Some facts are perfect for the quiet hours when curiosity refuses to let you sleep. This mixtape brings together 50 fascinating stories, strange discoveries, and unexpected pieces of trivia that are sure to send night owls down a few more rabbit holes.
OSS Simple Sabotage Manual
1. In 1944, the OSS, which was a predecessor of the CIA, published a field manual on simple sabotage that was meant for ordinary people to use. The manual offered advice such as misplacing tools, igniting small fires, and even delaying work by raising unrelated topics in meetings.
2. In 1792, 400,000 British citizens stopped using sugar to protest slavery, even though the UK population was only 6 million at the time.
3. San Francisco experienced a bubonic plague outbreak in 1900-1904 that caused 119 deaths. Although city officials moved quickly to contain it, California Governor Henry Gage hid it to protect the powerful railroads and other businesses. Some newspapers assisted by slandering the city health commissioner.
4. Green screens are green because that color does not match any natural skin tone of the actor, so no part of the actor will be accidentally removed during editing.
5. On January 3, 2005, FOX launched a reality show called “Who’s Your Daddy?”. It begins with an orphan who is introduced to eight men and tries to determine which one is truly her father. If she is correct, she wins the cash prize. If she is wrong, the “dad” who has tricked her takes the money.
6. Scientists examined women’s walking patterns and determined that they could tell with 81.25% accuracy whether a woman had recently had a vaginal orgasm just by watching her hips move as she walked. In the 2008 study, the researchers recorded women walking in a natural environment and later determined their orgasm history through interviews and questionnaires. They assessed particular aspects of pelvic and upper-body motion in the walking patterns. After comparing those movement patterns with the women’s reported sexual histories, they found a strong link between certain relaxed, fluid gait traits and recent vaginal orgasm.
7. Mattiedna Johnson was born to Mississippi sharecroppers in 1918. She used methods she learned on her childhood farm, such as making butter, jam, and soap, to collect and preserve molds for research. Her work later contributed to the development of drugs used to combat scarlet fever.
8. Zero stroke appeared during the German hyperinflation of the early 1920s and was described as an alleged mental disorder in which affected people compulsively write endless strings of zeros and may make extravagant claims, such as being ten billion years old or having forty trillion children.
9. Vin Diesel used his bargaining ability to obtain the rights to the Riddick franchise from Universal Studios. He did this by exchanging his cameo role in “Tokyo Drift” for complete control of the franchise. Because “Riddick 2” performed poorly, Diesel saw its promise and later made “Riddick 3” with a more practical budget, which became a success for him.
10. The “Women Are Wonderful” effect refers to the tendency for people to link more favorable qualities with women than with men. Although this pattern appears in both genders, women’s in-group bias is four times higher than men’s.
Argentina Escape Ending
11. In the novel “Hannibal,” Clarice Starling and Dr. Lecter flee together and become lovers in Argentina. Anthony Hopkins liked the ending better.
12. For his actions during the Battle of the Bulge, Melvin E. Biddle received the Medal of Honor from President Truman on October 30, 1945. While giving the medal, Truman whispered: “People don’t believe me when I tell them that I’d rather have one of these than be President.”
13. During a hunting trip, Alice In Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell forgot that November had only 30 days, so he missed a scheduled performance on December 1st. The next day, Columbia records gave him a calendar as a gift.
14. Ariel 1, the first British satellite launched in 1962, stayed in orbit for only 76 days before an American nuclear explosion test in space damaged it.
15. Pharmaceutical company Aventis halted production of Eflornithine, a cure for sleeping sickness and a lifesaving drug for millions of Africans, between 1995-2001 because it was not profitable enough. Instead, the product was sold in the west as women’s facial hair removal cream.
16. In 1915, Charlie Chaplin was paid $10,000 each week to appear in his films.
17. In 2002, a woman was denied public assistance because a DNA test showed that her children were not hers. An attorney helped her demonstrate that she had absorbed her twin in the womb, giving her two sets of DNA and meaning her unborn twin was possibly the biological mother of her children.
18. “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut” would have received an NC-17 rating if the movie had included more than 400 swear words. They deliberately used only 399 swear words.
19. In 1952, the Pan-American Coffee Bureau introduced the phrase “coffee break” and launched a $2 million advertising campaign saying that a “coffee break” would give workers “a needed moment of relaxation along with a caffeine jolt.”
20. English scientist Henry Cavendish predicted several major scientific laws, including results later linked to Ohm’s Law, Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressures, and Charles’s Law, years before others formally published them. Cavendish seldom published his results or discussed them with other scientists, mostly because of his extreme shyness and reclusive nature. After historians reviewed his notebooks long after his death, they realized that he had made many of these discoveries first.
Hidden Nazi Weather Base
21. The only known armed Nazi military operation on North American soil happened in October of 1943, when a German U-boat team installed Weather Station Kurt in Newfoundland. It was found by accident in 1977.
22. In 2013, a medical receptionist took the phrase “shooting some b-ball outside of the school” to mean “shooting people outside of the school” on a teen patient’s voicemail message, which led to county-wide school lockdowns.
23. A 9-year-old girl in Australia who had a liver transplant does not need lifelong immunosuppressants because her blood type changed on its own from O negative to O positive to match the donor’s liver.
24. In 1991, a plane crashed after an inspector on the afternoon shift began repairs by removing 30 screws but did not relay the information during the shift change. The plane then dropped from a height of 3 km, killing everyone on board.
25. While filming “Batman Begins,” a drunk driver hit the Batmobile because he believed it was an alien spacecraft. “This poor drunken guy who didn’t have a license. [He] said he got so panicked when he saw the car that he thought aliens were landing,” Christian Bale explained.
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