Here are 25 kickass random facts. For part 550, click here
1-5 Kickass Random Facts
1. Walt Disney was originally against the famous spaghetti-eating scene in Lady and the Tramp; he thought it would look too silly, and not romantic. Animator Frank Thomas disagreed, and animated the whole scene without layouts to convince Walt it would work. Walt was impressed and kept it in. – Source
2. The borders between Belgium and the Netherlands are so complex that many buildings have an international border running right through them. A bank was built on top of the border so paperwork was moved from one side of the building to the other whenever one nationality’s tax inspectors came. – Source
3. J.R.R Tolkien was rejected for a Nobel Prize, in 1961, on the grounds of his poor storytelling. – Source
4. For the first Superman movie producers wanted Christopher Reeve to wear fake muscles under the suit but he refused. He instead started an intense two-month training program which added 14kg to his 86kg frame. He got so big they had to reshoot earlier scenes as they didn’t match the later shots. – Source
5. When Bill Paxton died, hundreds of storm chasers spelled out his initials BP across three states using GPS markers to honor him for his role as a storm chaser in the 90s movie Twister. – Source
6-10 Kickass Random Facts
6. Empire actor Terrence Howard believes that “1 × 1 = 2”. He has even created his own mathematical language of logic called “Terrology”, to try to prove it. He claims he quit an engineering degree at the Pratt Institute over disagreements with a professor regarding his hypothesis. – Source
7. In Nepal, there is a festival which dedicates a day to solely thank dogs, for being dogs. Kukur Tihar translated ‘worship of the dogs’ involves a full day of celebrating & pampering dogs for their loyalty & friendship to humans. – Source
8. President Andrew Jackson didn’t like paper money. This is because during his presidency, Paper money was printed by individual banks, and their value could fluctuate greatly. Some of it was worthless, and Jackson felt bankers were abusing the citizenry. – Source
9. A 37-year-old opera singer Frederick Federici died whilst performing the role of Mephistopheles in “Faust,” on opening night. At the end of the opera, Mephistopheles sinks through a trapdoor in the stage, returning to hell. As Federici was lowered, he suffered a heart attack and died in minutes. – Source
10. Harold Harmsworth, founder of The Daily Mail in the UK, openly supported fascism and regularly sent telegrams to Adolf Hitler describing him as “Adolf the great” while praising the “genius” of Mussolini. – Source
11-15 Kickass Random Facts
11. Cillian Murphy’s character Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders has smoked over 3000 herbal rose cigarettes so far. – Source
12. 1000-year-old wooden structures are made of Ore-pine, the heartwood of prepared old-growth mountain pines; the trees had their branches removed and were left to stand, the tree resins bleeding upward and out through the cut branches and thus making the heartwood more resinous and rot-resistant. – Source
13. Construction workers at the new World Trade Center site in NYC stumbled upon the hull of an 18th century Philadelphia sloop active in colonial-era Caribbean trade. Tree-ring scientists at Columbia University found that the wood used to build the ship were felled in 1773. – Source
14. Rapper Lil Wayne was kicked out of an anti-violence charity basketball game after he tried to fight a referee. – Source
15. Princess Diana was a member and patron for more than 100 charities, many of which are now supported by her two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. – Source
