Facts You Probably don’t Need
- The muscle that causes a rattlesnake to rattle fires 50 times a second for up to three hours or 520,000 rattles without stopping.
- The border between India and Bangladesh is so complicated that there is a “3rd order enclave,” which is a piece of India within Bangladesh, within India, within Bangladesh.
- In 1997, Frédéric Bourdin, a 23-year-old French conman, impersonated Nicholas Barclay, a missing 16-year-old Texan boy, and spent nearly five months living with his family before he was found out.
- A poll conducted in 1997 revealed that Americans thought NASA’s funding accounted for 20% of the federal budget. In fact, NASA has received one cent or less per every tax dollar since 1975. At present, they receive $.005 cents per dollar.
- Hugh Trenchard, a British soldier in the Boer War, was shot in the chest and spine, becoming partially paralyzed. He took up bobsledding as a hobby, and after a major accident, regained use of his legs.
- As an April Fool’s Day joke, Gamestation added a clause stating that users who placed an order on April 1, 2010, agreed to irrevocably give their soul to the company. 7,500 users agreed.
Facts by Sean McVeigh, factologist.
