Weird Facts 7
- Disneyland had to close the “It’s a Small World” ride for several months in 2007 for renovations because people were too fat for the ride and the boats were regularly getting stuck. Source
- Universities get ‘Kickbacks’ from publishers for requiring their students to purchase textbooks. Source
- Lightning strikes about 6,000 times per minute on this planet!
- Animals have been shown to plan ahead. This was shown by a chimp who collected rocks to later throw at people when he got annoyed. Source
- In Bangladesh, kids as young as 15 can be jailed for cheating on their finals!
- The French Foreign Legion allows you to enlist with a fake identity, allowing members to effectively start their lives over. Source
- In the City of Mackinac Island, Michigan, cars have been banned since 1898. Source
- One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet! 1
- The average citizen of Liechtenstein doesn’t even lock their door because crime in the country is so low. The last murder was 10 years ago (as of 2007). Source
- A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years!
- 40% of Americans never moved away from the town they were born in. Source
- 110 people once tied for second prize in the Powerball lottery. Officials suspected cheating but discovered that the winners had all used the “lucky numbers” off copies of the same fortune from fortune cookies. Source
- In rural Georgia, there are still “Whites Only” school functions, where non-whites are turned away by the police. In 2013, Wilcox County High School will be having its first integrated prom. Source
- During WW2 one Russian pilot was shot down by Germans and dragged himself 18 days to Soviet controlled territory. After having his legs amputated, he learned how to fly with prosthetics, returned to flying combat missions and shot down 7 more German planes. He also lived to be 84 (died literally an hour before his 85 birthday party), received Golden Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, got a PhD in History, also served in the supreme soviet which was a legislative body for the USSR. Source
- Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!
- Peter the Great, enamored of Western ways, encouraged cleanshavenness among Russians by imposing a tax on beards. Noblemen paid 100 rubles a year for a medallion that served as a beard license. Source
- In 2011, firefighters let a house burn down because the owners had not paid the $75 annual firefighting fee. Source
- In 2007, a Bosnian couple found out that they had been cheating on one another in online chatrooms… with each other. Source
- It is estimated that a plastic container will not decompose for as long as 50,000 years.
- King Charles II used to wear a wig made of his favorite mistress’ pubic hair. Source
- The only part of the human anatomy that has no blood supply is the cornea
- Speed limits in Rhode Island, Utah, and Texas are all “prima facie”, which means motorists can get out of a speeding fine if they can justify their use of excessive speed. Source
- There is an island near Italy that was the site of wars, a dumping ground for plague victims and an insane asylum. It’s considered so dangerously haunted that the Italian government does not allow public access. Source
- Tupac Shakur shot two off duty police officers who were assaulting a young man. Charges against Shakur were dropped because the officers were intoxicated and in possession of stolen guns. Source
- There is an island which is so densely populated by poisonous snakes the Brazilian Navy has quarantined it and a biologist once said that when on the island you are “never more than three feet from death.” Oh, and it’s called “Snake Island.” Source
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