500 Facts - mental_floss List Show Ep. 524

hi I'm John Green welcome to my salon this is Mental Floss video and did you know that in 2006 an Australian man tried to sell New Zealand on eBay the price rose to three thousand dollars before eBay shut it down Meredith put that fact first because it is my all-time favorite Mental Floss fact I don't know why so we've been doing Mental Floss video for four years now and today we're gonna celebrate with five hundred of our favourite facts from over the years wait what five hundred mark is that right we'd better get started the movie dr. Strangelove originally ended with a pie fight John Cleese once auctioned off a piece of his colon before he was president Zachary Taylor had never voted and in today's terms george washington's net worth was around 500 million dollars making him the richest president ever to win the popular vote the grand prize for Finland's World Championships for wife-carrying is the wife's weight in beer the record for a cat surviving a fall is 43 stories in 1894 Thomas Edison filmed two cats boxing in a tiny ring with a little bit of human help a quarter of a million copies of pat the bunny are produced annually which is enough to cover six football fields in those little squares and JK Rowling thought of the Hogwarts house names on a plane and wrote them down on an airsickness bag also Clifford the Big Red Dog was almost named tiny a joke I stole in my book will Grayson Will Grayson in 1991 two men stole 20 paintings from the van Gogh Museum then abandoned them in a car 35 minutes later which might have been a bit of a mistake by the way because the average recovery rate for stolen art is only 2 to 6% wishing someone a happy birthday before their birthday is considered bad luck in Germany also in Germany if a man is unmarried on his twenty-fifth birthday his friends sometimes hang a sock wreath outside his house in South Africa when a person turns 21 their parents might give them a key symbolizing responsibility and the future when I turned 16 my parents also gave me a key and I was like oh my god my parents got me a car but no it was just a key to their car a joke I ended up using in my book Paper Towns the National Museum of funeral history in Texas has a full scale recreation of Abraham Lincoln in his coffin the Museum of Pez memorabilia in California contains every PEZ dispenser and Idaho's Museum of clean has the world's largest collection of vacuum cleaners all right some first lady facts Bess Truman hated the dry cleaning in DC and sent her laundry to Kansas City Dolly Madison allegedly spent $1,000 a year on turbines Julia Tyler introduced the polka to DC and Eliza Johnson kept cows on the White House lawn Pablo Picasso's first word was a shortened version of the Spanish word for pencil my son's first word was high probably not going to be as relevant to his career the firework display at Marie Antoinette and Louis the sixteenth wedding went wrong and kill over 100 people nikita khrushchev once gave JFK's daughter Caroline a dog whose mom was the first animal to orbit the earth and Neil Diamond wrote sweet Caroline about that Caroline an estimated 1 million dogs in the United States have been named the primary beneficiary in their owners will a joke I use in my new book turtles all the way down Zachary Quinto aka Spock can't do the Vulcan salute so they sometimes glue his fingers together to finance Eraserhead david winch had a paper route during production on Groundhog Day the groundhog bit Bill Murray twice at the University of Texas at Austin it's considered good luck to see an albino squirrel before an exam Florida State University has a sod Cemetery commemorating important football wins with turf from the games the first person to fly over Australia for about 3 miles in 1910 was Harry Houdini and speaking of magic orson welles wanted his own TV magic special but it turns out even if you're the greatest director in history you can't get everything you want some NFL facts according to a study the effect NFL teams have on local economies is either extremely small or negative from 1942 through 2015 the NFL was a nonprofit organization an NFL player Deion Sanders scored a touchdown and hit a home run in major league baseball in the same week also there are only 11 minutes of action in an average NFL game before footballs were invented in 1941 by the way players sometimes used animal bladders and in baseball in the 19th century a walk required 9 bad pitches John Keats's will was a single line of iambic pentameter and he left nothing to the dog my chest of books divided among my friends comedian Jack Benny arranged to have a rose delivered to his wife for every day of her life after he died the inventor of the Pringles can had his ashes buried in a Pringles can two more death facts Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had some of his ashes launched into space and Janis Joplin's will designated $2,500 for a 200 guest party at a pub all right on to a few completely random ones in New Mexico people over the age of 100 are exempt from state income tax Airbnb has teamed up with Renta village to rent out the entirety of Liechtenstein for $70,000 a night cannoli comes from a word meaning little too in the 1960s jello had celery Italian salad and tomato flavors Chinese checkers is neither Chinese nor based on checkers and a dentist and confectioner created the first cotton candy machine strudel comes from a Middle High German word meaning whirlpool a few Halloween facts for you jack-o'-lanterns were originally carved out of gourds and turnips and beets pumpkins are 90% water and after it's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown aired in 1966 viewers mailed in candy and cookies for Charlie Brown all right some Harry Potter facts Shirley Henderson who played 14 year old Moaning Myrtle was 36 while filming the Chamber of Secrets the Harry Potter spell expecto patronum is Latin for I await a protector and in the weekends after the order of the