86 Fascinating, Incredible, And Truly Wild Facts I Learned In April

🚨 Warning: This article contains mentions of murder, suicide, and other sensitive topics. 🚨

I love a good fun fact. In fact, I love them so much that I've started writing a weekly column full of all of the interesting facts I've come across each week.

Apple Music / Via giphy.com

At the end of each month, I round up all of the facts into one big post, in case you missed any. That means that you might have seen some of these facts before in previous posts.

Here are the original posts if you'd like to check 'em out:

22 Facts I Learned This Week That I Will Be Thinking About For All Of Eternity

23 Facts I Learned This Week That Are Making Me Reconsider Everything I Once Knew

22 Facts I Learned This Week That Pretty Much Shattered My Entire World View

19 Facts I Learned This Week, From A Skinny-Dipping President To Sea Otters Holding Hands

So without further ado, here are the 86 truly mind-boggling facts I learned in April:

1.Imagine being this good at your job! River Monsters, an Animal Planet series starring Jeremy Wade, ended because Wade had caught every large freshwater fish species known to man, so there was essentially no more content left to film. The show, which followed Wade as he attempted to catch fish from legends and folklore, ran for nine seasons.

2.William Shakespeare was worried that when he died, his bones would be stolen from his grave, which was common among high-profile people at the time of his death. To prevent this, the Bard placed a curse on his own grave, with his tombstone reading, "Good friend for Jesus sake forbear, to dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, and cursed be he that moves my bones." He also ponied up some extra cash to ensure that his final resting place would be inside a church, instead of outside in a graveyard.

3.It's completely silent up in space. Because sound waves need something to travel through, the lack of atmosphere in space means there's nothing for sound to pass through. There is sound on Earth because sound waves can pass through our atmosphere.

4.Mack Ray Edwards was a construction worker who used to kill children and then bury their bodies under portions of the California highway he was working on. He began confessing to his crimes in 1970, when he entered a Los Angeles police station, placed a loaded handgun on the counter, and revealed he was responsible for the robbery and kidnapping of three teenage girls.

From there, Edwards admitted to the brutal murders of six more missing California children, many of whom were suspected of being runaways by authorities. To make matters worse, Edwards told authorities that while he buried their bodies under the portions of the highway he was working on, the areas had already been paved over and completed, and thus were very difficult to dig up. Edwards was sentenced to death, but died by suicide before his execution date. In 2008, a dig to recover the remains of 15-year-old Roger Madison was unsuccessful, in part because of how expensive it would be to continue digging under portions of the busy freeway.

5.While US law requires the president to be paid a salary, you might be surprised that it's only been increased five times since 1789! Back in the day, George Washington took home $25,000. The pay was increased to $50,000 in 1873 during Ulysses S. Grant's second term. In 1909, it was increased to $75,000, during Taft's administration. By the time Harry Truman was re-elected in 1945, the president was earning $100,000. It was bumped up to $200,000 in 1969 while Richard Nixon was Commander in Chief, and has been resting at $400,000 since George W. Bush took office in 2001.

6.Singer Buddy Holly predicted his own 1959 death. Holly claimed that he and his wife, Maria, were simultaneously woken up by a nightmare involving a plane crash near a farm. Weeks later, Holly went on tour with his band. While they normally traveled via bus, it was a cold winter, and the unheated bus notoriously broke down often, so Holly decided to charter a plane to get to their next stop. He and several other musicians were killed when the plane crashed in a cornfield in Iowa shortly after takeoff.

7.When Napoleon Bonaparte died while exiled on the remote isle of St. Helena, it was revealed that during his autopsy, his heart, stomach, and penis were all removed. While it's unclear why the coroner castrated the ruler, some believed it was out of spite for not being included in his will. Others think that a priest ordered it out of revenge after Napoleon repeatedly called him impotent. Napoleon's member has traveled far and wide since the castration: It was originally sold to a London bookseller, then to a new owner in Philadelphia, before landing in a New York museum. It has been in the possession of a private collector since the 1970s.

8.Dingoes, a breed native to Australia, are actually an ancient breed of domestic dog. DNA testing proved that there aren't enough differences between the dingo and the average domestic dog to make them separate species. Scientists believe that this lack of differentiation is caused in part by human interference in dog breeding.

9.On the night of Iraq's Kuwait invasion, there was a huge increase in pizza deliveries to the Pentagon, tipping people off to the fact that a military operation was happening. After this, the term "PizzInt," or "Pizza Intelligence," was coined, referring to people in Washington, DC, learning something big was happening because of the increase in pizza deliveries.

While the Pentagon has a food court inside to prevent any ill-timed tipoffs, the government still takes extra precautions from time to time. During the 2011 raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, instead of placing a huge order from one restaurant, the White House supposedly ordered only two or three pizzas from a large selection of local pizzerias to avoid the media from finding out about the operation before it was officially released.

