The Best Interesting Random Facts
Abraham Lincoln was granted U.S. Patent No. 6,468 12 years before he became the 16th president. The four-digit patent number is a telling indication of just how long ago that was. The device was intended to help grounded steamboats get off shoals and sandbars without jettisoning heavy cargo; it involved inflatable chambers designed to float […]
Superman first appeared in Action Comics in June of 1938. Superman is widely considered to be an American cultural icon, and helped to create and establish the superhero genre within the American comic book industry. The Great Depression of the 1930s was a huge influence on early Superman stories, and Superman took on the role […]
An equestrian statue is a statue of a horse-mounted rider, and the term comes from the Latin word “eques”, meaning “knight” and a derivative of “equus”, which means “horse”. Statues of horse and rider are exclusively of monarchs or great warriors and are usually found in places of honor. The tradition is that if the […]
The statistic that 75% of all fatal auto accidents occur within 25 miles of home is quite alarming. It does make it sound like there’s a bubble of danger around your own home, or that you’ll be safe if only you’re willing to stay more than 25 miles from your house. The truth behind the […]
Although many believe that the word loony came from the loon’s laugh-like call, the word loony, or looney, is just a short version of the word lunatic. Lunatic has been in use for almost 1,000 years and comes from luna, the “moon,” based on the belief that insanity was affected by the moon’s phases. In […]
Putting pennies on dead people’s eyes could have been used by many cultures to keep the eyes of the dead shut until rigor mortis sets in. Some cultures, including the ancient Egyptians and more modern African Americans, have also used coins on the eyes and hands of the deceased to share with relatives in the […]
Traditionally, sailors on a ship considered seeing an albatross to be a sign of good luck. Probably this came from early days of navigation, when sailors mistakenly thought the bird sighting meant that land was near. Little did they know that an albatross can live for years on the sea without setting foot on land. […]
Pablo Picasso was an amazing and prolific painter. However, unlike Michelangelo, who was also an accomplished poet, or Leonardo, who dabbled brilliantly in the fields of science, math, philosophy, and music, Picasso’s genius in painting did not overlap into other fields. For example, when he tried his hand at writing plays, he took just four […]
As long as the matador does not harm or kill the bull, bullfighting is legal in the United States. Detroit is one city that has featured bloodless bullfighting, bringing in some of the best Spanish and Mexican bullfighters to demonstrate their skills, speed, and courage without doing overt harm to the animals. In Portugal it […]
The only way to find out if diner lingo is faster is to try it and see. First a little lingo: “Noah’s boy with Murphy carrying a wreath, splash of red noise, frog sticks, and an MD, hold the hail!” Now the order, straight: “Ham with potato and cabbage, tomato soup, French fries, and a […]
Picasso did smoke, and he credited cigar smoke with saving his life. The story that he told was that he had been born grey and wasn’t breathing. The midwife thought he was dead, but luckily an uncle, who was a doctor, decided to try something desperate, he blew cigar smoke into the infant’s nose. The […]
A firkin is an old English unit of measurement used in winemaking. It amounts to about a quarter of a barrel. The word firkin comes from the Middle Dutch word vierdekijn, which means fourth, or a quarter of a full-size barrel. For beer and ale a firkin is equal to nine imperial gallons, or seventy-two […]
Hostess Sno Balls are spongy half-domes of cake and marshmallow, and traditionally come in white and pink. But the Hostess company isn’t beyond surprising consumers with special colors on holidays or for special events. For example, when the Broncos made the NFL play-offs, the Hostess bakery in Denver filled each package with one orange and […]
There are at least three sports that originated in the United States. Basketball, Volleyball, invented in Holyoke, Massachusetts, by William Morgan in 1895, for sedentary businessmen who found the new sport of basketball too strenuous. Rodeo, first formalized as a sport in Prescott, Arizona.