Phoenix and the half-blood Prince were released there were half the usual amount of children at an ER in the UK in 1999 NASA lost communication with a Mars rover because one team working on the mission used metric units and the other used English units which cost NASA 125 million dollars the Super Soaker by the way was invented by a NASA engineer and NASA hires a chief sniffer to smell every item that goes into space I feel like a dog could do that job better and also cheaper but whatever I'm not a scientist NASA also helped found the learning channel which trivia alert used to be kind of like about learning in 1991 artificial Christmas trees started out selling natural ones in the United States all 50 United States grow potatoes 3 out of 4 Supermarket products contain corn and the first pies were meat pies and they were known as coffins ripe Peas are actually yellow they're picked before they become ripe PETA once asked the pet shop boys to change their name to rescue shelter boys cows yield more milk while listening to relaxing music Albert Einstein never learned to drive at between 1900 and 1920 tug of war was an Olympic event original basketball rules included a jump ball after every basket which would have meant like about as much actual game action as you see in an NFL game the nursery rhyme never actually states that Humpty Dumpty is an egg the caffeine from decaffeinated coffee beans is sold to soda makers and pharmaceutical companies the Pledge of Allegiance was written as part of a plan to sell flags to schools you could fit 75 new jerseys into Alaska I mean if you could move New Jersey but if you could move New Jersey they would yawning is contagious to dogs and chimps as well as humans in 1980 Detroit gave Saddam Hussein a key to the city one day in 1930 BBC radio reported there is no news Oh God to go back to 1930 is something you don't hear very often the last time the French government guillotined a convicted criminal was in 1977 Batman is an actual city in Turkey Disney's Aladdin was drawn based on Michael J Fox and Tom Cruise Oklahoma's state vegetable is the watermelon the average American three-year-old recognizes 100 brand logos I feel like my three-year-old is ahead of the curve on that one The Beatles were offered the roles of vultures in the Jungle Book neil armstrong's astronaut application was a week late so fear not procrastinators when MTV premiered they wanted to use footage of Armstrong's moon landing but he refused so they went with Apollo 11 in 1969 by the way 15 Star Trek fans called a local Canadian TV station to complain about the show being interrupted by Apollo 11 footage an estimated 10% of living Europeans were conceived on IKEA beds and in 1987 25% of all mattress sales were water beds it was a different time and in that way worse Jackie Chan voiced the beast in the Chinese version of Beauty and the Beast slap bracelets were invented by a shop teacher playing with steel ribbons and the Backstreet Boys were named after a flea market in Orlando that I used to go to growing up in 1993 a Russian astronaut brought his Gameboy to space with one game Tetris Chris Wiggs invented Polly Pocket after making a dollhouse in a powder compact Britney Spears his cousin played her love interest in the baby one more time music video and the t-rex sound effect in Jurassic Park is a slowed down recording of a Jack Russell Terrier playing with a rope Hanson has their own beer brand it's called hops the dub funny cartoons originated in Florida grapefruit juice commercials the first Google server was kept on a Lego storage rack and Macaulay Culkin was the first child actor to be paid 1 million dollars for a film remember y2k the u.s. spent around a hundred billion dollars to prepare for it Rudolph the red-nose rain dear rocking around the Christmas tree a holly jolly Christmas and run Rudolph run were all written by Johnny marks who was Jewish the Christmas song do you hear what I hear is about the Cuban Missile Crisis let it snow was written during a 1945 heatwave in California and there are 364 total presence in the 12 days of Christmas and Icelandic dating app finds non-relatives for its users you know cottage cheese it's called that because it was often made in cottages in the 1800's ricotta is the Italian word for wreaked Sam Adams was not known for his good looks oh there is a flattering version of him on the beer label okay time for some Ben Franklin facts his fellow founding fathers did not want him drafting the Declaration of Independence because they thought he might sneak in a joke he also coined many electricity related terms like battery conductor and electrician and Franklin once published a list of over 200 synonyms for getting drunk in 2012 the creator of Teddy Ruxpin announced that he hated the way teddy bears were portrayed in the movie Ted I mean of course he did after watching a double feature of can't stop the music and Xanadu John JB Wilson was inspired to start the Razzies the Oscars for terrible movies in the 80s Christian Bale starred in a pacman cereal commercial John Hughes wrote Ferris Bueller's Day Off in six days Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest and lost the opening act for Madonna's first tour was the Beastie Boys who often got booed the last names of Jem and the Holograms were the names of scientists who worked on hologram technology Doc Brown had a chimpanzee in early drafts of Back to the Future but the head of Universal said no movie with the chimpanzee ever made any money I guess to be fair that was said before the release of the excellent blockbuster film space chimps smart just pointed out that the Planet of the Apes movies also did okay dr. Ruth turned down a role in dirty dancing spandex is an anagram of expands Britney Spears by the way is an anagram of presbyterians it took Erno Rubik one month to solve his own invention the Rubik's Cube the screenwriter of Heather's wanted Stanley Kubrick to direct it people at the actual top gun school get fined $5 when