Here are 25 kickass random facts. For part 664, click here
1-5 Kickass Random Fact
1. Los Angeles is the first major city in the world to synchronize all its traffic lights. Nearly 4,400 lights across 469 miles receive real-time updates about traffic flow to make second-by-second adjustments. The system limits congestion by up to 16% while also dramatically reducing idling time. – Source
2. From 2003 to 2005, a 13-year-old girl wrote a 365k word Harry Potter fanfiction while in the hospital receiving cancer treatment. She passed away just six days after completing it, and her father used her notes to write the second book in the series. – Source
3. A Belgian businessman was instrumental to the Manhattan Project’s success. Realizing uranium’s importance, he shipped 1,200 tons of it to Staten Island. When Lieutenant Colonel Nichols contacted him, he simply responded: “You can have the ore now. It is in New York. I was waiting for your visit”. – Source
4. The jumping spider, Nefertiti, was launched to the ISS to observe if it could catch prey in microgravity. It succeeded in catching prey by learning to walk slowly, rather than leaping, as this species usually does. It survived reentry and readjusted to full gravity before its natural death. – Source
5. Brisbane was originally founded as a penal colony for convicts who committed new offenses after they had arrived in Australia. – Source
6-10 Kickass Random Facts
6. A California lawyer filed for a restraining order to stop his neighbor’s kids from playing basketball claiming their game dropped the value of his house by $100k. He was ultimately denied with the court saying that reasonable people can expect “some inconveniences and annoyances” from neighbors. – Source
7. American baseball player Rube Waddell (1876-1914) was so fond of puppies that the fans of the opposing team would bring their dogs to games and hold them up. Waddell would run over to play with them instead of focusing on the game. – Source
8. Lisa Leslie as a high school basketball player scored 101 points in 16 minutes of play. She shot 37 of 56 from the floor and 27 of 35 from the line. However, she did not break the record for women’s points in a high school game because the other team’s coach refused to play the second half. – Source
9. The soil in China lacked Selenium, a deficiency that contributed to muscular weakness and reduced growth in horses. Consequently, horses in China were too frail to support the weight of a Chinese soldier. – Source
10. 15% of people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes are not overweight. – Source
11-15 Kickass Random Facts
11. Ruby chocolate is a “fourth type” of chocolate (in addition to dark, milk, and white) introduced in 2017. It has a slightly sweet and sour flavor. – Source
12. Frankenstein’s monster as a character is public domain, as the novel was written in 1818, but the visual portrayal most people are familiar with (greenish skin, square-ish head, bolts in the neck, etc.) is the intellectual property of Universal Studios, as it originated in the 1931 film. – Source
13. Spotify pays the Artist/Label between $0.003 and $0.0084 per stream, with an average payout of $0.004 per stream. – Source
14. President William McKinley was the first president to ride in an automobile. McKinley was also the first president to ride in an electric vehicle; the ambulance that took him away after he was shot in 1901 was electrically powered. – Source
15. Rod Stewart has a giant model train set, spanning 1,500 square feet and based on postwar Manhattan, that took him two decades to build. – Source
