29 Random Facts To Fill Your Head With

1. Over 1,000,000 Euros are thrown into the Trevi fountain in Rome, Italy every year. The money is used to subsidize a supermarket for the needy.

2. Thelma Schoonmaker, director Martin Scorsese’s editor, when asked how such a nice lady could edit such violent movies, answered, “Ah, but they aren’t violent until I’ve edited them.”

3. The biggest squid ever caught weighed an estimated 990 pounds and about 39 feet long. If calamari rings were made from this squid, they would be the size of tractor tires.

4. The Smokey Bear Effect is a bad thing. Decades of preventing small fires leads to the accumulation of undergrowth that fuels massive super fires today.

5. In 1990, disabled activists got out of their wheelchairs and crawled up the steps of the Capitol, inconveniencing senators to encourage a vote on the Americans With Disabilities Act.

6. Steven Spielberg asked to do a James Bond movie, but was refused. When he told George Lucas he was going to ask again, Lucas said, “I’ve got something better than that. It’s called Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

7. Due to wasabi’s high cost, most of the ‘wasabi’ people eat is actually a mixture of horseradish, mustard, starch and green food coloring.

8. The city of Cincinnati has a subway system that was built and never used. It is recognized as the largest abandoned subway tunnel in the United States.

9. While he was writing the score for 'The Last Samurai,' composer Hans Zimmer felt that his knowledge of Japanese music was very limited even after doing extensive research. When he took what he had written to Japan for feedback, he was shocked when he was asked how he knew so much about Japanese music.

10. Having bridesmaids in a wedding wasn’t originally for moral support. They were “intended to confuse evil spirits or those who wished to harm the bride.”

11. There is an island called Just Enough Room located at the Canadian-US border on the St. Lawrence River east of Ontario. There is just enough room on the island for a tree, a house and two wrought-iron chairs.

12. There was a movie made in 2009 consisting only of paint drying, as a rebuttal to critics who often mention that they “would rather watch paint dry” than a particular film.

13. Lamborghini provided two Gallardos to the Italian state police, who now uses them for delivering organ transplants to patients.

14. When filming the movie “Space Jam,” Warner Brothers built an indoor gym nicknamed the “Jordan Dome.” Michael Jordan used it to get back into playing shape for his return by playing pickup games against other NBA players and celebrities.

15. One of the richest men of all time, J. Paul Getty, had a pay phone installed in his house after visitors racked up his phone bill.

16. The first word spoken over the internet was “lo.” It was supposed to be “login” but the computer crashed after the first two letters.

17. Charles Darwin and Joseph Hooker started the world’s first terraforming project on Ascension Island in 1850. The project has turned an arid volcanic wasteland into a self-sustaining and self-reproducing ecosystem made completely of foreign plants from all over the world.

18. During Greece’s fight for independence in 1826-27, a Turkish garrison in Acropolis was besieged by Greek fighters. When the Turks ran low on bullets, they began to cut the marble columns to use the lead within as bullets. The Greeks sent them ammunition saying: “Here are bullets, don’t touch the columns.”

19. ‘Yak Shaving’ is the term for getting sidetracked by multiple other tasks before finally being able to complete what you originally started out to do.

20. The opposite of sparkle is ‘darkle.’

21. The Federal Trade Commission states that your eye care provider must give you a copy of your contact lens and eyeglass prescriptions, whether or not you ask for them.

22. During the production of "Revenge of the Sith," George Lucas came into work one day with a cough, and decided that it would be amusing to record it and use it on the new Episode III villain, General Grievous.

23. It is optimal for your lithium ion smartphone battery to “top it off” and keep its charge between 40-80%, rather than let it drain to 0% and charge it all the way up.

24. Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was in space when the Soviet Union was dissolved. He went up a Soviet citizen and returned a Russian citizen.

25. The towns from “Ghost Whisperer,” “Gremlins,” “Bruce Almighty,” “Back To The Future,” “Falling Skies,” and the first episode of “The Twilight Zone” are all the same set, which is known as “Courthouse Square.”

26. The word “honeymoon” originated from the tradition of giving newly weds a month’s supply of mead on their wedding night

27. If a child loses their fingertip, it may sometimes grow back.

28. The secret blend of 11 herbs and spices that made KFC famous is sold by Marion-Kay Spices under the name “99-X”.

29. In 2013, a researcher at University of Washington managed the first human to human brain interface through the Internet by wearing a cap and playing a video game. When he wanted to shoot a missile, he thought “fire” and another researcher’s finger across the campus moved involuntarily and pressed the fire button.