Here are 25 kickass random facts. For part 819, click here
1-5 Kickass Random Fact
1. Thomas Jefferson was so impressed by macaroni and cheese during a visit to Paris that he wrote down the recipe and instructions on pasta extrusion, imported a pasta maker, macaroni, and Parmesan, and made it at his home. He served it at a state dinner in 1802. – Source
2. Earth is the only known place in our solar system where fire occurs, and no known exoplanets have enough oxygen to allow the fire to exist. – Source
3. Simeon Stylites lived on top of columns for 37 years. Simeon did this as a form of asceticism because when he lived in a cave people kept making pilgrimages to him and asking him religious questions. Ultimately his column life drew in even bigger crowds who would climb ladders to talk to him. – Source
4. The Davy Crockett was a tripod mounted gun developed by the US during the Cold War. It fired a tactical nuclear warhead with a range of up to 4 miles and a yield that caused fatal radiation within a radius of a quarter of a mile. – Source
5. In 1996, a 21-year-old man burst into a New Zealand radio station, took the manager hostage, and demanded that Kermit the Frog’s rendition of Rainbow Connection be played. – Source
6-10 Kickass Random Fact
6. Blackout Cake, sometimes called Brooklyn Blackout Cake is a chocolate cake filled with chocolate pudding and topped with chocolate cake crumbs. It was invented during WWII by a Brooklyn bakery, Ebinger’s, in recognition of the mandatory blackouts to protect the Brooklyn Navy Yard. – Source
7. Marry Mallon (‘Typhoid Mary’) lived in forced quarantine for the last twenty years of her life on an Island just off of New York (‘North Brother Island’). – Source
8. Willie Nelson smoked weed at the White House with Jimmy Carter’s son. – Source
9. Shel Silverstein wrote extensively for Playboy, frequented the Playboy mansion, and slept with “hundreds, perhaps thousands of women”. – Source
10. The miscarriage rate is higher than people perceive. On average 12.5% of women who know they are pregnant have a miscarriage within the first 23 weeks of pregnancy. – Source
11-15 Kickass Random Fact
11. In Chinese Folk Religion, a mortal human being could ascend into godhood not through the decisions of a clergy/church, but by the sheer number of people who believe that their extraordinary achievements led to apotheosis, which forced Confucian/Taoists clerics to canonize a person as a God. – Source
12. Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony was initially his tribute to Napoleon, whom he admired. But when Napoleon crowned himself emperor in 1804, Beethoven angrily declared that Napoleon had become a tyrant, and he erased Bonaparte’s name from the score’s title page. – Source
13. Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States as an independent sovereign nation. – Source
14. The fast food chain Popeyes isn’t named after the cartoon character, but Gene Hackman’s character from The French Connection. – Source
15. A special law in the UK was created to ensure that the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital will forever be able to collect royalties from stage performances, audiobooks, book releases, etc. of Peter Pan in the UK. This is the only work with an ‘exception’ to copyright laws. – Source
