Did You Know? Lots More Fabulous Facts Folks!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Welcome to another fasab fact day.

Diamonds and chocolate are just two of the delicious facts today.

Enjoy.

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There is a diamond floating in our galaxy

that is bigger than Earth

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Besides Wales, Argentina is the only other country

where Welsh is spoken by a significant minority

thanks to settlers who inhabited Patagonia nearly 200 years ago.

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Your brain was just about as big as it is now when you were born.

That’s one reason that babies have disproportionately large heads.

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Count the capt Jack Sparrows on The Pirates of the Caribbean.

There are usually three.

If you see four, you might actually have seen Johnny Depp

who sometimes hangs out in the ride in full costume for fun

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Malaria comes from the Latin phrase “mal aria” meaning “bad air”

and was used to describe the atmosphere around the swamps of Rome.

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Chocolate was included in WWII soldier rations.

According to army specification, it was designed

to taste just “a little better than a boiled potato”

so soldiers would not eat it too quickly.

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Oliver Cromwell was hanged and decapitated

two years after he had died.

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American playwright Tennessee Williams died in 1983

after he choked on a bottle cap in his hotel room.

Apparently he had been drinking.

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Kaffeklubben Island Belonging to Greenland,

is officially considered to be the northernmost point of land on Earth.

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The first Eagle Scout west of the Mississippi

is buried in San Marcos, Texas.

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In ancient Egypt, when a ruler would die all of his

servants and animals were buried alive with him.

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In 1985, New Orleans lifeguards decided to throw a pool party

celebrating their first drowning free season ever.

Ironically, after a party filled with hundreds of lifeguards,

local Jerome Moody was found dead at the bottom of the pool.

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The silhouette on the Major League Baseball logo

is Harmon Killebrew.

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The word ‘pound’ is abbreviated ‘lb.’

after the constellation ‘libra’ 

because it means ‘pound’ in Latin, and also ‘scales’.

The abbreviation for the British Pound Sterling

comes from the same source:

it is an ‘L’ for Libra/Lb. with a stroke through it

to indicate abbreviation.

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The Andy Griffith Show was the first spin-off in TV history.

It was a spin-off of the Danny Thomas Show.

If you have time why not enjoy an episode?

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Fasab’s Fact Feast Day!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Hello and welcome to another fact feast day on the fasab blog.

The usual selection of random facts, but with a few extras thrown in as a tribute to the late, great, and apparently much troubled Robin Williams.

Enjoy.

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In spite of the larger-than-life legends,

the Pony Express only lasted 19 months

(April 1860 to October 1861)

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According to a published Star Wars encyclopedia,

the real name of the Star Wars robot known to us as ‘R2-D2’,

is actually ‘Second Generation Robotic Droid Series-2’.

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Robin Williams was awarded a star

on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

in Hollywood, California

on December 12, 1990.

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The first chocolate bar

suitable enough for widespread consumption

was produced by the Fry’s chocolate factory,

located in Bristol, England in 1847.

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Of the ten deadliest wars every fought,

seven were fought in China

More people died in each of the two largest

than in WWI

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Up until the 1800s dentures were often

made from the teeth of dead soldiers.

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Robin Williams devoted much of his time and energy to charities.

For example,

he supported St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

and helped to rebuild the city of Christchurch

after the 2010 earthquake in New Zealand.

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In Archi,

a language spoken around the Caspian Sea,

each verb can have up to 1.5 million different conjugations

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During medieval times animals were put on trial

and sometimes sentenced to death

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Robin Williams co-owned the Rubicon restaurant in San Francisco

with his friend Robert De Niro and

fellow Bay area resident Francis Ford Coppola.

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You have roughly 70,000 thoughts

every day!

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Dung beetles can use the Milky Way to navigate.

(My stars!)

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The title, “World’s luckiest unluckiest man”

belongs to Frane Selak, a Croatian music teacher,

who has literally escaped the jaws of death seven times.

