12 Random Facts To Peak Your Curiosity

1. Artic Explorer Peter Freuchen was caught in a terrible blizzard and buried under a thick layer of snow and ice. When he couldn’t claw his way out, Freuchen whittled his own frozen feces into a knife and used it to chisel his way through. Standing six feet seven inches, Freuchen was an Arctic explorer, journalist, author, and anthropologist. He participated in several Arctic journeys (including a 1000-mile dogsled trip across Greenland), starred in an Oscar-winning film, wrote more than a dozen books (novels and nonfiction, including his Famous Book of the Eskimos), had a peg leg (he lost his leg to frostbite in 1926; he amputated his gangrenous toes himself), was involved in the Danish resistance against Germany, was imprisoned and sentenced to death by the Nazis before escaping to Sweden, studied to be a doctor at university, his first wife was Inuit and his second was a Danish margarine heiress, became friends with Jean Harlow and Mae West, once escaped from a blizzard shelter by cutting his way out of it with a knife fashioned from his own faeces, and, last but certainly not least, won $64,000 on The $64,000 Question.

2. During the Battle of Loos in 1915, German machine gunners stopped firing out of sheer disgust for the amount of casualties they were inflicting on the British

3. King Amanullah Khan of Afghanistan (1919-1929) once gave a public speech in which he said “Islam did not require women to cover their bodies or wear any special kind of veil”. At the conclusion of the speech, Queen Soraya tore off her veil (hejab) in public. Not only did conservative Muslims disagree with the changes, the British distributed pictures of Soraya without a veil, dining with foreign men, and having her hand kissed by the leader of France, Germany, etc. among tribal regions of Afghanistan. Conservative mullahs and regional leaders took the images and details from the royal family’s trip to be a flagrant betrayal of Afghan culture, religion, and “honor” of women.

4. Due to a lack of family and friends in attendance at his funeral, the pallbearer’s of Lee Harvey Oswald’s casket were reporters

5. The world’s largest brothel, with 500 rooms, was built in Seattle in 1910. It was so scandalous that the mayor lost his job, and the building became the ordinary Lester Apartments. It was destroyed 40 years later when an air force bomber crashed into it.

6. In order to offset some of the environmental damage caused by smoking, Indian Prasadam Industries has embedded seeds into its cigarette filters. Their biodegradable cigarette filters flower into trees when thrown away

7. WWE Hall of Famer “Rowdy” Roddy Piper broke down in Mickey Rourke’s arms after watching a screening of The Wrestler, due to the film’s accurate portrayal of the lives many older and independent professional wrestlers live

8. 30% of American adults do not consume any alcohol ever. The top 10 percent of American drinkers – 24 million adults over age 18 – consume, on average, 74 alcoholic drinks per week. That works out to a little more than four-and-a-half 750 ml bottles of Jack Daniels, 18 bottles of wine, or three 24-can cases of beer. In one week.

9. Victorinox, the maker of the iconic Swiss Army knife, lost over 40% of its business after 9/11. The company refused to lay off any employees. “Our company has never been as hard-hit as it was by the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York and Washington,” the 55-year-old Elsener says. Almost overnight, after sharp objects were prohibited on airplanes, sales of the fireman-red knives — which had been a duty-free staple in airport stores and on flights — collapsed.

10. In 1984, Steven Tyler heard an old Aerosmith song on the radio and didn’t recognize it due to memory loss from years of drug use. He suggested to the band that they record a cover version. Joe Perry told him “It’s us, fuckhead.”

11. On the set of the Wizard of Oz, the actors playing the Scarecrow, Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the Wizard resented being “upstaged” by a woman and refused to even talk to Judy Garland between takes. The only friend Garland made on set was Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch. From the very beginning, studio executives were worried that Judy Garland was too fat to play a happy-go-lucky Kansas farm girl, so in an effort to prevent her lumbering, gelatinous ass from literally sinking the production, they put her in a corset and shoved amphetamines down her throat hand over fist. She was 16 at the time, but this was the 1930s, when forcing children into meth addiction was standard Hollywood practice. As opposed to today, where it’s totally different. (We use prescription pills now.) MGM executive Louis B. Mayer was so committed to making sure Garland got down to an acceptable weight that he had people follow her around to make sure she wasn’t cheating on her diet. That diet, by the way, consisted of chicken soup, coffee, and … 80 cigarettes a day. Holy fuck, 1930s. Garland’s co-stars didn’t treat her any better, either. The actors who played the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the Wizard refused to even talk to her between takes, insisting that they were serious actors and resented playing second fiddle to a woman. Even on screen, they would attempt to shove her to the back of the scene like a bunch of schoolyard bullies. Ironically, the only friend she made on set was Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Director Victor Fleming was an utter bastard, too. Garland had an unfortunate habit of laughing at Bert Lahr’s (Cowardly Lion) antics during filming, so Fleming would have to occasionally take her into the back and slap the humor out of her. The fucking Land of Oz is no place for whimsy

12. There’s a biker gang who sit in courtrooms to help sexually abused kids feel relaxed when giving evidence.