January 2012
2 posts
In South Africa, there is a muppet on Sesame Street that is HIV positive! If you think about it, it’s probably not a bad idea. Africa has an overwhelming amount of HIV victims. Sesame Street is an educational program for kids, so it makes sense that they would try to inform them of HIV at a young age.
Former President Bill Clinton was taped with Kami the muppet talking about HIV. Kami reveals to...
One of the fathers of modern computers committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple! Alan Turing, was a successful British mathematician, credited with creating the building blocks for computer algorithms and cracking the enigma code. He was also gay.Turing was able to keep this a secret for most of his life until his boyfriend got in trouble with the law.
His boyfriend, Arnold Murray, attempted...
December 2011
22 posts
Montana had FEWER traffic accidents when they had NO speed limits! It’s called the Montana Speed Limit Paradox. Data collected by the state of Montana showed that when driving on highways with no posted speed limits, drivers actually drove safer and slower!
The number of deadly car accidents doubled (increased by 111%) when Montana enforced strict speed laws! How is this possible? Further...
When the US space station Skylab crashed in Australia, the municipality fined the US for littering! In 1979, pieces of the US space station Skylab fell from the sky and littered the Australian municipality of Esperance. The craft had broken apart over the Indian Ocean.
Esperance fined the United States $400 for littering! It wasn’t until 2009 that they were paid, though. A radio show host, Scott...
A family in Colorado lost their cat in 2007 and it was found 5 years later in New York! That’s over 1800 miles away. The cat had a microchip implanted when it was a kitten, so when an animal shelter in New York had it checked, they were able to contact the family, who couldn’t believe they had found their cat after such a long time!
The cat was in such good health that the animal...
“A Charlie Brown Christmas” was almost cancelled before it aired! The special, which is a staple of the Christmas season nowadays, was the very first animated work from Charles Schultz’s Peanuts strip.
When CBS TV executives saw the special they were dismayed. It was slow, it had no action, there were no professional voice actors (they were all kids!) and they did things that...
In the early days of Disney Studios, in a staff party, a cartoon short was shown of Mickey and Minnie Mouse in an x-rated scene. Afterwards, Walt chuckled along with everyone else, invited them up on the stage to be recognized, fired them both on the spot, and ordered the film to be destroyed.
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Ernest Duchesne discovered penicillin 32 years before Alexander Fleming, but he was ignored because he was only 23! Duchesne was a French physician who noted that certain moulds killed bacteria. This was 32 years before Alexander Fleming found the antibiotic properties in penicillin. Duchesne enrolled at the Military Health Service Schools of Lyons in 1894 and documented his findings in his thesis...
John Stump is credited for creating ridiculous, unplayable music! John Stump is credited with the invention of the ridiculous music genre after composing a piece entitled “Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz”. After looking at the sheet music for a second, you can see that something is not right.
There are giant clumps of notes everywhere and skilled music readers will see that the notes do not make...
How did Harriet Tubman trick a former slave owner? Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave who fled to the North in 1849. After this, she started helping her family escape the South, and eventually other people too. She ended up saving over 70 people in 13 trips. She was sometimes called Moses because she was freeing her people. In all her trips, she had a few really close encounters with people who...
Ghengis Khan killed 11% of the world’s population!
Ghengis Khan reached power by uniting the nomadic tribes of Northeast Asia. He founded the Mongol Empire and began invading other tribes. This resulted in the eventual conquest of most of Eurasia.
While most conquests like this are usually pretty bloody, no one holds a candle to Khan. He killed with such savagery that it is estimated that...
Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings using only 2 fingers! The novel took him over 14 years to write. After he wrote the Hobbit in 1937, it wasn’t until the mid 1950s when the first volume “The Fellowship of the Ring” was actually published.
When all was said and done, the book was over 1200 pages that he typed himself! It is said that when he needed a copy of the manuscript, he...