MGM / Via giphy.com

10.If you live in Singapore, you are automatically registered as an organ donor on your 21st birthday. Opting out means that if you ever need an organ transplant, you will be placed at the very bottom of the transplant list.

11.Private Kevin Elliott and his friend Barry Delaney jokingly made a pact that if Elliot was killed in battle, Delaney would wear a lime green dress to his funeral. Three years later, Elliot was killed during a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan. Staying true to his word, Barry showed up to the proceedings wearing a lime green dress that he bought for £4.99 at Primark.

12.Ben and Jerry's founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield originally wanted to start a bagel company. When they went to buy the equipment, they realized it was out of their price range, so they pivoted to ice cream. While I can't imagine a world without Ben and Jerry's ice cream, I'm not gonna lie, their original pitch sounded pretty great: They wanted to hand deliver bagels, cream cheese, lox, and the New York Times to customers on Sunday mornings.

13.If you're scared of getting bitten by a shark, then I suggest you also steer clear of New York City. The number of people who are bitten by another person in New York is 10 times the number of people who get bitten by a shark each year.

14.Irena Sendler was a Polish social worker. Because of her job, she had access to the Warsaw Ghetto, where hundreds of thousands of Jewish people were imprisoned. Horrified by what was happening, Sendler ended up rescuing over 2,500 children from the prison. Some of the children were smuggled out in caskets and potato sacks, while others were taken out in ambulances or through secret tunnels. In order to protect the children, she gave each of them a new identity, but recorded all of their old information in a secret code and kept it hidden in a buried jar, so that she could reunite the children with their families when it was safe.

In October 1943, the Nazis caught onto this plan and arrested Sendler. She was sent to prison, where Nazis tortured her in order to get her to give up the names of the people who helped her with the rescue efforts. She refused and was sentenced to death, but was able to escape unharmed. Sendler assumed a new identity and continued her work. Once the war was over, she remained true to her word and helped reunite families.

15.If you live in Wyoming, you better get used to taking the stairs! In the entire state, there are only two escalators, both located in banks.

Dior / Via giphy.com

16.In 1933, Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt snuck out of a White House event, commandeered a plane, and went on a joyride to nearby Baltimore. Eleanor also supposedly briefly took command of the plane’s controls to test out her pilot skills after taking flying lessons. The pair were still wearing their gowns from the dinner while up in the air.

17.Although coral attach themselves to the ocean floor as if they had roots, they are actually animals and not plants. Coral do not make their own food, which is a characteristic of plants. Instead, they use their tiny tentacle-like arms to sweep food from the ocean floor into their mouths.

18.The making of Shrek was quite chaotic. While Mike Myers' Scottish voicing of Shrek makes the movie memorable, nailing that portrayal wasn't without some trial and error. The late Chris Farley was originally tapped to play the ogre. He recorded somewhere between 85%–90% of the dialogue before he died in 1997. Myers was given the role and began recording the dialogue in a Canadian accent. Partway through filming, he decided he wanted to switch to the Scottish accent, and had to rerecord all of the lines he previously recorded.

DreamWorks / Via giphy.com

On the animation side, DreamWorks employees treated having to work on the project as a punishment. When higher-ups thought employees weren't giving the production of The Prince of Egypt their all, they were sent to work on Shrek, which wasn't given as much support as The Prince of Egypt. Turns out, Shrek would go on to become one of DreamWorks' most enduring movies. It ended up saving the company from financial ruin, and turned into a lucrative franchise.

19.In 1987, the state of Nevada developed an entirely uninhabited county called Bullfrog County with exorbitantly high property taxes. Why? The state wanted to prevent the federal government from constructing a planned nuclear waste site in the area. The concept was scrapped the next year when it started to cause the state legal problems. In 2002, a proposal to build a waste facility within Yucca Mountain, located about 80 miles away from Las Vegas, was approved, but by 2011, the Obama administration pulled all federal funding from the project, which was highly contested by the public.

20.We do not deserve dogs! Smoky was a Yorkshire Terrier who served in World War II. The pup only weighed 4 pounds, but participated in 12 combat missions, 150 air raids, and a typhoon in Okinawa. By the end of Smoky's military career, she had been awarded 8 Battle Stars. She is now credited as being the first therapy dog, and was likely the catalyst for a renewed interest in adopting Yorkies as pets.

21.When Pac-Man was invented in Japan in 1980, it was actually called Puck Man. The name was changed to Pac-Man when people started voicing concerns that the "P" in "Puck" would be changed to an "F" by aspiring graffiti artists.