they quote the movie after Top Gun was released by the way Ray Ban aviator sales increased by 40% the IgG Nobel Prizes honor scientist achievements that make people laugh and then think the inventor of the pink plastic flamingo is a past winner speaking of which the pink plastic flamingo is the official city bird of Madison Wisconsin and speaking of birds geoffrey chaucer was the first known user of the word Twitter Washington Irving gets credit for the word Knickerbocker it was originally his pseudonym the CEO of LifeLock put his social security number on billboards to prove that the company could protect people from identity theft and his identity has been stolen 13 times slot buster received an offer to buy Netflix in the early 2000s for fifty million dollars they declined to save five hundred thousand dollars on George Lucas's Star Wars pay check 20th Century Fox gave him all licensing and Merchandising rights which eventually made him a billionaire the fake blood in psycho was chocolate syrup the Quaker Oats company bought the rights to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory then financed the 1971 film to promote a new candy bar couple more candy facts Hershey's Kisses were hand wrapped between 1907 and 1921 and M&Ms have been brought to space over 130 times since 1981 that's a lot of M&M sniffing for that chief sniffer some animal facts bats account for one quarter of the world's mammal population a dead jellyfish can still sting you in 2004 a black bear raided the cooler of some campers he drank 36 cans of Rainier beer specifically avoiding cans of bush iguanas have three eyes goats have accents they bleed differently depending on which group they belong to in 2007 the Iranian army arrested 14 squirrels and every year the southern US experiences around 100 million dollars in property damage caused by beavers I'm getting out the pork chop party fun for the next few Winston Churchill once said cats look down on you dogs look up to you but pigs treat you like an equal strain pigs are generally more reliable than dogs at sniffing out Minds explosives and gunpowder so maybe NASA should hire them and the creators of Angry Birds made their villains pigs because of swine flu we're getting close to that pork chop party Abraham Lincoln's son once nearly fell on two train tracks while there was an oncoming train but John Wilkes Booth's younger brother saved him the NSA banned people from bringing furbies into the office in case they contained recording devices which does rather make me wonder why would anyone who works for the NSA own a Furby Pope John Paul the second was named an honorary member of the Harlem Globetrotters a human in space could survive for one to two minutes without a space suit Ernest Hemingway once stole a urinal from his favorite bar Andrew Jackson's pet parrot got kicked out of Jackson's funeral for cursing God and Jesus are the only Simpsons characters with ten fingers rather than eight a whale's tongue weighs as much as an elephant and after Julius Caesar was kidnapped by pirates he actually asked to have his ransom raised refried beans are fried once Elvis Presley was naturally blonde in 2012 Walmart's top-selling item was a banana it's a myth that elephants like to eat peanuts NASCAR does not require drivers to have driver's licenses and 2/3 of people on earth have never seen snow Topeka Kansas once its name to Google because they wanted fiber internet it didn't work before an ohio state versus oregon game in 2015 the town of Oregon Ohio renamed itself Oregon Ohio Buckeyes on the base city of duck hunters at Carnegie Mellon there is a seven thousand dollar scholarship for a bagpipe student subsidizing kilts according to a study syrup is as easy to swim in as water was that study performed by the super-slow-mo guys the band kissed cells kiss caskets a line of coffins because you know their fans are getting older in the early 1900's doctors treated syphilis patients by giving them malaria and then cured the malaria in the Wild West rabbit dropping T was a common hangover cure the world record for most people crammed into a mini cooper hatchback is 28 the world record for most dogs on a surfboard in the water is 17 and the record for most rotations while hanging from a power drill in one minute is 148 every cruise ship contains a morgue remember that when you are on your next cruise a couple geographical inaccuracies Italian Wedding soup is Spanish and both Russian and Italian dressings were invented in the United States in dreams smell and taste sensations occur less than 1% of time and according to studies 66 percent of the characters in men's dreams are male women's dreams have a 50/50 ratio of male to female characters sandy island off the coast of Australia appeared on Google but in 2012 a group of scientists tried to go there and discovered that it did not exist it was a paper island I used that joke in my book Paper Towns before hair dryers were invented many people used vacuum cleaners in the 1950s Xerox machines often overheated so they came with a fire extinguisher nurses and pharmacists are more likely to use generic headache remedies as opposed to name brands household names that are trademarked include Kleenex band-aids bubble wrap chapstick and popsicles in the 1980's the deadly serious Party of Australia suggested sending killer penguins to guard the coast Poland's political party of the bald has multiple slogans including receding we advanced and the prohibition party got 519 votes in the 2012 US presidential election Great Britain meanwhile has the political party Citizens for undead rights and equality aka zombie rights Nikola Tesla would not speak to women wearing pearls that is such a Nikola Tesla fact the creator of the upside-down squeeze bottle sold his company for thirteen million dollars within four years of inventing it the inventors of bubble wrap were trying to make 3d plastic wallpaper in Albert Einstein's 1919 divorce settlement he said he would eventually win the Nobel