- Oh, hey!
Fact time.
Let's do it.
Here are 50 amazing facts to blow your mind.
(glass shattering)
Actor Sir Christopher Lee,
who played Saruman in the Lord of the Rings films,
read the book trilogy every year
from when it was published until his death in 2015.
Harriet Tubman once pretended to read a newspaper
on a train to avoid her former master from recognizing her.
The former master knew Tubman was illiterate
and ignored the black woman reading on the train
without knowing it was her.
On September 21st, 1939,
radio station WJSV in Washington, DC,
recorded the entire 19-hours broadcast
for the National Archives.
This gave the National Archives a complete artifact
from the Golden Age of Radio.
The recording is available to listen to
for free on the internet.
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton
and his wife Jordan rent out a hotel every year
to let parents of children with disabilities
have a paid date night.
Two high schools in Seattle, Washington,
delayed their start times one hour each
so that students could sleep in longer.
They found that the students were more attentive
and performed better with only an extra half-hour of sleep.
Wild Bill Hickok usually sat in a chair
with his back against the wall in establishments
so that he could see the entrance.
One night while he was playing poker,
the only seat that was available at the table
faced away from the entrance.
He asked another player if he could switch seats twice,
but the man refused.
When Hickok ended up sitting in the seat,
a disgruntled card player from a previous night
entered the saloon and ended Hickok's life.
Because wasabi is so difficult to grow,
many restaurants outside of Japan
serve a mixture of horseradish, mustard,
and food coloring to imitate it.
In 2004, French police discovered a fully equipped
movie theater in the Catacombs of Paris.
They found a large cinema screen,
seats for an audience, projection equipment,
film reels of many different movies,
and even a fully stocked bar.
When rapper Eminem was being sentenced
for a weapons charge in 2001,
the judge said to him, "Mr. Mathers,
"now's the time for you to please stand up."
Speaking of Eminem, in 2010 he had a high score
of 465,800 on the arcade game Donkey Kong.
This would have placed him in the top 30 scores
in the world at the time.
There's a Japanese work philosophy called kaizen,
which means finding better methods to complete a task
instead of doing it the same way.
Soldiers from the Nebraska National Army Guard
used Chinook helicopters to drop bales of hay
for cattle that were stranded from a flood.
Khuk Khi Kai was an infamous prison in Thailand
during the 1800s that translated to Bird Drop Prison.
The first floor contained prisoners,
while the second floor was porous
and contained chickens that would poop on the prisoners.
This was used as a torture method on the prisoners,
who had to endure the smell and slime of the poop.
According to Title 27, Section 5.22
of the United States Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms code,
vodka must be distilled or treated until it's without
distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color.
If it does not comply with any of these rules,
then it's not considered vodka.
The retail store Target's main corporation in Minnesota
has a state-of-the-art forensics laboratory
that not only catches shoplifters,
but also helps with law enforcement agencies
during investigations free of charge.
Between 33,000 and 55,000 Canadian men
served in the Union army while a few hundred of them
served in the Confederate army during the U.S. Civil War.
At least 29 Canadian men were awarded the Medal of Honor.
During and after the U.S. Civil War,
Canada refused to return about 15,000 Americans
who deserted or dodged the draft.
Ninjas in Japan during the 17th and 18th centuries
avoided eating pungent food such as garlic or leeks
in order to have no body odor.
This was due to the fear of being sniffed out
by the enemy while trying to remain undetected.
On December 4th, 1956, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis,
Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash recorded an impromptu
jam session at Sun Records Studios in Memphis, Tennessee.
This historic moment in rock 'n' roll
was called the Million-Dollar Quartet.
While singer Diana Ross was recording
the hit song I'm Coming Out,
she didn't know that coming out
meant revealing someone was gay.
After she discovered the meaning of the term,
Ross broke out in tears and thought that songwriter
Nile Rodgers was trying to destroy her career.
It's officially forbidden to wager either $69, 666, 14, 88,
or $1,488 on the television game show Jeopardy!
One of the few historically accurate accounts of Pocahontas
is of a time when she did cartwheels completely naked
to provoke European settlers in a stockade.
NFL legend Jerry Rice started playing football
in his sophomore year of high school
after the principal caught him misbehaving one day.
Rice sprinted away so fast that the principal
told the football coach of the student's speed
and offered him a spot on the team.
Norway has introduced digital driving licenses
that people can download from an app on their smartphones.
The Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest
manmade structure in the world for 3,871 years,
until the Lincoln Cathedral in the United Kingdom
was built in 1311.
Deep Springs College is an all-male two-year college
that's located on a cattle ranch outside of Death Valley.
Only 15 students are admitted per year,
and the college offers free tuition
as well as free room and board.
However, they are required to work
20 hours a week on the ranch.
Alexandre Dumas, who wrote The Three Musketeers,
was the son of the first French black general,
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas.
He was the highest-ranking black military officer
in history until the year 1975.
According to sociologist Reuben J. Thomas
from the University of New Mexico,
people who participate in online dating
are more likely to settle down
with someone from a different race, religion,
class, or educational background.
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt's daughter Alice
chewed gum, played poker, and smoked cigarettes.
She also had a pet garter snake
that she would keep in her pocketbook
and take out at unexpected times.
Native American Joseph Medicine Crow
became a war chief during World War II
by unlocking the four achievements necessary to do so.
These achievements are leading
a successful war party on a raid,
capturing an enemy's weapon,
touch an enemy without killing him,
and stealing an enemy's horse.
In 2007, comedian Jon Lovitz slammed
fellow comedian Andy Dick's head into a bar
at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles.
In 1969, actor Samuel L. Jackson was expelled
from Morehouse College for locking the board members
in a building for two days in protest.
One of those board members
was Martin Luther King Jr.'s father, Martin Luther King Sr.
Having a dream that you're still in school
even though you graduated years ago
is one of the top 10 most common dreams in the world.
Actor Will Friedle from the show Boy Meets World
suffers from an anxiety disorder
that forced him to stop acting onscreen.
He became a voice actor for cartoons
such as Batman Beyond and Kim Possible.
In 2015, he was comfortable to get
in front of the camera again for the show Girl Meets World.
Most ground cinnamon in international commerce
is not actually true cinnamon.
It comes from the related species called cassia.
Indonesia and China are responsible for producing
most of the world's true cinnamon.
According to Dr. Philip Stephens from Durham University,
it would take at least 500 humans to repopulate the Earth
after a mass extinction event
in order to prevent inbreeding.
Eating 100 grams of red ants provides
14 grams of protein and 48 grams of calcium.
This amount of ants is also under 100 calories,
so they're low in carbs.
It's possible to eat stinkbugs
if you can get past the smell.
They add an apple flavor to sauces
and are a great source of iodine.
Legendary actors Henry Fonda and James Stewart
were best friends even though
they had opposing political views.
Fonda was a Democrat, while Stewart was a Republican,
and one night they got into a fight from a heated debate.
They decided to never argue again about politics,
and instead spent their time pranking each other
and building model airplanes.
After artist Frida Kahlo discovered
that her husband had cheated on her,
she found the woman he cheated with
and slept with her for revenge.
Japanese toilet company Toto created a green motorcycle
called the Toilet Bike Neo that runs on biogas
that are produced from livestock waste.
The seat of the three-wheeled motorcycle is a toilet,
and it has a 250cc engine.
Sorry to disappoint you, but there are currently no plans
to commercially produce the Toilet Bike Neo.
Dolphins are actually born with mustaches
that help them locate and feel their mother.
But after about a week they fall off
because of the depilatory process.
After the film The Taking of Pehlam 123
was released in 1974,
New York City Transit Authority decided to not have
any trains leave Pelham Bay Park at 1:23.
This is a rule that they still enforce today
by subway dispatches.
Crocodiles are capable of surviving
without food for up to three years,
because they're extremely efficient
at storing energy in their bodies.
In 2006, a railway switchman named Truman Duncan
fell off of a moving train car and fell underneath it.
He was cut in half by the steel wheels
but remained conscious and even calm enough to call 911.
He ended up surviving but lost his legs, pelvis, and kidney.
Bananas are curved because they reach for sunlight
as they grow due to a process called negative geotropism.
The Beatles were all under 30 years old
by the time they broke up the band.
The youngest was George Harrison at 27 years old,
and the oldest was Ringo Starr at 29.
In 2019, a Mexican judge granted two people
the right to recreational cocaine use.
The U.S. military developed a new precision missile
that uses blades instead of explosives to destroy a target.
This is intended to avoid any civilian casualties
after it's launched from a drone.
The small town of Severance, Colorado,
had a ban on snowball fights
until a nine-year-old boy named Dane Best
persuaded the town board to lift the ban in 2018.
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