Random Revelations: Article #80- 30 Fascinatingly Uncommon Random Facts

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".

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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

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."

7. 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.

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

9. 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.

10. 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.

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

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

13. 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.

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

15. 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.

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'.

17. The actual name of "Shaggy" from Scooby-Doo is Norville Rogers.

18. Danny Devito did the voice of the Lorax in English, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.

19. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe Satan was cast down to earth on October 1, 1914, and that only 144,000 will enter Heaven. The rest of the righteous will be resurrected and enjoy life after death in a cleansed planet after Armageddon.

20. Men can develop postpartum depression, and it is linked to lower levels of testosterone after the birth of a baby.

Brandenn E. Bremmer was a musical prodigy who taught himself to read at 18 months and played the piano at the age of 3. He completed high school at the age of 10 and committed suicide at 14.

22. Since the death of Confucius in 479 B.C., all his descendants have been registered. With over 2 million registered descendants alive today, it is the largest family tree in the world.

23. In the Netherlands, peanut butter is called pindakaas, or "peanut cheese" because of the term "butter" being a protected term for foods that contain butter.

24. Mark Ruffalo was set to appear in the movie 'Signs' but had to drop out when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. His part went to Joaquin Phoenix. The brain tumor turned out to be benign. Following surgery, he suffered from a partial facial paralysis for a few weeks, eventually fully recovering.

25. The U.S. Nuclear System relies on 8-inch Floppy Disks.