Pullasorsa's Interesting Facts #2
First published: Tuesday November 2nd, 2021
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1. The flag of Denmark is credited for being the oldest continuously used national flag, with its history dating back to the 13th century. [1]
2. India has the world's longest constitution: 146,385 words long. [1]
3. If you're somehow born in Palmyra Atoll, a U.S. incorporated territory with no permanent population, you will automatically become a U.S. citizen. At the same time, if you're born in American Samoa, you will not. [1][2]
4. Speaking of U.S. territories, the tiny Kingman Reef in the Pacific Ocean is treated a county-equivalent by the U.S. Census Bureau, making it the smallest county or county-equivalent in the United States. [1]
5. Gunung Padang is a large archeological site in Java, Indonesia. Controversial radiocarbon dating showed that the construction for the site apparently started as far back as in 20.000 B.C, pre-dating human settlement of the Americas. Other estimates suggest that the site was built as late as in the 6th century. [1]
6. Sir William Grove was an amateur scientist who developed an early version of the electric light in 1840, seven years before Thomas Edison was even born. [1]
7. The claim of Napoleon's army cutting off the nose from the Great Sphinx of Giza is a myth. It was apparently cut off intentionally between the 3rd and 10th centuries. [1]
8. The theory about plate tectonics wasn't accepted by the scientific community until the 1960s. [1]
9. Since the introduction of the Oscar for Best Animated Feature category, DreamWorks has released 37 movies with two of them winning the award, a rate of 5,4%. Meanwhile, Pixar has a rate of 52,4%. [1][2]
10. In a 2018 Quinnipac poll in which Americans voted for the best and the worst U.S. presidents since WWII, Barack Obama ranked second on both best and worst categories. [1]
11. There is territory of the United Arab Emirates inside of Oman inside of the United Arab Emirates. [1]
12. Actor Sir Christopher Lee volunteered to fight in the Winter War. He encountered several problems, one of them being not knowing how to ski, and he left Finland after just two weeks. [1]
13. The islands of the U.S Virgin Islands have been controlled by the Brits, Danes, Knights Hospitaller, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Prussian people. (and Americans, of course). [1]
14. There are countless theories of different civilizations having pre-Columbian contact to the Americas. These include the Japanese, ancient Romans and even Phoenicians. While a fascinating topic, most of it is pseudohistory and theories not supported by professionals. [1]
15. However, genetic studies have proved that Polynesian people visited the Americas before Columbus. [1]
16. William Wirt, a U.S. presidential candidate for the Anti-Masonic Party in 1832, was a Freemason himself. [1]
17. Worlds Chat is a very obscure online game developed in 1995. Even though very little people play the game, it's still up. The apparent reason for this is that the developer filed a patent named "System and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space" and sues game companies that "violate" this patent. [1][2]
18. Mount Athos is a Greek peninsula which is a subdivision under theocratic rule. The area has 20 monasteries, rich history, and nearly 2,000 citizens who live an ascetic life in isolation. [1]
19. YouTube was initially intended to be a dating site. This could be even more obscure than the fact that JetPunk used to be a travelling site (but you knew that one already). [1][2]
20. The TV show Mythbusters once tested a myth about creating an explosive made of commonly-found items. To the team's surprise, not only did the myth turn out to be true, the resulting explosion was so powerful that the experiment was never released and the footage was destroyed for safety reasons. [1]
21. Ballooning was a sport at the 1900 Summer Olympics. [1]
22. There is a sizeable amount of coral reefs in Norway - some as far north as in Finnmark. [1][2]
23. Operation Cherry Blossoms Night was a planned, but never executed, military operation by Japan during the final months of WWII. It involved using airplanes to spread plague to California. [1]
24. Kazakhstan was the last republic to leave the Soviet Union and declare independence, This means that Kazakhstan was the Soviet Union for a brief period of time (4 days, to be exact). [1]
25. Former U.S. president Zachary Taylor's death was reportedly caused by consumption of raw cherries and iced milk. [1]
