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Random facts

Anatomy fact: The reason our fingers prune when we have them in water for a period of time isn't because they absorb water or because oils are washed off, but because of an evolutionary quirk among homonids, where our fingers generate that effect to enhance hand-grip underwater.
 
Television fact: Producers hired Patrick Warburton virtually on the spot for the title character of the short-lived show "The Tick" because they were astonished by the "crater" he left when he stood up from the couch, as well as for his towering athletic physique, and his nonchalant comedic style.
 
Wrestling fact: In June 2011, Philip Brooks, better known to wrestling fans as CM Punk, made a jaw dropping speech on Monday Night Raw, which is broadcast live on national television, decrying World Wrestling Entertainment, to which he was under contract. He specifically took issue with the direction the company was taking, saying unequivically that the company would be better off if the owner of the company died, provided it did not to pass into the hands of the owner's "idiot daughter and doofus son in law", not to mention several wrestlers who had become little more than brown nosing yes-men around management.
 
To this day, there is fierce debate today among fans whether any of CM Punk's remarks were approved by the management at all, let alone being said live on the air, or whether the comments were how he really felt and he was doing a shoot (making unscripted and off the cuff remarks), especially given that he specifically mentioned other wrestling promotions and individual wrestlers by name who were contracted to those promotions and that he revealed the outcome of the match he had for the championship in a couple weeks, revealing he would win the title (and that he would walk out on the company with the title as his contract was not being renewed), all of which are usually considered cardinal sins in the wrestling business.
 
US Fact: Haym Solomon, an Ashkenazi Jew born and raised in Poland, was responsible for financing the great bulk of the Revolutionary War. Once France agreed to side with the American Colonists, Solomon, who lived in Philadelphia during the Revolution, was able to convert the French loans into cash, thus allowing the army to purchase the necessaary items to eventually win American Independence.
 
Here's some random laws you never knew existed:
 
In Alabama, it's illegal to have an ice cream cone in your back pocket
 
In California, riding a bicycle in a pool is against the law
 
In Delaware, wearing form fitting pants that go up to the waist are illegal
 
Serving an apple pie without at least 1 slice of cheese is illegal in any restaurant in Wisconsin
 
People in Hawaii are forbidden by law from placing coins in their ears
 
Giving kids "unusual haircuts" is punishable under Texas state law.
 
In order for a pickle to be legally labeled as a pickle in Connecticut, it must first pass a bounce test.
 
Riding a merry-go-round in Idaho on a Sunday is an arrestable offense.
 
Gossip and talking behind someone's back is illegal in Indiana, as are offering drinks on the house, and having someone else pour your drink into a glass
 
Anyone with the common cold is forbidden from walking around in any public space in Washington State
 
Mispronouncing "Arkansas" within state limits is illegal
 
It is illegal to look at a moose from an airplane in Alaska, as well as pushing a live moose from an airplane in flight.
 
Showering naked is illegal in Florida (the law never specifies whether this is in public or in private)
 
Also, singing in Florida while wearing a bathing suit of any kind is an arrestable offense
 
And finally.. in North Dakota, it is illegal to serve a patron beer and pretzels at the same time
 
Medical fact: For a brief period, all human babies are female, since it can take a few days for the Y chromosome to kick in. This is why even men have nipples and the requisite "equipment" attached to them, but the Y chromosome renders those tissues, barring any genetic damage or abusing certain types of steroids, inactive and physiologically unnoticeable aside from the nipple. This is also why even men are capable of getting breast cancer (up to 5% of cases are from men), though the stigma associated with it being a "women's only disease" means that statistically, most men would often go without saying anything to anyone for fear of ridicule.
 
Legal fact: In Nevada, there is a state law forbidding the state or any municipality from making public intoxication illegal.
 
Astronomy fact: If the Milky Way were reduced to the size of the continental United States, our Sun would be the size of a white blood cell
 
elcap1999 said:
The largest star thus far discovered, VY Canis Majoris, is so massive, that if it were to take the place of the sun in our solar system, the edge of the star would extend past the orbit of Jupiter.
Click to expand...
Canis majoris is the bomb
 
Military fact: By tradition in the US military, any soldiers addressing a Medal of Honor recipient are to initiate the salute, regardless of rank. So this technically means that a Private who was awarded the MoH can be saluted by a 5-Star General. Officially this is done to salute the award itself, but more often than not, it's also to salute the person who was awarded the Medal. This is despite never being fomally codified into military regulations.
 
In addition to winning the MoH, the recipient also gets a sizeable monthly stipend above and beyond their normal pay, significantly discounted airfare and travel benefits for them and their immediate family members, as well as special commisary priviliges, a guaranteed space at Arlington National Cemetary if they so choose (headstone included), and their children can apply to West Point without the need for a congressional recommendation that is usually required of prospective applicants. They continue to receive all this even after they retire from active military service.
 
And at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington, all unknown soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross (the British equivelent to the Medal of Honor), and the US responded in kind by awarding all soldiers at the British Tomb of the Unknown with Medals of Honor.
 
Food fact: Until its surge in popularity in 2013, the largest consumer of kale was Pizza Hut. They didn't use it as an ingredient or as a choice in their salad bar. They simply used it as decoration around the salad bar.
 
Historical fact: One of the earliest reported UFO sightings in US history was witnessed by, of all people, famed fire & brimstone Puritan preacher Cotton Mather, who is more infamously remembered for his role in the Salem Witch Trials.
 
