Random facts threads Merged

[Alexia Dark]

Wow.

There was a thread on this exact thing earlier today.

 

[tzarinna]

Information overload. t:

 

[JewishHobbit]

Hobbits are not gay... the rest are possible.

 

[C.F. Kane]

In the original tale, Sleeping Beauty was not awoken with a kiss. "Charming" got through the forest, found her, raped her and left. She gave birth to twins, while sleeping, and was awoken when her child attempted to nurse from her.

Mel Brook's portrayal of Louis XVI in History of the World Part 1 is of a crass womanizer. The real Louis was impotent; he spoiled Marie Antoinette with gifts because he couldn't please her otherwise.

David Prowse was Darth Vader's body. James Earl Jones was Darth Vader's voice. They have never met each other.

Most portrayals of Jesus in modern Christianity show him with long hair. In I Corinthians 11:7 however, St. Paul wrote that it is dishonorable for men to wear their hair long, especially when praying or making prophecies.

Citizen Kane has pterodactyls in one scene. Late in the movie the elderly Kane and his wife go for a picnic in the Florida marshes. To create a dense tropical backdrop, the editor used footage from an earlier RKO picture: King Kong. The shillouettes of pterodactyls are clearly visible on the backdrop.

In Hamlet, the character of Claudius is never called by his name. It's always "The King" or "my uncle".

Despite being called his greatest nemesis, James Moriarty, archnemesis of Sherlock Holmes, only appeared in one story.

Some of the films that are permitted to be shown in Iran include Dances With Wolves, Se7en, and the Godfather trilogy.

 

[Sam Fisher]

*Disclaimer, I can't verify any of these, and clearly some are jokes.

The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."

On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament
Building is an American flag.

According to legend, there's a Superman in every episode of Seinfeld.

The first porn movie was the 1908 Fench film al'Ecu d'or oula bonne auberge.

People who are lying to you tend to look up and to their left.

It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up it's stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of
it's mouth. Then the frog uses it's forearms to dig out all of the
stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.

The A&W of root beer fame stands for Allen and Wright.

All of the clocks in Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.

TIME Magazine's "Person of the Year" in 1938 was Adolf Hitler.

No word in the English language rhymes with month.

The Atlantic Ocean is saltier than the Pacific Ocean.

A coffee tree yields about one pound of coffee in a year

A roach can live up to nine days without its head.

In 1659, it was illegal to celebrate Christmas in Massachusetts

'Second Street' is the most common street name in the U.S.; 'First Street' is the sixth

Surgeons who listen to music during operations perform better than those who don't

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

The bark of an older redwood tree is fireproof.

The Ramses brand condom is named after the great phaoroh Ramses II who
fathered over 160 children.

Hobbits are gay.

Jimmy Carter is the first U.S. President to have been born in a hospital.

Only 1 person in 2 billion will live to be 116.

A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

Maine is the toothpick capital of the world.

Most tropical marine fish could survive in a tank filled with human blood.

In 1987 American Airlines saved $40,000 by eliminating one olive from its First Class salads.

Business.com is currently the most expensive domain name sold for $7.5 million.

Even Antarctica has an area code. It's 672.

Bluebirds cannot see the color blue.

Women end up digesting most of the lipstick they apply.

Babies are born without knee caps.

If you were to roll a lung from a human body out flat it would be the size of a tennis court.

Dueling is legal in Paraguay, as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

A species of earthworm in Australia grows up to 10 feet in length.

It takes about a week to make a jelly bean.

If you put a T-Bone steak in a bowl of Coca - Cola Syrup, it will dissolve in 2 to 3 days

During a lunar eclipse, one can view the curved shape of the Earth's shadow, which is naked eye groundbased evidence that the Earth is indeed round.

Beelzebub, another name for the devil, is Hebrew for "Lord of the Flies", and this is where the book's title comes from.

The term "devil's advocate" comes from the Roman Catholic church. When deciding if someone should be sainted, a devil's advocate is always appointed to give an alternative view.

In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, "They'll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run." On July 20, 1969, a few hours after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord Perry hit his first, and only, home run.

