100 Mind-Blowing Started Facts

The lead singer of The Offspring started attending school to achieve a doctorate in molecular biology while still in the band. He graduated in May 2017.

Elvis was originally blonde. He started colouring his hair black for an edgier look. Sometimes, he would touch it up himself using shoe polish.

There is a village in Russia called Tsovkra where every resident can tightrope walk. It is a tradition that dates back over 100 years, but no one knows how it started.

In Japan, Domino’s started testing pizza delivery via reindeer in 2016.

When Jorge Garcia first got the part on LOST as Hurley, he lost a total of 30 pounds in weight before filming started.

The manager of Guinness started the Guinness Book of World Records when he got annoyed that he couldn’t find out what the fastest game bird was ever recorded.

The hand and footprints in front of the Chinese Theater tradition started accidentally when silent film actress Norma Talmadge stepped on wet cement.

Both Motel 6 and Super 8 got their names from the original prices of the rooms. Motel 6 started at $6 in 1962, and Super 8 at $8.88 in 1974.

The first jet aircraft was invented in Nazi Germany. Development started in 1936, but the first takeoff occurred in 1939.

When tea started being sold in bags, originally, it was intended to be removed from the bags by customers, but they found it easier to brew the tea still in the bag.

When Nike first started, it was called Blue Ribbon Sports. The name was changed in 1971.

In 1325, two Italian city-states fought over a bucket, which resulted in 2,000 deaths. It started when two soldiers stole a bucket from a well in the city centre.

Chainsaws were first invented for childbirth. It was developed in Scotland in the late 18th Century to help aid and speed up the process of symphysiotomy (widening the pubic cartilage) and removal of disease-laden bone during childbirth. It wasn’t until the start of the 20th Century that we started using chainsaws for woodchopping.

National Puzzle Day, which takes place on January 29, was started by puzzle enthusiast Jodi Jill over 25 years ago. In 2023, over seven million people around the world shared their love of puzzles online.

The current American flag was designed by a high school student. It started as a school project for Bob Heft’s junior-year history class in 1958, and it only earned a B-minus. His design had 50 stars, even though Alaska and Hawaii weren’t states yet; Heft figured the two would earn statehood soon and showed the government his design. After President Dwight D. Eisenhower called to say the design was approved, Heft’s teacher changed his grade to an A.

The word “fizzle” started as a type of fart. In the 1400s, it meant to “break wind quietly,” according to the English Oxford Living Dictionaries.

Europeans were scared of eating tomatoes when they were introduced. Scholars think Hernán Cortés brought the seeds in 1519 with the intent of the fruits being used ornamentally in gardens. By the 1700s, aristocrats started eating tomatoes, but they were convinced the fruits were poisonous because people would die after eating them. In reality, the acidity from the tomatoes brought out the lead in their pewter plates, and they died of lead poisoning.

An employee at Pixar accidentally deleted a sequence of Toy Story 2 during production. Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar, wrote in his book, Creativity Inc., that the year before the movie came out, someone entered the command ‘/bin/rm -r -f *’ on the drive where the files were saved, and scenes started deleting. It would have taken a year to recreate what was deleted, but luckily another employee had a backup of the entire film on her laptop at home.

Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne started Apple Inc. on April Fools’ Day. The three technology innovators signed the documents to form the Apple Computer Company on April 1, 1976. However, the company was not fully incorporated until January 3, 1977. Thirty years later, the company was renamed Apple Inc. and is no joke. In 2018, Apple became the country’s first trillion-dollar company. Of course, computers have come a long way over the years—here’s what computers looked like the decade you were born.

The Spice Girls were originally a band called Touch. “When we first started [with the name Touch], we were pretty bland,” Mel C told The Guardian in 2018. “We felt like we had to fit into a mould.”

Lobsters used to be considered the cockroach of the ocean. It may be found in the most luxurious menus now, but lobster was once eaten regularly by the homeless, slaves and prisoners. However, lobster started to be seen as a delicacy after World War II.

