Random Fact Sheet #82 – 38 Facts to Get Your Brain Going

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1Prescription drugs

Prescription drugs

The United States, Canada, and New Zealand are the only 3 countries in the world that allow prescription drugs to be directly advertised to the general public.


2. President Franklin Pierce didn't swear his oath of office on a Bible. Weeks after his election, Pierce was involved in a train accident, in which he witnessed his son die before his eyes. He didn’t take the oath on a Bible because he believed his son’s death was God’s judgment for his campaigning.


3. Asian elephants are more closely related to Wooly Mammoths than they are to African Elephants.


4. The New Zealand badminton team were called the "Black Cocks". The International Badminton Federation (IBF) found the name hard to swallow and made them change it.


5. A skinny person can actually eat more food than an obese person. While it runs counter to logic, obese people have more fat in their midsection and around their organs. A skinny person lacks this which allows their stomachs to expand further. This is why many competitive eaters are so skinny.


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6The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is the only fantasy film in history to have ever won the Best Picture Oscar and holds the distinction of sweeping the highest number of nominations, with 11 out of 11 wins.


7. Cadbury creme eggs are just filled with melted fondant.


8. The Chevy Nova actually sold well in Latin countries and poor sales stories due to the "No Va"/"No Go" translation is just an urban myth.


9. The USS Constitution is a wooden frigate which was first launched in 1797 and is still active for ceremonial and educational purposes. It is the only active ship in the U.S. Navy fleet to have sunk an enemy vessel in combat.


10. Van Morrison purposefully recorded a whole album with really low effort songs to get out of a contract in the 60s, including gems like "Want A Danish?" and "Ring Worm".


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11Cyrano de Bergerac

Cyrano de Bergerac

Cyrano de Bergerac in the 1600s wrote about using rocket power to get to the Moon and talking earrings (headphones) used to educate children.


12. Martin Luther King, Jr., was actually born Michael King, Jr. His father, also a minister, changed his and his son's name to Martin Luther when he was five, after the famed Church Reformer.


13. The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker has been believed to be extinct since the early 1900's. In 1932, however, in an attempt to refute these claims, a Louisiana state legislator, and an attorney shot and killed one of the last of the birds and brought the remains to their local wildlife office.


14. King Herod of Judea (73/74 B.C.E. – 4 B.C.E.) desired a certain maiden and she killed herself to avoid marrying him. He later went on to preserve her body in honey for 7 years amid rumors of necrophilia.


15. When Thomas Bopp discovered the Comet Hale-Boop through a friend's telescope in 1995, he notified officials via telegram. The director later laughed and stated, "Nobody sends telegrams anymore, by the time that telegram got here, Alan Hale had already e-mailed us three times with updated coordinates."


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16Ghost Blimp

Ghost Blimp

In 1942, a ghost blimp floated into Daly City, California with all parachutes and working equipment on board, but had no sign of the crew.


17. There is a pub named Stiftskeller St. Peter in Austria that has been fully operational since 803 A.D.


18. When Gandhi was still in South Africa, he didn't fight for equality of races but rather that Indians were superior to blacks and that they deserved better treatment.


19. The US government has over one billion cubic meters of helium stored in a strategic reserve in Texas. The reserve was started in the 1920s and was originally intended for airships but was later used as a coolant for the space program.


20. In 2015, Ireland's GDP had a massive 26% spike, all because Apple moved it's intellectual property assets into Ireland for tax purposes.


21Bars

Bars

Bars play loud music because it is good for their bottom line. Loud music makes customers drink faster and in greater quantities.


22. In a 1964 survey about civil rights, 63% of Americans said the protestors were pushing too fast, 58% said they were violent, and 58% said they were hurting their own cause.


23. The Brand Killer is an augmented reality headset that detects and blocks advertisements.


24. The phrase hocus pocus originated in the Middle Ages from the Latin phrase "hoc est corpus meum" (this is my body) during the sacrament of communion. Those who didn't know Latin thought they were saying hocus pocus.


25. Using sheep as subjects for Huntington's disease research, scientists discovered they are able to recognize human faces, even from photographs. Upon seeing a photograph of its handler for the first time (the sheep had never seen an image of this person before), the sheep did a 'double take'.

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