Curious Mind Blowing Facts - 13
Will make you say, "No way".
The CEO of AMD (Lisa Su) is the cousin of Nvidia CEO and Co-Founder (Jensen Huang).
In 2019, France became the first country in the world to recognize lightsaber fights and it has become an official sport.
“It is estimated that the “surface web” (the internet we use everyday) makes up about 4 percent of the total content on the internet, while 90 percent is the deep web and 6 percent the dark web, though estimates vary.
The Deep Web refers to web pages that don’t show up in search results but which may be viewed if you’re logged in to the website in question.
The dark web refers to websites accessible only through special anonymizing software and consisting largely of illegal activity”.
~ By Eli Burnstein. Dictionary of Fine Distinctions: Nuances, Niceties, (p. 13). Kindle Edition.
China has 814 billionaires, the most in the world, (the US has 800) according to the Hurun Global Rich List 2024.
Back in 1987, Michael Jordan had already begun his domination of the NBA, and the rising star agreed to an event in which he would take on one of Hollywood’s most famous acting families, the Sheens, on the basketball court.
Martin and Charlie faced off against Jordan in a three-part battle, including a free throw competition, a game of horse and a two-on-one contest, with Jordan spotting the actors five points and being limited to one shot per possession.
After Jordan took the horse contest and lost the free throw shooting challenge, the handicaps proved insurmountable for the Bulls superstar and the Sheens walked away with a 10–5 victory in the final leg, and the ability to say they beat the greatest in basketball.
Newborn babies don't cry tears. Parents won't start to see actual teardrops form until their baby is between two weeks and three months old.
Mexico is constructing a $5 billion rail corridor to ease traffic, and compete with the Panama Canal. For 100 years, the Panama Canal has been one of the most important routes for trade all around the world. The quickest way to move things from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean has always been through this canal.
The initiative, named Isthmus of Tehuantepec’s Interoceanic Corridor (CIIT) project, is converting the isthmus (strip of land) in southern Mexico, which represents the shortest distance between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean in the country, into a 188-mile rail corridor that will handle up to 1.4 million twenty-foot equivalent units annually by 2033.
The human nose can detect more than 1 trillion smells.
A trillion is a lot. A million millions. It would take almost 12 days for a million seconds to elapse and 31.7 years for a billion seconds and a trillion seconds would take 31,710 years.
Pieces of the same metal become permanently stuck together if they touch in space.
Tie-dye is a very old technique. It was independently created in China, Japan, pre-Colombian Peru, and India almost two thousand years ago.
Don't Bring Me Down, Bruce by ELO. They did not sing the name Bruce in the song… at first.
https://pau1.substack.com/p/dont-bring-me-downbrrrruce
The hashtag (#) symbol isn't actually called a hashtag. Nor is it officially called a number sign. The real term is octothorpe.
There's a top-secret Starbucks for CIA agents. According to The Washington Post, it is listed as Store Number 1 on receipts, and its baristas must go through extensive and rigorous interviews and background checks. It is located deep inside the agency’s forested Langley, Va., compound. “It is one of the busiest Starbucks in the country, with a captive caffeine-craving audience of thousands of analysts and agents, economists and engineers, geographers and cartographers working on gathering intelligence and launching covert operations inside some of the most vexing and violent places around the world.” (https://archive.is/20240223211211/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-cia-starbucks-even-the-baristas-are-covert/2014/09/27/5a04cd28-43f5-11e4-9a15-137aa0153527_story.html#selection-711.0-711.318)
David Bowie's Top 25 Books:
Interviews With Francis Bacon - by David Sylveste
Billy Liar - by Keith Waterhouse
Room At The Top - by John Braine
On Having No Head - by Douglass Harding
Kafka Was The Rage - by Anatole Broyard
A Clockwork Orange - by Anthony Burgess
City Of Night - by John Rechy
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao - by Junot Diaz
Madame Bovary - by Gustave Flaubert
Iliad - by Homer
As I Lay Dying - by William Faulkner
Tadanori Yokoo - by Tadanori Yokoo
Berlin Alexanderplatz - by Alfred Döblin
Inside The Whale And Other Essays - by George Orwell
Mr. Norris Changes Trains - by Christopher Isherwood
Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art - by James A. Hall
David Bomberg - by Richard Cork
Blast - by Wyndham Lewis
Passing - by Nella Larson
Beyond The Brillo Box - by Arthur C. Danto
The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind - by Julian Jaynes
In Bluebeard’s Castle - by George Steiner
Hawksmoor - by Peter Ackroyd
The Divided Self - by R. D. Laing
The Stranger - by Albert Camus
The final words of Terry Kath, founding guitarist for rock band Chicago, before dying from an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound were “What do you think I'm gonna do? Blow my brains out?" Jimi Hendrix cited Terry Kath as one of his favorite guitarists and was “the best guitarist in the universe”.
On average, a person passes gas around 14 times a day. That’s roughly once every 1.5 hours.
The most accomplished female racing driver in the world. Desiré Randall Wilson is a former racing driver from South Africa and one of only five women to have competed in a Formula One race. She is currently 70 years old. She became the only woman to win a Formula One race of any kind when she won at Brands Hatch in the short-lived British Aurora F1 Championship in 1980.
LG stands for Lucky-Goldstar, but they use “Life’s Good” as a slogan. Before they made electronics, they primarily made pots. They also changed to LG to sound more American like ‘GM’.
Many of Alfred Hitchcock's "Hitchcock blondes"- including Eva Marie Saint (99 today) - film North by Northwest, Kim Novak (91 today) film - Vertigo, Vera Miles (94 today) film - Psycho, and Tippi Hedren (94 today) film - The Birds- are all alive today! These gals surely were not scared to death by the “Master of Suspense”.
There was a family with 7 generations alive at the same time. In 1989. The youngest great-great-great-great-grandparent being Augusta Bunge (USA) aged 109 years 97 days…https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-living-generations-(ever)/
Loma, Montana's temperature changed by 103⁰ Fahrenheit on one day in 1972. (-54F to 49F) within twenty-four hours.
Arlington, Texas is the largest city in the US without public transport. Despite having 390k population and major stadiums, it has no single bus or rail line. Conversely 95% of Londoners live within 400m of a bus stop.
Marvin Gaye was desperate to have Bassist Extraordinaire James Jamerson play on "What's Going On" but Jamerson was too intoxicated to stay upright, so James played the classic line while lying flat on his back.
Jamerson has played on more number 1 hits than any other musician. Most of them didn’t have his name as a credited musician, but as part of the session musicians that Motown Records called The Funk Brothers.
Paul McCartney famously advised Michael Jackson to invest in ownership rights to songs. Jackson promptly bought the rights to all of The Beatles songs. He also bought the rights to Elvis, Bruce Springsteen, Rolling Stones, Cher and Little Richard's songs among many others from various artists.
✌️Thanks for subscribing, reading, liking, commenting, re-stacking, sharing, and emailing to your special friends!
More:
Which fact made you say “No Way“?
Hang on a second (just one)! If a trillion seconds is 31,710 years, I’d like to know who counted the trillion detectable smells (and how many noses died in the attempt) 🤧
"Pieces of the same metal become permanently stuck together if they touch in space." - Way??
Like D. Bowie's reading list!