Interesting Facts by JetPunk Users

1 - Close Call

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Soviet sub, B-59, had lost radio contact with Moscow for several days. Believing nuclear war had broken out on the surface, Captain Valentin Grigoryevich Savitsky wanted to launch the nuclear missile. The launch required the unanimous decision of the three highest-ranking officers onboard, including Captain Savitsky and detachment commander Vasily Arkhipov. At the last minute, Arkhipov opposed the launch, and thus the missile was not fired.

—unimp0rtant

2 - Garfield Was Actually Cool

U.S. President James Garfield was ambidextrous and could write in Greek in one hand and in Latin with the other.

—DawnX

3 - Churchill the Sci-Fi Writer

In 1942, Winston Churchill wrote an 11 page essay about the possibility of alien life, entitled, "Are There Men on the Moon?"

—Fianchetto

4 - The Queen of Exclaves

With 55 exclaves, Argentina has more exclaves than any other country.

—ooftownroad

5 - GOOOOOOOOOOOAL!

San Marino, the lowest-ranked country in international football, once held the record for the fastest goal in both the World Cup and its qualifiers. Davide Gualtieri, now a computer salesman, scored that goal in 8.3 seconds during the 1994 World Cup qualifiers against England. That record stood for a staggering 23 years, 3 months, and 29 days before being beaten by Christian Benteke in 2017.

—SlimeBlobFLYING

6 - Mongolia Population Statistic

Inner Mongolia’s 2 biggest cities have a combined population greater than all of normal Mongolia.

—ooftownroad

7 - Alcoholism to the Extreme

In the Dublin Whiskey Fire of 1875, 13 deaths were recorded. None of them were from the fire, but all thirteen were from alcohol poisoning. People drank from undiluted whiskey running through the streets that in some places was 6 inches deep.

—Fianchetto

8 - I'm Just Playing Devil's Advocate...

The Devil's Advocate used to be a real position within the Catholic Church. They would argue against the canonization of saints in order to uncover their flaws.

—FreeStater

9 - Built Like a Truck, Drives Like a Supercar

The Tesla Cybertruck can outpace a Porsche 911—while towing another Porsche!

—McKenzieFam

10 - American Airlines Flight 587

Almost exactly two months after 9/11, another major airplane crash occurred in New York City. On the morning of November 12, 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 took off from JFK in the wake of Japan Airlines (JAL) Flight 47. Turbulence caused by the wake of the JAL and erroneous pilot maneuvers led to the failure of several critical pieces of the airplane, some of which fell on the ground, causing damage to houses, a gas station, and a boat. The plane pitched downward, its engines fell off, and it slammed into a neighborhood in Queens at Newport Avenue and Beach 131st Street. Several houses were destroyed or damaged. Fears of another terrorist attack involving an airplane spread quickly, leading to the evacuation of the Empire State Building and several other areas of New York City. All 260 onboard AA587 were killed, as well as 5 bystanders on the ground. The crash remains the second-deadliest in U.S. aviation history.

—unimp0rtant

11 - Gotta Count ‘Em All!

The first known population census was taken in 3800 BCE, nearly 6000 years ago.

—DawnX

12 - The Abominable Cooler

In 2021, a storm caused a bunch of shipping containers carrying new YETI-brand coolers to spill off a ship off the coast of Vancouver Island. A year later, hundreds of those coolers began washing up on Alaskan shores.

—unimp0rtant

13 - Vaticonfusion

People born in Vatican City, even to parents who are citizens of Vatican City, are not legal citizens of Vatican City. The only way to become a citizen of Vatican City is for the king to appoint you as one, and he only does that for people who work for the Pope, who is also the king.

—unimp0rtant

14 - Switched Targets

The original target for the second U.S. atomic strike on Japan was Kokura, not Nagasaki. High cloud cover on the day of the bombing would render the strike impossible, and so they bombed Nagasaki instead.

—unimp0rtant

15 - តើយើងរស់នៅបានយូរប៉ុណ្ណា ("How long do we live?" in Khmer)

During the Cambodian Genocide, the life expectancy of the country fell to just 12.

—eppek (source provided by Fianchetto)

16 - I ♡ NYA

The original name for Seattle was New York, eventually changed to New York Alki.

—ooftownroad

17 - USAir Flight 427

On Thursday, September 8, 1994, almost the exact same thing as AA587 occurred in a suburb of Pittsburgh. USAir Flight 427 from Chicago to Palm Beach, FL, a Boeing 737-3B7 carrying 132 people, hit the wake turbulence of Delta 1083 and crashed, killing everyone onboard. What followed was the longest investigation in the history of the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB found that after hitting the wake turbulence, the plane's rudder malfunctioned, causing the pilots to lose control and enter an aerodynamic stall and crash. It turns out that multiple accidents have been caused by wake turbulence throughout aviation history, which begs the question: why have planes been allowed to fly this way for so long?

—unimp0rtant

18 - Amtrak Ain't Never Seen Nothing Like This

Mauritania's entire railway is a single line that connects the center of their mining industry to the port city of Nouadhibou. Despite this, they have the heaviest and longest trains in the world, some up to 3 kilometers in length.

—Fianchetto

19 - Nuclear Chocolate Bombs

The Baby Ruth candy bar once had a promotion in 1920s hiring pilots to fly planes with "bombardiers" dropping their candy bars to promote their brand. In 1927, a promotion was carried out in Florida with a pilot and a "bombardier." The bombardier was a 12-year old boy who fell in love with flying that day. The boy's name was Paul Tibbets. He would eventually fly the plane that dropped the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.

—CambodianQuizzer

20 - Nigeria Population Statistic

Nigeria, a country a tenth the size of the United States, is projected to surpass them in population by around the year 2050.

—SlimeBlobFLYING

21 - Missile Mail

On July 8th, 1959, through an unusual collaboration between the US Navy and the Post Office Department (a sort of precursor of USPS), a new form of postal delivery was invented. Known as "Missile Mail" or "Rocket Mail", this system was invented when, after having been designated as a special Post Office, the Navy submarine Barbero fired a cruise missile containing 3,000 letters toward naval station Mayport from its location about a hundred miles off the coast of Florida. It reached Mayport in about twenty-two minutes (even though most of it was going to Washington D.C. so it was really going the wrong direction). This doesn't sound sound like much now, but it was a revolutionary speed in the pre-internet era. Sadly, missile mail never really took off (no pun intended).

—McKenzieFam