A seaman once set a ship on fire to get out of work early. One of the “don’t-try-this-at-home” fun facts: A civil employee once started a fire that ravaged the nuclear submarine USS Miami which was docked at a Naval Shipyard. Though the cause of the fire was unclear at first, civilian employee Casey J. Fury soon admitted to starting the fire for an early dismissal from work. Fury was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $400 million in damages.

A laughing epidemic made 14 schools close in East Africa. In 1962, a laughter epidemic broke out in Tanganyika (now known as Tanzania). It started with three young girls and the uncontrollable laughter spread to neighboring villages. Symptoms included crying, fainting, rashes, and pain. All in all, it made 14 schools close.

American Airlines saved money by getting rid of olives from their meals. About three decades ago the airline started looking into ways how to save money. They started by removing a single olive on their first-class meals which led to an annual savings of $40,000 during the 1980s.

Space travel makes mice run in circles. NASA once sent 20 rodents to the International Space Station to see how the effects of space affected mice. Not long after they got there, the mice all started running in loops inside their cages. No one is exactly sure why this occurred, but researchers stated that the critters might’ve just been enjoying their time in space.

The 1996 film called Scream increased the usage of caller IDs in the U.S. The movie featured a serial killer who would anonymously call and murder his victims. After the film started showing in cinemas, the number of caller ID users tripled instantly in the U.S.

The name ‘Adidas’ comes from Adolf (Adi) Dassler (Das). Building off of a shoe business that he started with his brother, Adolf “Adi” Dassler established his own company upon their separation in 1949. The founder named his brand Adidas as a contraction of his name. More interesting facts about shoes? Adi’s brother, Rudolf Dassler was the founder of Puma.

Cheddar cheese is not orange. Originally, the colour of cheese changes with the seasons because of the cow’s diet. During the summer or spring, the beta-carotene in grass makes cows produce yellow cheese. On the other hand, fall and winter cause them to eat hay instead, producing whiter cheese. With that, farmers started dying the cheese since people preferred yellow ones.

The longest hiccups lasted nearly 69 years. When Charles Osborne started hiccupping in 1922, he didn’t stop until 1990. Charles Osborne hiccupped non-stop for 68 years. He wasn’t even doing anything to trigger his decades-long hiccup – it just started while he was weighing a hog before slaughter. Initially, he hiccupped 40 times a minute. However, in his later years, it slowed to 20 hiccups per minute. After his long hiccupping episode, he managed to live a hiccup-less life for only a year until he died in 1991. One of the more unfortunate WTF facts.

LEGO has an underground vault with all the LEGO sets ever made. Yup, you read that right. One of the fun but still WTF facts: LEGO has an underground bunker that holds all the LEGO sets made since the company started in the mid-90s. The Memory Lane vault contains 4,720 sets.

Häagen-Dazs doesn’t mean anything. When Häagen-Dazs was started in 1961, it was named for “old-world craftsmanship.” the resulting name of Häagen-Dazs was a combination of Danish and Hungarian language that does not translate to anything.

A laughing epidemic made 14 schools close down in Tanzania. In 1962, a laughing epidemic broke out in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). What initially started with a few school girls turned into almost a year-long mass hysteria across villages. Symptoms of the laughing epidemic included crying, fainting, rashes, and pain. Towards the end of the epidemic, 14 schools had already closed.

Madame Tussaud used real heads for her first wax creations. Madame Anna Maria Tussaud started her waxing during the French Revolution. She would grab heads from the guillotine pile, look for the most interesting faces, and create wax masks with their faces for the revolution.

Toy Story 2 was almost deleted. A year before Toy Story 2 was released, someone entered the command, ‘/bin/rm -r -f *’ on the drive which started deleting the files for the movie. Thankfully, an employee had the entire film backed up on her laptop. If not, the deleted material would have taken a year to recreate.

After Ratatouille, more people started buying pet rats. At least one pet chain claimed that pet rat sales jumped 50 per cent after the movie’s release.