Prize and give his ex the winnings that happened in 1922 chocolate chip cookie inventor Ruth grades Wakefield sold the recipe rights to Nestle for $1 the inventor of the smiley face symbol was paid $45 for the design in the 1500s it was illegal for a European physician to conduct surgery on a patient without first calculating the moon's position a couple money facts for centuries Italian banks have accepted cheese in exchange for good loan rates and an Australian man who had been convicted of forgery appeared on the $10 note for decades in 2011 a woman sued century 21 for five million dollars because she was shorted 80 cents while trying to return an outfit two men sued the subway after they saw a picture of a footlong sandwich at only 11 inches and in 2014 a man sued McDonald's for 1.5 million dollars for undue mental anguish because he only received one napkin a slingshot bullet was excavated in Athens Greece from the fourth century BCE inscribed with the Greek word for catch more people live in Shanghai than in all of Australia and there is a helicopter taxi company in South Paulo Brazil Olympic gold medals are 93 percent silver astronaut Alan Shepard hit golf balls on the moon a 17 year old woman struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and the winner of the first Wimbledon said lawn tennis is a bit boring it will never catch on when the inventor of disc golf died his ashes were made into commemorative frisbees the inventors of paintball were inspired by the short story the most dangerous game that is not what you were supposed to take away from that story JFK's brain was stored in the National Archives but went missing in 1966 which could be the premise for a horror movie and speaking of horror movies the original title of the movie Halloween was the babysitter murders Freddy Krueger is named after a bully from Wes Craven's elementary school Stephen King wrote a screenplay for The Shining but Stanley Kubrick refused to read it Prince Charles has an Aston Martin that runs on biofuel made out of wine that seems to not be as related strawberries contain more vitamin C per serving than oranges M night Shyamalan claims he ghostwrote the romantic comedy she's all that and a 2012 study found that while cyclists pedaled in time to music they needed 7% less oxygen than cyclists pedaling to silence people prefer to listen to simpler songs just before the stock market gets volatile in case you're looking for a day trading strategy reservations are made months in advance for KFC in Japan on December 25th astronaut ice cream was crumbly and gross in the 1970s astronauts started getting real ice cream the Oxford English Dictionary credits the beastie boys with the word mullet so there's a legacy who am i kidding I would love to coin a word in 1994 the Edvard Munch painting The Scream was stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo the thieves left a note thanks for the poor security standing with your hands on your hips causes your brain to release positive hormones increasing confidence one study found that table tennis players with good posture were considered more aggressive and confident and when the Beatles played chase Stadium in 1965 the future wives of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were teenagers in the crowd Pocahontas and John Smith were just friends and speaking of friends a 2010 study from Oxford University found that falling in love on average involves losing two friends in a survey of 15 Americans two-thirds believed in love at first sight about 9% of pet owners throw birthday parties for their pets I'd be interested to see the Venn diagram between those people and the people who leave their estates to their pets fairly circular I'm imagining 4% of Americans have visited a tanning salon after vacation 18% of Americans believe they have encountered a ghost Adrian Dantley formerly of the Utah Jazz was a part-time crossing guard Bob Ross didn't get paid for his show and 13 Bob Ross paintings were stolen from his van during the second season of the show and sold on the black market by the way if you own a Bob Ross painting and don't mind parting with it I am in the market for one seriously just leave a comment American baby boomers and seniors spend more time per week on the internet than watching TV listening to the radio or reading newspapers and by the way 2017 might be the last time that we can differentiate between American baby boomers and elderly people I'm sorry I want to apologize to all the old people watching this and of course all the baby boomers who are just an extremely late middle age some British tanks have the ability to brew tea on board grumpy cat has earned her family somewhere in the low six figures Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination happened after his driver took a wrong turn in front of Gavrilo Princip who shot at the car to James Bond facts when pierce brosnan played James Bond his contract stated that he could not wear a tuxedo in any other movie and Sean Connery's brother starred in a Bond satire film called Operation kid brother in 1993 a 16 year old spent about three hours operating a subway in New York City before getting caught after Harry Houdini died his brother Theo continued doing his illusions for decades and comedian Leo Gallagher's brother Ron used to perform the same fruit smashing routine under the name Gallagher two chickens are effective weed foragers four asparagus farmers in one study they decreased weeds by 90% and if you eat 20 pounds of eggplant you've consumed the amount of nicotine found in one cigarette who needs Nicorette when you can just eat 400 pounds of eggplant today in 2012 Pizza Hut was the number one purchaser of kale in the US for its salad bars there's a fake mug Giuliani painting at the gallery of modern art in Scotland because its 17th century Italian frame is valuable the screenplay for The Dark Knight Rises was based on parts of A Tale of Two Cities croquet was an Olympic sport in 1900 there was