The opposite of ‘sparkle’ is ‘darkle’! While most of us have seen things shimmer with light and described it as sparkling, there is an equal opposite to sparkle. The word, darkle, means to become cloudy, gloomy, dark, or be concealed in the dark!
Another interesting fact about darkle is that it is a relatively new word in comparison to its antonym, sparkle! In fact, the first use of sparkle dates...
Microsofts “I’m a PC” Ads were created on a Mac! This campaign was a response to the highly successful Apple campaign that featured Justin Long and John Hodgman that (favorably) compared Macs to PCs. However, in a struck of irony, clever internet users figured out that the campaign had actually been created in Macs!
What they did is they looked at the ‘metadata’ or...
In 1979, people called in sick to work with a case of “being homosexual”!
This happened in Sweden. The event was a protest, because in the country, homosexuality was classified as a sickness at the time. After this happened, there was also a protest outside the National Board of Health and Welfare to try and get them to change this classification. Sweden had been one of the first countries to...
Canada is the only country in the world to sell ketchup flavored potato chips! Lay’s potato chips are known around the world, yet have different names in different regions. They make chips of all different flavors, and one claim Canada has is that Lay’s makes ketchup flavored chips. Other flavors available are Smokey Bacon, Dill Pickle, Flamin’ Hot, and Limon.
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A pigeon saved 194 soldiers in World War I! The bird, Cher Ami, delivered 12 important messages during the war. He was shot through his breast and managed to land. American soldiers found one of Cher Ami’s decapitated legs with a message! The message on the bird’s leg was from Major Whittlesey, whose battalion was isolated from the other American soldiers. Based on that information,...
The echidna and platypus are the only mammals that lay eggs! The echidna is found in Australia and along with the platypus lays eggs and produces milk for its young. They are considered mammals, though, and are the only of their kind. The echidna is also known as the “spiky anteater” and looks roughly like a hedgehog. The animal can survive an array of temperatures and is nocturnal.
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If the Lion King were to happen in real life, the lions would have naturally choosen Scar over Simba It’s because of the color of Scar’s mane. The mane in each adult lion is a telling sign of its strength and sexual maturity. The fuller and darker a Lion’s mane is the more attractive it is to the lionesses.
A dark and full mane in a lion indicates:
Higher testosterone...
You only have two fears when you are Born When you are first born your only fears were of falling and of loud noises. They are built into your DNA and have been passed down from generation to generation as a survival mechanism
Their sole purpose is to keep you alive, and create emotion that will motivate you to avoid danger.
Every other fear you face you have learned throughout your life.
...
A woman made a replica of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper” using nothing but lint from her dryer Laura Bell, from Michigan, spent 800 hours of laundry to create enough lint and 200 hours to put it together. The artwork ended up measuring 14 feet wide and 4 feet tall!
She had to buy towels according to the colors she wanted on her work, but she had to wash and dry them...
During World War I, France built a fake Paris to fool Germany France decided to make a fake city of Paris to keep German planes from bombarding the real city. The fake city was built just north of the real one. There were electric lights, replica buildings, and even a copy of the Gare du Nord—the station from which high-speed trains now travel to and from London.
The plan would have worked...
Have scientists discovered a cure to aging? These cells, known as senescent cells, have been shown to help the body age so scientists are trying to get rid of them to fight aging! After testing on mice, the one treated did not develop the aging disease cataracts and was able to exercise on a treadmill for much longer than the mice with its senescent cells remaining. The mouse with the aging cells...
A man woke up from surgery to find doctors removed his penis Hurshell Ralls went in for bladder surgery after developing cancer but unfortunately, the doctors had removed something besides the infected cells. Ralls’ doctors and surgeons never mentioned to the man that removal of the penis and testicles was a possibility and because of it, Ralls sued.
His doctor said that the cancer from Ralls’...
November 2011
30 posts
A crack in Antarctica might break apart and make an iceberg the size of Brazil The 18 mile (30 kilometer) long and 165 feet (50 meter) crack in western Antarctica is getting bigger every day by 6.5 feet (2 meters)! If the ice breaks off from the rest of the continent, the iceberg produced will be sized at 340 square miles (880 square kilometers)
This is part of a natural cycle, not a result of...