On January 1962, a train he was on flipped off the tracks

killing 17 passengers. He survived.

In 1963, he was sucked out of a malfunctioning plane door

and landed in a haystack; the plane crashed killing 19 people.

In 1966, a bus Selak was on skidded off the road and into a river

where four passengers drowned.

1970 and 1973 his car caught on fire;

1995 he was struck by a bus

and in 1996 he drove into a gorge.

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In 1911, French tailor Franz Reichelt

decided to test his invention,

a combination overcoat and parachute,

by jumping off the Eiffel Tower.

It didn’t work.

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Robin WIlliams is also the author of many

both humorous and serious quotes such as:

“Reality is just a crutch for people

who can’t cope with drugs.“

Or

“No matter what people tell you,

words and ideas can change the world.“

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Did You Know – The August Fact File Is Open.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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In truth nothing much to do with August, except that’s the months we are now in and you have to call these posts something.

But don’t let that deter you from finding out a few more interesting facts.

Here they are.

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You have over 100,000 km of blood vessels in your brain.

That’s enough to wrap around the world 4 times.

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Poinsettias are not lethal.

If your pet is silly enough to eat one,

it may upset its stomach but it won’t kill anything.

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Allan Pinkerton,

famous for creating the Pinkerton detective agency

died of an infection after biting his tongue

when he slipped on a sidewalk.

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Your ears secrete more earwax when

you are afraid than when you aren’t.

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Chewing gum doesn’t take 7 years to digest.

It actually can’t be digested at all

and will pass right through you as is.

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It takes a photon, on average, 170,000 years

to travel from the core of the sun to the surface.

Then it takes just 8 minutes

from the sun’s surface to your eyes.

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The radiation leak from the Chenobyl nuclear reactor accident

caused the nearby forest to turn a bright ginger color,

thus the forest was named the “Red Forest”.

 

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The Tinkerbelle that flies across the sky during the

Disney fireworks show is sometimes a man.

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According to researchers,

who have not been there and don’t know what they are talking about,

the center of our galaxy tastes like raspberries and smells like rum.

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According to astronauts,

who have been there and do know what they are talking about,

space smells like seared steak, hot metal, and welding fumes.

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On Sept. 2, 1944, George H W Bush was flying over Japan

when his aircraft was shot down in the Pacific.

Bush and another crewman were able to bail out,

but the other man’s parachute malfunctioned,

and he went down with the plane.

Bush was eventually rescued by a

submarine off the coast of Chichi-jima.

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There are roughly 7,000 languages

estimated to still be spoken on Earth.

About 2,400 of them are in danger of going extinct.

In fact, one goes extinct every 14 days.

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War comes from a Germanic root

that meant “to confuse”

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For a long time people speculated over the identity

of the secret informant behind the Watergate Scandal,

codenamed “Deep Throat”.

Recently he was revealed to be

former FBI associate director Mark Felt.

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Michael Holmes, the youngest man

to have ever received a skydiving instructor certification,

saw his young career almost come to an end

when on December 2006 a skydive jump went horribly wrong.

Due to faulty ropes, Holmes’ main and reserve parachutes

failed to deploy sending him spiraling out of control

towards certain death.

However, thanks to a blackberry bush,

Holmes was able to survive the fall

with only a punctured lung and a shattered ankle.

This horrifying experience was all captured on camera.

Here it is….

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Did You Know? – More Interesting Facts.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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More interesting facts today.

Hats definitely off to James Harrison, but my favorite is Bill Morgan.

Enjoy.

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We’ll start with one in honor of the recently passed St Patrick’s Day.

St Patrick’s given name was Maewyn Succat.

After becoming a priest, he changed his name to Patricius,

from the Latin term meaning “father figure.”

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Esperanto is an artificial language,

but is spoken by about 500,000 to 2,000,000 people,

and 2 feature films have been done in the language.

