The Best Interesting Random Facts
It’s hard to tell from the evidence if Albert Einstein was absent minded, many of the stories told about Einstein could be fabrications to perpetuate that stereotype. What we know is that he was a daydreamer as a schoolboy, so much so that his headmaster informed young Albert’s father, “It doesn’t matter what field he […]
On a spring afternoon in May, 1823, a youth appeared out of nowhere, staggering along the streets of Nuremburg, Germany. He asked to be taken to the military fort, where he handed the officer in charge two letters that said his first name was Casper and that he was 13 years old. The letters requested […]
It happened in 1914, during the early days of movies. Movie makers wanted real-life pictures for a war movie. They knew that Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary leader was about to go to war against the dictator of Mexico. The movie company signed a contract with Villa. Villa agreed to fight his war the way […]
A stewardess, Vesna Vulovic, flying for a Yugoslav airline, fell from a height of over 31,000 feet and lived to fly again and again. On January 26, 1972, the DC-9 on which she was working blew up at 33,330 feet while flying over Czechoslovakia. When she was found, she was strapped to an airline seat […]
You’d be pretty rich, right? After all, Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse, and he became very rich. Unlike Mickey, Superman did not make his creators rich. As a matter of fact, in 1938, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who created the Red-Caped Crusader, sold all their rights to the cartoon character to Detective Comics for […]
When this great Sioux warrior died, he was secretly buried, and only his parents knew the location of his grave. They kept the secret, and it died with them. Chief Crazy Horse was the greatest of the Oglala Sioux and after he and Sitting Bull defeated General Custer, the U. S. Army decided that Crazy […]
The book “The Catcher in the Rye” was written by J. D. Salinger and published in 1951. The novel has become a classic with over 64 million copies sold to date. Even today, 250 thousand copies are sold each year and it has been translated into all major languages. Walk into any decent bookstore, and […]
Yes. It was used for escaping from fires. In 1879, when Benjamin Oppenheimer patented his invention, there were many more house fires than there are now, and when houses burned, they generally burned to the ground. Houses caught on fire because of carelessness with fireplaces and wood- burning stoves, both of which were much more […]
It angered King George of England that the pesty Americans had invented the lightning rod. How could a country bumpkin like Benjamin Franklin have invented anything to do with something so complicated as electricity. In the early 1770s, just before the American Revolution, England went ahead and began to install lightning rods on those buildings […]
The Queen of England has the tiny stove, and she has a working refrigerator six inches high, a one inch-high kitchen scale that actually weighs things, a five-inch vacuum cleaner that sucks up dust, and a golden, carved piano eight inches from front to back on which every black and white key plays its own […]
Early American pioneers found that living in separate cabins did not offer them protection from Indians. So all the settlers who lived near one another would get together and build a fort. They would construct cabins inside the fort along one wall. Like the rooms in modern motels, these cabins were in a straight line, […]
Do you hear a lot of griping and complaining around you? Are your friends always saying this is wrong, that is terrible, and that other thing ought to be changed? Well, if you hear a lot of that here in the US, you ought to hear what’s going on in Italy and Japan. More people […]
Delivering fresh milk was a problem in the days before refrigeration. In small towns and cities around the world, a farmer often delivered milk to his customers in the freshest way he knew. He brought the cow with him. The customer bought what he or she needed. The cow delivered the milk right into the […]
Some of us are short or tall and it all has to do with the climate in which hundreds of generations of their people have spent their lives. People who have lived in the cold climate of the Arctic need to save every bit of heat their bodies can produce. The more skin they have, […]
For 2,000 years, people made bottles by blowing air into a glob of molten glass through a long, thin pipe. The hot glass expanded the same way a balloon does. It was slow, difficult work. Then, in 1903, a glassblower from West Virginia named Michael J. Owens invented a machine that could do the same […]
For six years around the turn of the century, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid led the most successful gang in the Old West.
The most famous case is that of Sgt. Roger Reynolds of the U. S. Army’s crack parachute team, the Golden Knights. On April 24,1974, he fell 2,000 feet when both of his parachutes failed to open during an army exhibition at Charlottesville, Virginia. He hit the ground at 85 miles an hour, broke many bones, […]
It doesn’t get very cold in the winter in the Indian city of Calcutta. Even had they heard of ice in 1833, most of the city’s people had never seen it. So, when Frederick Tudor’s ship arrived in Calcutta harbor with a shipment of ice from the ponds of New England, it caused a great […]
Mel Blanc was very allergic to carrots. He says he tried apples and celery and all sorts of alternatives to get the sound just right, but nothing worked as well as carrots did. So he chewed carrots when he needed to, spitting them out and watching for signs of anaphylactic shock.
