Random Fact Sheet #66 – 35 Facts That Will Make You Say ‘I Had No Idea’

Keanu Reeves turned down an $11 million offer to reprise his role as Jack Traven in "Speed 2: Cruise Control" in favor of playing the main role in "The Devil's Advocate" opposite to Al Pacino.

2. Fake Xmas trees have to be used for 20 years to be more environmentally friendly than using real trees.

3. The US has a 200-year-old pending Amendment which would strip citizenship from any citizen who accepts a title of nobility from a foreign country.

4. Singer Lorde has sound-to-color synesthesia, a unique condition where sound blends with sight to create certain colors. This greatly contributed to the creative process of "Melodrama", where she wrote music to the "violets and blues" that appear on the album's cover.

5. Michele Miscavige, the wife of the leader of the Church of Scientology, hasn't been seen in public since August 2007.

Chocolate for most of its 4,000-year history was actually consumed as a bitter beverage rather than as a sweet edible treat.

7. Wearing of the Fez hat is illegal in Turkey, having been banned in 1925.

8. Actress Rebel Wilson pursued an acting career after she contracted malaria and hallucinated that she was a famous actress winning an Oscar.

9. Communist leader Vladimir Lenin spoke English with a strong Irish accent.

10. A solar plant in the Mojave Desert generates so much heat it incinerates birds in mid-flight.

The Harvard Jail House was put on sale by accident. Robert Pinckney bought the jailhouse for $1.50 and successfully sued the town for rent when they continued putting criminals in there. He then sold the place to Charlie McCarthy, a ventriloquist’s dummy, for $10,000 in war bonds.

12. Prince Yasuhiko, the perpetrator of Nanjing massacre was never charged after the war because of he was a member of the Imperial family. General Matsui was executed despite forbidding his men to loot and expressed grief in his diary when his order was disobeyed.

13. The law of urination states that all mammals take roughly 21 seconds to empty their bladders regardless of size.

14. Although children of identical twins are legally first cousins, genetically, they are actually half-siblings.

15. A crocodile named "Gustave" in Burundi's Rusizi river has allegedly killed as many as 300 people.

An Albama woman named Dana Lewis who has diabetes has built her own artificial pancreas. She used social media, computer skills and mail-ordered parts to invent an artificial pancreas for people with diabetes and she is giving away the plans for free.

17. The band playing most of the songs on Michael Jackson's Thriller album was Toto.

18. Popeye has four nephews called Pupeye, Pipeye, Peepeye and Poopeye.

19. Frankie Muniz of Malcolm in the Middle tv show doesn't remember his role in the series due to side effects of suffering concussions.

20. A set of twins were born 87 days apart, setting a world record. One of the twins was born 4 months (Amy Elliot) prematurely while the other did not arrive until 3 months (Kate Elliot) after.

It was technically legal to kill Mormons in Missouri until 1976.

22. The amazing James Randi exposed a fraudulent "Faith Healer" named Peter Popoff who was using an ear mic to fool believers into divine healing.

23. When Woodrow Wilson was elected President, he immediately began a re-segregation and firing of Black Federal Workers. This led to some black federal workers being forced to eat in cages so as to not come into contact with white women.

24. Using the term "Jumbo" to describe something as large/huge etc is coined from an elephant of the same name which was around in the mid-1800's and was the first ever animal "celebrity" in both the UK and the US.

25. Few people attended Lee Harvey Oswald's Funeral. Reporters had to act as pallbearers.