The Best Interesting Random Facts
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 […]
The man who sells more big diamonds than any other dealer in the world is forbidden to have a picture taken of his face. His name is Harry Winston, and because the police and insurance companies are afraid he will be kidnapped or robbed, what he looks like remains a mystery. In a picture, his […]
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 […]
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 […]
President Grant did when he visited Central City, Colorado. It was 1873, and Central City was in the middle of a gold and silver mining boom. Throughout Colorado and elsewhere, the town was known as the “richest square mile on earth.” That claim may or may not have been true, but for awhile the town […]
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, […]
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 […]
He was sure his enemies would try to kill him if they knew where he would spend the night. To keep them guessing, he moved from palace to palace, never spending more than one night at a time in any one. They were always kept stocked with food, and each had servants ready to provide […]
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, […]
After fifteen years of spectacular robberies, the Wild West’s most notorious outlaw, Jesse James, was shot in the back by two members of his gang. They were out to collect a $10,000 reward for his capture, “dead or alive.” The strange thing was that when they brought his body in, they were arrested for murder […]
They do in India. Silver can be hammered till it is 150 times thinner than a page of this book. In India, they take this very, very thin silver and decorate food to make it look pretty. They then eat the food and the decoration, too. How would you like to see a silver chicken […]
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, […]
Fred Astaire’s shoe size was a pretty average, 10 1/2. His height, however, sometimes caused problems. He looks tall on screen because he was very thin and angular. In reality, however, he was quite short, 5′ 8″, and sometimes needed his dancing partners to take off their high heels for dialogue scenes. Ginger Rogers, at […]
It took 35 years to build his tomb, and 700,000 workers were brought from every part of China to do the work. When he was finally buried in it, in 210 B.C., the tomb was covered with earth. When the job was done, a small mountain fifteen stories high had been created. They called it […]
Men with four-inch fingernails? During the late 1800s and even during the early 1900s, it was the custom among the ruling classes and the very wealthy of China for men to allow one fingernail to grow to a length of four or five inches. Because such a fingernail could not possibly remain on the hand […]
That famous “hole in the ground” is the subway. England is the home of the subway. The first system, called the London Transport Executive, began to operate in 1863, while the United States was deeply involved in the Civil War. The Longest Subway System In The World is the The London Tube, with 408 km […]
Long before Grover Cleveland became president, he was a sheriff in Erie County, New York. As a law officer, one of his duties was to be in charge of hangings. While he was a sheriff, he had to hang two criminals. Cleveland was always a very busy man. In the course of three and a […]
They would, could, and do. It is a custom among the Brahman people of southern India that a younger son cannot marry before his older brother does. When it looks like the older son cannot find anyone to marry, and the younger son has already found a willing wife, an odd thing happens. The older […]
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 […]
They were a gang of Old West bank robbers and stagecoach hold-up men. They stashed fresh horses, provisions, and ammunition at hiding places along a trail that led from where they were going to pull a hold-up to where they wanted to hide out. This method was similar to the one used by the Pony […]
President Reagan liked to take a few weeks off to spend time at his ranch in California, but he worked at being president even while he is there. President Eisenhower loved to play golf and could be found on the golf course two or three times a week. But the man who liked to escape […]
The Macaroni Club was formed in England around 1770 by a group of wealthy young Londoners. It started as a joke. The members wanted to make fun of the stuck-up clubs that their elders all belonged to. The group of young men had just come back from a trip to Italy, so they called their […]
Frank Richards wanted to find out if he had the strongest stomach muscles in the world. He decided to make his stomach as strong as he could. He trained very hard, became a circus performer, and used his strong stomach muscles in his act. In 1927, the great heavy weight boxing champion Jack Dempsey hit […]
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 […]
For six years around the turn of the century, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid led the most successful gang in the Old West.
There are a lot of crazy automobile drivers in this world, but it is the Japanese who take the cake. They have more accidents than anybody else, based on the size of their population. Not many people get killed in these accidents. Not many people even get injured. They just keep bumping into one another, […]
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 […]
In many parts of the world, man is losing his battle against the desert. Iran is one place where he is winning. Iran’s desert is twice the size of the state of Vermont. Parts of it are being sprayed with oil. The oil dries to a gray crust that works like a mulch, protecting the […]
In France at the end of the 1700s, women wore their hair in the strangest fashion you can imagine. They wore wigs that rose two and a half to three feet above their heads. Some of the women were so tall they had to ride on the floor of their carriages in order to fit […]
Reading is a very human activity. The act of reading is so complicated that even the most advanced computer can’t do it as well as you can. When you read, you take shortcuts, play hunches, figure things out in advance, and you make all these calculations almost instantly. You see letters in groups and the […]
R. H. Macy & Co. at 34th St. and Seventh Ave. in New York City was the world’s largest Department store in 2008. It is more commonly known to the American public as Macy’s. This giant department store didn’t appear overnight. It started as a tiny “hole in the wall” store on New York’s 14th […]
In 1823, Captain John Cleves Symmes, a war hero, went to talk to the members of the U. S. Congress. He asked them to give him a ship and a few brave scientists for a journey to the center of the earth. He planned to sail there by going down a hole he believed existed […]
No, but those who wanted William Henry Harrison to become president did. During the campaign of 1840, Harrison’s friends made a large paper ball and rolled it all the way from Kentucky to Baltimore, Maryland, where the convention was to be held. They carried a sign that read, “Keep the Ball Rolling.” All this might […]
According to a recent Gallup poll, the kids who hate school the most come from that most polite of all nations, Japan. Why do Japanese children dislike school? Psychologists reason that it is because great pressure it put on Japanese children to get high marks in school. It is said that unless you have very […]
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 […]
They didn’t carry guns or, at least, they weren’t supposed to. But 9-year-olds served in the army during the American Revolution. They were drummer boys. Often, the sounds of their drums were used to send signals from one part of an army to another. More often, the drummer boys beat out the rhythm of a […]
