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15 Random Facts to Put Brain Cells into Full Throttle

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15 Random Facts to Put Brain Cells into Full Throttle

January 09, 2022

Did you know that the sum of all the letters in “random” is 47? That’s pretty random! And speaking of random, did you know that the chances of being struck by lightning are about 1 in 12,000? Pretty random, right? But what exactly is a random fact?

Random facts are, quite simply, facts that are random. They can be about anything, from history to science to pop culture. And they can be either amazing or totally mundane. For example, did you know that tennis orbs are not actually made of rubber? They’re actually made of felt! Or that the state of Texas is bigger than the whole country of France? Crazy, right?

So why do we love random facts so much? Maybe it’s because they help us to see the world in a different light. Or maybe it’s because they’re just plain fun to learn. Either way, there’s no denying that random facts are a great way to add a little spice to your life!

15

Michael Keaton & Mr. Rogers

Michael Keaton worked with Mr. Rogers. Before he tried comedy, Keaton worked at a TV station in his native Pittsburgh, and was occasionally a part of the behind-the-camera crew on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. According to Keaton, Fred Rogers was one of the nicest, authentically good people you've ever met. — More: Michael Keaton: The Batman Who Laughed

14

Marisa Tomei in Parks & Rec

Marisa Tomei was almost in Parks and Recreation. According to showrunner/co-creator Michael Schur, there were plans for a plotline about Aziz Ansari's Tom Haverford dating an older woman, who would have been played by Tomei. Schur laments that the timing didn't work out. — More: 'Parks And Recreation': Tom Almost Dated Aunt May & 2 Other Wild Casting Near-Misses

13

Truthful Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson used to be for truth in reporting (and was booed for it). Carlson was never progressive, but there was a time when he cared about facts. The New York Times is a liberal paper ... but it's a paper that cares about accuracy, he said at CPAC 2009. Conservatives need to ... mirror those institutions. The audience booed him. — More: 4 Boomer Pop Culture Staples That Are Getting Weird

12

Lesbian Velma Dinkley

Studio execs said no to a lesbian Velma in the Scooby-Doo movies. According to James Gunn, Velma was written as explicitly lesbian in his initial script - but then the studio intervened, making her sexuality ambiguous (and finally giving her a boyfriend in the sequel). — More: The Real-Life Lesbian Inspiration Behind Scooby-Doo's Velma

11

Gorbachev's Pizza

Mikhail Gorbachev did a Pizza Hut ad. In 1998, the former USSR leader appeared in an ad for everyone's third-favorite pizza chain. It's a bizarre, minute-long piece, in which Gorbachev randomly drops by a Pizza Hut (with a child, for some reason), and everyone ends up hailing him for bringing the franchise to Russia. — More: Terry Crews' Shilling For Amazon & 3 Other Bizarre Commercials

10

Blood Spatter Bullcrap

Blood spatter analysis is full of crap. According to the National Academy of Sciences, the uncertainties associated with bloodstain pattern analysis are enormous, and the thing is more subjective than scientific. Hardly the almost magical forensic tool Dexter and other TV shows make it out to be. — More: 5 Big Jobs That Movies And TV Get All Wrong

9

Feminine Hitler

The U.S. planned to feminize Hitler with estrogen. Stanley Lovell, research head of the OSS (CIA's precursor), hatched a plan to lace Hitler's food with estrogen and make him more feminine, which (somehow) would lead to Germany losing the war. This was even dumber than Lovell's regular dumb ideas, and was never carried out. — More: 4 Beautifully Dumb Schemes From America's Weirdest Spy Agency

8

Chromatic Ban

Myanmar banned the Simpsons movie because of its colors (allegedly). An often cited (though unverified) reason for the ban is the movie's prominent use of yellow and red. Some sources talk about superstitions regarding the colors, while others report the hues are forbidden due to their association with a rebel group. — More: 'The Simpsons' Movie & 2 Other Pop Culture Series Banned For The Dumbest Reasons

7

George Romero's The Last of Us

The Last of Us was initially pitched to George Romero. Neil Bruckmann came up with the basic concept while he was in college, and had a chance to pitch it to Zombiemeister George Romero himself - who passed on it. After that, Bruckmann tried to turn his idea into a comic book, before it became a game. — More: 4 Video Games That Were Supposed To Be Sequels In Totally Different Franchises

6

Lie-Detecting Dogs

Dogs can tell when you're lying. Researchers found that trained dogs would often not follow their handler's indications about where to find food, if the indications were intentionally misleading (as opposed to just wrong). The experiment has been conducted on chimpanzees as well, who failed miserably. — More: 5 Terrifying Animal Superpowers

5

Parcel Post Bank

An entire bank in Utah was sent by mail. In 1916, bank director William Horace Coltharp realized that bricks to build a new bank in Vernal, Utah were cheaper to ship by mail than by truck. Through a series of sneaky loopholes, he got 1,500 parcels (each containing 50 pounds of bricks) delivered all the way from Salt Lake City. CRACKED COM — More: When A Businessman Mailed Himself A Whole Bank (Brick By Brick)

4

California Nut Crime

Nut theft is big in California. Stealing electronics? Booze? Nope - the really high-yield crime in California is nut-napping. International crime rings run sophisticated operations, complete with false shipping papers. Nuts are notoriously hard to track, and a truckload can be worth as much as $500,000. — More: 5 Weirdo Crimes You Never See In The Movies

3

Harley-Davidson Golf Carts

More: 5 Huge Companies That Once Were Failing Miserably

2

Imaginary Criminal

Halifax, England was terrified of a criminal who didn't exist. For two weeks in 1938, Halifax was haunted by a knife-wielding maniac, and Scotland Yard offered a reward for the Halifax Slasher. Plot twist: the Slasher wasn't real. The whole thing was born from a few, unrelated incidents - and then people started faking attacks following the press coverage. — More: The Halifax Slasher, The Blood-Thirsty Public Menace ... Who Didn't Exist

1

Cooperative Gaming

A game studio has been working for two decades with no bosses. Motion Twin, the French studio behind the successful Dead Cells, describes itself as an anarcho-syndical workers cooperative where there are no bosses and everyone gets paid the same. And they've been making games since 2001, so it's hard to shrug them off as some hippie experiment. — More: 5 Video Game Companies Pulling Good Behind-The-Scenes Moves

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