Here is 25 Kickass Random Facts List #169.
1-5 Kickass Random Facts
1. A Komodo dragon may attempt to speed up the process of swallowing a carcass by ramming the carcass against a tree to force it down its throat, sometimes ramming so forcefully that the tree is knocked down. – Source
2. A doctor saved the life of a premature baby (Chris Trokey). About 30 years later Chris, who was a paramedic was the First responder to an accident, saved the same doctor’s life. – Source
3. Hours before his death, Einstein was still attempting to prove his Theory of Everything. – Source
4. UCSC grad student Jim Kent wrote a program to allow the Human Genome Project to assemble and publish the genome. The research was largely motivated by concerns that Celera Genomics, working on a parallel project, would patent the data. Kent’s results were released first by 3 days. – Source
5. A certain species of jellyfish has been deemed “immortal” by scientists who have observed its ability to, when in crisis, revert its cells to their earliest form and grow anew. That means that these tiny creatures, 4 mm to 5 mm long, potentially have infinite lives. – Source
6-10 Kickass Random Facts
6. Alexander Graham Bell developed the metal detector as a last ditch effort to locate a bullet lodged in the chest of American President James Garfield in 1881. The attempt was unsuccessful because the metal coil spring bed Garfield was lying on confused the detector. – Source
7. Tigers have striped skin not just striped fur. The stripes are like fingerprints and no two tigers have the same pattern. – Source
8. In 2010, the US Embassy in Beijing began tweeting daily air quality data for its employees. Chinese citizens took notice, exposing under-reporting of pollution by the Chinese government. This outrage forced Chinese government to get serious about addressing pollution. – Source
9. Teddy Roosevelt helped save American Football by urging rule changes to make the game safer after 19 players died during the 1905 season. – Source
10. Lions inhabited many parts of Europe until they were hunted to extinction around 100 B.C. – Source
11-15 Kickass Random Facts
11. When the trench gun was introduced by the U.S. during World War 1, the German Government issued a diplomatic protest claiming that the shotgun was prohibited by the law of war. – Source
12. Family Guy’s song “Prom Night Dumpster Baby” is a reference to Melissa Drexler. In 1997, she gave birth in her high school bathroom during prom. She discarded the baby in the trash and returned to the prom. She was sentenced to 15 years for manslaughter but was released on parole after 37 months. – Source
13. The 1955 film, the movie “The Conqueror”, was filmed downwind of the site of 11 above-ground nuclear bomb tests. Of the 220 people who worked on the movie, 91 developed cancer and 46 died, including the lead actor John Wayne. – Source
14. Joseph Stalin intended to be a priest, but was kicked out of seminary for missing final exams. – Source
15. Andy Weir, the author of The Martian, was so keen on getting every detail right that he wrote programs to calculate the orbital paths of spaceships that appear in the book. – Source
16-20 Kickass Random Facts
16. The average American golf course consumes around 312,000 gallons of water per day. – Source
17. Gary James Paulsen (“Hatchet” author) watched his mother beat a molester to death, hunted for sustenance while a teen, was molested by his parents servant, ran away and joined a carnival at 14, witnessed a plane crash/passengers get attacked by sharks, and completed the 1,150 mile Iditarod. – Source
18. Cymothoa exigua is a parasite that severs the blood vessels of a fish’s tongue and becomes a new functional tongue. It is only known parasite to replace an entire organ. – Source
19. Ronald Reagan is the only US president to have been divorced. – Source
20. Dolphins can tolerate and recover from extreme injuries like shark bites. The healing process is very rapid and even very deep wounds won’t cause a dolphin to bleed to death. Gaping wounds heal in a way that restores the animal’s natural body shape. Infection of large wounds is also very rare. – Source
21-25 Kickass Random Facts
21. The reason cats and snakes have vertical pupils is because it increases their depth perception while hunting at night while prey animals such as sheep have horizontal pupils so that they may have a panoramic view of their surroundings to watch for predators. – Source
22. “Gotham”, as a nickname for New York City, was coined by Washington Irving in 1807 and it literally means “Goat’s Town.” – Source
23. Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s father was named Homer, Mother was Marge, and had sisters named Maggie and Lisa. His mother’s maiden name was Wiggum. – Source
24. A Trillion-Meal Study, the largest ever of its kind, has shown genetically modified crops to be 100% safe and just as nutritious as non-modified crops. – Source
25. A simple equation called Dawes Formula is very accurate at predicting success of marriages – “frequency of lovemaking minus frequency of quarrels”. A positive difference predicts marital happiness and a negative one predicts unhappiness. – Source
#9 – According to what I’ve read elsewhere, the urging that Roosevelt used was that he would have the game banned if something wasn’t done to eliminate fatalities in the game.
#20 on this list is the same as #25 on the previous list (168) “Dolphins can tolerate and recover from extreme injuries like shark bites. The healing process is very rapid. Even very deep wounds won’t cause a dolphin to bleed to death. Gaping wounds heal in a way that restores the animal’s natural body shape. Infection of large wounds is also very rare”
I’ve noticed on my binge of random facts (my favorite genre on this site) that many facts are repeated throughout the series.
Yep, sometimes it does happen. We try to avoid it as much as possible, but because we are three different people who maintain this site in our free time, sometimes facts do overlap. Early in the series we didn’t have a possible checkpoint, so this happened commonly. But you will notice that as the Random facts series progressed, this happened rarely.