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.

The oldest stripper started at 60 years old. Age is just a number, and Bernie Barker proved it to a tee. The former real estate agent) got into stripping in 2000 when he was 60. To him, stripping was a way to get in shape after beating prostate cancer. Throughout his career, he won over 40 contests. Unfortunately, he died at the age of 66 in 2007.

A coin toss isn’t 50-50. The next time you’re trying to decide something, a coin toss may not be the best idea. Typically, the chances for a coin toss are 51-49, not 50-50. If you flip a coin, there is a 51% chance it will land on the side that it started on.

Walt Disney started sketching regularly when he was just four years old.

Tropical storms and hurricanes started getting “named” in 1953.

If you started with $0.01 and doubled your money every day, it would take 27 days to become a millionaire.

Play-Doh started as a wallpaper cleaner before the head of the struggling company realized the non-toxic material made a good modelling clay for children and rebranded it.

People started wearing pyjamas, originally spelt “pyjamas,” instead of nightgowns so they’d be prepared to run outside in public during World War I air raids in England.

These Billion-Dollar IT Companies Started In A Garage. The tech industry is unique compared to other industries. Some of the largest names in tech originated in founders’ garages. In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen worked from their garage space to launch Microsoft. Google began as a side project of Larry Page and Sergey Brin in a garage they rented in 1998. Other companies like Apple, Amazon, and countless others began in garages as well. Perhaps there’s something about garages that spark creativity or productivity. Either way, the tech industry’s giants often come from humble beginnings. Now they’re worth billions of dollars each and counting.

This man threw a hard drive loaded with 7500 bitcoins into the trash. James Howells mined 7,500 Bitcoins in 2009 and stored them on a hard drive. At that point, Bitcoin’s value amounted to almost nothing. The cryptocurrency slowly started to grow in value after a few years, and Howells thought he owned a small fortune. Only then did he realize he accidentally threw away the hard drive sometime in 2013? Howells lives in Wales and contacted the Newport City Council to excavate the local landfill. He offered the City Council over $70 million if the hard drive was recovered. Based on today’s rate, the hard drive is worth more than $375 million. The City council baulked at the offer due to environmental regulations and the required cost.

Computer Security Day is celebrated on November 30th. It was started in 1988 to help raise awareness of computer-related security issues. To celebrate Computer Security Day is easy and important – check your privacy settings on Facebook, and change your passwords to something stronger. You can also read the latest technology facts and make sure your data stored on your phone or in the cloud is secure.

Most of today’s successful companies started in garages. That’s right, aside from just Apple, other huge name companies started with humble beginnings. HP, Google, and Microsoft all were started in a garage.

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).

The Boston Marathon didn’t allow female runners until 1972. The first woman to finish the Boston Marathon, Roberta Gibb, actually ran the race a few years earlier in 1966. She hid in some bushes until the race started to avoid detection and then ran the marathon without any official sanction. Another woman, Katherine Switzer, didn’t declare herself a woman when she competed in 1967 and was allowed to enter the race. When it became apparent that she wasn’t a man, the officials unsuccessfully tried to stop her from competing. It wasn’t until the fall of 1971 when the Amateur Athletics Union allowed women to compete, which made 1972’s marathon the first to officially allow female entrants. Eight women competed in the 1972 Boston Marathon, and all eight completed it, with Nina Kuscsik claiming the first official female victory.

There are twice as many pyramids in Sudan then there are in Egypt. When most people think of pyramids, they instantly think of Egypt, but this couldn’t be more wrong! Sudan has somewhere between 200 to 255 pyramids, while Egypt is home to just 118 to 138 of them. So how did so many pyramids end up down in Sudan? From 3,000 BC, Egypt’s armies were sent south to conquer whoever they found, reaching as far as modern-day Sudan. There they lorded over the locals until the Egyptian empire collapsed in 1,070 BC, but their influence remained for much longer. Less than three hundred years later, the new rulers of this region, the Kush, still believed in the Egyptian Gods and started constructing pyramids en masse.