only one spectator Marco Polo once saw a rhinoceros in Asia and thought it was a unicorn which kind of reflects some larger issues with Marco Polo's writing but to get back to the Olympics for a moment during the Beijing Olympics Usain Bolt ate 100 chicken McNuggets per day for 10 days which is great but how much eggplant did he eat cuz you don't want to fail your drug test because of nicotine speaking of which the first failed Olympic drug test was in 1968 a Swedish pentathlete drank two beers before the pistol shoot you're 50 times more likely to be killed by bees than to win the lottery and you're more likely to be injured while using a folding lawn chair than on a roller coaster that doesn't surprise me at all actually those folding lawn chairs are baffling 10% of legally blind Americans read Braille Eleanor Roosevelt once snuck out of a White House event with Amelia Earhart they commandeered an airplane and flew around Baltimore speaking of Amelia Earhart she first saw a plane in 1908 and described herself as indifferent toward the thing of rusty wire and wood during World War two French people cut the lift cables in the Eiffel Tower so when Hitler visited he had to take the stairs some bird fax ducks have a 340 degree field of vision there are about 44 different species of gulls none of which are called a seagull and snowy owls eat 3 to 5 lemmings per day dr. Seuss gets credit for inventing the word nerd better than MOA David Lynch's abandoned Twin Peaks spin-off inspired Mulholland Drive older siblings are more likely to be the tallest of their parents children and koalas hug trees to regulate their body temperature and to be adorable bison vote on where to migrate by facing a direction once there's a majority they move that way Napoleon Bonaparte was actually slightly above the average height for his time many historians by the way believed Napoleon only lost the Battle of Waterloo because he was distracted by hemorrhoids and four men helped carry the over 80 pound cape that Napoleon wore to his coronation the queue in q-tips stands for quality Harry Truman's middle name was the letter S a hogshead of wine is exactly 60 3 gallons Gandhi never said be the change you wish to see in the world and in Star Trek Captain Kirk never says beam me up Scottie also Darth Vader does not ever say Wouk I am your father and hello Clarice is not in the Silence of the Lambs the mixed drinks screwdriver got its name because American engineers used screwdrivers to mix their drinks in the 1950s pterodactyls as my son can tell you were not dinosaurs and goldfish have memory spans of over three seconds in fact possibly as long as months humans have between nine and twenty senses not just five and people do not swallow eight spiders per year they swallow far more than that no I'm just kidding that is a completely made-up fact don't worry about swallowing spiders there are so many real things to worry about like survival speaking of which Charles Darwin borrowed the phrase survival of the fittest from philosopher Herbert Spencer some first names for you mrs. Butterworth's first name is joy mr. cleans first name is veritably veritably clean and Captain Crunch his full name is Horatio Magellan crunch Dartmouth's unofficial mascot Peggy the keg was banned from sporting events in 2006 but made his triumphant return in 2011 Monty the grizzly bear mascot of the University of Montana drives a motorcycle in two home games wait is he had actual grizzly bear because that is amazing he is not and the fighting artichokes is the mascot of Scottsdale Community College in Arizona the plastic table like thing in the middle of pizza boxes is called the box tent or pizza saber and the string of typographical symbols in comic strips to replace profanity is a growling subol movie facts Martin Scorsese wanted the clash to star in gangs of New York and the film adaptation of a confederacy of dunces is kind of cursed John Belushi was initially cast then he died the same thing happened to John Candy then Chris Farley the expression flies off the handle refers to 1800s axe heads that would literally fly from their handles if not wielded properly the expression to win hands down comes from horse racing a jockey who was far ahead could still win even if he took his hands off the reins beat around the bush meanwhile has been used since at least the 1400s when hunters would beat bushes to scare animals out from hiding a machine engineered at Purdue proved that it takes 364 licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop Mystery dum-dums are made when one flavor comes off the production line and the next starts a swallow'd piece of gum will not be your digestive system for seven years it'll be there for about a day starbursts were originally called opal fruits and Milk Duds are actually duds the machine couldn't make perfectly round candies so that's how they got the name Milton Hershey founder of the Chocolate Company had tickets for the Titanic but he ended up taking a different vote at the Boston University Bridge an airplane can fly over a car driving over a train traveling over a boat it's like a scene out of green eggs and ham Chimney Sweeps are considered good luck because one supposedly saved King William's life also chimney sweeps appear in Mary Poppins a movie made by Walt Disney who is not cryogenically frozen Teddy Roosevelt liked a box but he cut back when he was president because it was rather absurd for a president to appear with a black eye or a swollen nose some more presidential facts ulysses s grant was arrested during his term as president on speeding charges while riding a horse and franklin pierce was arrested during his term for running over an elderly woman with his horse martin van buren did not mention his wife in his autobiography President Lyndon Johnson issued the first Medicare card to Harry Truman and JFK was the first president to pardon a turkey and speaking of Thanksgiving pilgrims did not wear buckled hats and