Postum is a drink made of bran and molasses that was originally concocted as a substitute for coffee and a digestive aid. C. W. Post created Postum in 1895, then had to convince people to buy and consume Postum instead of coffee. So he did what every desperate businessman would do: scared the bejeebers out […]
It’s hard to say for sure who the smartest president in the United States was, but James Garfield must be up there in the top percentile. He was a college professor in ancient languages and literature and once published a mathematical proof of the Pythagorean theorem. An ambidextrous man, Garfield also had a nifty trick […]
You would think Fruit Smack would have been a better name for Kool-Aid. Kool-Aid was invented by Edwin Perkins and his wife Kitty in Hastings, Nebraska, United States. Perkins wanted to do what Jell-O had done, so he kept concocting until he came up with a powdered concentrate for his fruit-flavored drink. He named it […]
Like so many Old Testament characters, Lot lived a long and eventful life. However, his wife didn’t fare so well, and his daughters seemed to be pawns in a terribly twisted tale. The story began when God decided that the town of Sodom, Lot’s hometown, was so evil that it must be destroyed. Since Lot […]
Illinois Avenue is the most landed space in Monopoly. It is followed by B&O Railroad, Free Parking, Tennessee Avenue, New York Avenue, and Reading Railroad. Monopoly is a redesign of an earlier game “The Landlord’s Game”, which was first published by the Quaker and political activist Elizabeth Magie. Monopoly is also the most played commercial […]
Scrummage isn’t exactly the same thing as scrimmage from American football, in fact, you could call it the father of scrimmage. The two, scrummage and scrimmage, are similar in that they take place at the start of a play, but that is where the similarity ends. In football, each side lines up face-to-face on either […]
The story of Frankenstein came from a ghost story party in 1816. Nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley, her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, her pregnant stepsister, Claire Clarement, Lord Byron (father of Claire’s unborn child), and Byron’s physician, John Polidori, were all staying together on holiday in Geneva, Switzerland. To fill the long, rainy nights during this stay, […]
Shoeless Joe Jackson and eight other White Sox players were accused of throwing the 1919 World Series against Cincinnati, and were thrown out of baseball forever, even though they were acquitted of criminal charges. For 10 years afterward, Jackson, one of the best baseballers ever, played semipro around the country under various assumed names. When […]
Dr. Lillian Moller Gilbreth, who also invented the now common kitchen trash can with a step-on opening lid, invented the electric food mixer. She was a pioneering efficiency expert and incidentally was also the mother in the book Cheaper by the Dozen, written by two of her twelve children. Lillian Gilbreth was was born in […]
Disney World has only been closed for one day on September 15, 1999 since it opened in 1971. Although Disney World has shut down early or opened late for many reasons over the years, Hurricane Floyd in September 1995 has been the only event compelling enough to close down Disney’s Florida amusement park for an […]
Before the electronic age, ticker tape was a thin paper ribbon of information fed mechanically to the brokers on Wall Street. At day’s end, floors were ankle deep with ticker tape. On October 28, 1886, the elaborate dedication of the Statue of Liberty was visible from the brokers’ windows, causing such excitement that they began […]
Train whistles used to mean a lot more back before phones, walkie-talkies, and other ways for the engineer to communicate with the rest of the crew. For example, one urgent toot! signaled the brakeman to jump from car to car, applying the brakes on each one, which at one time was the only way to […]
Among the famous name composers who composed the most music were: Franz Josef Haydn, who wrote 340 hours of music in 54 years of composing; George Handel, 303 hours in 54 years; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 202 hours in 29 years; and Johann Sebastian Bach, 147 hours in 47 years. On the other hand, the most […]
Seven U.S. presidents were born in a log cabin. They included Abe Lincoln, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Andrew Jackson, and James Garfield. A log cabin was the first generation home building erected quickly for frontier shelter. Historically log construction has its roots in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, and the first log cabins were probably built […]
Shakespeare mentioned America once in his plays. In The Comedy of Errors, during a discussion between Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse, Dromio describes a woman, a rather large woman, who, in his mind, is globe shaped. During the course of the conversation, Antipholus urges Dromio to keep pinpointing geographic locations on her large […]
Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and Thomas Jefferson on Mount Rushmore all have the biggest faces, and win by a nose. The boys on Mount Rushmore each have faces about 60 feet tall. The Sphinx’s face is about half that size, and Liberty’s is only about two-thirds the size of the Sphinx’s face. The […]
Before magician Harry Houdini died, he promised his wife he would contact her if possible from the spirit world. During his life, Houdini had spent quite a bit of time running to psychics in an attempt to contact his dear departed mother, to no avail. He desperately wanted to find out once and for all […]
George Washington hated the tedium of sitting for days at a time when getting his portrait painted. When he retired from public office, he swore he’d never pose again, until his wife, Martha, suggested that both of them pose for portraits to be hung above the mantelpiece in their home. They chose Gilbert Stuart, a […]
Robert Moog built the first Moog synthesizer in 1964. The electronic instrument was enormous and could play only one note at a time. When Walter Carlos recorded Switched on Bach on it, he had to laboriously build Bach’s chords and counterpoint by repeatedly recording separate tracks on tape. In 1970, advances in electronic miniaturization and […]
Pepsi got its name from one of its main ingredients, pepsin, a substance used to relieve indigestion. When pharmacist Caleb Bradham concocted the kola nut, pepsin, sugar, and vanilla mixture in 1893, he called it Brad’s Drink. When it became popular, he changed the name in 1903 and began the PepsiCola company. Bradham, who was […]
The international Morse code distress signal is commonly known as SOS. Morse code is a series of electrical impulses that signify the letters of a structured message. SOS doesn’t stand for “save our ship” or “save our souls,” as has been commonly believed. First adopted by the German government in radio regulations, the letters SOS […]
You would think that Chock Full o’Nuts would be called Chock Full o’ Beans, wouldn’t you? Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee got its name from the fact that the company used to be a nut business. William Black sold nuts from a street pushcart in the mid-1920s, but sales slowed to the point where he […]