An 83 year old man was arrested for prostitution Ben Clifford Dawson was running for city council in Iowa when he offered to lower a woman’s loan debt in exchange for him performing sex acts on her!
Even though the woman said no, Dawson clutched and kissed her on the neck anyway! After spending 10 days in jail, Dawson was released after posting $2000 in bail money. It’s unclear how this will...
Have you ever wondered what the extras in movies are talking about? They are just saying ‘walla- walla”! This is called a “walla- walla scene” and it is used to make the extras look like they are talking to each other. The only thing they have to say is walla over and over again to do the trick.
If you want to make it more realistic just mumble animatedly reproducing the fluctuations...
A 20 million year old fossil of a “sea cow” was found The sea cow, otherwise known as ‘serenia’, existed 20 million years ago and was discovered within the walls of the Philippines’ Puerto Pricesa Underground River!
The fossils, when discovered, were in near-perfect conditions as you can see by the photo. Something odd found during this discovery was that the sea cow was native to areas in the...
Africa shares no borders with any country! If you look at a map, you might think that Israel borders the continent Africa on Egypt’s western side.
In all reality, the Sinai Peninsula is a part of Egypt and it reaches into Asia, which means no country borders Africa.
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On November 11, 2011 a baby was born at 11:11 a.m. (11/11/11 11:11) There was only one birth reported at this time. What is the best part? The baby was born on Remembrance Day to a veteran couple! The boy’s mother is an Air Force veteran and his father currently serves in the Air Force. This is a third generation military family.
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Kim Jong Il denied his son succession rights because he tried to go to Disneyland!
North Korea tries really hard to stop any kind of outside pop-culture from coming into the country in fears that it would destabilize the dictatorship. The state-run media frequently claims that imperialists are trying to infiltrate the country through things like music and television.
So when his son got caught...
As recently as 1985, babies were operated on without anesthesia because doctors believed they feel no pain! The author of this paper shows how babies and infants have been treated as lesser beings in the past because of the fact that they haven’t developed their full cognitive capacities. People have judged babies’ cries as ‘random sounds’ and their smiles as ‘muscle...
“The Real Slim Shady” was written a few before the album was due!
The record company wanted Eminem to have a track to introduce the rappers third album “The Marshal Mathers LP,” much in the same way that the song “My Name Is” introduced his previous album “The Slim Shady LP.”
When the record company asked this, Eminem got to work and wrote it with...
A pigeon will never forget your face! Researchers have shown that pigeons have remarkable perception. They went to a park and had one researcher ignore the pigeons, while the other was hostile and chased them away. Then later, they each returned, and neither tried to chase them away.
The results were staggering: the pigeons ran away from the person who chased them away earlier, but not from the...
Chuck Taylor was paid almost nothing for having his name on the ‘All-Star Shoes’ Chuck Taylor was a high school basketball player. He was hired in 1921 by Converse to be the spokesman for their ‘All Star’ basketball shoes, which were not selling well at the time. Based on his experience as a player, Taylor also helped improve the shoes. You know the rest, Chuck Taylors...
This tiny jellyfish can kill you within 20 minutes! The Irukandji jellyfish is a tiny and extremely species of venomous jellyfish in the waters of Australia. The jellyfish are usually no more than 1 cubic centimeter.
What makes them deadly is that they can fire their stingers into their victim. If you get stung, you develop something called the Irukandji syndrome. If left untreated, this...
Sarah Jessica Parker’s second line in the movie Ed Woods is “Do I really have a face like a horse?” That comparison has been pervasive on the Internet, to the point that it has become a meme. Apparently, she’s been on it for YEARS. Ed Wood was released in 1994!
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The safest UPS driver travelled 3 million miles without an accident! It only took him 45 years to reach the milestone, but in 2007, Ronald Sowder eclipsed the 3 million mile mark without a single accident. To put that into perspective, that’s enough distance to make 6 trips to and from the moon!