the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade featured animals from the Central Park Zoo in ancient Peru the only people allowed to brew beer were women of nobility some Christmas stuff Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer was originally a free storybook given to department store shoppers jingle bells was supposed to be a Thanksgiving song and it is a misconception that the modern Santa image comes from a 1930s coca-cola ad campaign the Yule Log on TV tradition continued with Mental Floss video started in 1966 when a New York broadcaster had nothing scheduled for an hour and a half - peeps facts in 1953 it took 27 hours to make a single people xyx and in bethlehem pennsylvania they drop a giant peep every New Year's Eve no one knows what John Harvard looked like so a student modeled for his statue on campus and while we're on the topic of colleges in 1996 Kermit the Frog received an honorary doctorate of amphibious Letters from Southampton College also the Georgetown University cheer Hoya Saxa combines Greek and Latin words that literally translate to what rocks the word lemur comes from a Latin word meaning spirits of the Dead muscle comes from the Latin root meaning little mouse raindrops are not raindrop shaped their spherical and velociraptors probably had feathers in 2006 a Dennis the Menace statue worth 30 thousand dollars was stolen from a park in California Steve from Blue's Clues made People magazine's list of America's 100 most eligible bachelors in the year 2000 and scooby-doo's original name was too much in 2001 by the way Bob the Builder had a number-one hit on the UK charts in the 1950s died goat hair was used for mini golf courses and if we could remove a pumping human heart from the body it could shoot blood 30 feet away Sigmund Freud visited Coney Island and supposedly liked it better than anything else in America a monopoly marathon in Pittsburgh once ran out of cash so Parker Brothers rushed over an armored car with game money Crayola means oily chalk in French the inventor of the Cozy Coupe came up with the idea while wheeling around in a desk chair hyundai means modernity in Korean Volvo means I roll in Latin and Prius is Latin for to go before the citizens of at least seven cities claim the poet Homer was born there kids would follow Edgar Allan Poe around pretending to be Ravens and he would shout Nevermore at them EE Cummings wrote a book of poems titled no thanks the dedication read no thanks - and was a list of the 14 publishers that rejected him and noted American poet dr. Seuss had a vanity license plate Grinch between 1859 and 1978 there were 18 attempts to cross the Atlantic Ocean via a hot-air balloon during the peak of the last ice age southern Florida had huge icebergs an accident once caused 28,800 rubber ducks to fall into the ocean and sea coral can be used in human bone graft surgeries I mean at least as long as there is sea coral I feel like people at the future are gonna look back on our time and be like what exactly was the function of the rubber duck a group of stingrays is called a fever the command module on the Apollo 10 was named Charlie Brown the lunar module with Snoopy the Longaberger company headquarters in ohio used to be a building shaped like a giant basket their basket company Hoban won a contest to design the white house he also got $500 in the past 500 years one-third of all lava that erupted on earth was in Iceland to someone on the International Space Station was the first to notice when a volcano in Alaska erupted in 2006 the state with the most internet searches for clown costumes is Maine no wonder all the Stephen King books are set there Krusty the Klown by the way was originally supposed to be the secret identity of Homer Simpson in 2012 a badger digging in Germany unearthed a 12th century grave site the world's oldest cheese from around 1600 15 BC was found in China in 2012 a couple in England discovered a 33 foot deep medieval well under their living room for skin care some noblewoman in the Middle Ages swallowed arsenic in 1770 English Parliament outlawed lipstick during World War two American women baseball players were fined $50 for not wearing makeup off the field there seem to be a lot of people who want to legislate what women can and cannot do with their faces according to a study people are most likely to exercise while in a neutral mood between 2009 and 2014 the amount of marathon runners worldwide increased by 13% Sylvester Stallone auditioned for Han Solo in the background of the Empire Strikes Back there are asteroids made out of potatoes another Star Wars fact Jar Jar Binks almost had a doglike buddy in the Phantom Menace I mean file that under how could we possibly have made the Phantom Menace worse two more Star Wars facts three members of NSYNC filmed a cameo for Attack of the Clones and a Star Wars droid fan club helped rebuild r2d2 for the force awakens the founder of match.com once said match.com will bring more love to the planet than anything since Jesus Christ clearly failing to foresee the advent of tinder Kenny G and this is one of my favorite facts of all time helped to invent the Frappuccino the Macarena is about a girl whose boyfriend gets drafted and she cheats on him we got the blue M&M thanks to a vote in 1995 via 1-800 number I voted for blue M&Ms literally in 1812 there was a vote to name Ohio's capital and a state legislature allegedly got his fellow legislators drunk to convince them to vote Columbus over Ohio City Portland Oregon's name was the result of a coin one settler wanted to call it Boston and another chose Portland Phoenix Arizona was originally called pumpkin Villa in 1988 a touchdown at LSU's football stadium caused such a loud roar that it registered as an earthquake on a local seismograph in 1919 a 50-foot tall molasses tank broke in Boston and around 2.3 million gallons of molasses flooded the streets hootie and the blowfish were formed after Mark Bryan over her Darius Rucker singing in their dorm showers researchers