Random Fact Sheet #85 – 40 Facts That Will Give You a New Perspective

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1Down syndrome

Down syndrome

At 40, women's chance of conceiving a child with Down syndrome is one in 100; at 45 it's one in 30.


2. Before the Miss USA beauty pageant, there existed a "Mrs America" which chose an annual best wife, based on cooking, sewing, ironing skills, as well as personality and looks


3. The phrase "o'clock" is short for "of the clock" and comes from a time when people had to specify that their time came from a clock instead of a sundial or other device.


4. The tallest man of all time was Robert Wadlow at 2.72m or 8 ft 11. He was asked if it bothers him that people stare, and he answered: "No, I just overlook them."


5. 358 million years ago Earth was in the Carboniferous period. During that age oxygen levels were 15% higher than today thanks to the abundance of plant life, which meant scorpions were the size of dogs, a caterpillar was the size of an anaconda and dragonflies were the size of eagles.


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6Hidden message

Hidden message

Archeologists have discovered a hidden message on a 2,600-year-old piece of pottery. The message was written in ancient Hebrew and it says "If there is any wine, send it."


7. AA, South Africa's equivalent of AAA, will send armed guards to your location in the event of a car break down.


8. The Bermuda Triangle isn't really some mysterious area of unknown dangers. In fact, it's one of the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world. Most of the mysterious "incidents" were found to be spurious, inaccurately reported, or embellished by later authors.


9. In comics, the superhero Black Panther predates the founding of the Black Panther Party, and Marvel even changed the name for a while to "Black Leopard" in order to avoid confusion.


10. The current CEO’s of Microsoft, Adobe, and MasterCard all went to the same high school in India (Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet).


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11Self-inflicted caesarian section

Self-inflicted caesarian section

In 2000, a pregnant woman in a remote village in Mexico experienced 12 hours of continous pain. Her solution was to drink three glasses of hard liquor and then give herself a Caesarean section with a kitchen knife. The mother and child both lived. She had no medical training.


12. In 1987, a radiotherapy source containing Caesium-137 was stolen from an abandoned hospital in Brazil to be sold for scrap. The lead capsule was opened and the scrapyard owner's family members and friends played with the glowing material. The radioactive material killed 4 people.


13. Saburō Sakai, a Japanese World War 2 fighter ace, was shot through his goggle by a turret gunner. The 7.62 mm bullet passed through his brain, blinding one eye and paralyzing one side of his body. Despite this, he landed his plane and returned to battle a year later.


14. Some deaf people with schizophrenia don’t experience the common symptom of hearing voices, but rather, they see visual hallucinations of disembodied hands or lips making words.


15. Since the Federal Witness Protection Program was started in 1971, not one of the 8,500 witnesses or the 9,900 family members participating have been harmed. According to Gerald Shur, its creator, 95% of those who enter the program are "what we call criminals".


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16Korean speech levels

Korean speech levels

Korean has 7 speech levels, each with different verb endings and vocab., reflecting formality/politeness.The highest, used for talking to royalty, is archaic but still used in historical dramas.The hagache level is now rarer, mostly used in novels. Middle management/bureaucrats sometimes use haoche.


17. The parents of murder victim Dee Dee Blanchard flushed her ashes down the toilet, saying she "got what she deserved." Blanchard was murdered in 2015 by her daughter Gypsy Rose who had endured years of unnecessary medical treatments and surgeries due to her mother's Munchausen by proxy.


18. Trey Parker and Matt Stone lost the Oscar for Best Song to Phil Collins in 1999. As a result, they brutally satirized him in the episode “Timmy 2000.” They have him sing a parody of “You’ll Be In My Heart,” get booed off stage and then had his Oscar shoved up his a*s.


19. American journalist Wolf Blitzer did so poorly on Celebrity Jeopardy that he was negative $4,600 at one point and had to be bailed out by the show by giving him $1000.


20. In a 2004 episode of Sesame Street, Cookie Monster revealed that before he started eating cookies his name was Sid.


21Gobekli Tepe

Gobekli Tepe

The ancient city of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey built in 10,000 B.C., is twice as old as Stonehenge, and completely disrupts our ideas of human development and agriculture.


22. Between the 14th-19th centuries, due to their early invention and love of ceramics, no glass was produced in China. Due to this, they were left behind in the progression of sciences and didn’t have things like glass windows and mirrors.


23. Richard Wagner, the 19th-century opera composer, once faked a homosexual attraction to a gay German king in order to get money from him.


24. South Korea has the fastest global average internet connection speed while the United States ranks 10th.


25. The reason why Cashews are sold without shells is that the shells are poisonous. The Cashew tree is in the same family of plants as Poison Ivy. Eating the shell would cause a similar reaction to eating a Poison Ivy plant.

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