In the country villages of remote areas of India, this has been going on for hundreds or thousands of years. Here it is the custom for girls to marry when they are 12 or 13. Recently, however, a law has been passed that forbids them from living with their husbands as a family until they […]
Did a king ever give his Toenails as gifts? Yes. One king did, and he did it more than once. King Victor Emmanuel II was the first man to rule over a united Italy and was probably also the first to give away his toenails as presents. Every year while he was king, he allowed […]
SmokeJumpers jump just where you’d guess they might, into smoke. The name smoke jumper is given to a very special group of 350 forest firefighters. These man are trained to parachute from low-flying planes into parts of the forest that are hard to reach. Their job is to try to stop a forest fire before […]
Two of the most famous sharpshooters of all time were Annie Oakley and Daniel Boone. Annie toured with Bufffalo Bill’s Wild West show for 17 years during the late 1800’s. She was such a crack shot that the emperor of Germany performed in her act when the show came to his country. He would put […]
His name was Big Nose George Parrott, and he was one of the Old West’s meanest outlaws. He would just as soon murder you’ as shake your hand. When Big Nose Parrott held up a stagecoach, passengers and driver were lucky to come out alive. Big Nose’s luck finally ran out one day in Rawlins, […]
The famous French poet Charles Baudelaire took great delight in shocking both his friends and strangers. One of his favorite pranks was to walk a lobster through the streets of Paris on a leash. A few years earlier, the famous Countess of Eglintoune tried to shock her friends in another way. She would invite them […]
Every joint in your body is slicker than a skate on ice. As a matter of fact, your body is so well lubricated at its joints that they have only one-third the friction of a sharp skate slicing its way over a hard-frozen pond. The human body is truly amazing. Did you know that a […]
Turmeric is the powdered rhizome of Curcuma longa; and paprika, which is obtained from the fruits of sweet peppers, Capsicum annuum, are examples of spices used in cooking as much for their color as for flavor. The yellow colour of turmeric is caused by curcumin, which makes up around 5 percent of the dry powder. […]
Mathew Brady was a photographer, and he became famous because he was the first American to shoot and document a war. Brady’s 3,500 photographs taken during the Civil War provided the very first such record of any American war. The pictures he took brought the real meaning of the fighting to the families at home. […]
The Continental army, the American forces of the Revolutionary War, had its share of great athletes. George Washington was himself a fine wrestler and took on all corners. He was also a champion broad jumper. The title of “strongest” probably belongs to Peter Francisco, who at age 16, stood six feet six inches and weighed […]
Three of America’s Founding Fathers, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe, died on the Fourth of July. Of the three, James Monroe was the only one who fought in the American Revolution. He fought in many battles and was wounded twice, once at the Battle of Harlem Heights and once at the Battle of […]
It is western Burma, and the women with the long necks are the tribeswomen of Padaung. Brass rings worn around the necks of the women make their necks look as though they were twelve inches long. Each of the rings is one-third of an inch in diameter. There are 36 of them, and they weigh […]
The city of New York Uses The Most Water. Sound like a lot of water, doesn’t it? In the 1980s, 10 million people used 500 million gallons of water a day. That works out to 50 gallons for every person. That is less than the average for the rest of the U.S.A. Throughout our country, […]
They don’t have presidents in India, but there is a group of people called Todas who think the milkman is the greatest hero on earth. They think he is far more important than a president. In fact, he is the most important man in town. In spite of the honor this man has, he has […]
He didn’t wear an iron mask, he wore one of cloth. For 35 years, this man was kept a prisoner. To this day, nobody knows who the man was. He was put in prison by the king of France, who absolutely refused to answer any questions about why the prisoner was there or who he […]
One of our most famous presidents was a smuggler. He was never caught, but he only smuggled once. In 1784, congress asked Thomas Jefferson to travel to Europe to make treaties of friendship and to see if the European nations were interested in buying such American products as tobacco, whale oil, and furs. The European […]
There is no proof that such a thing is possible, but there have been people who seemed to be able to foresee the future. One such person was David Goodman Croly, a successful journalist who lived between 1829 and 1889. One of the things he foresaw long before it happened was World War I. He […]