Boring facts don’t make it into this mixtape. These 50 fascinating stories, unexpected discoveries, and unbelievable moments prove that reality is often far stranger and far more entertaining than fiction.
Hidden Dice Swallower
1. In 18th-century England, gambling dens employed people whose task was to swallow the dice if the police raided them.
2. Sir Robert Watson-Watt, the inventor of RADAR, was caught speeding with a RADAR gun and reportedly said, “‘My God if I’d known what they were going to do with it, I’d have never have invented it!”
3. Director Tobe Hooper hoped that by suggesting much of the violence off-screen and restricting foul language, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre would get a “PG” rating. The Rating Board demanded no less than an “R” rating based on the story alone, and the British censors flatly rejected the film.
4. In 1995, producers for Striptease and G.I. Jane began a bidding war to determine who could get Demi Moore in front of the camera first. The Striptease team prevailed, and to secure her, they gave her $12.5 million, more money than any other woman in Hollywood had ever been offered at the time.
5. The Berlin Wall came down by accident. East Germans had intended to open the border gradually and announced it at a press conference without a plan. When a reporter asked when it would be opened, the party official wrongly said “Immediately, without delay,” which set off a rush to the wall.
6. Domestication is very different from taming. Although you can tame many wild animals so they do not attack you, domestication means genetic changes inside the species.
7. Jessica Alba was told by “Fantastic Four” director Tim Story that her crying did not look pretty enough and that “We can CGI the tears in.”
8. Thomas Linley was called “the English Mozart.” Mozart described him as “a true genius” and said, “he would have been one of the greatest.” He drowned in a lake at age 22, and most of his compositions were lost or burned in a fire.
9. German physicist Max Planck was advised by German physicist Philipp von Jolly not to study physics because almost everything had already been discovered. Planck answered that he did not want to find anything new and only wanted to learn the basics. He later developed quantum theory and won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
10. Mud Dauber Wasps reproduce by constructing tubular nests from mud, then leaving to collect spiders, paralyzing them, and sealing them inside the nest with an egg. The offspring then eat the paralyzed spiders when it hatches.
Disney Land Acquisitions
11. Walt Disney set up several fictitious companies, including M.T. Lott Real Estate, to quietly buy land in Florida during the 1960s. This let him obtain the property that would later become Disney World without drawing attention and while keeping land prices down. The names of those original companies appear on the shop windows along Main Street in Disney World.
12. In October 2008, Michael and Amanda Stacey found a winning £30,000 National Lottery ticket on the floor of a Co-op store in England after another woman, Dorothy McDonagh, dropped it. The couple claimed the prize, used about half of it to pay off debts, and regarded the money as luck until records helped identify the claim. McDonagh showed she had purchased the ticket because she kept the receipt, and a court later required the Staceys to give half the money back to her while police froze the remainder. In 2009, both were given 11-month suspended sentences for fraud.
13. In 1631, nearly all copies of the King James Bible were recalled and burned because of a small typo. The Seventh Commandment said, “Thou shalt commit adultery”. It became known as the “Wicked Bible” or the “Sinners’ Bible”.
14. In 2003, two Australian teenagers spent 22 hours in a tree above rising floodwaters after a crocodile killed their friend and showed his body to them. Before helicopters rescued them, the 13-foot crocodile followed them in their tree through the night and most of the next morning.
15. The serial killer Bela Kiss liked to pickle people in barrels kept in his basement. Someone discovered this, but they could not catch him because he was fighting in World War 1. By the time they found his trail, he had vanished and left a dead man in his hospital bed. He reportedly joined the French Foreign Legion and deserted that as well, except for one possible sighting as a janitor in New York. The janitor disappeared before anyone could verify it.
16. Warner Bros. invested about $30 million in developing “Superman Lives,” a Tim Burton project that was supposed to star Nicolas Cage, before the studio ultimately abandoned it in 1998. The film fell apart after years of rewrites and creative clashes, with Burton naming producer Jon Peters as a key reason the process became impossible to manage.
17. On his 20th birthday, comedian Bill Murray made a joke about carrying two bombs in his luggage but was instead caught smuggling 10 pounds of marijuana. He was convicted and sentenced to probation.
18. American physicist Richard Feynman’s last words before dying were “I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring.”
19. In 2008, Chinese authorities were confronted with a worsening crisis after baby formula tainted with melamine made tens of thousands of infants sick. Later reports showed that complaints about the contaminated formula had come up before the Beijing Olympics, but the scandal was not made public until after the Games ended. By that time, about 54,000 babies had been hospitalized, and at least six had died from illnesses tied to the contaminated milk products.
20. In “New X-Men #118,” the word “sex” is concealed in the artwork on every page of the issue.
Villain Casting Choice
21. In the film Labyrinth, Jareth the Goblin King was first intended to be a puppet creature like his goblin subjects, but Jim Henson wanted a major star. He nearly chose Sting, Prince, Mick Jagger, and Michael Jackson, but in the end decided David Bowie fit the character best.
22. Hitler acted as a controlling uncle toward his niece Geli Raubal, preventing her from marrying, having someone accompany her everywhere, and effectively holding her prisoner until she died by suicide in 1931, after which Hitler called her “The only woman he ever loved.”
23. The Mission Impossible theme is well known for its two long notes and then two short notes. Those notes match the Morse code signals for “M” and “I.”
24. The self-absorption paradox proposes that as we grow more self-aware, we are less likely to commit social mistakes. However, this greater self-awareness frequently results in more psychological distress because we usually dwell on past errors.
25. In the Batman 60’s series, Batman & Robin would interact with people while climbing the side of a building, during the obviously poor special effect known as the “bat climb”. These were cameo appearances and included Sammy Davis Jnr & Bruce Lee.
Add Comment