once found that children who eat chicken off the bone exhibit more social aggression and research from Cornell University found that people spend more when there's no dollar sign in front of menu prices the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses Yelp as a source for tracking foodborne illnesses and speaking of foodborne illnesses researchers once turned a Hardee's into a fine-dining establishment with dim lighting and soft music people stayed at the tables longer and ate less food so Hardee's was like forget that the direction of water going down a drain is not different in the northern and southern hemispheres Sun flower buds followed the direction of the Sun but sunflowers don't MSG does not cause headaches white chocolate contains no chocolate and in 2007 researchers dropped a burning cigarette into a tray of petrol or sprayed petrol at a whip cigarette 2,000 times and the petrol never caught fire so that scene in Zoolander is totally unrealistic unlike the rest of Zoolander getting a phone call after you're arrested is not an official right in the United States we've known since 1989 that dogs can see color some cats are lactose intolerant and a dog's mouth is not cleaner than a human's mouth also there were camels in the Wild West in 1976 a body prop on the Six Million Dollar Man set turned out to be an actual corpse the Pony Express company lost around 200-thousand dollars during its brief existence Butch Cassidy once stole a pair of jeans and left an IOU and speaking of the Wild West a Wild West judge once find a corpse $40 for carrying a concealed weapon the mona lisa has her own mailbox at the Louvre the glass floor at the CN Tower in Toronto can support 35 moose that's actually a requirement for glass floors in Canada you must be able to support 35 moose because they could arrive at any moment businessman tried to buy Seattle Space Needle for $1,000,000 and move it to five Washington the word henge comes from Stonehenge but Stonehenge isn't technically a hinge in 1937 a bill was introduced to Congress to have susan b anthony headed to mount rushmore also the presidents in Mount Rushmore were originally going to be depicted from waist up but there was not enough money ancient Egyptian noble women may have worn scented cones on their head to smell better the word candidate comes from a Latin word meaning white toga in the 1850s and 60s about 3,000 English women died because their hoop skirts caught on fire and speaking of fashion the hemline theory posits that when short skirts are trendy it's correlated with better economic time 3 more clothing facts boat shoes were inspired by the grooves in dog paws the miniskirt was named after the Mini Cooper and the first jeans were called waist-high overalls when Coco the gorilla met mr. Rogers she took his shoes off oh my god I love Coco the gorilla and Mister Rogers both so much that collision was like the greatest moment in world history over 80% of American adults believe that children who study music are smarter but many studies have discredited the so-called Mozart Effect schizophrenia does not mean multiple personalities that's disassociative identity disorder the Bible never claims there were actually three wise men and the Immaculate Conception is not in the Bible it became a doctrine in 1854 also the Bible does not specify the fruit that Adam and Eve eat we made it into Apple's one quarter of children in the u.s. outgrow their food allergies there's evidence that the people who built the Egyptian pyramids may have been paid workers and there were women gladiators cesarean sections are not named after Julius Caesar and he probably wasn't even born via c-section the ravenclaw symbol in Harry Potter is an eagle not a raven and it's a misconception that no one dies in Disney parks numerous deaths have been declared there in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein the monster isn't green it's yellowish and translucent Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes but Alaska has three million lakes the cron extensively describes heaven and there is no mention of 72 anything there blowing into an NES cartridge did not fix it in fact it may have harmed the games people float in quicksand and the jazz singer was not the first movie would sound it was the first feature-length film with synchronized dialogue Bollywood is not India's filmmaking industry the term only describes the part that makes films in Hindi the 1950 Disney movie Treasure Island invented pirate speak like AR and shiver me timbers and yes I know I have a good pirate accent and the original story pandora opens a jar it didn't become Pandora's box until the 16th century some more misconceptions we do not use only 10% of our brains we use all of our brains also brains aren't just gray they're also white and black and red st. Patrick not Irish he was born in modern-day Britain in 390 C II and bats are not blind also in the 1958 Disney documentary white wilderness the crew staged a lemming suicide lemmings do not do that on their own holes can't see the color red and camel humps are made up of fat not water according to accounts Annie Oakley was pretty shy people think the 1990s were great but that was the age of Harley Davidson perfume and wine coolers scientists developed a smallpox vaccine after discovering that milkmaids who had mild versions of cow pox were immune to virulent smallpox after sleeping for a long time people can get sleep drunkenness an increase in lethargy and decrease in motivation I get that out even from not sleeping in the 1600s colonists in America and British people in England had accents similar to today's American accent by the time a child is two years old their brain is 80% of its adult size and it's a misconception that eyes don't grow after birth they stop growing when you're around 13 a doctor in California wrote a research paper after 50 years of cracking the knuckles on his own left hand twice daily and hardly ever cracking the right I mean it's a