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After the bible,

the most translated book in the world is

Pinocchio.

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Hall of fame boxer Sugar Ray Robinson backed out of a fight

because he had a dream that he was going to kill his opponent in the ring.

After a priest and minister convinced him to fight, Robinson went into the ring

and killed his opponent Jimmy Doyle.

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The German word for birth control pill is ‘antibabypille’

and in Switzerland they have pregnancy tests

called ‘MaybeBaby’ in vending machines.

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After 9/11, 1600 people died in automobile accidents

after they switched travel plans from flying to driving.

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If officials awarded Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France title

to the next fastest finisher who has never been linked to doping,

they would have to give it to the person who finished 23rd.

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When US Army officer Braxton Bragg held both the job of

the company commander and the post’s quartermaster,

he made a request to the quartermaster (that is, himself)

and when he received the request as quartermaster he denied it.

He continued to argue back and forth with himself through letters.

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In 2010 workers at Ground Zero found an 18th century wooden ship

underneath the World Trade Center rubble.

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When child actor Jackie Coogan turned 18,

he found out all his money, $68 million,

had been spent by his mother, who argued

“No promises were ever made to give Jackie anything.

Every dollar a kid earns before he is 21 belongs to his parents.” 

Coogan’s Bill was then passed to protect child actors.

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In Samoa, it’s a crime to forget your own wife’s birthday.

(Isn’t that true for most places?)

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Ryan Gosling was cast as Noah in The Notebook

because the director wanted someone “not handsome.”

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After needing 13 liters of blood for a surgery at the age of 13,

a man named James Harrison, aka “The Man With The Golden Arm”,

pledged to donate blood once he turned 18.

It was discovered that his blood contained a rare antigen

which cured Rhesus disease.

He has donated blood a record 1000 times

and saved 2,000,000 lives.

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In 1942 in Mississippi there was a man known as the Phantom Barber

who would break into peoples’ houses at night and cut their hair.

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In 1999 an Australian man, named Bill Morgan

was declared dead for 14 minutes after an allergic reaction to drugs

given to him in hospital after a car accident.

To celebrate his survival he bought a scratch card

and won a $27,000 car.

A news team covering the story asked him to re-enact

the scratch card moment for their story,

so he went into the shop, bought another scratch card,

and won  $250,000 jackpot.

Here he is….

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Did You Know? More Random Fact File Fun

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Facts don’t more random than these selections.

A little something for everyone seems to be the goal, so I hope you find at least one fact in here of interest.

Enjoy.

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People say “bless you” when you sneeze

because your heart stops for a millisecond.

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US gold coins used to say

“In Gold We Trust”.

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Kuwait is about 60% male

(highest in the world).

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Latvia is about 54% female

(highest in the world).

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The Hawaiian alphabet has only 12 letters.

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Julius Caesar’s autograph is worth about $2,000,000.

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The surface of the Earth is about 60% water and 10% ice,

but the volume of fresh water compared to

the volume of the earth is a lot smaller.

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For every 230 cars that are made, 1 will be stolen.

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Lightning strikes the earth about 8 million times a day.

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John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe died on July 4th.

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In 1386, a pig in France was executed

by public hanging for the murder of a child

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Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.

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Present population of 7 billion plus people of the world

is predicted to become 15 billion by 2080.

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A man named Charles Osborne

had the hiccups for 69 years!

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A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!

(That takes some lickin’)

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The average person laughs 10 times a day!

(But obviously readers of the Fasab blog are well above average!)

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Someone paid $14,000 for the bra worn by

Marilyn Monroe in the film ‘Some Like It Hot’.

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More than 1,000 different languages

are spoken on the continent of Africa.

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The White House has 132 rooms and

a total floor area of around 55,000 ft²

(5,100 square metres).

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Buckingham Palace in England has 775 rooms and

the total floor area of the Palace, from basement to roof,

covers over 828,000 square feet (77,000 square metres).

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