← FACTSlides → Random Facts Page #55

Eric Clapton grew up believing his grandmother was his mother and his mother was his sister.

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The term “checkmate” comes from the Arabic and ultimately Persian phrase “shah mat” which means “the king is dead.”

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An attempt to set the Guinness World Record for the world's most expensive cocktail in 2012 was thwarted when a customer dropped and broke the bottle of Cognac that was worth $77,500.

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Blink-182, the Pop punk band, was originally called Duck Tape.

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In 2017, a woman called Chau Smith ran 7 marathons in 7 consecutive days on 7 continents in celebration of her 70th birthday.

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In cultures that have had little or no exposure to Western music, dissonant chords are rated just as likeable as consonant chords.

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The way you cut a vegetable can change the way it tastes.

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Drug companies often use two narrators in their commercials. A stern and confident voice is used to describe the benefits of the drug, while a calm and soothing voice is used to describe the harmful side effects.

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On average, most people have fewer friends than their friends have. This is known as the ‘friendship paradox'.

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If you had an 'insect of the month' calendar, you wouldn't have to reuse a species for 80,000 years.

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California generates so much solar power that at times the state will pay Arizona to take it.

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While being seriously ill, inventor Nikola Tesla suddenly had an insight which lead to the development of alternating current electrical mechanism.

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In 2003, archaeologists in Venezuela discovered fossilized remains of guinea pig the size of a cow.

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In Hong Kong, about 80% of residents flush their toilets with seawater.

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In Thailand, it is illegal to possess more than 120 playing cards.

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Rutka Laskier, a Jewish girl from Poland who died in Auschwitz at the age of 14, wrote a diary describing her experiences under Nazi occupation. Her diary was published in 2006 and she has become known as the "Polish Anne Frank."

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In Cuzco cathedral in Peru, there's a painting of the Last Supper in which Jesus and the disciples are about to eat a roast guinea pig.

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Over 200 people have claimed to descend from the Romanovs, the family of the last Tsar of Russia. However, irrefutable DNA evidence shows that all children perished with their parents at the hands of Bolsheviks.

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British actor Gareth Jones suffered a massive heart attack during a live television broadcast of a theatre play in 1958 and died. The play continued to its conclusion, improvising around his absence.

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Van Halen, the rock band, was originally called Rat Salad.

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6 million pounds of syrup, worth US$18 million, were stolen in 2013 from the Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve in Canada.

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Actor Nicolas Cage purchased his own tomb, a 9-foot-tall pyramid-shaped mausoleum in a famed New Orleans graveyard, with an inscription in Latin: "Everything From One."

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Carmenelectra shechisme, pronounced “Carmen Electra, she-kiss-me,” is an extinct fly species.

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Every year, a 9 lb round of Double Gloucester cheese is rolled from the top of Cooper's Hill, in England, with competitors racing down after it. The first person over the finish line at the bottom of the hill wins the cheese.

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The Persians, fully aware of the reverence that Egyptians paid to their felines, rounded up as many cats as they could find and set them loose on the battlefield.

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All former U.S. presidents and their spouses have secret service protection for life. Their children also have it until their 16th birthday.

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In 2013, a Michigan judge, whose smartphone disrupted a hearing in his own courtroom, held himself in contempt and paid $25 for the infraction.

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For the Apollo 11 moon landing conspiracy theory to be true, over 400,000 people would need to be part of the secret.

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Colon Rectum Hatch

is the biological nomenclature

for a

leiodid beetle.

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Washoe, the chimpanzee, was the first non-human to learn American Sign Language. She also passed on her knowledge to other chimpanzees.

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