Pac-Man / Via giphy.com

22.As a teen in the 1940s, Judith Love Cohen loved math and dreamed of becoming an engineer. While her teachers tried to convince her to go to finishing school, she earned a spot at the University of Southern California, where she majored in engineering. Her talents earned her a job as a NASA contractor, where she was often the only woman in the room. Cohen went on to help develop the Abort Guidance system, the mechanism that saved the Apollo 13 astronauts after an oxygen tank exploded.

Cohen continued to work while heavily pregnant. On the day she went into labor, she had been working on a complex problem. Not wanting to abandon her work, she took a printout of the problem to complete while in the hospital. Not only did she end up finishing the problem, she also gave birth that day. The child? None other than Jack Black. A twist that I am truly obsessed with!

23.In 2019, a doghouse in Costa Rica was struck by a meteorite. Shockingly, it's actually incredibly rare for an object to actually be hit by a meteorite, and as a result, the doghouse became one of the most valuable pieces at a space-themed auction. The doghouse ended up selling for $44,000, while a piece of the meteorite itself went for $21,000. And in case you were wondering, the house belonged to a pup named Roky, who was in the house when the meteor struck, but was luckily unharmed.

24.Domino's pizza recorded one of its busiest days in history during O.J. Simpson's 1994 car chase, during which he attempted to evade police in his white Ford Bronco as more than 95 million people tuned in. "People were so enthralled by the bizarre nature of what was happening, they didn’t want to miss a moment, so instead of going out to dinner or making dinner, many people ordered pizza," Tim McIntyre, vice president of corporate communications for Domino's, said.

Domino's / Via giphy.com

During the trial a year later, Domino's claimed that not a single person ordered a pizza for the five minutes it took to read the final verdict. More than 150 million people tuned into the final moments of the trial.

25.Point Nemo is the location in the ocean that is farthest from land, coming in at about 2,688 kilometers or 1,450 miles from Ducie Island, which is the nearest land. The location was named after a submarine sailor from Jules Verne's classic novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Point Nemo is known as the space junk graveyard because it's the safest place for space debris to fall. In 2030, the International Space Station will crash into the ocean at Point Nemo. More than 263 pieces of debris have fallen at Point Nemo since 1971.

26.Ever wondered why some countries drive on the left side of the road? It dates all the way back to the Roman Empire. Because most people are right-handed, it made it easier to stab strangers who passed them on the right side.

SubPop / Via giphy.com

27.In the 1990s, Marlon Brando, famous for his role in The Godfather, used to spend his days in AOL chatrooms, where he would get into political arguments with strangers. Brando's account was frequently suspended after telling people to "fuck off" when they didn't agree with him.

28.Marcel Petiot was a French doctor who was suspected of killing over 60 people. Petiot served in World War I, but was discharged after he injured his own foot with a grenade. After the war, Petiot turned to medicine, and completed an accelerated medical program designed for war veterans. He moved to Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, a commune in Northern France. Petiot quickly gained a reputation of dubious practices after performing illegal abortions and supplying patients with narcotics, which he was also suspected to be abusing himself. Despite this, Petiot became mayor of Yonne, but was soon accused of theft.

After this accusation, Petiot fled to Paris, where he opened a new medical practice. He used fake credentials to attract patients and in 1936, was appointed médecin d'état-civil, which meant he was able to write death certificates. During World War II, he provided people fake disability certificates so they could avoid having to serve. Petiot also created a fake escape route under the name Dr. Eugène. He told people he could get them out of France, and lured Jewish people and Resistance fighters to a secret passageway. Petiot told them they needed a certain vaccine before escaping, and then injected them with cyanide and burned their bodies in the basement of his house after stealing their belongings.

French authorities discovered this plot in 1943 after several of Petiot's accomplices ratted him out. Much to the authorities' dismay, they couldn't find Petiot anywhere. Turns out, he had adopted a new identity, and was now acting as Henri Valeri. As Valeri, he joined the French Forces of the Interior and quickly moved up the ranks to become captain. One of his main duties? Find Marcel Petiot. He was recognized at a train station and captured several months later. Petiot went on trial in 1946, where he admitted to killing 63 "enemies." The media began calling him Dr. Satan. He was executed by guillotine two months after the trial.

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29.The Earth's crust is so thin that it can be compared to the skin of an apple, with a thickness-to-diameter ratio of about .4%.

30.Vincent Van Gogh didn't begin his painting career until his late 20s, and enrolled in art school in 1880 at age 27. Despite his late start, he created over 2,100 works of art.

Those 2,100 works of art included over 850 oil paintings and over 1,300 watercolors and sketches. Most of his paintings are from the last two years of his life. Van Gogh died by suicide in 1890.

31.Finches, sparrows, and other species of birds who live in cities will often line their nests with cigarette butts from the streets. Why? The nicotine smells deter predators and parasites. While this tactic keeps out pests, researchers are investigating the potential consequences of this practice. Many compounds in cigarette butts are known carcinogens, while others are pesticides.

