100 Mind-Blowing His Facts

Charles Darwin invented the modern office chair when he added wheels to his chair, so he could move around his office more easily.

A chicken named Mike lived for 18 months without his head in the 1940s.

A British man found £100,000 of Roman gold coins 20 minutes after buying his first-ever metal detector.

Babe Ruth put chilled cabbage leaves under his hat to keep him cool while playing baseball.

In 2003, street artist Banksy put his work on the wall at the Tate Modern Museum in London. The prank lasted several hours.

The Tin Man original actor in The Wizard of Oz was replaced after suffering health issues from ingesting aluminium into his lungs from the costume makeup, his skin turned blue and he struggled to breathe.

There aren’t “57 varieties” of Heinz ketchup, and never were. Company founder H.J. Heinz thought his product should have a number, and he liked 57. Hint: Hit the glass bottle on the “57,” not the bottom, to get the ketchup to flow.

One of President John Tyler’s grandsons is still alive today—and he was born in 1790. How is this possible? President Tyler, the 10th US president, was 63 when his son Lyon Tyler was born in 1853; Lyon’s son was born when he was 75. President Tyler’s living grandson, Harrison Tyler is 94. Lyon’s other son Lyon Jr. passed away in 2020 at the age of 95. The Tyler family still maintains the President’s home, Sherwood Forest Plantation in Virginia.

The tallest living man is 39-year-old Sultan Kösen, from Turkey, who is 8 feet, 2.8 inches, and set the record in 2009. His growth is also due to a pituitary issue.

The Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, who lived in the 1700s, reportedly invented the sandwich so he wouldn’t have to leave his gambling table to eat.

Flamin’ Hot Cheetos were developed by a janitor at Frito-Lay, Richard Montanez, who got the idea after putting chilli powder on some rejected Cheetos and then pitched it to the CEO. He’s now a successful executive and motivational speaker, and a movie is in the works about his life.

Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, wasn’t the first to introduce Christmas trees to Britain from his native Germany—Queen Charlotte did that in the late 1700s. But, Victoria and Albert are credited with popularizing the custom in the mid-1800s.

The man who designed the Pringles can, Fred Bauer, is buried in one—or at least some of his ashes are.

There’s a world record for the holder of the most world records: Ashrita Furman, who’s set more than 600 records and currently holds more than 200. His records have ranged from the fastest mile on a pogo stick, the longest time to hula hoop underwater and the greatest distance travelled on a bicycle balancing a milk bottle on the head.

No one yet has verified the identity of Bitcoin’s founder. Satoshi Nakamoto is the only pseudonym for the most popular cryptocurrency in the world, the bitcoin. Up until now, his real identity remains a world mystery.

Facebook was originally a directory of freshmen with their names and pictures. It’s a book of faces! Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard colleagues created a digital book of new students with their faces on it. Since then, Facebook has become the leading social networking website in the world.

Jeff Bezos named his company Cadabra Inc. before renaming it Amazon.

This is the first website ever. In 1989, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and published the first website ever which can be found here. Tim worked for CERN at the time. He hosted the first website on his NeXT Computer to allow scientists and universities to share information with ease. This archaic website described the World Wide Web (W3) project itself and was the start of the Internet Era as we know it today.

Google Was Put On Sale In 1999. In 1999, Yahoo and Excite held the top spots in search engine popularity. Larry Page pitched a sale of Google to Excite CEO George Bell. Page wanted $750,000 and 1% of Excite to let go of his fledgling search engine. At the time, Bell considered the offer competitive except for one detail: Page wanted Excite to ditch its search engine technology and adopt Google’s system. Bell declined the offer and threw himself into Internet lore. In 2021, most people don’t know the name Excite, but everyone knows and uses Google. The company is now worth over 300 billion dollars.

The first cell phone call. The first mobile phone call took place on April 3, 1973. Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher, placed the call on a prototype device. After dialling the phone number, his device connected to a base station, which then connected to the landline system of AT&T. Cooper called his biggest rival at AT&T, Joel Engel. Cooper kept the conversation both brief and modest. He simply told Engel he had made the call from a bona fide mobile phone. From there, Cooper helped Motorola and other companies usher in the age of the mobile phone a few years later.

