Random Fact Sheet #59 – A Collection of 40 Odd, Interesting, and Amusing Trivia

A boat is considered a ship if it weighs 500 tonnes or more. A more general distinction is that ships can carry boats but boats cannot carry ships.

27. Jack Black's eponymous character in the 2006 comedy Nacho Libre is based on a real priest- Sergio Gutiérrez Benítez, who wrestled with the ring name "Fray Tormenta" (Friar Storm) in order to support an orphanage he founded.

28. The scientific name for llamas is Lama glama.

29. Adrian Carton de Wiart was a British officer who served in 3 wars. He was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear. He survived 2 plane crashes, tunneled out of a POW camp, tore off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them. After World War 1 he wrote, "Frankly I had enjoyed the war."

30. Antarctica is governed by a treaty of over 50 countries banning all mining, pollution, colonization, or claims from any one country. Only scientific exploration is permitted and visitors must take every trace of themselves with them when they leave.

On average, 4 shipping containers drop into the ocean every day.

32. Near-perfect ellipsoid lenses have been found among Viking artifacts. Hinting that the Vikings likely made telescopes 1000 years ago, 500 years before Galileo.

33. There was a cult that formed around the same time as Christianity which worshipped the emperor Hadrian's young gay lover Antinous, believing the boy was resurrected as Osiris after he'd drowned in the Nile.

34. Native German and Russian speaker's tongues naturally rest on the bottom of their mouths while English speakers tongues rest on the top.

35. 120 years ago the most pressing environmental threat was cities being buried in 9 feet of horse manure in 50 years.

High heels on men's shoes were once considered virile and masculine.

37. When Franklin D. Roosevelt died, Eleanor Roosevelt told Harry Truman that the president was dead. When he asked if there was anything he could do for her, she replied, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”

38. Stanley Kubrick appointed French Director Bertrand Tavernier as his publicist in France and he was asking him regularly about strange stuff like types of lamps in theaters, Tavernier resigned after 3 months and told him: As a film-maker, you are a genius but as an employer, you are an imbecile.

39. Because a patch of clovers usually contains around 10,000 plants in 13 square feet, you only have to search an area around the size of an office desk to find a four-leaf clover.

40. When a rookie hits his first home run in Major League Baseball, it's tradition for his teammates to ignore him and give him the silent treatment instead of congratulating him.