Here are 25 kickass random facts. For part 811, click here
1-5 Kickass Random Fact
1. The founders of video game maker “Acclaim” named their company so it would be listed alphabetically before their former employer “Activision” and before “Accolade” another company founded by ex-Activison employees. Activison itself was founded by ex-Atari employees based on the same logic. – Source
2. The autocorrect feature in Excel, which converts certain combinations into dates, has mangled up to 30% of published papers, causing significant issues. As a result, at least 27 gene symbols have been forced to change to prevent further errors from occurring. – Source
3. Anne Frank’s stepsister is still alive. Eva Schloss and her family lived in the same apartment block as the Franks, and she often played with Anne and Margot. She and her mother survived Auschwitz, and her mother resumed her friendship with Otto Frank after the war. They got married in 1953. – Source
4. After plagiarizing work for his directorial debut, actor Shia LaBeouf plagiarized a public apology from a Yahoo! answers question about plagiarism. – Source
5. Lego was flirting with bankruptcy, and the release of Bionicle, which accounted for 100% of their profits in 2003, saved them from going under. – Source
6-10 Kickass Random Fact
6. The Higgs-Boson Particle, aka “the God Particle”, was actually called “the g*ddamn Particle” by physicists because it was so difficult to detect. Publishers forced the rename, resulting in a confusing tie to religion for the particle which is nearly universally hated by physicists. – Source
7. In the first edition of the Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory novel, The Oompa Loompas were Black pygmies imported from “the deepest and darkest part of the African jungle.” – Source
8. In the 1800’s bananas were seen as “immoral fruit” because of their shape. Fruit companies began issuing postcards of women eating bananas to advertise the fruit wasn’t taboo. – Source
9. New York City is reintroducing millions of oysters into its harbor to help clean the water and create marine habitats. They’ve been collecting used shells from local restaurants to create new homes for juvenile oysters. – Source
10. Lacrosse descends from a version played by Native Americans in the 17th century. Games could last several days with as many as 1,000 players per team, on a field with goals up to 6 miles apart. Sticks were so treasured, players were often buried with them upon death. – Source
11-15 Kickass Random Fact
11. In 1941, the Germans allowed the British RAF to drop a prosthetic leg by parachute to a Luftwaffe base in France. The Germans were very respectful of Captain Douglas Bader, who was captured after bailing from his plane with only one of his two prosthetic legs. One got stuck in his damaged plane. – Source
12. It’s estimated that after the Civil War, up to 20,000 Confederates emigrated to Brazil from the US South. Today, roughly 260,000 Brazilians descend from these American Confederates. – Source
13. Shift work is associated with cognitive decline. Shift work throws off the circadian rhythm which causes hormonal irregularities and various neurobehavioural issues. The decline was seen in processing speed, working memory, psychomotor vigilance, cognitive control, and visual attention. – Source
14. The most powerful commercial radio station ever was WLW (700KHz AM), which during certain times in the 1930s broadcasted 500kW radiated power. At night, it covered half the globe. Neighbors within the vicinity of the transmitter heard the audio in their pots, pans, and mattresses. – Source
15. You can buy a room on a cruise ship and live on it. You pay a yearly fee and all amenities are provided like normal cruise ships. – Source
