Random Fact Sheet #67 – 35 Facts That You Won’t Find in a Textbook

Ham, the first chimpanzee in space, was only given the name "Ham" after successfully completing his mission. He was known as Number 65 before that, as NASA believed that it would be bad publicity if a "named" chimp burned up in the atmosphere or otherwise died as a result of mission failure.

27. 30+ minutes of running, 5 days a week, has been linked to 9 years of less aging on the cellular level.

28. When Rupert Murdoch (then-owner of 20th Century Fox) was shown a rough cut of "Titanic" to appease him over how much money James Cameron was spending on the film, Murdoch said, "I can see why you like the movie, but it's no Air Force One."

29. Foo Fighters' frontman Dave Grohl is such a huge fan of UK rock band Killing Joke that he did all of the drummings on their self-titled 2003 album free of charge.

30. There is a math competition (William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition) for undergrad students that is so hard that in 2014 the median score was 1/120.

In 1946, a local chicken farmer offered 100 chicks for each homer the Nashua Dodgers hit. Newcomer Roy Campanella hit 14 in his first season and sent all 1,400 to his father who used them to start a thriving poultry farm. He also went on to become one of the first black major league players.

32. There's strong evidence that chewing gum improves working memory, episodic memory and speed of perception. Why this is the case is not understood.

33. Anthony Daniels (the actor who plays C3PO) is the 11th highest grossing actor of all time because he's been in every Star Wars movie.

34. Bass Reeves, the first black U.S. Deputy Marshal west of the Mississippi is credited with capturing over 3,000 outlaws, including his own son. He is also rumored to be the inspiration for the Lone Ranger.

35. Despite making dozens of recordings of his voice on wax cylinders, no known recordings of Mark Twain's voice are known to have survived.

Vince Gilligan wrote an episode of The X-files featuring Bryan Cranston, which ultimately lead to Cranston being cast as Walter White in Gilligan's "Breaking Bad".

37. For over 50 years, you could play tic-tac-toe against live chickens in New York City, and they seldom, if ever, lost.

38. A holocaust denial group offered $50,000 to anyone who could prove that gas chambers were used to intentionally kill people at Auschwitz. They were forced by a judge to pay that money, and an additional $40,000, to Auschwitz survivor Mel Mermelstein who provided proof of that very fact.

39. When Eminem was sued in 2003 by the bully, DeAngelo Bailey for slandering him in the song "Brain Damage", the judge threw out the case and provided the ruling by rapping it.

40. A Cleveland woman named Shena Hardin was ordered by a judge to stand on a corner during rush hour for 2 days holding a sign that read "Only an idiot would drive on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus", after notoriously disregarding the law and laughing at the charges.

A woman won $1.3 million lottery. She hid it from her husband and immediately divorced him to avoid giving him half. He found out and sued. Due to a Family Code statute that penalizes spouses for falsifying data about their property during divorce, the judge ordered her to give him 100% of the winnings.

42. A death row inmate named Marlon Duane Kiser in Tennessee discovered there were untested fingerprints that had been found at the original crime scene. In a last-ditch effort to prove his innocence, he successfully petitioned a judge to have the tests run. They were found to be his own fingerprints.

43. The city of Dallas, Texas has lost every single one of 82 court cases against the same man named Robert Groden, over several decades.

44. In 2008, two judges named Mark Ciaverlla and Michael Conahan were found to be accepting money from two juvenile detention centers in return for increasing the number of residents, offenses were as minimal as mocking a principal on Myspace, trespassing in a vacant building, or shoplifting DVDs from Wal-mart.

45. In 1971, a woman petitioned a Judge for permission to sterilize her "somewhat retarded" daughter. Without a hearing, evidence, or representation for the daughter, the judge granted permission. The daughter later tried to sue the judge, but the Supreme Court voted 5-3 to grant the judicial immunity.

A Colorado judge named Paul Sacco sentenced violators who were brought to court for blasting loud music to an hour of listening to Barry Manilow at high volume.

47. In 1960, a 5-year-old orphan named José Luis Painecur was sacrificed in the coastal village Collileufu, Chile after the largest earthquake ever recorded. The two charged were released after 2 years, as the judge ruled they "acted without free will, driven by an irresistible natural force of ancestral tradition."

48. In the 1920s a Chicago man convinced his wife to pull out all her teeth then refused to get her dentures because it was 'cheaper to feed her with soup than solid food'. She took him to court and he was ordered to get her 2 new sets of teeth and a beefsteak a week.

49. Daniel Balsam is a US man who got so infuriated with constant email spam that he quit his job, got a law degree and has so far earned over $1 million in court judgments against the spammers.

50. A German biologist named Stefan Lanka claimed measles is psychosomatic and offered 100,000 Euros to anyone who proved measles is a virus. A German doctor named David Barden presented evidence of the virus. The biologist dismissed the evidence, but the local court ordered him to pay up.