Steve Jobs used sleight of hand at the first iPhone presentation. The first iPhone presentation happened six months before the iPhone was set to hit the market. At that time, the phone was too buggy to use, so Steve Jobs often had to switch phones behind his desk. Otherwise, it would run out of RAM and crash.

The Nintendo Game Boy went to space. In 1993, a Soviet cosmonaut brought his Nintendo Game Boy to space on the TM-17 space mission. It is said to have orbited Earth 3,000 times and was later auctioned for $1,220.

Donkey Kong got his name because his creator believed “donkey” meant “stupid” in English and wanted to convey the impression that the character was a “Stupid Ape.”

“Weird Al” Yankovic wrote “Albuquerque” as a joke specifically to “annoy people for 12 minutes.” It ended up becoming one of his most popular songs.

Sonic the Hedgehog’s full name is Ogilvie Maurice Hedgehog. This is a bit of a contentious one, though, as some fans claim that it isn’t canon. This is because Sonic’s full name was never published. Archie Comics, who published two different Sonic comics, released a comic that mentions that Sonic’s middle name is Maurice but never mentions his first name. One of the Archie Comic writers has since shared that Sonic’s first name is Ogilvie. Fans disagree, as they say, that Archie Comics’s Sonic isn’t true canon, only the video games and the Japanese manga are.

Mexico’s presidential palace is 14 times larger than the White House and started allowing visitors for the first time in 2018. From 1935 to 2018, the Los Pinos presidential palace was the official place of residence for Mexico’s presidents and was closed off to any who weren’t expressly invited. This changed in 2018 when Andres Manuel López Obrador was elected the Mexican President, winning his campaign on the back of promises to fight corruption. As a gesture of goodwill, he chose not to move into the palace, instead simply living in a small apartment in Mexico City’s central district. To give you an idea of what the Mexican president gave up, the presidential palace covers 603,000 square feet (56,000 square meters).

In September 2007, a guy named Kevin Shelley broke 46 wooden toilet seats with his head in one minute to create a world record.

Banksy is the most popular graffiti artist, known for his stencil art with political and anti-war themes. They remain anonymous and are based in Bristol, England, but their work can be seen worldwide.

One of the first known graffiti artists was called Cornbread. His name is Darryl McCray, but he was known by his tagging name, Cornbread.

Absent monarch. Richard the Lionheart only spent six months of his ten-year reign in England.

Loss of horsepower. Napoleon took 187,600 horses with his army as he rode into Russia in 1812, and only 1,600 came back.

Sheep at the White House. American President Woodrow Wilson and his wife Edith kept sheep at the White House during World War One to keep the lawn neat and reduce gardening costs. The sheep’s wool was also auctioned off to raise money for the Red Cross.

Thomas Crapper’s toilet. Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Crapper did not invent the flushing toilet, though his name is often associated with it. Crapper did play a significant role in popularising the flushing toilet and developed related inventions like the ball cock. However, the word ‘crap’ does not come from his name; it has Middle English origins and first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1846.

Commitment to the cause. Colonel Sourd, Napoleon’s 2nd Lancers, fought all day on horseback at Waterloo. He’d had his arm amputated, no pain relief, the day before.

Rodent reprobates. In 1510, rats who destroyed a field of barley were summoned to face trial. Their defence lawyer, Bartholomew Chassenee, argued that attending court would put his clients at risk from local cats and dogs. A reasonable fear of death was a sufficient reason to excuse a human from court. If rats were to be subject to the same laws, surely the same mitigation had to apply? The judge postponed the trial indefinitely.

Doggy defence. King Henry VIII of England had a suit of armour made for his dog.

Surrender? Never! Lt Hiroo Onoda served with Japan’s army in the Philippines during World War Two. He was ordered not to surrender, so he didn’t, until 1974. His wartime boss was sent to get him. He returned home a hero.

Oll Korrect. The origin of the phrase ‘OK’ dates back to a fad for intentionally misspelt abbreviations in 1830s Boston. When witty Bostonians began spelling ‘all correct’ as ‘Oll Korrect’, newspapers picked up on the joke. In 1840, US President Martin Van Buren, originally from Kinderhook in New York, adopted the phrase for his re-election campaign and his supporters set up ‘Old Kinderhook’, or ‘OK’, clubs across the country. The term quickly made the transition from slang to legitimate use.

