Curious Mind Blowing Facts - 8
will make you say "No Way" - From sources across the web
Winston Churchill's mother was born in Brooklyn, New York.
Before it was demolished in 1994, Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong was considered the densest settlement on earth, with 33,000 people living within the space of one city block. A largely unregulated space, the Walled City grew massive as residents built new structures directly on top of existing structures:
At the age of 37, Jonny Kim has changed careers a few times. He was a Navy SEAL, is a Harvard-trained Doctor, and a NASA astronaut. He just completed advanced helicopter training resulting in his designation as a Naval Aviator. Kim is now a “dual designator,” meaning he is one of a rare group of individuals who is simultaneously designated (qualified) as both a Navy flight surgeon and Naval Aviator as part of the Aeromedical Dual Designator Program.
There are about 13,000 nuclear weapons in the world right now. More than 2000 of them are ready to be launched within minutes of receiving a warning. Modern nuclear bombs are 3000 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima.
A company in Japan gives employees who don’t smoke an extra six vacation days to make up for cigarette breaks. This has incentivized employees to stop smoking.
The current American flag was designed by a 17-year-old high school student named Robert Heft in 1958.
Boxer Sugar Ray Robinson once backed out of a fight with Jimmy Doyle in 1947, because he dreamt that he killed his opponent in the ring. But after being convinced by a priest, he agreed to fight. He knocked his opponent out cold and Doyle was taken to the hospital. The opponent was pronounced dead the next day. Robinson saved the money from his next four fights to buy Doyle's mom a house.
Erramatti Mangamma currently holds the record for being the oldest living mother who gave birth at the age of 73.
In the early days (1910’s) of U.S. parcel service, there weren’t clear guidelines about what you could and couldn’t mail. So people used the Postal Service to ‘Mail’ their Children. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/05/24/mail-that-baby-a-brief-history-of-kids-sent-through-the-u-s-postal-service/)
The expression "surfing the internet" was introduced by a librarian, named Jean Armour Polly, and yes, riding waves was an inspiration for the iconic term.
Because plastic lasts for so long, every single piece of plastic ever made still exists, and will continue existing for at least 500 years. (Some of the plastic has degraded into a micro-plastic).
On average, Americans spend 90% of their time indoors.
Nordlingen is a German town of about 20,000 people that was built inside a 14 million-year-old meteorite crater.
Amazon's typical shopper is a white Gen X woman earning around $60,000 per year, according to a study by Numerator. The typical customer makes an average of 72 orders per year (or roughly 1-2 orders per week) at an average cost of $37 per order for an annual spend of $2,662.
That new car smell is comprised of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) used in car production. VOCs can include acetaldehyde, benzene, formaldehyde, styrene, and several other chemicals.
Richard Nixon was an extremely talented musician. He played piano, saxophone, clarinet, accordion, and violin.
East of Eden took John Steinbeck twelve years to write.
There are more (16,000) golf courses than McDonald’s locations (13,000) in the United States.
These are some actual bird names that sound rude:
Dirty Allan
Dickcissel
Goatsucker
Cranky fan
Swinepipe
Hornero
Blatherskite
Mumruffin
Meatbird
Bufflehead
Booby
Bustard
Bushtit
Bogsucker
Prada will design NASA’s new moon suit.
There are more than 1.5 billion surplus condos in China. That’s enough housing to put up everyone in the Western Hemisphere and everyone in Europe.
Charlie Chaplin enrolled in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike competition and he came in 20th.
In WW1 an estimated 37 million people lost their lives and in the last year of WW1, the Spanish flu broke out. The flu took an estimated 50 million lives worldwide.
“I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people,” Albert Einstein wrote in 1952 after he declined the offer to become Israel’s 2nd President. Israel is a parliamentary republic with a president as the head of state. The president's powers are largely ceremonial, while the prime minister holds the executive power.
John F. Kennedy, Anthony Burgess, Aldous Huxley, and C.S. Lewis all died on November 22, 1963
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I’d love to know if you enjoy these Mind Blowing Facts.
Mark me down as one who enjoys these Mind Blowing Facts! I feel like, Paul, that any 'Stack newcomers who struggle with "what to write about" could "spin the wheel" on your stack o' fax, here, and not be lacking for topics that could warrant possible deeper dives! Word to the why's.
Also, the comedy-writer part of me leans toward a smart-aleck remark for nearly every one of these! But, with excretion (did I get that right?) being the better part of valor, you'll thank me for refraining, or my name isn't Dick Cissel.
Thank you! Re: Einstein, he also didn’t believe that forcibly taking land from one group for another group of people would ever pan out peacefully. He turned down multiple requests to be an advocate/spokesperson of the new Israel as a result per his biography.