Fun facts!

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You swallow 8 million spiders each night while you sleep.
“average person eats 3 spiders a year" factoid actualy (sic) just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted”
 
"tater tots" is a registered trademark of oreda foods, anyone besides oreda who makes and sells them can only call them taters or tots or any alternative names (spud rounds, spudies, spud nuggets, spud nuts) But not their full name.


Also the word superhero and superheroes is technically a shared copyright between Marvel and DC, other companies get around this by using super hero as two words or with a hyphen super-heroes.
 
The American Civil War started and ended on one man's property.

Wilmer McLean, a retired Virginia militiaman, too old to serve in the Civil War, owned property on which the First Battle of Bull Run was fought in 1861; Confederate General Beauregard set up office in McLean's house, and at one point a cannonball landed in his fireplace.

In 1863 McLean and his family moved to a house in Appomattox County, Virginia, which General Lee in 1865 requested to use as location for signing the treaty to end the war; after the signing, soldiers and officers present just started clearing the house of furniture and other possessions as "souvenirs", in some cases bothering to hand money to McLean (in spite of his complaints) on the way out as payment; eventually the family sold the house, unable to keep up with mortgage payments.
 
Leslie Nielsen is mostly known as a comedic actor. He actually started his career as a fairly dramatic actor. Airplane completely redefined his career and he became a comedic actor after that. He did very few dramatic roles after that, most notably in one of the segments in Creepshow. In fact, his last dramatic role ever was in the 1986 movie Nuts. After that he did nothing but comedies for the next 23 years, when he eventually died.
 
Leslie Nielsen is mostly known as a comedic actor. He actually started his career as a fairly dramatic actor. Airplane completely redefined his career and he became a comedic actor after that. He did very few dramatic roles after that, most notably in one of the segments in Creepshow. In fact, his last dramatic role ever was in the 1986 movie Nuts. After that he did nothing but comedies for the next 23 years, when he eventually died.
I think his greatest skill was acting as if he was completely oblivious to the zany antics in the background and playing it completely straight.
 
While the Ghost of Kiyv is probably fake, there really was an actual Ukrainian Sam Hyde look-a-like.
Meet Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, a soldier, a red revolutionary, politician that ultimately found himself at the wrong side of Stalin's purges.
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Children's Author Shel Silverstein Wrote Country Music

Shel Silverstein is known for many things: his prose (The Giving Tree, Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back), his children's poetry (A Light in the Attic, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Falling Up ); his eccentric style of art; his mildly unsettling author photos publishers thought appropriate for children's books...

Portrait_of_Shel_Silverstein_in_c._1964_by_Jerry_Yulsman.jpg
Yikes...

BUT he was also a successful country music lyricist, among his works being "Boa Constrictor", "Boy Named Sue" and "25 Minutes to Go" performed by Johnny Cash, "Queen of the Silver Dollar", "Silvia's Mother", "Marie Laveau", "The Taker" performed by Waylon Jennings — and several album's worth of album material for Bobby Bare, much of it released. Bobby Bare's album Sings Lullabys, Legends and Lies (the entire album's lyrics written by Silverstein) includes a poem straight from Where the Sidewalk Ends, about Paul Bunyan, set to music. Shel Silverstein also wrote several whole albums of lyrics for Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, among the songs "The Cover of the Rolling Stones" and other country-flavored songs.
Also surprised to learn he was NOT a black man.


Bobby+Shel.jpeg
Pictured with Bobby Bare his most frequent collaborator

Performing on The Johnny Cash Show
 
In Brazil, the people who chase and retrieve balls out of bounds in soccer, basketball and other such sports are called gandulas.

The name appeared like this: Back in the late '30s, popular footy team Vasco da Gama had an Argentinian striker named Bernardo Gandulla, who spent most of his time on the bench. To keep himself occupied and warmed up for an eventual call, he'd attentively check the match and whenever the ball went out of the playing pitch, he'd gladly run towards it to retrieve it - This in a time when there was only one ball for a match. He managed to become a fan favorite just doing that, and from then on, his surname was used for ball repositioners of any kind.
 
I grew curious about how Alaska became part of the US, as the Russians previously had claim to it.

In 1856, Russia had lost the Crimean War, and grew concerned that they could not defend their Alaskan colony. To raise cash from the war losses, they decided to sell their colony.

Because of the Crimean War, the Russians did not want to sell the Colony to the UK, and actually figured selling to the United States would allow them to thumb their nose at the British on the west cost of America (Canada had not achieved confederacy yet)

The deal had to wait, though. While the US was interested, they were in the middle of the US Civil War, and that was a far more pressing issue at the time. Finally, in 1867, two years after the Civil War ended, a deal was reached where the US would purchase Alaska for 7.3 million dollars ($133 million in 2020 currency)

Transfer of ownership was supposedly uneventful, but the majority of the russian colonists opted to return to Russia, not liking the rowdiness of the Americans who started moving there.

Alaska was considered a US territory until it was officially granted statehood in 1959
 
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- An English schoolmaster commented in 1754 that someone should compile a dictionary of "Americanisms".
- In 1770, William Eddis commented that speech "in Maryland and adjacent provinces" was "more uniform" than in England. This suggests that people across a large geographic area had "leveled" the dialects that their ancestors had brought from their homelands.
- In 1777, Nicholas Cresswell commented that Americans "speak better English than the English do", apart from New Englanders, who had a "whining cadence".
- Much of Noah Webster's early work (late 1700s to early 1800s) promotes American English as its own variety distinct from British English.

The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol VI (2001), edited by John Algeo
 
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Before Il Canto degli Italian became the Italian national anthem. Marcia Reale was the Italian anthem back when italy was still a kingdom.
Marcia Reale did not had any official lyrics but two different unofficial versions aroused as to what the song would be sung had it had official lyrics.
 
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Bones are actually bright pink because the blood inside the skeleton is visible. A 'White' skeleton has had the bones bleached
 
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