Here are 25 kickass random facts. For part 766, click here
1-5 Kickass Random Fact
1. The Black Terror was a Union Ironclad responsible for the destruction of an enemy ship. The Black Terror was also completely fake, and cost $8.63 to construct. – Source
2. In 2013, a surgeon in the UK was struck off and convicted of assault after branding his initials into two patients’ livers. It was only discovered when 1.6-inch (4cm) initials were discovered by another doctor on organ that he had transplanted failed. – Source
3. Official temperatures used in weather apps are taken in shade, not under sunlight. – Source
4. A Portuguese Man of War is not a jellyfish; it’s a colony of thousands of individual animals called “zooids”. – Source
5. Tonda Dickerson is a waitress who was tipped a lottery ticket that won. The jackpot was $10M. She was sued by her co-workers who demanded a share and the person who tipped her, who demanded a truck, and was pursued by the IRS, who demanded a gift tax. – Source
6-10 Kickass Random Facts
6. A Nashville man known as “The Free Pizza Guy” has been giving free pizza to anyone who asks for it since 2019. As of November 18, 2020, they had sent nearly 4,000 pizzas to strangers in need. – Source
7. The only reason we have a video of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series is because Bing Crosby was too nervous to watch the game live so he had a company record the game for him. During this time TV networks didn’t keep records of the games. The tape was found 50 years later in his wine cellar. – Source
8. Sediment cores retrieved from the Antarctica seafloor contained pristine samples of forest soil, pollen, spores and even root systems. The soil, its fine-grained clay, and silt were dated to 90 million years ago. The researchers suggest that the continent was a swampy rainforest at the time. – Source
9. In 2021, former NBA center Shawn Bradley was involved in a bike accident that left him paralyzed. He has since described his height (7 foot 6 or 2.29m) as a hindrance to recovery since quadriplegia at that height has no medical precedent. – Source
10. Rust (corrosion) has an estimated worldwide annual cost of $2.5 trillion, roughly 3.4% of the global GDP. – Source
11-15 Kickass Random Facts
11. Chef and restaurateur David Chang was the first celebrity to win the top $1,000,000 prize on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (for charity), in 2020. – Source
12. The Dodge Viper was discontinued in 2017, not due to low sales numbers, but because side curtain airbags were starting to be required. The SRT team felt it would have been too expensive, needing a redesigned chassis and significantly reducing its already limited headroom. – Source
13. When Mozart died unexpectedly at age 35, rumors began circulating that he was poisoned by his colleague Antonio Salieri. Though proven untrue, the accusations and public belief contributed to nervous breakdowns later in Salieri’s life. – Source
14. In the 1940s and 50s Quaker Oats and MIT conducted experiments by feeding cereal containing radioactive iron and calcium. This was conducted to prove that the nutrients in the oatmeal traveled throughout the body. A $1.85 million settlement was made in 1998 for the victims. – Source
15. The first known species of millipede that actually has at least 1,000 legs was only discovered in 2020. Prior to that, the record-holder was a species with only about 750 legs. – Source
