Some facts are so strange, unexpected, or oddly specific that they stick with you long after you’ve finished reading. Random Facts Mixtape Vol. 009 – 25 Facts For Long Scrolls brings together another collection of remarkable stories from history, science, pop culture, space, and human behavior. From ancient Roman slave collars and runaway guinea worms to Saturn’s impossibly thin rings and a World War II battle of fake camel dung, these facts are perfect for anyone who enjoys wandering down fascinating rabbit holes.
UN Annual Vote on Cuba
1. Since 1992 the UN General Assembly has annually condemned the United States embargo on Cuba as a violation of the UN Charter.
2. There is enough gold on Earth to cover the planet 13 inches deep, roughly halfway up a person’s leg; most gold, however, lies deep in the planet’s core, and tungsten isotope studies indicate that the vast majority of the gold now found at the surface came from the mantle after a meteorite bombardment about 3,900 million years ago.
3. While serving as governor of Tennessee, Andrew Johnson, later a US president, personally made an elegant suit and sent it to the governor of Kentucky, who had been a blacksmith in his youth; that Kentucky governor forged a shovel and tongs and sent them to Johnson.
4. Viggo Mortensen accepted the role of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings because his 11-year-old son loved the books; he performed his own stunts, insisted on using a real steel sword, and bought the two horses he rode and bonded with throughout the films.
5. During filming of Twister (1996), actors Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were temporarily blinded with “burnt retinas” after bright lamps used to make the sky look stormy caused the damage.
6. After her husband Martin Melcher died, Doris Day discovered he had depleted all of her money and had, without her consent, contracted her to star in the sitcom The Doris Day Show. She agreed to do the series reluctantly out of a sense of obligation, and the program experienced several sudden changes in cast and premise during its run.
7. When two writers are credited with an ampersand (for example, “Quentin Tarantino & Woody Allen”), it indicates they collaborated directly as a team; when credited with the word and (“Quentin Tarantino and Woody Allen”), it means they worked on the same screenplay independently of each other.
8. Guinea worms can be picked up by walking barefoot in stagnant water. They mature in the abdomen and then migrate through the body until it feels as if they are slowly burrowing under the skin. About a year after infection a blister forms and the worm emerges through the skin. The worm is then removed over the course of several weeks by winding it around a stick. They can reach lengths of up to a meter.
9. The Department of Homeland Security conducted an experiment to see whether government employees and contractors would use CDs and USB drives that were covertly dropped in the parking lots where they worked. They did so 60% of the time, and that figure rose to 90% when an official-looking logo was visible on the media.
10. In 1123, the people of Greenland asked King Sigurd of Norway to send them a bishop, and they included a polar bear as a gift to accompany their request.
Worst Airborne Food Outbreak
11. The largest in-flight food poisoning happened in 1975 on a Japanese Airlines flight headed to Denmark, when 197 passengers became ill after eating contaminated omelets. A shortage of Japanese/Danish translators led to Japanese-speaking restaurant staff from Copenhagen being recruited to serve as medical translators.
12. In ancient Rome, slaves wore iron collars with inscriptions comparable to modern dog collars; one reads “I have run away; hold me. When you shall have returned me to my master, Zoninus, you will receive a solidus.”
13. Saturn’s A and B rings, which are the most visually prominent, extend for hundreds of thousands of kilometers in width but are only about 5 to 15 meters and 10 to 30 meters thick, respectively.
14. A flight simulator called “SimCopter” became controversial after a designer hid an easter egg that spawned shirtless “himbos” (male bimbos) in Speedo trunks who hugged and kissed each other and appear in large numbers on certain dates, such as Friday the 13th. Their fluorescent nipples were rendered using a special mode normally reserved for fog-piercing runway landing lights, making them easy to see from long distances in bad weather. The easter egg caused hundreds of himbos to swarm around the helicopter, where rotor blades would slash them, and they then needed to be airlifted to the hospital, which allowed the player to earn easy money.
15. 35 restaurants in China were raided or investigated for dosing food with opium poppy to addict customers.
16. Female penguins that engage in prostitution copulate with unpaired males and remove a pebble from the male’s nest after copulation.
17. Triton, Neptune’s moon, is the coldest location recorded in the Solar System, with a temperature of -240C (-400F).
18. Paris has about 2.14 million residents and more than 44,000 restaurants, which works out to 48 people per restaurant.
19. Homing pigeons are frequently used to smuggle drugs across borders and into prisons. A single bird can carry over $3,000 worth of cocaine.
20. While filming Buried, Ryan Reynolds’ acting was so convincing that on several occasions the crew thought he was genuinely in distress and losing consciousness, so they rushed to remove the coffin lid to help him.
Why Chicago’s Nickname Exists
21. The nickname ‘Windy City’ for Chicago came from boastful politicians promoting the city to win the 1893 World’s Fair, not from its weather. Its average wind speed is 10.3 mph, which is not notably high compared with other American cities: Boston 12.4 mph and New York City 9.3 mph.
22. As Clark Kent, Superman adopts a slouched posture to appear several inches shorter, intentionally wears loose clothing to hide his physique, uses glasses that change his eye color, and alters the pitch of his voice.
23. The stegosaurus’ appearance made mating seem problematic: large plates rose along its back and a spiked tail added extra danger, and paleontologists still do not know exactly how two adults managed to mate without injuring one another.
24. During World War II in Africa, German tank crews would drive over camel droppings for luck. The Allies countered by planting land mines disguised as camel dung. When the Germans discovered this, they began running over dung that had already been trampled by tank tracks, and the Allies then made mines that looked like overrun dung.
25. Auschwitz ran a brothel, Block 24, where women prisoners were forced to have sex with selected male inmates as part of a reward system.
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