A Canadian company started selling fresh air in a can as a joke, and then Chinese consumers made it real, paying up to $20 a can.

Graffiti, as it’s known today, started in Philadelphia in the late 1960s. Originally, graffiti was mainly used to make political statements and mark gang territory rather than to provide artistic value.

The first known graffiti artist was Mr. Darryl McCray, a street named Cornbread. In the late 1960s, he and a group of friends started tagging their nicknames on walls around Philadelphia, which instigated the modern graffiti movement.

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.

The first book to be published about Linux was Matt Welsh’s ‘Linux Installation and Getting Started’ back in 1993. The first dedicated magazine, Linux Journal, was published a year later in March 1994. The first issue carried an interview with Linus.

The Linux kernel started using the GPL license from version 0.12. The initial license forbade any commercial usage.

The Bank of America and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China also started using Linux in the early 2000s.

Linux 1.0 launched in 1994, three years after Linus started creating the operating system’s first building blocks.

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.

In 2020 hackers sold over 500,000 Zoom passwords on the dark web (Forbes): Criminals will often take advantage of events happening in the world, the concerns of their targets, and the vulnerability of society to make money. This was particularly evident in 2020 when countless hackers started sending COVID-themed phishing emails to attempt to hack personal and business accounts. Forbes reported in April 2020 that hackers stole and sold over 500,000 passwords for the popular video-conferencing tool, Zoom, which ended up on the dark web. The information included personal user names too.

60% of senior decision-makers still aren’t taking cybersecurity seriously (Keeper Security): A report by Keeper Security found around 60% of decision-makers in small to mid-sized companies place cybersecurity at the bottom of their list for things to invest in. Small businesses with less than 500 employees in particular are most likely to believe they won’t fall victim to a cyber-attack. Two out of three senior SMB leaders say cyber attacks are unlikely. Perhaps more worryingly, around one out of four senior leaders in this report said they have no idea where to get started with their cybersecurity measures.

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.

French was the official language of England for over 300 years: After William the Conqueror of France completed the Norman Conquest of 1066, French became the official language of England. However, the language was mainly spoken by noblemen, whilst lower classes spoke English. French continued to be the official language of England until 1362. Historians believe that the country reverted to being English-speaking due to King John’s loss of the French region of Normandy in 1294. This was encouraged further by the 100-year War against France, which started in 1337. Despite this, French names were popular throughout England, with Richard, Robert and William still being common names to this day!

London has the world’s longest-running show: At St. Martins Theatre in the West End in London, the world’s longest-running show is being played. Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap has been running since 1952, which means that the show has been running for more than 70 years now. The show started as a radio play, called Three Blind Mice, and follows the story of seven strangers snowed in at a home in the countryside.

Cheese rolling is a sport: Yes, you read it correctly, cheese rolling is a sport. It is estimated that the sport started in the 15th century. Once a year, competitors compete in a cheese rolling competition at Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire. During these competitions, participants chase a 3.2-kilogram (7lb) wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down a steep hill. It is certainly a sport at risk, but it is a tradition not to be missed in the region. The winner, the one crossing the finishing line first, wins the wheel of cheese as their prize.

Paper money enabled international trade: Once the shift to paper money had occurred, international trade began to increase. Currency value began to depend on the strength of a particular country’s government or monarchy and before long, currency wars had started.

There’s a Reason US Dollars Are Green: Dollar bills weren’t always green. Colonial money, for example, was tan with black or red ink. It wasn’t until the Civil War the government started using green ink to print paper money that it got the name greenbacks. The colour was selected because the ink didn’t fade or easily decompose, which protected against counterfeiting.

OpenAI released the first version of the Generative Pre-Train Transformer (GPT) artificial intelligence language model in June 2018. OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, was started as a non-profit in 2015 by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, and others, and is backed by Microsoft and led by Sam Altman.

In 2021, 33% of just over a thousand companies started implementing limited AI use cases. – PWC

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