In his report from 1644, he was looking through a telescope at the moon, and witnessed a shiny "glowing starlike" object fly across the moon's face. He reported the sighting to a fellow preacher who was bound for Rhode Island when that preacher reportedly sighted the Flying Dutchman on his way over from England to North America.
 
A more detailed account of Mather's reported sighting is in the NASA archives.
 
Celebrity fact: In the 1990's, Apple Cofounder Steve Wozniak, a noted fan of the video game Tetris, submitted so many high scores to Nintendo Power Magazine for publication that they eventually stopped printing them and barred him from making further submissions. He attempted to circumvent this by using the pseudonym "Evets Kainzow", which was just his name spelled backwards.
 
Historical fact: There is a natural gas vent in Iraq, known as the Eternal Flame, which has been continuously lit for over 4,000 years. It's been mentioned in the works of Heroditus, Plutarch, and was even mentioned in the Old Testament Book of Daniel.
 
Wall Street fact: Hetty Green was considered the richest woman in the world in the 1920's, but was so extremely frugal with her money, she was referred to as the Witch of Wall Street. Even her family wasn't exempted from her frugality. When her own son suffered a severely broken leg, instead of just taking him to the hospital, she searched instead for free quack medicines to give to him. However, the search was in vain as he eventually developed a bad case of gangrene and had to have the leg amputated.
 
Medical fact: During Louis Pasteur's efforts to find a rabies vaccine, he insisted on keeping a fully loaded large-caliber revolver in the lab at all times. Should someone contract the disease while working on it in the lab, other lab technicians were under strict orders to shoot them in the head, and Pastuer himself insisted that he not be exempted from this rule.
 
Music fact: Instead of suing them in court for music piracy, famed British heavy metal band Iron Maiden decided to embark on a world tour. They deliberately chose venues in cities where their music was being most heavily pirated, and as a result, they made millions of dollars from the tour itself, as well as merchandising and renewed music sales. They also won over legions of new fans in the process.
 
Astronomy fact: The moon is moving away from the Earth at the rate of approximately 3.6 centimeters per year year. The reason why is the tidal bulges the moon's gravity creates in the Earth's oceans also slows the moon down ever so slightly, by fractions of a mile per hour every day. This moving out of the moon is also why this moment in time is the reason we still have total solar eclipses, since when the moon formed 4.5 billion years ago, it was only 14,000 miles away from the Earth's surface, and it took this long to move out to it's current location of  just under 239,000 miles away.
 
And this braking effect from gravity works both ways, and has had the effect of increasing our days from 6 hours when the Earth formed to the 24 hour day we currently have, or about an average of 2.3 milliseconds per century.
 
Movie facts, "Revenge of the Nerds" edition:
 
Tim Busfield had never so much as touched a violin prior to the day where they shot the musical number for the Homecoming scene. The producers swore they would overdub his horrible screeching, but he was dismayed when they left his "playing" as is in the film. However, the other Nerds already knew how to play their respective musical instruments quite well, and the music from them was also from their actors themselves.
 
Also, Busfield ad-libbed a painful yelping sound during the Pi-watching scene that forced most of the crew to turn around and run out of the room because they couldn't contain their laughter. In some editions of the movie, you can hear the director start to laugh behind the camera right before the end of the scene.
 
When Larry B. Scott showed up in character for his audition as Lamar, complete with a hairband & glitter in his hair, the casting directors couldn't stop laughing the entire audition. And because of his prior roles as very masculine men, Scott overcompensated for this role to such a degree that for several years after "Revenge of the Nerds" came out, people (even those who knew him) really thought he was gay.
 
Donald Gibb, who played Ogre, wore a Viking helmet in several scenes. This proved to be somewhat serendipitous, as recently, he can be seen as a Viking in Capital One credit card commercials.
 
The drug given to Takashi to counteract the effects of the alcohol during the Field Day is completely fictional, as was the drill silencer Lamar developed.
 
Robert Carradine and Anthony Edwards went to a Rush Week at the University of Arizona completely in character and in costume, as a test-run to see how good their "nerd" makeup & wardrobe was. It proved so successful, no fraternity would give them the time of day, and the first fraternity they approached, the pledge coordinator immediately refused them and said "No Way!".
 
Despite some initial reservations about being in a film called "Revenge of the Nerds", the mood on set was very much that of a perpetual fraternity party, and the universal concencus was that a wonderful time was had by all during filming. Several of the students who wouldn't give Carradine & Edwards the time of day during their dry run in costume eventually became extras, and many of the students would socialize and party with the cast between takes and after shooting had wrapped for the day.
 
As confirmed by most of the cast & crew, there never was a formal script for the movie, per se, more of a framework and rough outline for each scene, which ended up working better,as virtually all the actors had extensive experience in improvisation and ad-libbing, which allowed for more realistic and fluid dialogue, and more genuine reactions.
 
Even though it didn't exist at the time, Lambda Lambda Lambda eventually became a real fraternity, first established in 2007 @ the University of Connecticut.
 
Robert Carradine was initially unsure on how to do Lewis Skolnik's signature "goose honk" laugh, but when he heard James Cromwell do the laugh, he was able to imitate it almost perfectly.
 
Yup, and the only mention of his character's name is as a sign on the door to his office, and nobody ever said it on screen during the whole movie
 
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