Random fact #21 A sea lion once saved a man.

Attempting to klll himself by jumping of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, a man named Kevin Hines survived but broke his back. While it seemed he would be not long for this world, a sea lion came to the rescue, swimming beneath him and keeping him afloat until the coast guard arrived.

Random fact #20 There may be treasure in Virginia.

A set of coded texts known as the Beale Ciphers (as they were originally acquired by a prospector named Thomas Jefferson Beale in the early 1800s) are said to reveal the location of a massive treasure: approximately $43 million in gold, silver, and jewels. Of the three texts, one has been cracked, revealing that the treasure is in Bedford County, Virginia. Where exactly it is within that county remains unknown.

Random fact #19 The world's most successful pirate was a woman.

The 19th century Chinese pirate Ching Shih, a former prostitute and widow of fearsome pirate Cheng I, became a hugely successful pirate in her own right, succeeding her husband and eventually commanding more than 1,800 pirate ships and 80,000 men (the secrets she'd learned about her powerful clients at the brothel also came in handy).

Random fact #18 South Koreans are 4cm taller than North Koreans.

A researcher from Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul has found that North Koreans on average are four centimeters shorter than those in South Korea, pointing to malnourishment, economic stagnation, and lack of immigration as reasons for the stunted stature.

Random fact #17 A hiker found and returned an ancient wallet.

Halfway up a glacier in the Andes, hiker Ricardo Peña found a wallet. It turned out it belonged to a Uruguayan rugby player who had been in a 1972 crash of flight 571 in which all but 16 passengers died. As it turned out, the wallet belonged to one of the survivors. Peña tracked him down and returned the wallet, more than three decades after its loss.

 Random fact #16 Queen Elizabeth wouldn't sit on the Iron Throne.

When Queen Elizabeth paid a royal visit to the set of Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland, she refused to sit on the Iron Throne for legal reasons. As David Benioff told Esquire, "Apparently the Queen of England is not allowed to sit on a foreign throne…This is an esoteric rule we didn't know about until that moment."

Random fact #15 Bottled water expiration dates are for the bottle, not the water.

After a while, the plastic will start leaching into the liquid.

Random fact #14 A U.S. Park Ranger once got hit by lightning seven times.

That would be Roy Cleveland Sullivan, a park ranger at the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, who between 1942 and 1977 was struck by lightning on seven different occasions, earning him an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records and the nickname "Human Lighting Rod." He survived all of them, and lived to the age of 71.

 Random fact #13 Cold water is just as cleansing as hot water.

When using modern detergent, clothes will be equally clean whether warm or cold water is used. There is one major difference: warm water uses much more energy (about 75 percent of the energy used for a load of laundry comes from warming the water). And for tips on how to do your laundry, learn the 15 Ways You're Washing Your Clothes Wrong.

Random fact #12 Medicine bottle foil exists because of poison.

Those foil seals added to the top of medicine bottles that can be so annoying to remove was put in place after a rash of poisonings occurred in 1982, in which seven people in the Chicago area were killed after ingesting Tylenol laced with potassium cyanide.

Random fact #11 Superman helped take down the KKK.

In the 1940s, a 16-episode series of the hugely popular Adventures of Superman radio series incorporated the findings of activist Stetson Kennedy, who had infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan but had been unable to get local authorities to use the information he'd found to crack down on them. The creators of the Superman show used the secrets he provided them to help tell the story of "Clan of the Fiery Cross," exposing the organization to the public and removing much of the mystery that the resurgent organization was enjoying at the time, earning it widespread mockery and condemnation.

Random fact #10 London cabbies have to memorize literally everything.

If you take a taxicab in London, you can expect the driver to know exactly where they are going, since they are required to take a series of tests known as The Knowledge. These require them to study 320 routes and 25,000 streets, not to mention 20,000 landmarks and places of public interest—estimated to take as long as four years to fully complete.

Random fact #9 Yes, you can smell rain.

Weather patterns produce distinct smells, and one of these is a lightly pungent scent of ozone that springs from fertilizers and natural sources and can be carried in a thunderstorm's downdrafts from higher altitudes, alerting those with sensitive noses that the rain is about to fall.

Random fact #8 We may have already had alien contact.

In 1977, a volunteer for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence received a 72-second-long signal from a distant star system, 120 light years from Earth. It was loud and sent from a place that had yet to be visited by mankind, so the guy who received it wrote, "Wow!"next to the original printout of the signal. It continues to be known as the "Wow! Signal."

Random fact #7 Coke saved one town from the Depression.

Well, sort of. As the country was reeling from the Great Depression, a local, trusted banker in the town of Quincy, Florida, urged anyone who would listen to invest in Coca-Cola stocks, then selling at $19 per share. Many followed his advice and when the company's stock boomed as he'd promised, others followed. Soon at least 67 inhabitants (in a town of fewer than 7,000) had become "Coca-Cola millionaires," making Quincy the richest U.S. town per capita.

Random fact #6 The world's largest pyramid isn't in Egypt.

The Great Pyramid of Cholula, located in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico, is the largest pyramid in the world and—with a base four times the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza—also happens to be the largest monument ever constructed anywhere. Part of the reason it's not better known may be that it happens to be buried under a mountain.

Random fact #5 The Netherlands is so safe, it imports criminals to fill jails.

The Netherlands has enjoyed a steady drop in crime since 2004, and has become so safe that it's closed down one prison after another—19 prisons shut their doors in 2013 alone. To help mitigate the job losses that this has created, the country has taken to importing prisoners from other countries, bringing in 240 prisoners from Norway in 2015.

Random fact #4 Roosters have built-in earplugs.

Considering how a rooster's call can get up to 140 decibels or louder, it might leave one to wonder how the rooster himself keeps from going deaf when that noise is coming right out of its beak. It turns out, the farm fowl have built-in earplugs. Researchers found that when a rooster opens its beak to crow, its external auditory canals close off, preventing sound from coming in and serving as earplugs.

Random fact #3 Subway footlongs aren't a foot long.







When confronted about this fact, the sandwich chain explained that, "With regards to the size of the bread and calling it a footlong, 'SUBWAY FOOTLONG' is a registered trademark as a descriptive name for the sub sold in Subway Restaurants and not intended to be a measurement of length."

Random fact #2 Nearly 30,000 rubber ducks were lost a sea in 1992 and are still being discovered today





Over 25 years ago, a cargo ship traveling from Hong Kong to the United States accidentally lost a shipping crate in the Pacific Ocean. Inside that crate were 28,000 rubber ducks unwittingly about to embark on many long journeys across the globe. As rubber ducks continue to pop up on shores around the world from Australia to Alaska, they've enlightened our understanding of ocean currents. Some have made it all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, while others have been found frozen in Arctic ice.  

Random fact #1:You can hear a blue whale's heartbeat from two miles away




The blue whale is the largest animal on the planet, weighing up to 150 tons and measuring up to 90 feet long. Naturally, an animal this massive would have an equally massive heart. Roughly the size of a small car, the blue whale's heart weighs about 1,300 pounds. To move blood through its massive body and huge arteries, it's heart beats so powerfully, you can hear it from two miles away. You just might miss it, though, as its heart only beats eight to ten times per minute.