Not every fact needs to change your life to be unforgettable. These 50 random facts range from oddly amusing to genuinely surprising, offering the kind of fascinating trivia that sticks in your mind even if it changes absolutely nothing.
Mayan Temples That Echo Like a Sacred Bird
1. The Mayan people built temples so that a handclap at the base produces an echo resembling the call of the sacred Quetzal bird. For them, the bird was a messenger of the gods.
2. On 11/25/1970, Japanese writer Yukio Mishima and his militia entered a military base in Tokyo, took its commandant hostage, and tried to persuade the Japan Self-Defense Forces to restore national defense and the emperor divinity. After the effort failed, he committed seppuku.
3. An SR-71 Blackbird once flew from LA to Washington DC in 64 minutes. The flight averaged 2145mph.
4. Goombas, the mushroom enemies, were added to Super Mario Bros. only after playtesters felt Koopa Troopas, the turtles, were too tricky as enemies. With very little space left in the game, the developers used a single sprite flipping itself back and forth to convey the idea of walking Goombas.
5. Louis Armstrong always wore a Star of David as an homage to a Jewish family that took him in when he was young and gave him his first horn.
6. Octopuses are naturally anti-social toward other octopuses, but when given MDMA they become much friendlier and even try to “hug” each other.
7. When a university underwater archaeology team ran out of funding for research on Captain Morgan’s shipwreck, the rum maker of the same name funded their research.
8. Robert Levinson disappeared on March 9 2007, while working as a private investigator in Iran. Levinson flew to Kish Island to meet Dawud Salahuddin, a US fugitive, as part of a “unauthorised CIA mission” before disappearing, and in 2011, photos of Levinson alive were sent to his family.
9. When Ichiro Suzuki learned the Seattle Mariners were going to give him #51, the same number worn by pitching great Randy Johnson, he sent Johnson a personal message promising not to bring shame to the uniform.
10. Author Roald Dahl’s last words would have been “You know, I’m not frightened. It’s just that I will miss you all so much”, but after a painful morphine injection while he was still conscious, his last words were “Ow, fuck.”
A Teen’s Webcam Evidence Wasn’t Enough
11. In 2006, a teenage girl secretly pointed a webcam at her bed and left it running all night, hoping to prove to her mother that her father was molesting her. Even with the video evidence, the jury voted to acquit because they thought the girl “didn’t seem upset enough” during her testimony.
12. Mel Brooks wore a prosthetic 11th finger while adding his handprint to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The extra finger made the ceremony a little more memorable.
13. Author and radio host Amy Krouse Rosenthal publicly announced that she had ovarian cancer by writing a modern love essay for the NY Times that was a dating profile for her soon to be widower husband. She died 10 days after publication.
14. Children who are anxiously shy at an early age tend to display distinct patterns of brain activity in social situations at a later age. This shows up as increased distress when they anticipate unpredictable social feedback.
15. 1749 out of 1750 species of cacti are native to only The Americas. That leaves just one species found outside the region.
16. For years, many people assumed that infants felt no pain, and they routinely underwent major surgeries without anesthesia until infant pain was formally recognized in 1987. That belief left a lasting mark on medical care before it was finally challenged.
17. A sugar rush is a placebo effect, and sugar does not cause hyperactivity. The sensation can feel convincing, but the science does not support the idea that sugar alone makes children hyperactive.
18. During the shooting of “Groundhog Day”, a crowd of 500 had gathered to watch. Bill Murray said, “You know what these people need? Danishes!”, went into the bakery, bought all the cakes he could find, and gave them to the crowd.
19. On Christmas Eve in 2008, SpaceX and Tesla were literally hours from bankruptcy until Elon Musk secured $20M from investors in those final hours. Two days later, SpaceX won a contract with NASA worth $1.6B.
20. Ten days before Freddie Mercury died, Jim Beach, Queen’s manager, met with him to discuss what could be done with his legacy. Freddie quipped, “You can do whatever you like with my image, my music, remix it, re-release it, whatever… just never make me boring.”
McKinley’s Lucky Carnation
21. President William McKinley, who was later assassinated, often wore a trademark good luck charm: a red carnation on his lapel. While meeting the public, a 12-year-old girl asked him for the flower, and he gave it to her. Moments later, he was shot.
22. One of the original dwarves in Disney’s “Snow White” was named “Deafy,” and his primary trait was misunderstanding others. The idea was later jettisoned in favor of “Sneezy.”
23. In 1991, the Junipero Serra High School football team was so bad that it failed to score a touchdown or win a game. Even so, the team never tried starting the backup quarterback, who was 5-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady.
24. In 2007, a 53-year-old woman died from a stroke, and four people received kidneys, lungs, and liver transplants from her. All four later developed breast cancer, and three of them died from it. The donor had breast cancer that had not been found at the time of her death.
25. The empty cardboard box is so widely regarded as a plaything that, in 2005, a cardboard box was added to the National Toy Hall of Fame. Its reputation as a toy had become impossible to ignore.
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