These 37 facts will astonish you. I really have no idea about many of these until today. Enjoy!
1. The founders of Google were once willing to sell to Excite in 1999. The price was just under $1 million. But Excite turned them down.
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2. Ronald Wayne (pictured below in 2010) was the third Apple founder. He sold his 10% stake for $800 in 1976.
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3. The most highlighted Kindle books, according to Amazon, are the Bible, the Steve Jobs biography, and The Hunger Games.
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4. During World War I, the German measles were called ‘liberty measles’ and dachshunds became ‘liberty hounds.’
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5. Based on a survey in 2008, 58% of British teens believed that Sherlock Holmes was a real person. 20% of them believed that Winston Churchill was a fictional character.
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6. When the three-letter codes became standard, airports that had been using two-letter codes just added an X.
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7. A man from the UK changed his name to Tim Pppppppppprice to make it difficult for telemarketers to pronounce his name.
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8. J.P. Morgan once offered $100,000 reward to anyone who could tell him why his face was so red and his nose purple. No one, even doctors, figured out the mystery.
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9. Prairie dogs give each other a ‘greeting kiss’ to show affection.
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10. In 1965, Slumber Party Barbie came with a diet book entitled ‘How to Lose Weight” which advised: “Don’t eat.”
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11. The first graduating class in 1893 of New Mexico State had only one student. Unfortunately, he was shot and killed before graduation.
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12. In the 1980s, Fergie (The Black Eyed Peas) provided the voice of Sally Brown for Peanuts and The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show.
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13. Brilliant virologist Jonas Salk refused to patent his polio vaccine. When asked in an interview why, Jonas replied: “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
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14. The 50-star flag of America was designed by a high school student in Ohio for a class project. His teacher wasn’t impressed and just gave him a B–.
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15. The most commonly stolen vehicle in 2012, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, was the 1994 Honda Accord.
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16. The entire ant population in the world weighs the same as the whole human population. There are 10,000 different types of ants and they outnumber the human population 1 million to one. The total weight of humanity are almost exactly the same as the ants.
17. Researchers used the Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men to attract animals to their cameras in the wild.
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18. Sean Connery turned down the role as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings. He said: “I read the book. I read the script. I saw the movie. I still don’t understand it.”
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19. 12 + 1 = 11 + 2. “Twelve plus one” is an anagram of “eleven plus two.”
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20. Barry Manilow didn’t actually write his song hit “I Write the Songs.”
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21. Lady Randolph Churchill, the mother of Winston Churchill, was born in Brooklyn.
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22. On April 16, 2014, Portland officials were forced to drain 38 million gallons of water from a reservoir. The reason: a 19-year-old guy peed in it.
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23. Above the Supreme Court is a basketball court, which they called the Highest Court in the Land.
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24. When Janis Joplin died, she left $2,500 in her will so that her friends can “have a ball after I’m gone.”
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25. The medical term for headache you get when eating ice cream is ‘sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.’
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26. After the death of Leonardo da Vinci, King Francis I of France hung the Mona Lisa painting in his bathroom.
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27. The brilliant filmmaker Quentin Tarantino played an Elvis impersonator on The Golden Girls.
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28. Sleeping through winter is called hibernation. Sleeping through summer is called estivation.
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29. Mr. Clean is known in Spain as Don Limpio.
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30. All the water on Earth is 4.3 billion years old. It’s just being recycled over and over.
31. Reed Hastings got his inspiration to start Netflix after racking up $40 late fee on a VHS copy of Apollo 13.
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32. The notebooks of Marie Curie are still radioactive until this day. If you want to view them, then you must sign a disclaimer.
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33. The man who invented the Pringles can was Fredric Baur. When he died in 2008, his ashes were buried in a Pringles can.
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34. Start counting at one. Then spell out the numbers as you count. Ever notice not using the letter “a” till you reach 1,000.
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35. Meet Tsutomu Yamaguchi. He was in Hiroshima when the first A-bomb was dropped. Then he made it home to Nagasaki when the second A-bomb hit. He died in 2010 at the age of 93.
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36. The world’s driest place is located in Antarctica. There’s a patch of land there called the Dry Valleys and it’s the driest place on Earth. There hasn’t been rain there for over 2 million years.
37. See that strawberry? The Internet weighs about as much as that fruit. A computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, calculated that the electrons that make up the Internet can weigh up to 50 grams, which is about the size and weight of a strawberry.
