87. Stinky Bowls
Many gourmet cooking techniques can seem like they’re total bunk—rinsing a Martini glass with too little Vermouth to possibly taste in order to make a dry martini, for example. The biggest prank played on foodies was by a writer for the Saturday Evening Post in 1936. George Rector published a recipe for green salad in the French style. It was a complete prank:
The recipe called for a leafy salad served without dressing in a bowl that had been rubbed with garlic and then never washed. The myth lasted until the 1960s, when people figured out that the salads they were eating out of musty, stinky unwashed salad bowls were far grosser than those smothered in ranch dressing.
New Hampshire Bowl and Board
88. Random Facts of a Lifetime
In 1963, San Francisco Giants Manager Alvin Dark joked, “they’ll put a man on the moon before [Giants pitcher] Gaylord Perry hits a home run.” On July 20, 1969, less than an hour after Neil Armstrong’s historic moonwalk, Perry hit the first home run of his career.
89. Bogged Down
A "Bog Body" is a human cadaver that has been preserved by a bog. This natural preservation can be insanely effective. In 1952, researchers discovered a man who had live around 300 BCE that was so well-preserved that they could determine his cause of death: His throat had been slit.
90. Didn’t Understand the Food Chain
From 1958-1962, Chairman Mao Zedong of China launched the “Four Pests Campaign,” which would exterminate rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. What they didn’t realize was that sparrows ate a large number of insects. Without the sparrows to eat them, locust populations grew, and helped to create an ecological imbalance that exacerbated the Great Chinese Famine.
This famine then resulted in 15-30 million deaths. That's right, when Chairman Mao ordered the extermination of sparrows, he accidentally sentenced 15 million citizens to death, all because he didn't realize that sparrows were mission critical for pest control.
91. Ah, Those Awkward Teenage Years
It was the 1970s, and Mattel decided they needed to really amp up Barbies. They ended up releasing the "Growing Up Skipper" doll, which was supposed to depict Skipper on the verge of adolescence. Naturally, then, when you turned Skipper's arm, her boobs grew. What can I say, no one made it out of the 70s with their dignity intact—not even plastic dolls.
Confessions of a Doll Collector
92. Alternate Universe
Orion Pictures originally proposed OJ Simpson to play the Terminator before the part went to Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, he was passed over for the role because he was “likable, goofy, kind of innocent”— this was of course before he was accused of his wife’s murder. Perhaps now he’d be considered ruthless enough to play the role?
93. Talk About Bad Luck
Japanese engineer Tsutsomo Yamaguchi happened to be in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time of their respective atomic bombings during World War II. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on business, when American forces dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on the city center. He sustained burns, temporary blindness, and ruptured eardrums in the blast.
Afterward, he returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, only to be witness to the dropping of the Fat Man atomic bomb. Yamaguchi is the only person recognized by the government of Japan to have survived both atomic attacks.
94. Hydrogen Is Flammable
The Hindenburg disaster marked the end of the airship era, killing 35 passengers, and one member of the ground crew. The airship caught fire because of a spark that ignited leaking hydrogen. As the Germans discovered, hydrogen is an extremely flammable and dangerous substance, and using it to fill airships perhaps wasn’t the smartest idea.
95. How Apt
The three main characters of the Harry Potter films were perfectly cast, even better than the casting directors knew: Before the filming of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, director Alfonso Cuarón had Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson write essays about their characters. The results were telling:
Watson turned in a 16-page essay, Radcliffe gave a single page, and Grint forgot to turn his in.
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96. Mani/Pedi Takes on a New Meaning
A Memphis resident was given steroids for an allergic attack in 2009. Over the next three years, her body suffered one of the strangest allergic reactions in medical history. On the surfaces of her body which would normally grow hair, she started to grow nails, due to a change in the number of skin cells that were produced.
She is the only person of record to suffer from this rare disorder.
97. Indestructible
A 19th-century railroad worker named Phineas Gage had an iron rod rammed through his head—and survived. In one of the most bizarre medical anomalies in history, Gage lived another 12 full years despite having had his brain’s left frontal lobe mostly destroyed in the accident. His story does have another interesting twist to it, though.
Though he was technically still alive, his friends said that his behavior was virtually unrecognizable from this point on, describing him as “no longer Gage,” and claiming he was violent and moody. Nonetheless, researchers have since argued that these claims were exaggerated, and that the personality changes, though present, were not as remarkable as they've been made out to be.
His case has since been very popular for psychologists and neurologists to study, for obvious reasons. After examining his remains, scientists believe that the personality changes were not caused solely by the damage to his frontal lobe. Instead, modern researchers believe that Gage also damaged the white matter in his brain, which connects different parts of the neural system.
With this discovery, scientists posit that our personality is not located in just one part of our brain, but is more about how different parts of our mind interact with one another.
98. Victory After Death
In 1923, jockey Frank Hayes suffered a fatal heart attack in the midst of a race at Belmont Park in New York. His horse, named Sweet Kiss, finished first and won the race with his lifeless body still atop. Hayes became the first, and thus far, the only jockey to win a race after death. Hayes was only 35 at the time. The horse never raced again, having acquired the nickname “Sweet Kiss of Death” for the remainder of her life.
99. Some Like It Hot
Alcatraz used to be the only prison where the inmates got to take hot showers. This seems nice, but in fact, they didn't want potential escapees to get used to the cold water in case they tried to swim to shore.
100. Is This a Dagger I See Before Me?
When King Tut’s tomb was unearthed, researchers found an iron dagger that was still remarkably sharp thousands of years later. Having a sharp dagger is not strange in itself, but the dagger’s origin is quite mysterious. Scientists have tested the metal and determined it came from a meteorite, and the ancient Egyptians most likely didn’t have the technology to craft a weapon from meteorite debris.
As a result, it either came from another more advanced civilization or, as some are convinced, it might have been left behind by aliens.
Looking for more facts like this? We made a special list with all of our most fun facts together.
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, , 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93