UPS provides another, more down-to-earth comparison: he’s driven the equivalent of more...
An Italian town was intentionally submerged to create a lake! The lake is called Lake Reschen and it is the largest lake in the province of South Tyrol, Italy. Iin 1940, the village of Graun was not able to stop a proposed artificial lake from being built in order to support a hydroelectric dam.
Due to the war, the dam wasn’t finished until 1950. When it was finished, they had created a...
There’s an alien hidden on EVERY episode of South Park This is an Easter egg that the creators of South Park insert on every episode. This is one of the most creative and cool easter eggs in any show, because they aren’t always visible in plain sight. You have to look really hard to find some of these. Check out a couple of examples and go here to see more.
Sharks have no bones in their body! Their skeleton is made of cartilage, the same substance that your nose is made of. It’s more flexible and lighter than bones are. This makes it more durable, and light, which saves them energy. This is particularly useful because sharks have to constantly swim in order to not drown. Sharks also lack a rib cage, which means that they can be crushed by their...
11/11/11 11:11:11 will be the last date this century to repeat the same digit In the US, 11:11 has been considered a magical time for a while. People usually make a wish if they notice it’s 11:11.
Today will be the last time that a date repeats the same digit until 2111. And a lot of people are celebrating it in different ways. Egypt, for example is closing the great pyramid of Giza...
A man survived 18 days with no food or water just by licking his prison walls! Andreas Mihavecz was a passenger in a car crash. The police took him and put him in a holding cell. Then they forgot all about him! For 18 days no one came by his cell to check on him. The guards later said that they thought some other guard had released him.
The way he survived for those 18 days without having food or...
In order to serve Pufferfish, you have to risk your life!
We’ve talked before about how Pufferfish is the ultimate Japanese delicacy. However, one does not simply cook Pufferfish. Japanese cooks have to go through 3 years of training, because of how precise the cooking of the fish has to be.
Pufferfish poison is resistant to cooking, and there is no known antidote for it. This means that...
Johnny Carson caused a toilet paper shortage all by himself! Although you might be tempted to think it was because he ate one too many Chalupas, it actually shows the power that TV personalities used to have. In December 1973, he went on his show and he said “You know what’s disappearing from the supermarket shelves? Toilet paper? There’s an acute shortage of toilet paper in the...
President Obama walked past the N-word on his way to the Oval Office!
Ruby Bridges was the only black girl to attend a white public school in New Orleans, soon after desegregation was official in the 1960s. To commemorate this, Norman Rockwell painted a piece called “The Problem We All Live With,” which shows her walking to school, escorted by police officers. Behind her, the n-word...
A stonemason was told by Disney not to engrave Winnie the Pooh on a child’s gravestone because it would violate their copyright! Companies protecting their intellectual properties is nothing new and every company does it. However, because Disney creates cute and cuddly things for kids, it tends to draw more attention. For example, they once forced a daycare to remove Minnie Mouse from their...
Richard Nixon had a speech ready in case the Apollo 11 astronauts were stranded on the moon! Reaching the moon was truly a great achievement for mankind. However, it was a very dangerous one, and could have easily ended in tragedy. The danger of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong being stranded on the moon with no way of getting back to Earth was a very real possibility. Because of this, the president...
A man was found next to a dumpster in 2004. Since then, no one, not even himself, has any idea who he is! He adopted the pseudonym Benjaman Kyle (BK), because he was found next to a dumpster behind a Burger King (BK). When found, the doctors saw that he had three depressions on his head, which indicate that he was hit by a blunt object. That might have been the cause for his Retrograde Amnesia,...
Fidel Castro taught everyone in Cuba how to read using 6th graders to teach them!
In 1960, Fidel Castro announced in the United Nations that he planned to eradicate illiteracy from Cuba. His plan? schools would close the following year, and people who had completed the 6th grade or higher would be asked to volunteer to teach those who were not able to read.
The next year, schools closed for...