Here are 25 kickass random facts. For part 447, click here.
1-5 Kickass Random Facts
1. President Diouf began an anti-AIDS program in Senegal before the virus was able to take off. He used media and schools to promote safe-sex messages and required prostitutes to be registered. While AIDS was decimating much of Africa, the infection rate for Senegal stayed below 2 percent. – Source
2. In 2014, black taxi cab drivers brought parts of London to a standstill, protesting against Uber. This led to an 850% increase in downloads of Uber. – Source
3. Serial killer Ed Kemper befriended the very police officers investigating his murders, and would socialize with them at a bar called the “Jury Room”. They called him “Big Ed” and never suspected him. When he initially confessed, they thought he was pulling a prank. – Source
4. The reason Roger Moore stopped being James Bond was because of how much older he was than his female co-stars. He was in his 50s, and they were in their 20s. In his own words: “Well, the leading ladies were young enough to be my grand-daughter and it becomes disgusting.” – Source
5. The red flag, when used by pirates, came to mean “no quarter given”, meaning that no mercy would be shown, and no life would be spared, while a black flag usually meant that those who surrendered without a fight would be allowed to live. – Source
6-10 Kickass Random Facts
6. When the famous pirate Henry Morgan died, an amnesty was declared so pirates and privateers could come and pay their respects without fear of arrest. He was also given a state funeral in Port Royal, and buried with a 22-gun salute. – Source
7. In 1964, when Bob Dylan first met The Beatles, he had misheard the lyrics to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” as “I get high” instead of “I can’t hide”, and showed up to meet them ready to smoke. He gave a joint to Ringo, who didn’t realize he was supposed to pass it and smoked the whole thing himself. – Source
8. Peter Dinklage’s brother is an accomplished violinist, who performed on the original Broadway recording of Hamilton. Peter describes him as “the real performer of the family”. – Source
9. In 1948, a man wore 30 pound, 3 toed lead shoes and stomped around a Florida beach during the night. That footprints lead people to believe that a 15-foot tall penguin was roaming the land. He kept up the prank for 10 years, visiting other beaches. The hoax wasn’t revealed until 40 years later. – Source
10. In Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, certain scenes such as the forest swinging scene, Miles was animated 12 frames a second while Peter was animated at 24 frames a second, making Miles look less smooth. This was done to show Miles’ inexperience at being Spiderman compared to Peter. – Source
11-15 Kickass Random Facts
11. In Finland, city planners are known to visit parks immediately after the first snowfall, when the existing walking paths are not visible. People naturally choose desire paths, clearly marked by their footprints, which can be then used to guide the routing of new purpose-built paved paths. – Source
12. In 2014, a three-year-old girl, Karina Chikitova, survived 11 days in the Siberian wilderness with only her dog for company. She ate wild berries and drank from a river, curling up next to her dog for warmth. She was saved when her dog went back to her village and guided rescuers to her. – Source
13. Women are better at discerning shades of colors, while men are better at tracking fast-moving objects and discerning detail from a distance. These are evolutionary details linked to a hunter-gatherer past. – Source
14. The 1100 page epic novel about the history of Japan “Shogun” by James Clavell was inspired by a single sentence in his daughter’s school textbook that read “in 1600 an Englishman went to Japan and became a Samurai”. – Source
15. The US had a lesbian First Lady in 1885-1886. She was Rose Cleveland, Grover Cleveland’s youngest sister and Acting US First Lady before Grover married in 1886. She was also a lesbian & had a relationship with a wealthy widow, Evangeline Marrs Simpson, with explicitly erotic correspondence. – Source
