Curious Mind Blowing Facts - 70

From Car Guru to Fossilized poo, from bad cleanliness habits to Lenny Kravitz

According to the latest data from July 2024, the average new car price in the U.S. is $48,401. Prices have generally trended upward but have slightly decreased since the 2022 peak of $49,507. The most significant price jumps were in luxury and full-size SUVs, with some models now exceeding $100,000.

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Elon Musk had to change the name of his child from X Æ A-12 to X Æ A-Xii because California law says that only the 26 letters of the alphabet can be included in names.

The names Jesus Christ, 1069, Mary R., III (pronounced three), Santa Claus, @, Majesty and Adolf Hitler are also banned in the U.S.

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There has not been even one reported case of a congenitally blind person (blind at birth) who developed schizophrenia.
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🎸 6 Facts About Lenny Kravitz

1. Romeo Blue?
   Before the dreads and vintage rock vibe, Lenny went by Romeo Blue - complete with wraparound shades and synthy swagger. It was a phase.

2. TV royalty runs in the blood.
   His mom? Roxie Roker - aka Helen Willis from The Jeffersons. So yes, Lenny grew up with a backstage pass to cool.

3. He turned down record deals and lived in a car.
   Labels wanted to mold him. He said no, stuck to his sound, and slept in a car until Let Love Rule broke through in ’89.

4. Wardrobe malfunction of rock legend status.
   During a 2015 show, his leather pants split wide open. No boxers. No backup plan. Just raw commitment to the music.

5. He designs luxury furniture.
   Lenny isn’t just about the music - his firm Kravitz Design has worked with hotels, penthouses, and even camera companies. Kravitz Design

6. He plays every instrument on some of his albums.
   Drums? Bass? Uh-huh. Guitar? Of course. Piano? Check. When Lenny records, it’s often just Lenny.

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British TV presenter Jonathan Ross caused headlines by stating that he sometimes washes less than once a week, and in 2023, actor America Ferrera astonished her fellow Barbie castmates in an interview when admitting that she occasionally skips the shower. In 2021, a mini furore broke out when actor Ashton Kutcher horrified commentators with his routine of washing his "armpits and crotch daily and nothing else ever", and fellow actor Jake Gyllenhaal said he believed bathing was at times "less necessary" (only to later claim he had been sarcastic). As other celebs chimed in, the compounded upset became so great that actors Jason Momoa and The Rock soon had to clarify that they themselves shower a lot.

In 2015, chemist David Whitlock made headlines with the announcement that he had not showered for 12 years. Instead, he sprayed himself with good bacteria, and even started a skincare brand based on the philosophy. The year after, physician James Hamblin wrote about how he stopped showering, too.

Donnachadh McCarthy. "I'm not alone in [not showering every day]," he tells me. "What I am alone in is being bravely willing to talk about it."

Eight years ago, McCarthy wrote an article for the Guardian about his – then – weekly showers, complemented with sink washes.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240423-theres-no-need-to-shower-every-day-heres-why

or

On the other hand: https://www.gq.com/story/two-showers-a-day-clean-summer

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The Amazing Poop Discovery

Scientists found something incredible hidden inside 236-million-year-old fossilized poop (called a coprolite) from Argentina. This ancient poop came from a big plant-eating animal, maybe the size of a hippo. Inside it, they discovered super tiny, beautiful scales – like the ones found on butterfly wings. This is the oldest proof ever found that butterflies and their moth relatives existed way back then. It means butterflies appeared much earlier on Earth than scientists used to think, right after a huge event wiped out most life.

Butterflies Before Flowers?

Finding these scales pushes back butterfly history by 30-40 million years! Even more surprising, these ancient butterflies lived in a world *without flowers*. Back then, forests only had plants like pine trees and cycads. These plants made sweet droplets, not nectar. Scientists think the butterflies' long, straw-like tongue (proboscis) actually evolved to suck up these droplets, not flower nectar. This clever adaptation helped them survive after the big extinction and set them up to become flower experts much later!

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My life expectancy is 80 years old. Providing I stay away from buses. That’s just 4,182 days. Yikes. I built a countdown clock that counts down to a specific date. You can play with it here: https://1app.ca/countdown.html

It’s free just for you.

