Random Facts Generator

Charles Dickens’ father was imprisoned for unpaid debts when Dickens was just a boy. At the age of 12, Dickens was forced to leave school and work 10-hour long days at a warehouse for 6 shillings per day.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators of the Game of Thrones TV series had no prior experience in television and had only limited experience writing movie scripts. Their original pilot episode was so poorly received at test screenings that HBO demanded that they re-shoot 90% of it.

In Deep Blue's (chess-playing computer developed by IBM) first game against Garry Kasparov, the computer made a move that puzzled the Grandmaster so much, it made him believe the machine had superior intelligence. It threw Garry off his game, and ultimately cost him the match. The move was the result of a bug in Deep Blue's code.

The Manned Orbiting Laboratory was a United States Air Force project back during the Cold War. Its stated goal was to test the effectiveness of space-based reconnaissance. Its hidden agenda was to test the applications of an orbital weapons station. It would have also been used for global surveillance, including Americans. Luckily it was canceled to fund the Vietnam War.

The largest and most powerful power plant on Earth is the Three Gorges Dam in China. The controversial project which produces power for over 60 million people, caused multiple landslides, and even slowed down the Earth's rotation a fraction of a second.

The song "Red Red Wine" was written by Neil Diamond in 1967. The band UB40 covered it in 1983 in a light reggae style and it reached #1 on the Billboard 100. Diamond has stated that it is one of his favorite covers and he often performs the song in the UB40 style instead of the original version.

Gympie Gympie is an Australian shrub that is nicknamed the “Suicide Plant.” Its sting can last years and is so agonizing that people have been known to kill themselves after touching it.

Female navels were banned from American television from 1951 to 1983.

Christopher Nolan waited to make Dunkirk until he had earned the trust of a major studio to let him make it as a pure British film, but with an American budget. He said, "Hollywood studios are interested in films about Americans, and there were no Americans involved."

In 1963, a man escaped to West Berlin from East Berlin with a car that could drive under the barrier. Another man crossed the Berlin Wall on a tightrope the same year.