Prediction of death. Mark Twain kind of predicted his death. In 1909, he said: ‘I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt, “Now there are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together”.’ He died of a heart attack on 21 April 1910 – one day after the comet had come again and appeared at its brightest. Halley’s comet only passes by Earth approximately every 76 years and has been the subject of a string of predictions since 1705.

Two significant car crashes. On 13 December 1931, Winston Churchill was struck by a car while crossing Fifth Ave in New York City. He had looked the wrong way before crossing the street and was dragged for several yards, sustaining bruises, sprains and cuts. In the same year, a 19-year-old British aristocrat named John Scott-Ellis was driving a red Fiat in Munich and almost hit the future Führer, Adolf Hitler. Scott-Ellis jumped out of his car and apologised, and Hitler only suffered minor bruises. They shook hands, and Scott-Ellis later remarked, ‘For a few seconds, perhaps, I held the history of Europe in my rather clumsy hands. . . [Hitler] was only shaken up, but had I killed him, it would have changed the history of the world.’

Outcast. DH Lawrence was thrown out of his village during World War One because he was allegedly signalling to German U-boats with laundry on his clothes!

Handy brandy. Rather than bury Nelson’s corpse at sea after his death at the Battle of Trafalgar, it was preserved in a cask of brandy stored in the hold of HMS Victory for a London burial.

Coronation confusion. When William the Conqueror was crowned at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, 1066, his guard mistook a shout of acclamation for a defiant roar and massacred bystanders.

The Churchill myth. Of Winston Churchill’s most famous 1940 speeches: ‘Blood, toil, tears and Sweat,’ ‘Fight Them on the beaches’, ‘Finest Hour,’ and ‘The Few,’ only one, ‘Finest Hour’ was broadcast on the radio at the time. All of them were delivered to the House of Commons, but only after his ‘Finest Hour’ speech did Churchill record a version later for the BBC. The other speeches he only recorded in 1949.

Keeping it in the family. The first time the Roman imperial crown passed from father to son, with the son being born in the Emperor’s lifetime, was when Commodus succeeded his father Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD. The pair had reigned jointly since 177. This was over 200 years after Augustus had first established the role.

Hitler’s half-nephew’s service in the US Navy. The son of Adolf Hitler’s half-brother, Alois, William Patrick Hitler was born in England in 1911 but moved to Germany in the 1930s. He was something of a problem for the German Führer, and in July 1939 he published an article in Look magazine titled ‘Why I hate my uncle. . .’ He moved to America in 1939. It has been reported that in 1944 he appealed directly to President Roosevelt to join the fight against his uncle and the FBI deemed it sincere. Though he never saw combat, Hitler served until 1947. He changed his name to William Stuart-Houston and died in 1987.

Flatulent flair. The role of a jester in the medieval royal court was to entertain the king. Henry II had a particular fondness for his fool, Roland, who had a special talent for flatulent performance. Each Christmas he performed an act known as ‘One jump and whistle and one fart’. Henry was so delighted with Roland’s farting that he gave him a manor in Suffolk, with 30 acres of land.

Luckiest man in the world? Japanese engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived the atomic bombings in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War Two. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip when the first atomic bomb was dropped on 6 August 1945. Despite being only three kilometres away from the blast, Yamaguchi survived, though was seriously burned and temporarily blinded. The following day, he began the journey back to his hometown of Nagasaki, arriving on 8 August. On 9 August, he was a little over a mile from the epicentre of the second atomic bomb when it dropped on Nagasaki. He survived but was injured again, along with his wife and infant daughter.

An unnatural royal death. Edward II is said to have probably died in captivity, with later, unreliable accounts suggesting he was murdered by having a red-hot poker inserted into his rectum, in September 1327.

Downfall by chicken. Having adopted the identity of John Palmer and posing as a horse trader in Yorkshire, highwayman Dick Turpin instigated his demise by murdering hunting associate John Robinson’s game-cock on 2 October 1738. When Robinson angrily responded, Turpin threatened to also kill him, which brought the incident to the attention of three local justices.

Shortest war. The shortest war in history is the Anglo-Zanzibar War, on 27 August 1896. It started at 9.02 am and ended at 9.40 am. 1 British soldier was injured. It followed the refusal of the Zanzibari Sultan to step down after the British issued an ultimatum. British warships then fired on his position and the Sultan surrendered.

