1Robert Downey Jr.
Robert Downey Jr. was paid $10 million for only 8 minutes of screen time in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’. He got paid over $1 million per minute he’s in the movie.
2. Police are called to Walmart stores in the USA 3-4 times as often as they are to other big-box retailers like Target. About 25% of all arrests in St. Petersburg, Florida, and 92% of larceny calls in Granite Falls, North Carolina are attributed to single Walmart locations in each city.
3. As they became domesticated (in a remarkably short time), dogs evolved specific muscles that allowed them to raise their inner eyebrows to manipulate human emotions. Dogs who made the facial movement enabled by these muscles are more likely to be adopted from a shelter than those who don't.
4. Serena Williams, often considered to be one of the greatest tennis players of all-time, voiced Ming the Prison Guard on “Avatar: The Last Airbender”, after she said it was her “favorite show.”
5. After Beatles fired drummer Pete Best in favor of Ringo Starr, he formed a new band and released the album: “Best of the Beatles”, a play on his own name. This led to disappointment from fans who bought the album without reading the tracklisting.
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6Full Moon Halloween
Despite its association with the supernatural, a full moon rarely occurs on Halloween. This once in a blood moon event falls on Halloween night of 2020. The last time this happened was in 2001.
7. Early in his career, H.B. Reese, inventor of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, created two nearly identical candy bars. The "Lizzie Bar" was named after his oldest daughter and the "Johnny Bar" was named after his son. The only difference between the two was that the Johnny Bar had nuts.
8. The number of nuclear weapons in the world is actually down from 70,000 in 1986 to around 14,000 today.
9. Horses hide pain very well, almost too well, due to their nature as range prey that historically wouldn’t show weakness to their predators.
10. Fran Drescher’s stalker changed how sitcoms were made. To stop him from sneaking into the studio audience of The Nanny, they began to cast the audience from extras. Good/loud laughers were picked in casting, making the show feel funnier to home audiences. This became an industry standard.
11Bull Moose
When a French scientist wrote that American wildlife was physically inferior to European wildlife, Thomas Jefferson was so offended that he got a group of soldiers to find and send the scientist a bull moose from New Hampshire to prove the “stature and majesty of American quadrupeds.”
12. Your skin gets sunburned because your skin cells put up a protein flag on their surface that tells your white blood cells to come kill them so that they don't become cancerous. So they basically put a hit out on themselves.
13. The author of Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, helped develop several Nickelodeon shows such as “Little Bear” and “Clarissa Explains It All.” She was also the head writer for Scholastic’s “Clifford's Puppy Days.”
14. When Clark Gable discovered the studio facilities for filming ‘Gone with the Wind’ were segregated, he threatened to walk out of production until the segregation signs were taken down.
15. American physicist John Bardeen is the only man to have received 2 Nobel Prizes in Physics. While receiving his first Nobel Prize, the King of Sweden asked him: “why did he bring just one of his 3 kids?” He replied: “I’ll bring them all for the next time.” He kept his promise.
16Aglaonice of Thessaly
Aglaonice of Thessaly was an ancient Greek sorceress who was part of a coven of witches known for their ability to “draw down the moon.” In reality, Aglaonice and her female acolytes were likely accomplished astronomers who were able to predict lunar eclipses.
17. Rudolph Hass, the man who grew and patented the original Hass avocado tree, didn’t make very much money despite its success as most people bought one single tree and then grew vast orchards from cuttings. He only made $5000 from his patent and remained a postman his entire life.
18. The optimal recovery position post-exercise is hands on knees, rather than hands on head. The results of a study indicated that the hands on knee posture significantly improved heart rate recovery, tidal volume, and carbon dioxide elimination in comparison with the hands on head posture.
19. Betty Crocker was never a real person. She was created for a Gold Medal Flour ad in 1921. Shortly after the company decided to use the character to answer all the baking and cooking questions received by mail, as a woman was a more trusted source of baking information than an all-male staff.
20. American actor Danny DeVito’s short stature, 4 feet 10 inches, is the result of Fairbank’s disease, a rare genetic disorder that affects bone growth.
21Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock was so afraid of Psycho being spoiled ahead of time that he bought up as many copies of the original novel as possible. He also insisted that cinemas (for the first time) schedule screening times, sell tickets for those screenings, and not let anyone in after the film started.
22. Iceland was extensively forested before the first humans settled there. But within 500 years of their arrival, 95% of woodlands had been cut down, leading to soil erosion, crop failure, and the eventual abandonment of many farms.
23. A pigeon named Gustav carried the first word of the Normandy invasion back to the British mainland during World War 2, as the fleet underwent radio silence at that time. He flew 150 miles in 5 hours 16 minutes. He was awarded the Dickin Medal for bravery. He died after the war after he was accidentally stepped on.
24. During a live performance in 1965, The Kinks guitarist Dave Davies asked drummer Mick Avory “Why don’t you get your c*ck out and play the snare with it? It’ll probably sound better.” In response, Avory knocked Davies unconscious with a cymbal and then fled the venue, thinking he’d killed him.
25. ‘Umarells’ is a term used in Italy used to describe old men, who watch over construction sites with their hands behind their backs, offering unwanted advice.
