Did You Know? – Americans, Chinese, French, Greeks, There’s Facts About All Of Them In Here!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Yes, today is a bit of a multi-cultural fact feast.

Hope you enjoy.

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Brown eyes are actually blue,

under a layer of melanin.

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Billionaire Chuck Feeney donated most of his fortune

anonymously and with no recognition,

while flying coach, owning a $15 watch,

and having no cars or homes.

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George Washington was surprised to discover

that the Chinese were not white.

(I wonder how surprised they were to find out he was?)

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When it first opened in 1955 Disneyland had

a lingerie store on Main Street called The Wizard Of Bras

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In the mid 1800s France gave a crucial patent

in photography as a free gift to the world…

except for Britain who had to pay for it!

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Disaster comes from the Greek

“dis” meaning bad,

and “aster”, meaning star.

The ancient Greeks used to blame calamities

on unfavorable planetary positions.

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If you are in a room with 23 people,

there’s more than a 50% chance that

two of the people have the same birthday.

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There are more tigers living in Texas

than in the rest of the world.

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While serving as sheriff of Erie County, N.Y.,

Grover Cleveland had to spring the trap

at a hanging on two occassions.

This earned him the unflattering nickname

“Buffalo Hangman.”

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Workers at Amazon’s distribution centers

can be expected to walk up to 11 miles per shift,

picking an order every 33 seconds.

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The shortest French word with all

five vowels is “oiseau” meaning bird.

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Des Moines has the highest per capita0

Jello consumption in the U.S

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In 1770 the British parliament passed a law

condemning lipstick, stating that

” women found guilty of seducing men

into matrimony by a cosmetic means”

could be tried for witchcraft.

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Mr Feng, a Chinese father, hired a bunch of assassins

to kill his son’s online World of Warcraft character.

Apparently his son was wasting too much time after being laid off.

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Spencer Eldon was the name of the naked baby

on the cover of Nirvana’s album

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Did You Know? – Another Random Fact Feast!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Random fact feast it is.

Another selection of hopefully interesting facts that you didn’t know you didn’t know.

Enjoy.

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In Raiders of the Lost Ark there is a

wall carving of R2-D2 and C-3P0 behind the ark

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Chinese Checkers is not Chinese.

It was created in America to circumvent the

patent for a popular boardgame called Halma,

invented by a Boston surgeon named George Howard Monks.

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In the 17th century,

the value of pi was known to 35 decimal places.

Today, to 1.2411 trillion.

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Technically speaking, Alaska is the northernmost,

westernmost, and easternmost state of the United States.

Parts of the Aleutian Islands cross over the 180th meridian.

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The original story from “Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights” begins,

“Aladdin was a little Chinese boy.”

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There is a hotel in Sweden built entirely out of ice;

it is rebuilt every year.

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In 1959, the USSR launched a craft called the Mechta towards the Moon.

It missed, and instead became (inadvertently) the first

man-made satellite to go into orbit around the Sun.

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It has been calculated that in the last 3,500 years,

there have only been 230 years of peace throughout the civilized world.

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In the 1987 movie ‘Predator’, the character of the Predator

was originally set up for Jean-Claude Van Damme

to play a martial-arts fighting Predator.

However the producers realized much of the cast

were bodybuilders over 6 feet tall (and Van Damme was clearly smaller)

so they cast the enormous 7’ 21/2” Kevin Peter Hall

so that the Predator could realistically physically dominate

the film’s human characters.

Interestingly Hall also appears in the movie

as the helicopter pilot at the end.

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Gatorade’s inventor later created an alcoholic variation,

Hop ’n Gator

— essentially, lemon lime Gatorade mixed with beer.

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At the Great Gettysburg Reunion of 1913,

two men purchased a hatchet,

walked to the site where their regiments had fought,

and buried it.

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Though it’s rarely used,

the word referring to half a computer byte

is a “nibble.”

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Because of the angle at which its esophagus enters its stomach,

the horse is physically unable to vomit.

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The reason why hair turns gray as we age

is because the pigment cells in the hair follicle start to die,

which is responsible for producing “melanin”

which gives the hair colour

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Hydrogen gas is the least dense substance in the world,

at 0.08988g/cc

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The purpose of gasoline rationing during the Second World War

was not to conserve gas, but to conserve TIRES.

The primary source for natural rubber at the time was Southeast Asia,

much of which was under Japanese control.

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The concept of Boxing Day, which is on December 26th,

was to give boxes of food and clothing to the poor.

It is now viewed in some countries as a time

to get merchandise from stores at reduced prices

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Jewelers Tiffany & Co., based in New York, are responsible

for making the Super Bowl trophy

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The world’s most expensive cigarettes.

In 2009, Josh Muszynski used his Visa to buy cigarettes.

Due to a Visa “glitch,” he was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars.

To be exact: $23,148,855,308,184,500

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The popular hip-shaking dance, the merengue,

got its name from the whisking motion required to make meringue.

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