*DOUBLED FACTS* The Book of Random Facts

Part 1 - Generic Trivia

#1 - On Good Friday in 1930, the BBC reported, "There is no news today." Instead, they played piano music.

#2 - December 5 is Krampusnacht (Krampus Night), when the half-goat, half-demon of Christmas folklore visits homes to punish naughty children, armed with a bundle of sticks and a chain to take them back to the underworld.

#3 - In 1939, Hitler's nephew wrote an article called "Why I Hate My Uncle." He came to the U.S., served in the Navy, and settled on Long Island.

#4 - In the 1920s and '30s, many movie theaters had signs instructing ladies to "Please Remove Your Hats" to keep from blocking anyone's view.

#5 - The first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer.

#6 - Residents of the Galápagos island of Floreana use a barrel of disorganized mail in place of a formal postal system. Tourists are responsible for sorting through the mail and grabbing any parcels they can deliver to wherever they head to.

#7 - In 1897, Indiana state legislators tried to pass a bill that would have legally redefined the value of pi as 3.2.

#8 - At one time, George Washington was the nation's largest whiskey producer. He made 11,000 gallons in 1799.

#9 - The raven that inspired Edgar Allan Poe's poem was named Grip, and he was Charles Dickens's beloved pet.

#10 - North Korea's 105-story Ryugyong Hotel, nicknamed "The Hotel of Doom," is the world's tallest unoccupied building.

#11 - The Antikythera mechanism, discovered by sponge divers in 1900, is sometimes called the world's first analog computer. Designed to calculate dates and predict astronomical phenomena, it was so advanced nothing surpassed it for almost 1500 years.

#12 - Blood donors in Sweden receive a thank you text when their blood is used.

#13 - The Hass avocado was patented in 1935 by Rudolph Hass, a mailman from California.

#14 - Maine is the U.S. state closest to Africa.

#15 - Sleep literally cleans your brain. During slumber, more cerebrospinal fluid flushes through the brain to wash away harmful proteins and toxins that build up during the day.

#16 - The dot over a lowercase "i" is called a tittle.

#17 - Johnny Carson's first three wives were named, in order, Joan, Joanne, and Joanna. (His first wife went by "Jody.")

#18 - The paint that coats the White House and Buckingham Palace is made by the same German company.

#19 - Ada Lovelace, the daughter of poet Lord Byron, wrote the first algorithm created specifically for a machine.

#20 - The first Hershey's chocolate bars with almonds were produced in 1908 because they were cheap to make. The nuts took the place of some of the more expensive milk chocolate, which meant Hershey's could keep the price of the candy at a nickel.

#21 - Quetzalcoatlus, the largest known flying animal ever, was as tall as a giraffe. It may have used its powerful forelimbs to pole-vault into the sky.

#22 - In 1991, Wayne Allwine—who was then the voice of Mickey Mouse—married Russi Taylor, the voice of Minnie.

#23 - The word PEZ comes from the German word for peppermint—PfeffErminZ.

#24 - Nintendo was founded in 1889. Before it sold video games, the Japanese company specialized in playing cards

#25 - In the 18th century, wealthy British landowners hired ornamental hermits to live in their gardens.

#26 - At the Poison Garden of Alnwick Castle in England, many of the plants are so deadly they're grown in cages.

#27 - People didn't always say "hello" when they answered the phone. When the first regular phone service was established in 1878, Alexander Graham Bell suggested answering the phone with "ahoy."

#28 - While an Oscar is of unnamed value to someone who wins (or loses) one, the actual trophy has a raw value of about $600.

#29 - Louis Braille was 12 years old when he began transforming a method of silent communication used by the French military into a language that allows blind people to read.

#30 - Despite the optical illusion, the Gateway Arch is exactly as wide (630 feet) as it is tall.

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