32.In the 1930s, Louis Rothschild, the Jewish heir to the Austrian branch of the Rothschild banking dynasty, was worth about 2 billion shillings, or $10 billion in today's money. During World War II, Rothschild refused to leave Austria, which prompted the Nazis to capture him, believing they could leverage the businessman's life to gain access to his billions. After being held for 14 months, the Rothschild family gave the Nazis $21 million, which equals about $400 million in today's money in exchange for the safe return of Rothschild. It was the largest ransom for a single individual in history.

33.The time period of 1.8 billion BCE to 800 million BCE is known as the "Boring Billion" because nothing happened. During this period, the climate stabilized, oxygen levels steadied, and evolution stalled. Recent research leads biologists to believe that this time was actually crucial for the emergence of animals, which brought the planet out of the "Boring Billion" and into the Neoproterozoic era.

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34.George Carlin, the comedian who was also the narrator for the first several seasons of Thomas the Tank Engine, was nervous about performing his lines without an audience. Someone suggested a child be brought to the booth where he was recording, so that Carlin could perform to the child. While this request was denied, a producer suggested bringing along a teddy bear. For the next four seasons, Carlin spoke all of his lines to the stuffed animal.

35.When developing the game cartridges for the Nintendo Switch, the game company decided to coat them in a foul-tasting film to dissuade babies and animals from putting them in their mouths. They used Denatonium Benzoate, which is known as the most bitter chemical compound. The coating is non-toxic, and designed to be so gross that anyone who puts it in their mouth will want to immediately spit it back out.

36.If you've ever complained about your name, just be glad you're not Hubert Blaine Wolfe­schlegel­stein­hausen­berger­dorff Sr.! Wolfe­schlegel­stein­hausen­berger­dorff has the world's longest name, clocking in at 747 characters long. Each of his 26 names start with a different letter of the alphabet. Wolfe­schlegel­stein­hausen­berger­dorff claims that his last name was invented by his great-grandfather during the 19th century, when German Jews were forced to take a second name.

37.Palm trees actually aren't trees — they're just large plants, like bamboo.

38.While we're all now familiar with the long process of Supreme Court justice hearings, it used to be a much simpler affair. In fact, before 1916, Supreme Court justice nominees were simply voted on by the Senate. The hearing process began when President Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis Brandeis, a successful lawyer who served as one of Wilson's aides, to the court. Brandeis was Jewish, and several members of the Senate were opposed to the nomination of a Jewish man. It took four months of hearings before Brandeis's nomination was confirmed.

39.At least nine fatal military flights were caused by the pilot having to pee during the flight. Military pilots used to have to unzip their flight suits and pee into a bag called a "piddle pack." This was especially difficult for women, who often would refrain from drinking water before a flight, even though dehydration can dramatically affect vision and reaction time. As a result, the US Air Force is developing a new technology that involves a pad for women, and a cup for men attached to a tube through a special pair of underwear, which will pull their pee through the tube to a collection bag.

40.There was once a time when Burger King wasn't quite fast food. From 1992 to 1994, the chain used to offer table service, with waiters delivering patrons their food to promote their new BK Dinner Baskets. They even brought popcorn to every table as an appetizer. The initiative only lasted for two years, and was quietly discontinued.

41.After the Titanic sunk in 1912, over 118,000 people claimed that they were supposed to be on the ship, but missed the inaugural voyage for various reasons. “Up to the present time the count shows that just 118,337 people escaped death because they missed the Titanic or changed their minds a moment before sailing time,” an Ohio newspaper wrote weeks after the tragedy.

42.After leaving office, President Ulysses S. Grant was facing financial failure after a series of bad investments and lavish living. His son had started his own investment firm with a friend named Ferdinand Ward. Grant agreed to let Ward handle his money. What Grant and his son didn't know was that Ward was running a large Ponzi scheme, and was pocketing Grant's money for years. In poor health and close to bankruptcy, Grant decided he would sell his memoirs. He began writing, but was diagnosed with cancer while working on the project.

Grant was desperate to finish writing before his death so that his family wouldn't face poverty. He signed a contract stating he would receive 10% of the profits, a deal that was standard for the time. Mark Twain, who was one of Grant's close friends, heard about the deal and thought it was appalling that a former president on the verge of death wasn't given a larger deal. Twain stepped in and offered Grant a new contract, complete with a large advance payment, living expenses, and 70% of the book's profits. Grant reluctantly accepted, and finished the book in July 1885. He died a week later, but his wife Julia earned nearly $11 million (in today's money) thanks to Twain's deal. Talk about a good friend!