Out with their eyes! Henry, I permitted two of his granddaughters to be blinded and have the tips of their noses cut off after their father blinded the son of another baron. Their mother, Juliane, was so enraged she rebelled against Henry and attempted to kill him with a crossbow. She missed, leapt off her castle tower into the moat and made her escape.

Stalin’s eldest son died in a German concentration camp. Stalin’s son, Yakov Dzhugashvili, was raised by an aunt and didn’t meet his father until he was 14. During the war, Yakov fought as a Russian soldier and was captured by the Nazis. After he was revealed to be Stalin’s son, the Nazis attempted to use Yakov as leverage, but Stalin refused to negotiate, stating: ‘You have in your hands not only my son Yakov but millions of my sons. Either you free them all or my son will share their fate.’ Yakov died at Sachsenhausen concentration camp while attempting to climb the camp’s electric fence.

Slow down! On 28 January 1896, Walter Arnold drove his ‘horseless carriage’ through Paddock Wood, Kent, at a reckless 8mph – four times the 2mph speed limit. He also had no man with a red flag preceding him, as required by law. Arnold was chased down by a police officer on a bicycle, and later fined £4 7s, of which 10 shillings was for speeding – the world’s first recorded speeding ticket.

We can thank Albert Einstein for a lot of our current understanding of the physics of time. Rather than viewing time as a set order, he proved that it’s relative. For example, according to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, there’s an inverse relationship between your speed and the speed of time. The faster you move, the slower time moves. This is why someone blasting through space will age slower than the people still hanging out on Earth: Astronaut Scott Kelly was born several minutes after his twin brother, Mark, but after Scott spent 340 days living on the International Space Station, he returned to Earth around an extra 5 milliseconds younger than his “big” brother. Had Scott been travelling at a speed close to the speed of light, that age difference would have become much more pronounced.

After an engineer named Sandford Fleming missed a train in 1876, he set out to change the way time worked. Fleming originally proposed a concept he called “Cosmic Time,” in which the world would run off an imaginary clock located at the planet’s centre, essentially a line from the centre of the planet to the sun. He then suggested splitting the world into 24 time zones labelled with a letter of the alphabet, with each zone spanning 15 degrees of longitude. His original plan to create a standard “Cosmic Time” was rejected, but it did lay the groundwork for a similar standardisation, so-called Universal Time. Nations present at the 1884 International Meridian Conference laid the groundwork for dividing the world into 24 time zones, with the Prime Meridian, also known as Longitude 0°, running through Greenwich, England.

Even with the advent of standardised time, people still struggled to keep their clocks in sync. One London family used this to their advantage and made a living by selling people the time. An astronomer named John Belville would set his pocket watch to the time at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. He would then travel around the city and visit his network of subscribers, who paid to set their clocks by Belville’s pocket watch. After Belville died in 1856, his wife, and then later their daughter Ruth, carried on the tradition. Ruth continued to sell the time until World War II. By then she was in her eighties, and a couple of factors led to her timely retirement: Improved technology had made her role less important, and the war was making treks around London too dangerous.

Though a lot of people believe daylight saving time was adopted to keep farmers happy, that’s a myth. The first person to seriously advocate for daylight saving time was an entomologist who wanted more sunlit hours to look for insects after work in the summer. He proposed his idea to a scientific society in New Zealand in 1895.

Linux very nearly wasn’t called Linux! Linus wanted to call his “hobby” project “FreaX” (a combination of “free”, “freak” and “Unix”). Thankfully, he was persuaded otherwise by the owner of the server hosting his early code, who happened to prefer the name “Linux” (a combination of “Linus” and “Unix”).

Early Linux development took place on the MINIX operating system, leading Linus to adopt a file system layout similar to Minix for his fledgling project. It didn’t last; proving inefficient, Linus later replaced it with the ‘Extended file system’, better known as ext, versions of which are still in use today.

Linus was born in Finland, a bilingual country, and considers Swedish to be his “mother tongue”. He says he’s often “uncomfortable” speaking in English because of pronunciation differences but prefers to read English books.

Linux is the most famous example of open source software but did you know that it wasn’t always that way? Early versions of Linux were distributed with a license forbidding commercial use or redistribution. It was version 0.12, released in 1992, that saw Linus adopt the GPL, making his code freely available to all.

