Not every fact has to be useful to be worth knowing; sometimes it just needs to be strange, clever, or memorable enough to brighten your day. This mixtape pulls together history, science, pop culture, technology, and human oddities into one fun collection of facts that are perfect for reading just because you feel like it.
Fastest Manned Airbreathing Jet
1. Although it is over fifty years old, the SR-71 Blackbird still holds the official airspeed record for a manned airbreathing jet at 2,193 mph (3,530 km/h).
2. Researchers examining Chernobyl’s Elephant’s Foot, a dense mass of corium and other materials beneath Reactor 4, found it too hard and too radioactive for ordinary drills. To obtain fragments, they fired an AK-47 loaded with armor-piercing rounds at the surface to chip off pieces.
3. Liviu Librescu, a Romanian-born, internationally respected aerospace engineering professor at Virginia Tech, was a Holocaust survivor. At age 76 he held his classroom door shut while a gunman tried to enter; most of his students escaped through the windows. He was shot 5 times through the door and succeeded in saving 22 of the 23 students in his class. A gunshot to his head was fatal.
4. Deer Avenger is a video game series that parodies Deer Hunter in which players take the role of a deer that hunts humans.
5. In the late 1910s the British Army sought to arrest Michael Collins because he was a member of Dáil Eireann, an Irish government Britain did not recognize since Ireland had not been granted independence. As head of intelligence and leader of IRA hit squads he was a top priority for capture. Instead of hiding, he rode a bicycle openly around Dublin because the British Army had no idea what he looked like.
6. In 2000 the destroyer USS The Sullivans was the target of a failed terrorist attack in the Port of Aden. The attackers’ suicide boat was so overloaded with explosives that it sank. They were able to recover the explosives and, nine months later, used them to attack the USS Cole in the same port.
7. In the 2018 film Mission Impossible: Fallout, Lane hyperventilates before being submerged, which increases the oxygen available to his blood and brain compared with a single deep breath, allowing him to remain conscious for a longer time.
8. In 1891 the U.S. government ruled that cities ending in ‘burgh’ should drop the final ‘h,’ causing Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to be rendered as ‘Pittsburg’ in federal usage. Local officials and residents resisted and continued using the traditional ‘h’ spelling. For twenty years federal institutions used ‘Pittsburg’ while the city kept using ‘Pittsburgh.’ In 1911, after political pressure, the U.S. government formally restored the ‘Pittsburgh’ spelling.
9. Producer Jeffrey Katzenberg revived Walt Disney Studios with several of its biggest hits: The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. After those successes he asked for a promotion but was abruptly fired by the company. He then vowed revenge against Disney and founded DreamWorks.
10. Honeymoon rhinitis is a condition that causes a runny nose and nasal congestion during arousal and sex.
1994 Pentium FDIV Incident
11. In 1994, Intel’s original Pentium P5 (60/66 MHz) and P54C (75-100 MHz) processors contained an FDIV hardware defect, a fault in the floating-point unit’s lookup table, which produced incorrect results when dividing certain large numbers (for example, 4,195,835 ÷ 3,145,727). Public pressure led to a full recall with roughly one million chips replaced, ultimately costing Intel $475 million in replacement and write-off expenses.
12. From the 800s until the 1880s the Northern Great Plains was home to numerous fortified Native American towns. These settlements held over a thousand residents and were organized around a central plaza. They were sedentary communities occupied year-round.
13. The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras (510-428 B.C.) was the first to offer a correct explanation of eclipses. He also proposed that the Sun is a star and that stars are burning rocks, though the other stars are too distant for their heat to be felt here.
14. When Southwest Airlines began using the slogan ‘Just Plane Smart’, Stevens Aviation, which was already using ‘Plane Smart’, notified them that this infringed its trademark. Rather than filing a lawsuit, the two companies’ CEOs resolved the dispute with an arm-wrestling match; the loser made a donation to a charity of his choice and the winner gained the slogan.
15. Dutch authorities created more than 300 small ‘parks’ for bees on top of bus-stop shelters in Utrecht; the roofs are planted with low-maintenance sedum to provide a safe habitat for bees. Over 50 percent of the Netherlands’ 358 bee species are endangered. Commuters benefit from bamboo benches and LED lighting.
16. David by Michelangelo has an unusually large right hand and head because it was meant to be placed on a cathedral roof so important features would look proportionate when viewed from far below.
17. Known as the ‘Loneliest Tree on Earth,’ a Sitka spruce stands on Campbell Island more than 170 miles from the nearest tree. It was planted by a lone meteorologist in 1907 and represents isolation.
18. Saccharin, the first artificial sweetener, was discovered by accident when chemist Constantine Fahlberg failed to wash his hands after work and noticed something ‘unspeakably sweet’ at supper. He abandoned his meal and went on to taste every beaker in his lab, which fortunately contained no poisonous substances.
19. Ghrelin, an appetite-stimulating hormone, is elevated in both people with anorexia and obese individuals.
20. In 1983, instead of suing Marvel over alleged plagiarism of his short story ‘Soldier from Tomorrow,’ Harlan Ellison reached a settlement with Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter. The agreement granted Ellison a lifetime subscription to all Marvel publications.
Da Vinci Tree Thickness Observation
21. More than five centuries ago, Leonardo da Vinci wrote in his notebook that at every level the total thickness of a tree’s branches equals the trunk’s thickness; in other words, if the branches were folded upward and pressed together, the tree would look like a single trunk with the same thickness from top to bottom.
22. In the 1850s, a Mormon missionary named Arnold Potter declared himself to be the second coming of Christ and started a new religious movement, which ended when he tried to ascend into Heaven by jumping off a cliff in front of all his followers.
23. During World War II, British operatives produced fake footwear for Special Operations Executive agents in the Pacific so their footprints appeared like those of barefoot locals.
24. While developing protective goggles for surgeons performing laser eye surgery, researcher Don McPherson let his friend Michael Angell borrow them during a game of frisbee, and the friend reported that the glasses cured his colorblindness.
25. On Disney property in Florida there is a resort limited to military personnel that charges guests based on their rank.
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