43.In November 2008, a factory worker named Ronald Ball allegedly found a dead mouse in his can of Mountain Dew. He said that he had given Pepsi, who distributes Mountain Dew, to the mouse and later sued the company for $50,000. The case made headlines again in 2012 when Pepsi revealed that they had called a veterinary pathologist to testify in the case. The pathologist said that the drink was so acidic that a mouse would turn into a jelly-like substance within 30 days of being trapped in the can. The mouse Ball had given them was too young to have been trapped in the can given the timeline. By August 2012, the case had been settled out of court.

Mountain Dew India / Via giphy.com

44.William Shakespeare wrote about one-tenth of the world's most quoted lines. In fact, the only thing that is quoted more often than Shakespeare's work is the Bible.

45.The Dahomey Amazons was a military comprised of women who were trained to protect the kingdom of Dahomey, a West African empire that existed from 1625 to 1894. The Amazons were known for their fearlessness, and were seen as equals to men. They were officially incorporated as official members of the army in the mid-1800s, and went on to fight against French colonizers.

The women in this army were known for being ruthless, stopping at nothing to protect their kingdom. An Italian priest recounted a training exercise during which he watched the Amazons scale 120-meter-high thorn bushes. He said that not a single one complained during the exercise. The Amazons went on to inspire the Dora Milaje, the all-women army in the Black Panther franchise.

Marvel / Via giphy.com

46.In 2001, Beaver College changed its name to Arcadia University, partly because anti-porn filters blocked access to the school's website. The school's name had even been the focus of jokes on Saturday Night Live. The university held focus groups and polled thousands of former students to gauge what people thought the new name should be. When the change was announced, over 800 former students requested replacement diplomas featuring the university's new name.

47.While we all know Domino's as one of the biggest pizza chains around, it was slow-going at the start. Brothers Tom and James Monaghan bought a pizzeria in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with hopes of turning it into a larger chain. James decided he wasn't cut out for the pizza business and quit to become a mailman, giving his half of the company to his brother in exchange for a Volkswagen Beetle. Four years later, Tom changed the name to Domino's, and the chain found huge success.

48.There is a thriving colony of parrots in New York City. The monk parakeet, also known as the Quaker parrot, was first spotted in Brooklyn in the 1960s, and has since been seen in the Bronx, Queens, and occasionally Manhattan.

The parrots are unusually good at adapting to new environments, which makes life in New York City easier for them. They build their nests virtually anywhere, but tend to gravitate toward grassy areas with lights for warmth, meaning they're typically spotted around baseball fields.

49.During the 1913 Indianapolis 500, Jules Goux, a French driver reportedly drank three bottles of champagne during the race, and ended up winning. Goux didn't speak any English, and allegedly drove up to the pit stop for a tire change and told the crew in French, "Fetch me a pint of wine, or I'm done." His requests were honored, and Goux ended up cruising to victory. Despite this, drivers were banned from drinking alcohol while racing in 1914.

50.Robert Hansen, also known as the Butcher Baker, was a serial killer who used to kidnap women, set them loose in the Alaskan wilderness, and then later hunt them down to kill them.

Hansen first began committing crimes in the 1960s. He first burned down a school building as revenge for being bullied in high school, and then began committing sexual crimes against women. After he was released from jail in the 1970s, he moved to Anchorage, Alaska, with his wife. While in Anchorage, Hansen began kidnapping sex workers at gunpoint. After raping the women, he would set them loose in the wilderness, making them think they had escaped, and then would later hunt them down and kill them.

After Hansen was caught, police found a map in his home with "X" marked over the spots where he buried the bodies. It was revealed that he had raped or assaulted an estimated 30 women, and had killed 17. He was sentenced to over 400 years in prison without the possibility of parole. He died in prison in 2014 of natural causes.

51.Despite the name, Philadelphia Cream Cheese was actually invented in New York. So why call it Philadelphia? At the time of the company's founding in the 1880s, Philadelphia was known for their high-quality dairy, so the brand decided to include the city in the name as a clever marketing tactic.

52.During the Woodstock festival in 1969, the dynamic duo of Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young realized that the charter plane they flew in on had landed at the wrong airport. In danger of missing their sets, Hendrix and Young decided they would drive to the festival. The problem? There was nobody at the airport who could drive them. Hendrix, Young, and Young's attorney decided the only way to arrive on time would be to hot wire a pickup truck that was in the airport's parking lot, allowing the performers to arrive on time. Young later said it was his fondest memory of the entire festival.

53.On December 20, 1921, John Tierney, a construction worker, died during the construction of the Hoover Dam when his crew got caught in a flash flood while surveying a potential building location. He was the first person to die during the dam's construction.

Exactly 14 years later, on December 20, 1935, Tierney's son, Patrick William Tierney, was working on a crew that was wrapping up construction on the Hoover Dam when he fell to his death at Arizona's Black Canyon. He was the final person to die during the construction of the dam, 14 years to the day of his father's death. Both John and Patrick's names appear on a plaque at the dam.