Linus Torvalds wanted to name the project Freax (a combination of free and Unix) but his colleague had created an FTP server named Linux (a combination of Linus and Unix) for the project already. So, the project continued to be called Linux.

Linus Never Intended to Make Money Out of Linux: As a strong advocate for open-source software, Linux never intended to commercialize Linux. In fact, as a hobby project, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, never envisioned making a profit from his groundbreaking operating system. When he started working on Linux in 1991, his primary motivation was to develop a free and open-source alternative to proprietary Unix systems. Torvalds released Linux under the GNU General Public License, ensuring that it would always remain open for anyone to use, modify, and distribute freely. This commitment to openness and collaboration led to rapid growth and popularity over the years to become one of the most essential operating systems in the IT world.

An Asteroid Named in Honor of Linus Torvalds: Linus Torvalds, the renowned creator of the Linux kernel, received a unique and celestial honour when an asteroid was named after him. This astronomical recognition symbolizes his significant contributions to the world of open-source software and technology. The asteroid named “9793 Torvalds” serves as a testament to Torvalds’ enduring impact on the tech industry and the global community of Linux enthusiasts, solidifying his legacy not only on Earth but also among the stars.

Headline Puzzle: The Headline Puzzle is a monthly feature started in 1964 by Paul Derthick to keep his mind sharp outside of cryptanalytic work. It involves solving monoalphabetic substitutions from recent newspaper headlines.

Winchester was the first capital of England: We’re beginning this collection of interesting facts about England by uncovering some insights into the country’s history. It’s a well-known fact that the bustling city of London is the country’s capital, however, it hasn’t always had this status! Over 1,150 years ago, in 871, the Hampshire city of Winchester was the country’s capital. This came to be when King Alfred began his reign as King of Wessex and chose the city to be his capital. During the 10th century, all seven of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, including Wessex, merged to become England. This led to London becoming the capital and the new base for the government, thanks to its fantastic trading opportunities.

A handful of world-renowned scientists were born in England: Another intriguing fact about England is that it’s been the birthplace of several iconic scientists! Sir Isaac Newton, a household name, was born in Lincolnshire in 1643 and went on to write the laws of motion, gravity and the theory of colour. More recently, Stephen Hawking was born in 1942 in Cambridgeshire. The professor is best known for his theory of exploding black holes which has revolutionised the field of astronomy. These English scientists’ findings are still very relevant for science to this day, with their works being used frequently in education and the industry.

Sparkling wine was invented in England: It’s widely thought that Dom Perignon, a French monk, invented sparkling wine in the form of champagne in 1697. The BBC states that this isn’t entirely true and that an English scientist discovered and documented how to add fizz to sparkling wine 30 years prior. The scientist in question was Christopher Merrett, who lived in the Cotswolds. If you ever happen to be in the area, you can head to the village of Winchcombe and uncover a plaque dedicated to Merrett and his wine documentation on Mill Lane. Additionally, in the 17th century Sir Kenelm Digby, an English diplomat, was known to make the most ‘superior’ wine bottles of the time, with millions of his sturdy bottles being shipped throughout Europe each year.

The infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper was active in London in the year 1888. Strangely enough, he never got caught and his identity remains a mystery to the world.

USA was declared free from foreign rule on July 2nd, however, it was on the 4th of July when John Hancock gave his first signature on the declaration.

George Washington was not the first President to reside in the White House, instead, it was John Adams and his wife Abigail.

The term “check” or “cheque” is derived from the game of chess. Putting the king in check means his choices are limited, just like a modern-day cheque that limits opportunities for forgery and alteration.

The first ATM to ever exist was at Barclays Bank in London, in 1967. It was invented by John Shepherd-Barron while bathing in his tub, or so he claimed. Guess what else? That ATM didn’t charge a fee…

There is no exact historical data, but many experts are inclined to believe that the word “money” comes from the Turkic designation of coins “tenge”. The “penny” got its name during the time of Ivan the Terrible, when they issued money with the image of a horseman with a spear in his hand.

Justin Bieber is one of the first YouTube success stories. He posted covers on YouTube that were discovered by Usher, which paved the road to his astounding level of fame.

Scroll to Top