Random factoids you can't help but remember

[Esternial]

Heya folks.

Usually I tend to recall random things. Utterly pointless things beyond perhaps an interesting conversation topic. I'm entirely convinced you lot also have plenty of seemingly useless knowledge sitting up there in your noggin', so I figured we might as well share it with eachother to step away from all this boring NSG debating and give ourselves the feeling like our mental storage space is being used properly.

Perhaps this may also be a good time to discuss those factoids? Maybe they're interesting, but just wrong? Might as well get other folks' input to get your facts straight.

To hit it off: I'll always remember the origin story of Fanta. It was invented in Nazi Germany when they couldn't get their hands on Coca Cola.

[Slotted Floppies]

Pepsi once had the worlds third largest navy.

[Shofercia]

Coca Cola was made with cocaine.

[Erythrean Thebes]

The Soviet Union was interested in whether apes could reproduce with humans but was afraid to push their experimentation too far.

[Bear Stearns]

John F. Kennedy was commonly drugged out of his mind on painkillers.

[Des-Bal]

The plastic tips at the end of shoe laces are called "aglets." Their true purpose is sinister.

[The Blaatschapen]

Alpacas are smaller than llamas.

[Heloin]

Alpacas are smaller than llamas.

Wait, they're different things? I always thought it was like a sheep/lamb/ram situation

[Depackya]

Back before dentures were invented, people collected the teeth from the corpses of killed soldiers. The teeth would then be used as replacements in place of wood, glass, or other fragile teeth.

I honestly have no clue why the hell I remember that.

[Woods Is Back]

Lego started out making handcrafted wooden toys

[Petrolheadia]

The average millionaire becomes one at nearly 59 years old, and has a less than 1/6 chance of doing so through inheritance.

Drummer Keith Moon died as a result of a massive overdose of Heminevrin - he was supposed to take one pill at a time, but took 32, with only 6 dissolving in his organism. He also did it at the age of 32.
He was also the person who told Jimmy Page that his project was gonna "crash like a lead balloon", which Page made into Led Zeppelin.

One Japanese company wanted to emit 4,000 stocks at 610k yen each. However, due to a typo, they emitted 610k stocks at 1 yen each.

The CEO of Rootes Group told Ivan Hirst, the founder of the Volkswagen company, that he was "a bloody fool" for restarting Beetle production after WWI.

The band Lynyrd Skynyrd is named after Leonard Skinner, the principal of the founders' school.

The actual successor to the old Top Gear show is not the new one, but Fifth Gear, as it absorbed most of the old crew.

When Road & Track compared the 1974 Mercedes 450SEL and Oldsmobile Cutlass Salon, they found out that the Benz wasn't worth the money when compared with the somewhat pedestrian Olds.

Coming back to Keith Moon, he was estimated by The Who to have caused £300,000 of damage with his notoriously destructive behaviour. That is over £3 million when adjusted for inflation.

[The Blaatschapen]

Alpacas are smaller than llamas.

Wait, they're different things? I always thought it was like a sheep/lamb/ram situation

They are two different, but related, species. More like donkey and horse.

[Woods Is Back]

Nutella was invented in WW2, when hazelnuts were mixed in with chocolate to extend its lifetime

And people think they're history buffs.

[Heloin]

Wait, they're different things? I always thought it was like a sheep/lamb/ram situation

They are two different, but related, species. More like donkey and horse.

You learn something new every day

[Strenida]

The most purple national flag is the flag of Dominica. It has a small purple bird right in the centre.

[The Fascist Waffle Empire]

Croissants are believed to have been invented in Vienna, 1683. After the siege of Vienna, to commemorate their triumph against ottoman forces. Hence the cresent shape.

[Heloin]

Simón Bolívar is the only person to have more then one country currently named after him. Bolivia and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

[The Blaatschapen]

The Belgian king is called 'king of the Belgians' rather than King of Belgium.

[La Paz de Los Ricos]

The most purple national flag is the flag of Dominica. It has a small purple bird right in the centre.

Purple really is an underused color. Now that purple dye is much easier to acquire, I'd like to see a real-life state that gives their national flag an indigo/violet spin. The Spanish Republican flag did it right, so why can't anyone else?

Also, I guess to contribute a factoid, since Pluto's discovery in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, the dwarf planet has yet to complete one full orbit around the sun, and will not do so until around the year 2178.

(I remembered the "Pluto has not completed a full orbit" part, but I had to calculate the year it would complete the orbit.)

[Pilipinas and Malaya]

Someone in the US Army Radio Station, intercepted a message which said to bring Tootsie Rolls (codeword for ammo), the shipment was delivered and it had actual Tootsie Rolls instead of ammo. Surprisingly, the rolls helped that division to get through the winter, helping with food and repairing tanks.

[Umpus]

coca cola was banned in the soviet union,and when a soviet general wanted some,clear soda was invented,then smuggled to him.

[United States of Wonderland]

More Chinese Speak english than Americans

[Major-Tom]

Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

[Quaeg]

Flamingos have no natural predator (citation needed)

[The Rich Port]

Puerto Rican separatists were at one time the most prolific anti-American terrorist groups pre-9/11, having tried to assassinate Teddy Roosevelt, attempting a coup in the 1950's, and performing several armored car robberies in the 80's and 90's, before the Osama bin Laden of Puerto Rico, Filiberto Ojeda Rios, was finally gunned down by the FBI in the 2000's after 9/11.

Really pisses me off that the Wahhabis rip us off without shame.