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If you’ve never been in a family crisis, congratulations. You are either:

1. an orphan,
2. lying,
3. due.
https://bakadesuyo.com/2025/06/resilient-family/

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Ahoy - Sailor Tats:

Lucille Ball's production company, Desilu, produced the original Star Trek TV series, and Lucy herself approved the development of the Star Trek concept into a series.

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It is commonly stated that the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was the most valuable company in history, with a valuation reaching $7.9 trillion in modern-day dollars. This valuation is based on the company's stock being worth 78 million Dutch guilders during the Dutch "Tulip Mania" in 1636.

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Scott Adams, the guy behind Dilbert, once pulled a fast one on Logitech. He convinced their managers to adopt a mission statement so bloated and vague it meant absolutely nothing.

Here's what they approved:
“The New Ventures Mission is to scout profitable growth opportunities in relationships, both internally and externally, in emerging, mission inclusive markets, and explore new paradigms and then filter and communicate and evangelize the findings.”
Total gibberish. But the execs bought it.

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Jerry Seinfeld performed the exact same standup material the first (in 1982) and last (2015) times he appeared on Late Night with David Letterman.

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If you write any number in words (English), count the number of letters, write this new number in words and so on, you'll end with number four.

six = 3; three = 5, five = 4 (wow magic 👁️👁️).

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20% of companies acquired by private equity enter bankruptcy proceedings within 10 years, compared to 2% of other types of companies.

Researchers think that our minds are blank somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of the time.

The Scots have a word for that panicky hesitation you get when you can’t remember someone’s name: tartle.

Why Alarm Clocks Use a 9-Minute Snooze (Instead of 10)

Back in the day, alarm clocks had gears, not software. When snooze buttons were added in the 1950s, clockmakers had to work with the existing mechanics. The gear teeth didn’t line up well for exactly 10 minutes—but 9 minutes was fine. That fit like a glove. So they went with it. Over time, the 9-minute snooze became the default. Even with today’s tech, most clocks still follow that weird old tradition. One minute short. But you’ll get to work faster.

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The average American consumes about 34 gigabytes of data and information each day, according to a study by the University of California, San Diego. This amount is equivalent to approximately 100,000 words.

Outside of manager roles, cake decorators are the highest paid hourly positions at U.S. Walmart stores. Sweet!

Which popular retailer manufactured seats for tanks, torpedo boats, gun turrets, and armored cars in WWII?

ʎoq-z-ɐl

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You know how much a gallon of milk is. Your heart pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood each day. That’s enough to fill an 8-by-10- by 3.34 feet swimming pool. It beats around 100,000 times daily. In an average life span of almost 79 years, your heart beats nearly 2.9 billion times.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a blog post published Tuesday, says an average ChatGPT query uses about 0.000085 gallons of water, or “roughly one fifteenth of a teaspoon.”

Mind Blowing Videos - Lars Andersen:

See how 432 robots relocate a 7,500 ton building complex:

Working Robots:

Rock Posters:

What’s the best seat on the airplane?
People are now eyeing Seat 11A like it’s some kind of magic charm. That’s where Viswash Kumar Ramesh, 38, was sitting—the only survivor of the Air India 787 crash in Ahmedabad.

So, is 11A the lucky seat?

Not likely. Aviation pros say there’s no seat safer than others in a crash. But Viswash was very lucky! https://archive.ph/cdFty

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Chihuahuas have the biggest brain-to-body ratio of any dog breed.

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The sound that the Raptors made in the movie Jurassic Park was a recording of tortoises mating.

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Reddit post: “My wife started a plain T-shirt brand on Shopify July of 2020. I thought it was a bad idea. This week we hit $70M in sales.” Plain T-shirts.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was the first to use the term "T-shirt" in print. He included the word in his novel "This Side of Paradise", published in 1920. This is widely recognized as the first instance of the term in literature. The shirt, originally an undergarment, gained popularity and eventually became a common term, thanks in part to Fitzgerald's writing.

Midjourney just about got it…

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