pretty small sample size though the blood in veins is dark red not blue and there are a and B batteries double-a and triple-a are just much more convenient in 1882 the New York Times reported that a woman had her eyeball pop out after she sneezed so remember that every time you sneeze for the rest of your life by the way a sneeze travels between 10 and 40 miles per hour according to one study 92% of people get a song stuck in their head at least once a week oh to be the 8% and when you get a song stuck in your head it's usually about eight seconds worth generally from the chorus movie theaters earned about 85% of their it's from concessions that's why they don't love you bringing in candy when bright light causes someone to sneeze it's called the autosomal dominant compelling Helio ophthalmic outburst achoo you know what I want from my scientists good solid science you know what I don't want pun Souls do not smell like chlorine that's chloramine which forms when chlorine reacts with substances like sweat oils and urine bananas and b12 do not repel mosquitoes some people's urine starts to smell just 15 minutes after eating asparagus and according to a study toothpaste affects the taste of orange juice for at least an hour after brushing your teeth the first newspaper to print the word Muppet was The Washington Post in 1955 no guest by the way ever appeared on the Muppet Show more than once three more Muppet facts the Muppets Statler and Waldorf were named after New York City hotels Kermit the Frog has his own self-help book and the Muppet animal has four and a half inch biceps Bill Murray was once arrested for driving a golf cart through downtown Stockholm and refusing to take a breathalyzer test not since Prince Charles fueled his fancy car with wine has someone so fulfilled my expectations for them Joan of Arc was arrested for heresy a charge that was dropped 25 years after she was burned at the stake when Frank Sinatra was 23 he was arrested for adultery McGillicuddy serious party a political party in New Zealand once tried to elect a hedgehog to parliament in 2006 two men were arrested in Michigan for bringing their pet alligator into Petsmart but you are supposed to be allowed to bring your pets speaking of pets a chef prepared a daily steak lunch for rin-tin-tin while he ate classical musicians played to aid his digestion Paul Simon wrote mother and child reunion after seeing that chicken and egg dish on a Chinese restaurant menu Michael Jackson meanwhile wrote Billie Jean while driving and said his car lit on fire because he was so enamored with it the oldest person to climb Mount Everest was 80 the oldest person ever on record lived to 122 Mark Twain was born and died in Halley's comet years William Randolph Hearst had a pet alligator named champagne Charlie and in 1942 an elegy Hearst wrote for his dachshund was published in Time magazine Beethoven supposedly insisted that his coffee cups were made with exactly 60 beans Starbucks is named after Captain Ahab's first mate in Moby Dick Rangel st. Elias National Park in Alaska is bigger than nine states a park ranger at Shenandoah National Park was hit by lightning seven times triple divide peak in Montana's Glacier National Park contributes water to three oceans a place in the Grand Canyon still gets its mail by pack mule people were called Buckeyes in 1788 before Ohio was founded a Floridian used to be known as a fly up the creek which also refers to the small green hair and the people of Idaho were once called fortune seekers because many of them moved there for mining in 2011 an 8-foot tall lego man washed up on a beach in Florida lego by the way is an adjective so they're Lego bricks not Legos a life-size Lego house was constructed in England with 3.2 million bricks and there have been high-profile Lego robberies hundreds of thousands of dollars worth have been found on the black market the word Lego by the way has never said in the lego movie let's move on to libraries in 2010 the Mount Vernon staff sent a replacement book to the New York society library for one that George Washington had checked out some years before the Library of Congress has a secret FBI interrogation manual in their collection Melville Dewey invented the Dewey Decimal System when he was 21 the word Nimrod used to mean a hunter Norman Mailer came up with the term factoid it originally meant false facts backlog originally referred to the biggest log in the fireplace Mahatma Gandhi gave Princess Elizabeth a cloth as a wedding gift and Elizabeth's grandmother thought it was a wine cloth Prince Philippe of Belgium is about 1,000 80th in line to be king of England Queen Elizabeth the first made it a capital crime to open messages in bottles and finally I return to my salon to tell you that in the 1880s there was a real blue silk ribbon tied around Pabst Blue Ribbon bottles we did it thank you so much for watching Mental Floss video which is made with the help of all of these lovely people and to commemorate these 500 facts we are now going to open up our piggy bank to see how much money we have saved for our pork chop party here we go big money no whammies all right I'm concerned that's not going to fund a pork chop party we'll try to keep at it thanks again for watching and don't forget to be awesome [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Mental Floss

Views: 1,642,664

Rating: 4.7298841 out of 5

Keywords: John Green, fun facts, interesting facts, list of facts, Mental floss, list show, trivia, facts, education, knowledge, random, animals, facts list, fact list, presidents, einstein, vlogbrothers, invention, PEZ, christmas, songs, holidays, heist, NASA, first lady, linguistics, star wars, bob ross, mr rogers, fact, 500 facts, long list of facts, nerdfighters, hank green, strange facts, weird facts, funny facts, facts for kids, facts about the world, 101 facts, 500 fun facts, fun list of facts

Id: E7-Kht9Xnzc

Length: 44min 58sec (2698 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2017