54.We've all been in a theater with a crying child, haven't we? Back in the day, this problem was avoided because movie theaters used to have "cry rooms," which were small, soundproof booths that allowed parents to sit with their crying children while still enjoying their movie.

TCM / Via giphy.com

55.Your average 2x2 Lego is actually so strong that you could build a 2-mile-high tower before the bottom brick would fail. In fact, scientists have concluded it would take a maximum force of 4,240N to break the bottom brick. That means the tower would be comprised of 375,000 Legos, measuring in at 2.17 miles tall and weighing in at about 950 pounds. In case you're wondering, that's taller than Mount Olympus. However, experts agree that the tower itself would buckle long before, even if the bricks all remained intact.

56.While Pixar normally keeps their projects under wraps during production, a driver for the car service Pixar uses to pick up talent from the airport figured out the company was making Soul because he noticed that he was driving more Black people to Pixar's headquarters than he ever had before. The movie's director, Kemp Powers, said that the driver frequently asked him about the movie, but he had to stay quiet for the most part. "He's like, 'I ain't never picked up this many Black people and brought them to Pixar. He's like, man, you know y'all doing a Black movie.'"

Pixar / Via giphy.com

57.Nas listed his 7-year-old daughter Destiny Jones as a producer on his 2001 album Stillmatic to ensure that she would make residual money from the record. The album peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200.

58.Director George Miller had his wife edit Mad Max: Fury Road, because he wanted the movie to look different from the typical action movie. Margaret Sixel, despite never having cut an action movie before, ended up winning an Oscar for her work on the film.

59.This one might have you actually paying attention to that pesky junk mail! In 1995, Patrick Combs received a $95,000 check as junk mail. He deposited it into his account as a joke, but much to his surprise, the "check" met all of the legal criteria for a check, and the $95,000 was deposited into his bank account. Once it was revealed to be a fake, Combs still got the money, because the bank had missed their deadline to correct the error. He ended up giving back the money, and turned the experience into a motivational speaking career.

HBO / Via giphy.com

60.Pete Maravich, known as Pistol Pete, was an NBA player who had been famously quoted as saying that he didn't want to play basketball for 10 years and then die of a heart attack when he was 40. Maravich was forced to retire six years into his career after he was injured.

After leaving basketball, Maravich became a recluse, saying he was searching for a new meaning in his life after leaving basketball. He ended up adopting evangelical Christianity, and even returned to the court through his church. In 1988, at age 40, Maravich's quote eerily came true after he had a heart attack and died while playing a pick-up game at his church. An autopsy later revealed that Maravich had a heart defect.

61.Cat lovers, I've found your next vacation. Japan is home to a dozen cat islands — places where cats significantly outnumber people. Most of these islands are in remote fishing villages, and the cats tend to stick to abandoned homes, but there has been a significant increase in tourism to the islands. In some of these islands, the cat to human ratio is 6 to 1.

62.James K. Polk was the only US president who campaigned on the idea that he was only going to serve one term. Luckily for him, he was known for fulfilling all his major campaign promises, including the acquisition of California, New Mexico, and Oregon. In fact, some considered him the most efficient and effective president since George Washington. Polk died three months after his term ended, making his retirement the shortest of any president.

63.Of Uranus’s 27 moons, a whopping 25 of them are named after Shakespeare's characters. While it's unclear who exactly started this tradition, astronomers have made sure to keep up with the precedent as new moons are discovered.

64.In today's installment of facts that are extremely disturbing: People used to believe that the blood of the freshly executed was a health tonic. If that's not horrific enough for you, people would pay executioners to let them drink it warm, even going so far as to line up at execution sites in search of fresh blood.

FX / Via giphy.com

65.The children's classic Green Eggs and Ham actually began as a $50 bet. Bennett Cerf, Seuss's editor at Random House, challenged the writer to pen a book using no more than 50 different words. He did it, and the book went on to sell millions of copies. This wasn't the only time Seuss was limited by word choice: The Cat in the Hat was written from a list of 348 words that educators used to teach children to read. Seuss ended up only using 236 of them.

66.Koala fingerprints are so close to humans' that they could taint crime scenes. Their prints are unique to each animal, and contain the same whirls and loops as human fingerprints. So why are their prints so similar to ours? Their hands function very similarly to human hands, and the way they grasp things created the print similarities.

67.Gloria Swanson was more than just an actor who bridged the gap between the end of silent films and the rise of talkies — she also saved Jewish inventors during World War II and was a vegetarian pioneer.

