Random Revelations: Article #36 – 44 Fantastic Random Facts

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1Harry Potter book series

Harry Potter book series

The most commonly used sentence in the Harry Potter book series was: "Nothing happened."; for The Hunger Games series it was: "My name is Katniss Everdeen.", and for the Twilight series, it was: "I sighed."


2. In Japan, avid golfers buy insurance to protect themselves on the course. They purchase it because if they get a hole-in-one, they have to buy gifts and drinks for their friends. The policy covers them for a party worth up to $4,900.


3. The researcher who popularised the idea of "Alpha" and "Beta" members of wolf packs has spent the rest of his career trying to convince everyone he was wrong.


4. John Wayne Gacy's former attorney, Sam Amirante, who heard Gacy's original confession to over 30 murders, later went on to author the Missing Child Recovery Act of 1984 which removed the 72-hour waiting period to begin the search for a missing child.


5. The Chernobyl disaster released approximately 400 times more radioactive fallout than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.


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6Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

The mystery novelist Agatha Christie posthumously saved a girl's life by having written in one of her stories about a rare poison. That same poison was killing this girl in real life, and the doctors had no clue, but a nurse happened to be reading that story at the time.


7. A thief named Matthew Ryan Hahn stole a safe that contained evidence of the sexual abuse of a child. He risked life imprisonment to turn in the memory card so police could "remove this animal from the streets".


8. A woman named Claire Wiegand Beckmann, was at a garage sale when she decided on buying an old card table. After bargaining the price down to $25, she took it. She later found out that it was one of 6 tables left in the world by furniture makers John Seymour & Son. It later sold at an auction for $541,000.


9. One of the oldest statues in Bern, Switzerland is of a guy eating babies, and nobody really knows why it's there.


10. Knowing he was the slowest competitor, Australian speed skater Steven Bradbury won gold at the 2002 Winter Olympics by cruising behind and simply avoiding group crashes in both the semifinal and final.


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11Calanolide A

Calanolide A

An explorer once found a compound, Calanolide A, in certain trees in the Malaysian rainforest. Researchers found out that it has anti-HIV properties, but they couldn’t find another sample for nine years as almost all the tree of that species had been cut down for firewood and building material.


12. While filming the movie Buried, Ryan Reynolds' acting was so good that on several occasions, the crew thought he was really in distress and losing consciousness so they rushed to remove the lid of the coffin to help him.


13. An '&' between two writers for a movie (e.g. "Quentin Tarantino & Woody Allen") means the writers worked together on the script as a team, while an 'and' ("Quentin Tarantino and Woody Allen") means they worked on the same script independently.


14. A UFC fan happened to get fighter Rory MacDonald's old cell phone number and was selecting Rory's walk out music via text messages without Rory or the UFC finding out for years.


15. In Japan, '39' is common text speak for 'thank you', due to how 3 (san) and 9 (kyu) sound when spoken out loud.


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16Banana candy

Banana candy

Banana candy doesn't taste like a banana because the flavoring was invented while an old species of banana was popular, the Gros Michel, which tastes different to the currently popular banana, the Cavendish. Panama disease wiped out the Gros Michel but the artificial flavor never changed.


17. Musician and peace advocate John Lennon often beat his girlfriends and wives, almost killed a man for calling him gay. He was emotionally abusive towards his son and mocked disabled people.


18. Gaming computers heat a room just as efficiently as a space heater does.


19. Kathryn Beaumont was 13-15 years old when she voiced Alice and Wendy in the original 1950s animated Disney films Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953). She returned 50 years later to voice the same characters in 2002 for Kingdom Hearts at the age of 64.


20. Halle Berry was the first woman to collect her Worst Actress award in person at the Razzie Awards, saying "I want to thank Warner Bros. for casting me in this piece-of-sh*t, god-awful movie."


21DNA damage

DNA damage

Microwaves are "non-ionising" radiation, meaning they are too low-energy to damage DNA. So your microwave could give you a nasty burn (enough to kill you, even), but only in the same manner as your oven.


22. It's A Wonderful Life movie was a box office flop that caused the sale of its production company. It only became popular after the copyright holders forgot to file for a renewal and TV stations could play it all day and night without paying for it.


23. Asians are more likely to die from heart failure on the 4th of the month than they are any other day of the month (7.3% death rate above expected), due to increased stress from Tetraphobia (their cultural fear of the number 4). This has been termed the Baskerville effect.


24. Seattle's first openly-gay bar, Shelly's Leg, was founded using settlement money after Shelly, a dancer, lost her leg in a glitter cannon accident at a Bastille Day parade.


25. When Barry Allen "died" in the DC Comics, Marvel introduced an amnesiac speedster with blonde hair and red suit who can't remember his name but knows it sounds like "Buried Alien". He was named the "fastest man alive" in his first appearance.

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