Random Fact Sheet #63 – 40 of the Most Unusual and Fascinating Facts

This famous photo called "Lunch atop a Skyscraper" wasn't the unfinished Empire State Building. It was 30 Rockefeller Center.

2. Bill Gates accidentally got into philanthropy after he and his wife accidentally came across extremely impoverished people while they were sightseeing. He now says philanthropy is the "best job in the world."

3. Honey bees initially have up to 21 virgin queen bees, who fight to the death until there is only one.

4. One of the selling points for introducing the guillotine during the French Revolution was equality. Commoners could now enjoy the comparatively quick and painless death of decapitation just like the nobility, and would no longer have to endure brutal deaths such as those caused by hanging.

5. Once, to treat an earache, a nurse administered ear drops to a patient's rectum, because the doctor had abbreviated "right ear" to "R ear". Neither patient nor nurse questioned why the ear drops should go there.

A squirrel monkey named Miss Baker was one of the first animals to be launched into space by the United States and recovered alive. She lived to the age of 27, becoming the longest living squirrel monkey, and her tombstone often has a banana or two on top of it.

7. Thurl Ravenscroft who sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" was also the voice of Tony the Tiger.

8. Ancient Greek and Roman statues were actually brilliantly colored and not just bare marble/stone.

9. McDonald's intentionally created exactly four different shapes for chicken nuggets. According to the company, “three would’ve been too few. Five would’ve been, like, wacky.”

10. Fish and chips are historically so important to the UK that in World War 1, the British government made safeguarding supplies of them a priority and during World War 2, Churchill refused to ration the dish.

American singer Tom Petty wrote the song "I Won't Back Down" after an arsonist burned down his house and he escaped with just the clothes on his back.

12. Americans spend more on lottery tickets than on movies, video games, music, sports tickets, and books combined.

13. Snoop Dogg wrote, starred in, and created the score for a hardcore p*rn video that was shot at his house. It was the first hardcore video ever listed on the Billboard music video sales chart.

14. During the filming of Jaws, a real shark attacked a shark cage, Spielberg was so impressed with the footage that he incorporated it into the film. One of the characters, oceanographer Matt Hooper, was supposed to die in this scene but nobody was in the shark cage, forcing Hooper to live.

15. Reese's Hearts have the highest percentage of peanut butter per cup.

NASA's plan to dispose of corpses in space is to freeze them in the airlock and then violently shake the body with a robotic arm until it turns to space dust.

17. In 2008, Microsoft proposed to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion, but Yahoo rejected the offer. In 2016, it was sold to Verizon for $4.8 billion.

18. It is possible to checkmate an opponent in chess in two moves.

19. Some Native American Indian nations believe in a mysterious man, a handsome brave who wears white buckskins and brings gifts to Indian children. His name is 'Handsome Fellow'.

20. The Megalania, a venomous 23-foot long species of giant monitor lizard, was hunted to extinction by early human inhabitants of Ice Age Australia.

Jerome of Sandy Cove was an unknown man who washed up on the shore of Nova Scotia on September 8, 1863. Both his legs were amputated above the knees and he couldn't (or refused to) understand French, Latin, Italian, or Spanish. He died 49 years later and no one ever figured out where he came from.

22. Winston Churchill had so much respect for the American Constitution that he called it the best constitution ever written in English.

23. The largest fire in American history was the Peshtigo fire in 1871 in Wisconsin. It was on the exact same day (October 8) as the great Chicago fire so it was largely forgotten. There were 2,000 casualties.

24. There's a new state of matter called "Time Crystals" that is different from solids, liquids, gases, and plasma.

25. Ramin Djawadi, the composer of the Game of Thrones theme music, was shown the title sequence and was so inspired that he composed the music within 3 days.