16-20 Kickass Random Facts
16. The opposite of “paranoia” is “pronoia”: a person’s belief, without evidence, that the world around them is conspiring to do them good or otherwise help them. –Source
17. The word “literally” has been used figuratively for hundreds of years. Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain all used it for hyperbole. – Source
18. Coco Chanel sold her perfume recipe to Jews, then got the Nazis to try and help her get it back when it became popular. – Source
19. Chimpanzees have got all the cognitive abilities necessary for the human-only practice of cooking. They understand that cooking is a process that food is transformed into a tastier form; they don’t do it in the wild because they’ve never learned to manage the fire. – Source
20. Matthew Lillard originally screamed until his voice went hoarse and scratchy to achieve his voice for Shaggy in Scooby Doo, even doing it in his car before his audition at Warner Bros in LA. – Source
21-25 Kickass Random Facts
21. The waterbed was invented in 1833 by a Scottish Physician. He intentionally did not patent it so that anyone could design their own variation of the waterbed and it could help as many people as it could who were suffering from bed sores. – Source
22. The characters in Mad Men lit a total of 942 cigarettes and had 369 drinks over the course of seven seasons. – Source
23. Bruce Willis suffered from severe stuttering as a child. He discovered the stutter disappeared while performing in a school play through the memorization of lines. While studying acting in college it was the combination of acting and speech therapy which helped him overcome his condition. – Source
24. On the 12th of September 1897, 21 Sikh soldiers held their own against 10000 enemy tribesmen at the battle of Saragarhi, killing 180 and buying enough time for the nearby British fort to prepare and suppress the insurrection. All 21 were given the Indian Order Of Merit. – Source
25. In 1977, David Begelman, then head of Columbia Pictures, was caught embezzling $75,000 from the studio. To avoid a scandal he was quietly fired, and three years later became CEO of MGM. The actor who discovered his embezzlement was blacklisted by the studio for reporting it to the police. – Source
