "mercenary state" renting out its army to other major powers. The state maintained strict neutrality, to the point that it would rent out soldiers to both sides of a conflict and the Hessian soldiers would end up fighting each other.

35. The U.S state of Texas is roughly 10% larger than France and almost twice as large as Germany.

Babe Ruth was one of the first cancer patients to receive radiation and chemotherapy treatment simultaneously.

37. Rio residents rely on an app called "Fogo Cruzado" (Crossfire) to keep track of all gun battles happening in the city any given day in order to avoid them.

38. Operation Looking Glass was a 24-hour a day, continuously airborne command center capable of directing all of the United States' nuclear assets as a backup, should SAC's ground facilities be destroyed. Taking turns, the airplanes stayed continuously staffed for 29 years.

39. Granny Smiths, Fujis, and Pink Ladies (Types of apples) can all be traced back to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where the ancestor apples still grow wild there in the Tian Shan mountains.

40. A bog is acidic and a fen is alkaline; a swamp has trees and woody plants and a marsh has other types of plants.