Disney sold the streaming rights for the original Star Wars films in 2016 to Turner until 2024. Disney has since decided to start a streaming service and has tried asking for the rights back, but Turner refuses every time.
100 Mind-Blowing Decided Facts
Volvo invented the three-point seatbelt and then gave the invention away for free. They decided it was too important of an invention to keep to themselves.
Someone left a family photo on the Moon. When Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke landed on the Moon in 1972, he decided to leave behind a photo of himself, his two sons and his wife. The photo remains on the Moon to this day.
The U.S. government saved every public tweet from 2006 through 2017. Starting in 2018, the Library of Congress decided to only keep tweets on “a very selective basis,” including elections and those dealing with something of national interest, like public policy.
The “Like” button on Facebook was supposed to be the “Awesome” button. However, the developers decided “Like” would be a more universal term.
A Polish doctor once faked an outbreak to keep the Nazis away. Eugene Lazowski announced that there was a typhus outbreak that ended up saving over 8,000 people during the Second World War. At the time, this was considered to be a smart move because Lazowski decided to tug on the German’s phobias about hygiene.
Over a dozen skeletons were found in Benjamin Franklin’s basement. In 1998, an organisation called Friends of Benjamin Franklin House decided to restore the four-story Georgian house where Franklin lived in London. However, they discovered a gruesome sight – one of the workers found a human thigh bone. The authorities were brought in, and a total of remains from 15 people were found – 6 of those belonging to children, and all with holes drilled into their skulls. The skeletons date back to 200 years ago then, which was around the time Benjamin Franklin lived in the house. This is one of the most disturbing WTF facts.
A rollercoaster can make you pass kidney stones. After many reports of passing a kidney stone on Disney World’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride, a team from Michigan State University decided to investigate whether it was coincidental or not. They found that there was a 64% kidney stone pass rate for passengers in the rear of the Thunder Mountain ride. However, it was just 16% for passengers in the front.
Scientists accidentally killed the world’s oldest animal while trying to learn its age. Everybody makes mistakes. When scientists found an ancient ocean quahog, they decided to examine it from the inside to determine its true age. However, in doing so, they accidentally killed the ancient clam. And all for nothing, too – they ended up using the outside of its shell to determine its age. Ming, named after the dynasty it was born, had been 507 years old at the time of its discovery.
People used to answer the phone by saying “Ahoy!” What would you do if you called someone and they answered with, “Ahoy!” I, for one, would throw my hands at how unnecessary that would be. However, when the public started using the phone in the 1800s, inventor Alexander Graham Bell decided that phone calls should be answered with “ahoy” instead of “hello.” However, Thomas Edison wanted users to answer the phone with “hello.” By 1880, “ahoy” was just something a pirate would say.
Standard CDs are always 74 minutes long. Sony and Philips set the standard CD length in 1980 as 74 minutes based on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The executives decided that the standard CD should be able to fit the Ninth Symphony, giving it a 74-minute length.
The current American flag was designed by a high school student named Bob Heft in 1958. He originally got a B- on the project. After President Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to use his design for the new flag, Bob’s teacher changed his grade to an A.
Lincoln had a bodyguard on duty on the night of his assassination. John Frederick Parker had already arrived late for his shift. Then, he decided to take a break and get a drink at a nearby saloon during the show. During his absence, John Wilkes Booth entered Lincoln’s box and shot the President.
In 2017, Chau Smith decided to celebrate her 70th birthday by running seven marathons on all seven continents in seven days. Her amazing feat almost did not happen due to travel delays, however.
There’s a restaurant in New York that employs grandmas instead of chefs. The menu at Enoteca Maria is a little unconventional, as half of it is a fixed Italian menu while the other half changes daily. This is because a different grandmother comes in every day with not just a new menu but a completely new cuisine! The owner decided to run his restaurant like this as he had lost all maternal figures in his life and wanted to re-create the feeling of eating in his grandmother’s kitchen.
The Titanic wreckage was discovered during a top-secret mission to search for sunken nuclear submarines. Robert Ballard, who discovered the Titanic wreckage, originally went to the US Navy to request funding to develop an advanced robotic submersible that would allow him to search for the wreckage. The navy liked his idea but decided to use it to search for two lost US nuclear submarines. The mission finished early, and Ballard was able to use the extra time to discover the lost ship.
Only one married couple has ever been sent to space. Mark Lee and Jan Davis met during their astronaut training programs but decided to keep their relationship secret. NASA had an informal policy against sending out married couples on missions. Nine months before their mission, they got married, and by the time NASA found out it was too late to begin training replacements. Instead, they made their informal policy formal to prevent it from happening again!
One of Fleetwood Mac’s founding guitarists disappeared just before a show and was found days later as a newly initiated cult member. Jeremy Spencer was with Fleetwood Mac from the very beginning, but during a tour to the US in the 70’s he became quite disillusioned with his career and life in general. He met members of Children of God, a religious cult in California, and decided to join them instead of continuing on the road to stardom. Jeremy Spencer is still affiliated with the cult, now known as Family International.
The teddy bear is named after President Theodore Roosevelt. After he refused to shoot a captured black bear on a hunt, a stuffed animal maker decided to create a bear and named it after the president.
“123456” is the most used password in the world!! NordPass released the list of the most common passwords of 2020. Over 2.5 million users decided to use the password “123456”. Unsurprisingly, that’s a weak password that nobody should ever use. It was cracked over 23.5 million times in 2020. Hackers can crack the password in less than a second due to its sequential and common nature. For better or worse, NordPass lists “12345” as the most common password from 2019. That password fell to number eight on the company’s list for 2020. The most secure passwords include letters, numbers, and symbols. Also, a longer password is always more difficult to crack than a shorter one.
Telephone greeting. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the first practical telephone in 1876, decided that the correct salutation for answering should be ‘Ahoy.’