49 Facts That People Just Learned. | eBaum's World

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49 Facts That People Just Learned.

You can learn something new every day.

By Nathan Johnson

Published 3 years ago in Wow

You can learn something new every day.

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1
During the 2000's, Google, Apple, Adobe, Intel, and several other mega corporations had a mutual agreement not to hire each other's employees in order to keep salaries low. This led to a 400 mil class action lawsuit.

2
that Steve McQueen had a habit of demanding free items, in bulk, from studios, when doing movies, it was later discovered that these items (like electric razors and jeans) went to Boys Republic reformatory school, where McQueen had been, as a teenager.

3
David Copperfield was once robbed at gunpoint -- but successfully performed an illusion to convince the robbers his pockets were empty when they weren't.

4
Sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children. This myth is based on a single 1978 study; no subsequent study has shown a relationship.

5
since its premiere in 1987 the show Unsolved Mysteries has helped locate half of the wanted fugitives it has featured, reunited over 100 lost loves and freed 7 prisoners who were wrongfully convicted. An additional 260+ cases involving murder, missing persons and fraud have also been solved.

6
the pet food company Chewy sends flowers and a card when a customer's pet dies. They will reimburse the purchase of unopened food and suggest it be donated to a shelter. They also offer the option of talking to someone about the grief of losing a pet.

7
Oscar the Therapy Cat accurately predicted 25 deaths. After this the staff started notifying family members of residents to come say goodbye if Oscar was curled up next to them.

8
that Ben & Jerry's employees are entitled to 3 free pints of ice cream every day.

9
some insomniacs may have nights of "sleep misperception", where it feels like you were awake all night but you actually slept for hours.

10
NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar agreed to appear in the movie "Airplane!" on the condition he be paid $35,000.. the exact price of a rug he wanted to purchase.

11
in 1912 4 yr-old Bobby Dunbar disappeared, was found eight months later in Mississippi with a couple that refuted that it was him. Courts ordered the boy to live with the Dunbars. 100 years later DNA verified that the boy was Bruce Anderson and had been wrongly identified by Dunbar's parents.

12
certain species of wild oats are able to walk. They have a pair of 'legs' called awns which flex and make the seeds crawl around, to find an ideal place to plant itself.

13
that Ticketmaster was caught recruiting resellers to scalp its own tickets.

14
the vocals for the Gnarls Barley song "Crazy" (2006) were recorded in one take. Not only that, it was the first time singer CeeLo Green ever tried singing the lyrics. The song topped the charts in many countries and peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100.

15
traffic roundabouts, compared to intersections with stop signs or signals, have 37% fewer overall collisions, 75% fewer injury collisions, and 90% fewer fatal collisions.

16
Wheat and Barley were ancient Egyptian pregnancy tests. A woman would urinate on bags of barley and wheat and if they sprouted, she was likely pregnant. A 1963 study found that this was accurate ~70% of the time.

17
the car coordinator of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood managed to locate the exact 1959 Ford driven by the Manson Family, but a replica was used instead because the idea of having the real Manson car was considered too creepy.

18
that Pope Innocent VIII was breastfed while he was on his deathbed, as that was the only thing he could eat or drink.

19
In 36BCE, Roman statesman Marcus Varro wrote about germs, describing "minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which enter the body through the mouth & nose & there cause serious diseases". The germ theory of disease would not be widely accepted for another 1,900 years.

20
in an effort to protect her son and daughter from falling under the sinister charms of Charles Manson, Angela Lansbury relocated her family from LA to Ireland. Describing Ireland as “free from bad influences”, she then refused work to better support their recovery from heroin addiction.

21
that there was a 60s band named Nirvana that tried to sue the 90s band for having the same name as them. They wanted to cover them after that, but the project was scrapped due to Kurt Cobains death.

22
Emperor Hirohito of Japan was given the original print of the Disney short Lambert the Sheepish Lion, after it was learned it was his favourite Disney film.

23
that the geologist Michel Siffre spent 2 months underground without time cues to study how his body clock adapted, repeated the experiment for even longer on himself and more subjects, and discovered that their bodies tended to switch to a 48-hour clock. In one case, one even slept 34 hours.

24
about Giles Corey, who was accused of witchcraft during the Salem trials. He used a legal loophole and refused to plea, which meant he couldn't be tried. He was then tortured to death, but still refused to plea, allowing his children to claim their inheritance.

25
TGI Fridays stopped requiring employees to wear flair after Office Space came out and customers began making jokes about the flair.

26
Abraham Lincoln signed the bill creating the Secret Service on April 14, 1865, the day he was assassinated.

27
Marjoe Gortner is an Evangelical preacher who decided to pull the curtain back on the scams he and other preachers used. He invited a crew to film behind the scenes as he revealed tricks of the trade and the sacks full of cash he earned nightly. It won the '72 Academy Award Best Documentary.

