Random Fact Sheet #68 – 35 Facts You May Not Know (But Should!)

Jimmy Carter helped launch the craft beer revolution by removing taxes for beer brewed at home for personal use.

2. Witnessing 9/11 had such a profound effect on aspiring comic book artist Gerard Way, that it inspired him to start a band and write their first song. My Chemical Romance (American rock band) would not exist if 9/11 had never happened.

3. Many of the hangings during the Nuremberg trials were carried out with a short rope that caused prisoners to die a long, lingering death from suffocation, rather than an instantaneous death from a broken neck.

4. "Where in North Dakota is Carmen Sandiego?" is a 1989 Apple II game commissioned by the North Dakotan government. Only 3 retail copies are known to exist.

5. The 'appeal to nature' is a logical fallacy where people assume that something is either good because it's perceived as "natural", or bad because it's perceived as "unnatural".

The Talmud (Text of Rabbinic Judaism) says Jesus was fathered by a Roman soldier named "Pantera".

7. Mamie Johnson was a professional Negro League baseball player, with a 33–8 win-loss record and a batting average of .262. She was known as "Peanut" during her career due to her height 5 feet, 3 inches. After retiring, she went to nursing school and became a nurse for 30 years.

8. Medical errors are the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States with more than 250,000 Americans dying each year from medical errors.

9. Those who see Earth from space experience “The Overview Effect:” A remarkable sense of connection with the rest of the human race, and a desire for world peace.

10. After South Park premiered in 1997, the number of households with Comedy Central jumped from 9.1 million to a staggering 50 million by 1998.

The 1964 Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer TV special is in a grey area of copyright due to the fact that the studio mistakenly spelled out the copyright date as 1164 in roman numerals and haven't corrected it since.

12. Korean is a language isolate having developed independently of all other languages. It is the largest language isolate by a wide margin.

13. In 2013, it was estimated there were more than 100 uncontacted tribes around the world, mostly in the densely forested areas of South America, Central Africa, Asia and New Guinea. Knowledge of the existence of these groups comes from infrequent and sometimes violent encounters and aerial footage.

14. Schools in Philadelphia went on lockdown in 2013 after a teacher misheard The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song lyrics as "shooting some people outside of school," instead of "shooting some b-ball."

15. In 1999, NASA spacecraft (Mars Climate Orbiter) burned up in Mars' atmosphere because all the units were in the metric system except for one contractors' (Lockheed Martin) numbers, which were in US Industrial units.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show has had the longest-running theatrical release in film history (Since 1975).

17. The last claim under the 1866 Homestead Act, which entitled a person to free frontier land if they lived on it for 5 years and built a farm, was made on 80 acres near the Stony River in Alaska in 1979.

18. The WHO has some very specific disease code classifications, such as "hurt at opera", "bitten by orca", "burn due to water skis on fire", and "unspecified spacecraft accident injuring occupant".

19. During the Watergate investigation, the Nixon team offered to let a Democratic Senator listen to the 'Nixon tapes'. The Senator was hard of hearing and on pain medication.

20. When a child actor is cast in California, a trust fund, or Coogan account, is set up to store at least 15% of their earnings. This was after the parents of Jackie Coogan, a child star from some early Charlie Chaplin movies, squandered nearly all of his fortune before he reached adulthood.

A region (Rio Omerê Indigenous Territory) in Brazil is home to the remnants of two native tribes, consisting of four and five people, respectively, who “speak mutually unintelligible languages, but are linked by marriage,” as well as “an unknown man who lives alone and is thought the be the last survivor of a different tribe.”

22. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote letters with illustrations to his kids for Christmas, every year until his youngest was 14 years old.

23. The number of girls in India who drop out of school due to menstruation is 1 in 5 (20%).

24. Cheddar cheese wasn't the dominantly produced cheese in Britain until World War 2, when cheese factories were forced to produce Cheddar due to its high yield per liter of milk. This was necessary due to the introduction of rationing.

25. When Isaac Watts (English Christian minister) wrote: "Joy to the World", he didn't intend it to be about Christmas, but rather about Christ's promised return at the end of time.