Here are 25 kickass random facts. For part 366, click here.
1-5 Kickass Random Facts
1. Keanu Reeves runs a private charitable foundation to fund cancer research and children’s hospitals. In 2009, he told Ladies Home Journal: “I don’t like to attach my name to it, I just let the foundation do what it does.” – Source
2. Upon hearing about the death of Teddy Roosevelt, Vice President Thomas R. Marshal declared “death had to take him in his sleep, for if he was awake there’d have been a fight”. – Source
3. Chris Evans turned down the Captain America role multiple times because of Anxiety, fear of a 10-movie commitment and the public spotlight. He went to therapy before taking the role. – Source
4. Viggo Mortensen was offered the role of Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit film trilogy but turned it down since Aragorn never appeared in Tolkien’s Hobbit. – Source
5. In the USA if you are delayed by an airline by more than 4 hours for actions within their control (overbooking) you are entitled to 4x the face value of the ticket capped at $1300. – Source
6-10 Kickass Random Facts
6. An IKEA in the Netherlands had to cancel their 1 euro breakfast special because it attracted too many customers and caused traffic jams on the highway. – Source
7. In 1987, Steve Rothstein took advantage of the AAirpass (a promotion by American Airlines that let people pay a one time $250,000 and have a lifetime of unlimited flights) and quit his job so he could fly continuously. This ended up costing the airline more than 21 million. – Source
8. During the D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan, the two surrendering “Germans,” killed by American soldiers, were saying in Czech: “Please don’t shoot me! I’m not German, I’m Czech, I didn’t kill anyone!” The American soldiers jokingly translate it as “Look, I washed for supper!” – Source
9. Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara signed transit visas in Lithuania for more than 6,000 Jews in 1940. He wrote visas for 18-20 hours every day, continuing to sign them through the window of a train and throw them into the crowd as he fled Lithuania. – Source
10. Scientists attached stilts to the legs of ants to prove that they return to their nests by counting their steps. The ants with stilts overshot their nest by roughly 50% due to the new length of their steps. – Source
11-15 Kickass Random Facts
11. Mark Zuckerberg is actually only five foot seven inches tall, but he stages his photos to exaggerate his height. – Source
12. There is a woman who was born with 3 fingers on her right hand. After a tragic accident, she lost her right hand and later developed a phantom limb with 5 fingers, suggesting her brain “knew” what a hand was supposed to feel like. – Source
13. Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain made out with his bandmates on live TV “just to spite homophobes.” – Source
14. Depictions of knights fighting snails were common in medieval texts. And no one really knows why. – Source
15. When Male honey bees mate, their penises explode and they die. During the queen’s nuptial flight, she’ll mate with about a dozen partners and leave a trail of their dead, penisless corpses in her wake. – Source