During World War II, Swanson felt her career was fading. She decided to turn to entrepreneurship, and began to develop her own companies in hopes of finding something that would stick. When she heard about Jewish inventors looking to flee Germany as the Nazis gained power, she helped them flee under one condition: They had to work for her. She paid them and hid them in her husband's home in Paris. Although Swanson eventually returned to Hollywood, one of the engineers she rescued went on to create the talking typewriter.

Swanson was also an advocate for vegetarianism during a time when it wasn't very widespread. She was known for bringing her own meals to public functions, and lobbied against pesticides and hormones in food, long before organic meals were in fashion.

68.Snow has been detected on Mars, but because of the atmospheric pressure, snowfall is unable to reach the ground and instead vaporizes in the air.

Amon Amarth / Via giphy.com

69.William Patrick Hitler, who was Adolf Hitler's half nephew, was not a fan of his uncle's beliefs. In 1939, he published an article called "Why I Hate My Uncle." In the piece, he detailed tense interactions with his uncle, writing, “I shall never forget the last time he sent for me. He was in a brutal temper when I arrived. Walking back and forth, brandishing his horsehide whip, he shouted insults at my head as if he were delivering a political oration.”

After the article was released, William moved to the United States and changed his name to William Stuart-Houston. He also attempted to enlist in the Army to fight in World War II. His initial attempts to enlist were denied because of his family connections, so William sent a passionate letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who then permitted William to join the Navy.

70.If you ever see a bird with Cheetos claws, this is why. Ornithologists often use Cheetos to study how crows compete for food. Rhea Esposito developed the idea after she realized how difficult it was to spot traditional food during observations. The orange dust from the Cheetos made it much easier to conduct their experiments.

71.President John Quincy Adams was an avid skinny-dipper. In fact, he used to skinny-dip in the Potomac River every morning. While it wasn't super uncommon to swim naked back in the 1800s, Adams recounted a few times when his clothes were swept up by the tide, meaning there was a chance people had spotted the president heading home in the nude.

72.Hedgehogs can suffer from “balloon syndrome," in which they inflate upon injury or infection and then need to be deflated. In some cases, hedgehogs will go from the size of a softball to the size of a basketball because of gas trapped under their skin. As their bodies inflate, it makes breathing increasingly difficult, but the rare syndrome can be fixed with surgical incisions.

73.Up until 1857, the US produced half-cent coins, which were the lowest-value coin ever minted in the US. Production on the coins began in 1792, and they were worth 1/200 of a dollar and made of pure copper. Despite the name and low value, the coins were actually nearly the size of a quarter. The half cent was discontinued with the Coinage Act of 1857, which revamped the coin system used in America. Some half-cent coins are now worth upward of $20,000.

74.In 1944, 18-year-old Robert Earl Hughes was drafted in the Army. The issue? Hughes weighed over 700 pounds and was considered the heaviest human on Earth. Despite his weight, Hughes was completely mobile and could walk on his own. He ended up serving for 21 months before he was discharged. Hughes went on to perform at carnivals. Upon his death in 1958, he weighed 1,041 pounds.

75.Dennis Rader, who was known as the BTK Killer — for "bind, torture, kill" — killed 10 people in Wichita, Kansas, in the 1970s. He killed his first victim in 1974 by severing a family's phone line and killing their two youngest children, leaving their bodies for the older siblings to find when they came home from school. He continued on his killing spree, stabbing a woman to death.

A young man turned himself in for the crimes, but Rader called the police station and told them that the man only confessed for publicity. He directed the police to a letter hidden in a book at the public library. The letter read: "Those three dude you have in custody are just talking to get publicity ... The code words for me will be ... Bind them, torture them, kill them, B.T.K., you see he at it again. They will be on the next victim." From then on, the BTK Killer became notorious for misspellings. Rader continued his killing spree, occasionally tipping off authorities via pay phone. By 1979, Rader had stopped his crimes, but police were still struggling to figure out who he was.

In 1985, Rader returned to killing and strangled his neighbor. He committed his final murder in 1991. Police still could not track down the BTK Killer's identity. In 2004, the Wichita Eagle ran an article about the killings on the 30th anniversary of the first murder. Rader admitted that the article inspired him to come back, and he began leaving clues via postcards, crossword puzzles, and mysterious messages. Police still could not crack the case but planted a coded message in a newspaper ad. Rader responded, asking if he could be traced through a message sent on a floppy disk. After he sent the disk, the police were able to use the disk's metadata to trace it to Christ Lutheran Church, where Rader was president. He was arrested in 2005 and was sentenced to 10 consecutive life sentences.

76.During World War II, both German soldiers and the Allies listened to the nightly broadcast of “Lili Marlene,” a love song that was totally unknown before the war. It came on at 9:55 every evening and was typically a moment of calm during warfare. The song was written during World War I by Hans Leip, who was a German soldier, and was addressed to two of Leip’s girlfriends, Lili and Marlene.

