25 Kickass Random Facts List #276

Here is 25 Kickass Random Facts List #276.

1-5 Kickass Random Facts

1. In 1915, the steamship Eastland capsized while still tied to the dock in Chicago. New safety laws which rushed through Congress after the Titanic sinking mandated so much safety gear installed that the ship was top heavy and rolled over, killing 844 people. – Source

2. “؟” has been proposed as a punctuation mark to denote irony since the 1580s. – Source

3. There’s a diamond mine open to public in Arkansas that is the only diamond mine open to public. Visitors can keep whatever gems they find. 31000 gems have been found so far since it became a state park in 1972. – Source

4. The most effective treatment for CDI (a bowel disease causing chronic diarrhea) is a fecal transplant, where poo from a healthy person is put in the infected person’s bum, thereby transplanting healthy bacteria into the digestive tract. It is 94% effective as opposed to 30% for antibiotics. – Source

5. The night before the Olympic final, Michael Jordan apparently spent the night drinking and gambling all night, then he went on a long day of press appearances, plus 18 holes of golf in Barcelona, before he went on to lead Team USA in a gold-medal winning victory over Croatia. – Source

6-10 Kickass Random Facts

6. The longest living koi fish ever, Hanako, was 226 years old when she died. – Source

7. The Irish-Jamaicans make up 25% of the Jamaican population. – Source

8. Nikon camera lenses and bodies have had the same mounting technology since 1959. Thus, you can buy a 30-year-old lens and use it manually with virtually any Nikon dSLR. – Source

9. No U.S Navy submarine is ever considered “lost.” If it does not return, it is considered to be “still on patrol.” – Source

10. In order for stores in China to stock/sell tampons they have to import them, as Chinese companies made 85 billion sanitary pads last year, but not one tampon. – Source

11-15 Kickass Random Facts

11. Russia will spend about $200,000 maintaining Vladimir Lenin’s corpse this year. Maintenance includes bathing the body in chemicals and occasionally replacing parts. – Source

12. When Sparta won the Peloponnesian War, the cities of Corinth and Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and its citizens should be enslaved. Sparta refused, and took Athens into their own system. Athens was “to have the same friends and enemies” as Sparta. – Source

13. There are a series of towers built with unobstructed lines of sight from Washington, D.C. to ‘Site R,’ a secure bunker in Pennsylvania, built to relay microwave transmissions in the event of nuclear war. – Source

14. Inspired by The Empire Strikes Back, Richard Dailey killed his horse and crawled inside the carcass to survive an Idaho storm. He found it wonderful and warm at first but later claustrophobic and grotesque. Dailey said ‘The Revenant’ was pretty accurate but wondered why DiCaprio got naked. – Source

15. The Teton mountains were named by French trappers who thought they resembled breasts (teton is French slang for breast) so Grand Teton National Park translates to Big Breasts National Park. – Source

16-20 Kickass Random Facts

16. Dwayne Johnson’s beard in Hercules (2014) was made of yak testicle hair. – Source

17. George Harrison decided to write a song based on the first words he read upon opening a book. He then wrote “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” after seeing the words “gently weeps” in a random book pulled from a shelf at his parent’s house. – Source

18. Of the 34 countries with the highest birth rates in the world, 32 are in Africa. – Source

19. Sunscreen SPF is a very nonlinear metric. An SPF of 15 blocks 93% of incoming radiation, SPF 30 blocks 97%. SPF 50 blocks only 1% more than SPF 30, at 98%. – Source

20. After US defeated the favored French team for the rugby gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics, French fans invaded the field. Police and French players defended the Americans from the crowd. Boos and hisses interrupted the US national anthem at the medal ceremony. – Source

21-25 Kickass Random Facts

21. Saddam Hussein’s love of a grilled fish dish called masgouf caused the U.S. to discover Saddam Hussein’s hiding place in 2003. – Source

22. Dwarfism was not seen as a defect in ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptian texts promoted the acceptance of those with physical or mental disabilities, and there were two dwarf gods, Bes and Ptah. – Source

23. In 2009 a man in Iceland bought and saved the last McDonald’s burger ever sold in the country and donated it to Iceland’s national museum. You can now watch the burger via a live webcam. – Source

24. “Made in Germany” was introduced by Britain to protect its people from “bad” import goods into the empire. But it backfired as most people noticed “Made in Germany” as a mark of quality instead. – Source

25. Navy Chief Warrant Officer John Walker began spying for the Soviets in 1968 when he walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., sold a top secret document for several thousand dollars, and negotiated an ongoing salary of $500 to $1,000 a week. – Source