Here are 25 kickass random facts. For part 496, click here
1-5 Kickass Random Facts
1. The FBI has struggled to hire hackers because of the FBI hiring rule that the applicant must not have used marijuana during the last 3 years. – Source
2. An annual supply of bottled water for a person who consumes 8 glasses a day would cost approximately $200; the same amount of tap water would cost approximately $0.33. – Source
3. Kim Philby, head of the MI6 anti-communist section, was forced to resign over allegations that he helped two KGB moles escape. However, he was exonerated by the government. He then defected to the Soviet Union after having been KGB double agent for 30 years. – Source
4. A Vietnamese man was hospitalized unconscious from consuming too much methanol alcohol; doctors transfused 15 cans of beer about 1 per hr into his body to revive him. The liver breaks down ethanol before methanol which gave doctors more time to do dialysis to remove the alcohol from his system. – Source
5. In 2005, the US introduced a new $1 coin that you could buy and have shipped for free. People took advantage of this by buying them with a credit card then immediately using the coins to pay their bills to get free airline miles. One man abused this so much that he earned 4 million airline miles. – Source
6-10 Kickass Random Facts
6. Mary Ellen Pleasant, a black woman, pretended to be white, listen to white men of finance’s gossip, using the knowledge to earn a $30 million fortune. After the civil war, she let everybody know she was black. – Source
7. A German company developed a pane glass for windows that replicates the way birds see spiders’ webs so they will avoid flying into them, thus greatly reducing the high avian death rate caused by collision with building windows. – Source
8. There is a Diamond mine in Arkansas that is open to the public. Visitors can keep whatever Gems they find. Till now thousands of diamonds have been found since it opened. – Source
9. The Winnie-the-Pooh media franchise has generated more revenue ($76 billion) than Marvel Cinematic Universe ($35 billion) and Harry Potter ($32bil) combined. – Source
10. The first American to die in Vietnam was actually murdered by a fellow soldier in 1956. Richard B. Fitzgibbon Jr. gave candy to local children when he bumped into a drunk colleague that shot him on sight. It took 43 years for his name to be added to the Vietnam War Memorial. – Source
11-15 Kickass Random Facts
11. The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster could have been even more catastrophic, but 2000 workers at the sister Fukushima II Plant succeeded in stabilizing their reactors and achieving cold shut down. – Source
12. In 1958, a technician was working on a plutonium compound that went supercritical giving him a lethal dose in 200 microseconds, his colleges found him outside in the snow screaming “I’m burning up! I’m burning up!”. – Source
13. Guerrilla Grafting is the illegal process of turning city maintained sterile fruit trees into fruiting trees by splicing compatible branches onto the sterile trees with branches from fruiting trees. – Source
14. A woman in Utah kept her dead husband in a freezer for ten years so she could collect his veteran’s benefits. He left a notarized note saying she hadn’t killed him. – Source
15. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel is both a bridge and a tunnel. Considered one of the 7 wonders of modern engineering, it was completed in 1964 and is 23 miles long. – Source