77.This fact is extremely disturbing to me: While dead bones are dry and brittle, your living bones are actually wet. In fact, they're also kind of soft and flexible so that they can absorb pressure. Up to a third of the weight of a living bone is water.

Fox / Via giphy.com

78.On the cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, John Lennon posed wearing five antique military medals. Those medals actually belonged to Pete Best's grandfather. Best was the drummer who had been kicked out of the Beatles right before they hit it big.

So why was Best kicked out of the band? Some believe that the band's management thought that he was too conventionally good-looking compared with the other band members. Others claim that his personality didn't fit in with those of his bandmates. Despite the fact that Best was forced out of the band, there was no bad blood about Lennon wearing the medals: He called Best's mom to ensure it was OK that he sported them on the cover.

79.In 1890, Eugene Schieffelin, a massive Shakespeare fan, decided he wanted to import each species of bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s works that was absent from the US. Schieffelin released two flocks of starlings in Central Park. The birds began breeding, and now there are over 200 million starlings in America. The birds are such a nuisance that they are one of the few species that aren't protected by law.

80.Some believe that Princess Diana predicted her own death after a note she wrote in 1995 resurfaced years after her 1997 death. The note read, “My husband is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury." In the years following her divorce from Prince Charles, Diana had notably been paranoid that the British royal family had bugged her apartment and tampered with her car. Princess Diana died after a car accident in Paris.

81.In 1968, Dennis Wilson, a member of the Beach Boys, picked up two women who were hitchhiking in California. The women told Wilson about meditation and promised to introduce him to their spiritual guru, who was none other than Charles Manson. Manson and Wilson became fast friends. During the summer of 1968, Manson and 20 of his fellow cult members frequently stayed at Wilson's home. At the time, Manson was interested in music and thought he could leverage the friendship with Wilson into a record deal. The other Beach Boys recalled being creeped out by Manson and wondered why Wilson was so enamored of him.

Despite this, Manson recorded a song through the Beach Boys' label. During the session, Manson pulled a knife on one of the sound engineers, promptly ending the session. By the end of the summer, Wilson had become fed up with Manson and had spent an estimated $100,000 on expenses from Manson and his cult staying on his property. Wilson moved out of the rented property, leaving his landlord to evict Manson. Wilson also stole one of the songs Manson recorded and renamed it "Never Learn Not to Love." When Manson found out about this, he showed Wilson a bullet and told him to protect his family. During this altercation, Wilson beat Manson up and officially ended their friendship. Months later, in 1969, Manson began his infamous killings after he learned that the record deal was never coming. People close to Wilson said the singer felt guilty about his association with the serial killer until his death at 39.

82.Clearly, Elvis Presley didn't care about the haters. In fact, his manager devised a genius plan to ensure he could make money off of them! During the height of the King's fame, his manager sold “I Hate Elvis” pins. By the end of 1957, Elvis-themed merchandise had grossed over $22 million.

Elvis Presley / Via giphy.com

83.Sea otters hold hands while they sleep. While it happens to look incredibly sweet, the hand-holding actually serves a purpose: It prevents the otters from drifting and becoming separated in the water at night.

84.We all know the value of pi to be 3.14, but in 1897, Indiana state legislators tried to pass a bill that would have legally redefined the value of pi as 3.2. The bill was written not just to make pi a little bit easier to remember but also to challenge the mathematical principle that defines a circle after a mathematician claimed he had debunked the principles discovered in ancient Greece. The bill was shot down, and the value of pi remains the same to this day.

Netflix / Via giphy.com

85.Looks as if the grandparents from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory were on to something! In the medieval era, beds were so expensive that even fairly well-off families could afford only one bed, forcing the entire family to sleep in bed together. Families often assigned sleeping spots depending on age and gender, and if the family had overnight guests, they would invite them to sleep in the bed as well. Even though it had be a rather cramped way to sleep, families allegedly loved the bonding experience and feeling of community.

86.And finally, Fredi Washington was a Black actor who refused to pass as white in order to get better roles. Although Washington's skin was light enough to allow her to pass as white, she decided she was too proud of her heritage to do so. Instead, she immersed herself in the Harlem Renaissance, during which she met Duke Ellington. By the 1930s, Washington was touring the South with Ellington and his band and watched the group constantly face racist remarks. Washington was able to avoid the racism and even went into whites-only restaurants to pick up food for the band.

As Washington became more famous, she was offered opportunities to "pass" in order to get better roles. She declined the offers and made her acting debut in 1934's Imitation of Life, in which she played the daughter of a Black housekeeper. The movie became a hit, and the trailer featuring Washington was shown in segregated movie theaters. Despite this success, Washington still struggled to find work. By 1937, she had quit acting and helped found the Negro Actors Guild of America, a group that pushed for better roles and working conditions for Black performers.