1) The Sheffield Star, a newspaper, once printed the headline: "Workshop Man Dies of Natural Causes".
2) Sorry to disappoint all you romantics out there, but when you listen to the “waves” in a seashell, what you are actually hearing is the airflow resonating inside it. It works with a mug or a cup as well.
3) In 1988, Warner Communications paid John F. Sengstack twenty-eight million dollars for the rights to the song “Happy Birthday to You”. And in theory, if you sing it in a restaurant, you owe Warner Brothers money, because it's counted as a public place.
4) A bizarre experiment on spiders conducted by NASA in 1995 aimed to find out how spiders reacted to different drugs. Nobody understands why, but when they've been given LSD, they make even more geometrically-perfect webs than they do in nature.
5) Roman emperors ordered the death of a gladiator not by giving a “thumbs down”, but instead a “thumbs up”.
6) The commonest material in the world is perovskite, a mineral compound of magnesium, silicone, and oxygen. It accounts for about half the total mass of the planet. It's what the Earth's mantle is mostly made from, or so scientists suppose.
7) Three quarters of the people accused of witchcraft in England were no drowned, not burned, not killed- but acquitted. Books such as The Da Vinci Code claimed around five million women were burned or hanged around Europe for being witches; there's absolutely no evidence of anything like as much as that. Probably only about 500, probably less, were hanged in England. Only two, possibly, were burned.
8) Rolls Royce PLC, an Arrow Engine Company, test their aeroplane engines to see what would happen should a bird be caught in them by hurling chickens into them at about 180 miles per hour with a specially designed “chicken cannon”. They also use ducks and turkey.
9) Blackberries, raspberries and strawberries are not berries. They are instead classified as "droopsacks". Examples of true berries include bananas, cucumbers and oranges, none of which are fruit, because they are berries which is a seperate classification of produce.
A/N: When I found fact #9, I was like, "EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT THIS PLANET IS WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!!"
YOU ARE READING
Random Facts You Didn't Need to Know
De TodoThis is a totally random compilation of facts, collected for my own enjoyment. After all my years of storing them up, I felt it was time to share them with you. Well... enjoy this bundle of totally random awesomeness!
