Here are 25 kickass random facts. For part 453, click here.
1-5 Kickass Random Facts
1. Schizophrenia’s hallucinations are shaped by culture. Americans with schizophrenia tend to have more paranoid and harsher voices/hallucinations. In India and Africa people with schizophrenia tend to have more playful and positive voices. – Source
2. Saturns’ rings are cosmically speaking a very brief event. We are about halfway through their 200 million year lifespan and are very lucky as a species to be alive to witness them. “Some velociraptor with a telescope looking at Saturn would not have seen rings.” – Source
3. The potato was popularized in France largely by one man who placed guards around his potato field and instructed them to “accept any and all bribes from civilians”. – Source
4. Sea urchins are called “sea urchins” because hedgehogs were called “urchins” until about the 15th century. Therefore, sea urchins are ocean hedgehogs. – Source
5. Because American textbooks are sold at a lower price in Thailand, somebody was reselling them in the US and making enough of a profit to get sued by the publishers, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled against the publishers because the “first sale” doctrine applies everywhere, not just the US. – Source
6-10 Kickass Random Facts
6. When 18-year-old Lady Gaga was studying at NYU, her classmates made a Facebook group called “Stefani Germanotta, you will never be famous” where they bullied her and called her an “attention-whore”. She dropped out after a year to pursue her music career full time. – Source
7. The most common street name in the US is Second. First is the third, Third is the second with Fifth being the sixth most common. – Source
8. All “warranty void if removed” stickers are illegal in the US since 1975. – Source
9. Immediately after the end of slavery was declared in America, there was a surge in Wanted Ads placed in newspapers across the country. African-Americans used them to search for family members sold or escaped, sometimes decades earlier. – Source
10. Geoffrey de Charny, a French knight, a veteran of the Hundred Years War, writer of Book of Chivalry, dedicated parts of his book to preventing psychological trauma from warfare, and cautioned his comrades that “when they would be secure from danger, they will be beset by great terrors”. – Source
11-15 Kickass Random Facts
11. Cherophobia is fear of being happy. It is the belief that when one becomes happy, something bad will happen. – Source
12. The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI was a small group that broke into an FBI field office and stole documents that revealed the FBI’s spying on and infiltration of left-wing organizations across the US. – Source
13. FOX network refused to pick up the South Park series, saying the talking poo character (Mr. Hankey) would stain “[their] network.” The series was then brought to Comedy Central, and it became the highest-rated show that made the network one of the fastest-growing U.S. cable channels at the time. – Source
14. The Greek word for “Carpenter” more accurately translates as “home builder” and since Judea built structures primarily out of stone, Jesus was probably a stonemason. – Source
15. The British comedian Tony Hawks became so frustrated with being mistaken for pro skateboarder Tony Hawk that he has published a book called “Tony Hawk’s The A to Z of Skateboarding” that contains nothing about skateboarding. – Source
FOX News did more to stain their network than a talking piece of sh*t ever could. Then again, the latter is an apt description for most people who appear on that network.