26. Ulysses S. Grant has a legacy of being a heavy drinker and an alcoholic. This claim, however, is not very well-supported by historians. [1]
27. The name of the city of Uusikaupunki, one of the oldest cities in Finland, translates to "New town". [1]
28. Some roadhouses along the Eyre highway, Australia, have their own unique time zone - UTC+8.45. Only around 200 people live in this zone. [1]
29. Nunavut wasn't its own territory until 1999. [1]
30. The official name of Brunei is "Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace". [1]
31. Operation Carthage in 1945 was an air raid in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen, Denmark, by the British air force. The intention was to destroy the city's Gestapo headquarters, but they also mistakenly targeted a nearby school. 125 civilians died, including 86 children. [1]
32. United States vs. approximately 64,695 pounds of shark fins is a very real U.S court case that happened in 2008. [1]
33. The most abundant mineral on Earth is bridgmanite, or silicate perovskite. It exists deep inside Earth and can only be found on the surface in craters left by meteor strikes. [1]
34. Having a great national football team doesn't necessarily mean the nation will have great football clubs. For example, Belgium and France have the highest FIFA World Rankings out of every European nation, but clubs from those countries have just two European club competition championship wins between them. [1][2]
35. Some acids have a pH level as low as -3.6. [1]
36. China and Afghanistan, neighboring countries, have time zones that are 3,5 hours apart. [1]
37. The Bulgarian communist Fatherland Front party lost 398, or 99,5% of its seats between the 1986 and 1990 elections. [1]
38. We might soon have a new country. The French overseas collectivity of New Caledonia is set to hold an independence referendum in December 2021. Last time this happened in 2020, 46,7% of the population voted in favor. [1]
39. It is illegal to film the Eiffel Tower at night. Even though the tower itself has been in the public domain since 1993, the lights on the tower are copyrighted. [1]
40. The name of the symbol depicting infinity (∞) is called "lemniscate". [1]
41. Some enclaves in Tibet were once controlled by Bhutan. They were monasteries granted by the state of Ladakh in the 19th century and were seized by China in 1959. [1]
42. Mussolini wasn't an avid fan of Hitler's Mein Kampf. He called it "a boring tome that I have never been able to read" and describing its ideologies as "simplistic and coarse". [1][2]
43. Almost every Mongolic language is distributed around Mongolia, but there are some interesting exceptions. Kalmyk is a Mongolic language spoken in distant Caucasus by around 80 thousand people. Moghol is a possibly extinct language spoken in Herat, Afghanistan. [1][2]
44. Boltzmann brain is a concept of a fully developed brain that spontaneously forms in a void. Physicist Ludwig Boltzmann suggested that a brain forming like that would be more likely than the Universe being born as a result of a random fluctuation. [1]
45. An offspring of a cow and a buffalo is called "beefalo". [1]
46. Hawaiian pizza was created in Canada by a person who was born in Greece. [1]
47. According to a legend, the ancient Greek author Aeschylus died when a bird dropped a tortoise on his head. [1]
48. There was a scandal in Finland in the 1960s about "cat margarine". A news company claimed that margarine companies used dead animals, most famously cats, to get grease. This was revealed to be true to a certain extent, and margarine sales in Finland collapsed for years. [1] Finnish source
49. Kosovo once used German currency. The Deutsche Mark was widely used between 1999-2002. [1]
50. And finally, the name of the wizard in the Disney classic "Sorcerer's apprentice" is Yen Sid, which is "Disney" backwards. [1]
17: Since the game is so weird and eerie, some theories of cult activities taking place in the servers exist. Watch this Nexpo's video if you're interested.
27: I feel like I should emphasize this: Uusikaupunki is the 11th oldest city in Finland, but was founded "only" in 1617. It's still old, not as old the fact makes it seem.
42: Hitler and Mussolini weren't really that big fans of each other, especially as WWII went on. They had some conflicting ideologies and didn't respect each other as much as some would think.
As I said, this is a sequel to my previous blog, something that I kinda mentioned I would do. I hope you enjoy this one as much as you liked #1!
nommed!