16-20 Kickass Random Facts
16. In 1886, W. T. Stead wrote a short story about the great loss of lives on a sinking ship due to an insufficient number of lifeboats. 26 years later he perished on the Titanic. – Source
17. The opera house in Paris that the Phantom of the Opera is based on actually has an underground lake beneath it, just like in the book and musical. – Source
18. In The Battle of the Bismarck Sea, the Japanese were defeated so completely when Allied planes sank 12 ships & and killed 3,000+ enemy soldiers, that any hope of a Japanese invasion of Australia was eliminated. 2 weeks later Tokyo announced that all Japanese soldiers would be taught to swim. – Source
19. An estimated 92% of U.S. dollar bills contain traces of cocaine. – Source
20. Mel Brooks approached John Wayne for a role in Blazing Saddles, which eventually went to Gene Wilder. Wayne declined, as he thought the dialogue was “too dirty” for his family-friendly image. – Source
21-25 Kickass Random Facts
21. Besides the Illiad and the Odyssey there were at least six more ancient Greek poems related to the Trojan War, collectively known as the “Epic Cycle”, but only some fragments of them have survived to the present. – Source
22. During the Vietnam War, the American Navy laid thousands of sea mines in the waters off North Vietnam. In August of 1972, a solar storm caused 4,000 of them to spontaneously explode in just a few weeks. – Source
23. The fee for renouncing your citizenship in the United States is $2,350, which is the highest citizenship renunciation fee of any nation and 20 times higher than the average price of other high-income nations. – Source
24. A British man from 1797 is considered the first medically documented case of paranoid schizophrenia. He accused many prominent politicians of conspiring to kill him and claimed a secret machine called an “air loom” was causing him physical ailments remotely, through magnetic rays. – Source
25. The longest professional baseball game ever lasted 33 innings and over 8 hours. Players became delirious with exhaustion, it got so cold that people burned bats to keep warm, and the president of the league stopped the game at 4 a.m. The final score was 3-2 after play resumed a month later. – Source