28
that US Navy sailor's love of ice cream in world war II was so great that in 1943 the navy purchased an 'ice cream barge' to act as a mobile ice cream making factory for sailors and marines. The barge was capable of producing 10 gallons of ice cream every 7 minutes.

29
After traveling more than 1 billion miles, a Japanese spacecraft brought 1,500 grains from an asteroid back to Earth in 2010. It was the first time samples from an asteroid had been brought back to Earth.

30
that during the looting of the Chinese imperial palace at the end of the 2nd Opium War, the British soldiers took a Pekingese dog to gift to Queen Victoria. She named it "Looty".

31
Teddy roosevelt, who is thought of as the national park man, is actually the National forest man. During his presidency he founded 5 of 63 US national parks. As for national forests, he founded 150 of the 154 US national forests!

32
the US didn’t have the $15m to pay France for Louisiana, so they financed it through banks in London. Napoleon had made the deal with the US to fund his war against Great Britain and Europe. Britain allowed this deal to go through only because they didn’t want France to have their NA territory.

33
Boeing built an entire fake town on top of their Seattle area factory during WW2.

34
the British had a secret WW2 plan called Operation Tracer to leave behind an observation post if the Germans captured Gibraltar. Six men were to be sealed inside a hidden chamber to observer the harbor and Strait of Gibraltar. They would have had 7 years of supplies and bicycle-powered radios.

35
The Fairey Swordfish biplane was considered out of date by 1939 but was effective throughout WW2. Swordfish sunk more enemy tonnage than any other plane, sunk numerous U-boats, disabled the Bismarck, and remained in use into 1945.

36
When the printing press made its debut in Europe in the 15th century, thousands of old texts were 'recycled' for use as binding material for newer books. In 2015, researchers at Leiden University started using an x-ray technique to reveal these texts. Some are up to 1,300 years old.

37
Caffeine is a banned substance by the NCAA. A urinary caffeine concentration exceeding 15 micrograms per milliliter (corresponding to ingesting about 500 milligrams, roughly 6 to 8 cups of brewed coffee, two to three hours before competition) results in a positive drug test.

38
that the Watergate scandal began when burglars acting on behalf of the Nixon administration broke into Democratic campaign headquarters. They were caught because their lookout (posted in a hotel next door) was watching "Attack of the Puppet People" on TV and didn't notice the police arriving.

39
Physiologist Giles Brindley, in 1983 presented his treatment for erectile disfunction by injecting himself before his talk and dropping his pants to show the crowd of urologists.

40
In the 18-1900s dueling scars were a prominent feature of German officers and academics. The scars were symbols of courage and also showed one was "good husband material". Some would even make their own scars by cutting themselves.

41
that in 2005 burglars stole $71.6 million from a bank in Fortaleza, Brazil by setting up a fake landscaping company near the bank and digging a 256ft tunnel beneath two city blocks to the bank over 3 months. Neighbors noticed vanloads of soil removed daily but assumed it was business-related.

42
Mel Gibson originally intended for The Passion of the Christ to have no subtitles, despite the film being entirely in Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic.

43
that the line "You gotta keep 'em separated" in The Offspring's song "Come Out and Play" came from when singer Dexter Holland worked in a biology lab. He had two steaming flasks of liquid that weren't cooling off when placed next to each other, so he thought, "I've got to keep 'em separated."

44
The night before Emperor Hirohito's surrender broadcast army officers launched a coup. The officers occupied the Imperial Palace trying to destroy the Emporer's surrender record and assassinate officials. The plan failed when the record was smuggled out and the military didn't support the coup.

45
in 2014 a drum of radioactive nuclear waste burst when workers used organic kitty litter to absorb the volatile chemicals. The cleanup cost was estimated to be $600mil+.

46
about Melanie Martinez, a Louisiana native who had five separate houses destroyed by five separate hurricanes: Betsy (1965), Juan (1985), George (1998), Katrina (2005) and Isaac (2012).

47
Sonora Carver, one of the first female horse divers, went blind from retinal detachment while diving with her horse, Red Lips, at an Atlantic City show in 1931. Despite her permanent injury, she continued horse diving for another 11 years.

48
that Nosferatu plagiarized Bram Stoker's book Dracula. Stoker's estate sued them and attempted to destroy all copies of the film, but at least one copy made its way to the US where Stoker's book had already become public domain. For this reason, it survived and circulated as a cult classic.

49
General Hancock chose to sacrifice an entire regiment to save the Union Army during the Civil War. The 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment, 250 men, was ordered to charge a brigade of roughly 1200 men. They suffered a staggering 82% casualties; the largest loss by any surviving U.S unit in a day.

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