When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home to a sellout crowd, the full stadium becomes the state's third largest city.

One in three snake bite victims is drunk. One in five is tatooed.

Indoor pollution is 10 times more toxic than outdoor pollution.

Fine-grained volcanic ash can be found as an ingredient in some toothpastes.

C3PO is the first character to speak in Star Wars.

Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television in 1926 in Soho, London. Ten years later there were only 100 TV sets in the world. Today there are almost a billion TV sets in the world

The first TV commercial was a 20-second ad for a Bulova clock, broadcasted by WNBT, New York during a game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies in July 1941.Bulova paid $9 for that first TV spot. Bulova also was the first watch in space.

In the Return of the Jedi special edition during the new Coruscant footage at the end of the film a stormtrooper can be seen being carried over the crowds.

The longest film ever released was "****" by Andy Warhol, which lasted 24 hours{and people thought King Kong was too long}. It proved, not surprisingly (except perhaps to its creator) an utter failure. It was withdrawn and re-released in a 90-minute form as 'The Loves of Ondine.'

In 1952, CBS made computer history by being the first to use a computer, the UNIVAC I, to forecast the U.S. presidential election.

Did you copy me???t:

 

[ComicChick]

the george foreman grill was initially pitched to Hulk Hogan, who missed out.

 

[Sam Fisher]

In the United Kingdom, the first season episode of Starsky and Hutch "The Fix", in which mobsters get Hutch hooked on heroin in order to extract information from him, was deemed too graphic by the BBC (despite the series being shown after the 9pm watershed), and was effectively "banned" from all of the corporation’s runs of the series. It was never broadcast on British terrestrial television until many years later, as part of Channel 4's one-off Starsky & Hutch Night, on Saturday 31st May 1999. Interestingly, in 2003, when Five ran the series, they included the episode, on Thursday 10th January 2003, in its usual time-slot of 10 a.m., although the actual scene of Hutch being graphically injected with Heroin was edited almost completely out.



There have been many songs based around the Star Wars universe, the most notable of which are "Weird Al" Yankovic's Yoda, (a parody of The Kinks' "Lola"), which describes Luke's training with the "wrinkled and green" Jedi master, and The Saga Begins, (a parody of Don McLean's "American Pie"), which chronicles the events of Episode I. The latter of these is particularly reveled, as it was released one week before the film. On Blink-182's album "Dude Ranch", the track "A New Hope" discusses the bassist Mark Hoppus' obsession with Princess Leia.
In late 1977, at the height of the original Star Wars craze, comedian Bill Murray portrayed Lounge Lizard Nick Winters on Saturday Night Live and sang a swanky version of the Star Wars theme, complete with inane improvised lyrics.[11] Carrie Fisher reprised her role as Princess Leia on SNL in a parady of Star Wars and the old beach party movies with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello with Fisher as Annette singing about Obi Wan Kenobi
Other songs based on the Star Wars saga include The Star Wars Gangsta Rap and Star Wars Cantina.

 

[Sam Fisher]

The Saga Begins" is a parody by "Weird Al" Yankovic, released from the 1999 album Running With Scissors. To the tune of "American Pie," by Don McLean, it recounts the plot of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, from Obi-Wan Kenobi's point of view. Yankovic gathered basically all the information he needed to write the song from Internet spoilers. (He did such an accurate job that, even after he attended an advance screening, he wound up making only very minor alterations.) McLean not only approved the song, but he has also since said that his children have played it so much that he has a tendency to accidentally sing Yankovic's lyrics when performing "American Pie" in concert.

 

[Sam Fisher]

The X-Files's Fox Mulder and Dana Scully appear on The Simpsons to investigate paranormal phenomena in Springfield, and remark that dealing with Homer Simpson is even worse than the time they were attacked by that flesh-eating organism.

 

[Kritish]

Owls always hoot three times.

 

[Fried Gold]

Despite being called his greatest nemesis, James Moriarty, archnemesis of Sherlock Holmes, only appeared in one story.

I thought it was 2, The Final Problem and The Valley Of Fear?