Collection of Insane and Fun Facts
In 2001, Kenny Waters, a man who was wrongly imprisoned 18 years for murder, was finally freed after his high-school dropout sister went to law school to prove his innocence. Tragically, Kenny Waters died in an accident 6 months after his release from prison.
Conviction is a 2010 biographical legal drama film based on this story.
November 2, 2000 was the last time all humans were on the planet together. Since then at least one person has remained on the international space station.
Back in the early 1980s, orthodontist David Marshall, from Syracuse, NY, liked to speculate about what humans would look like 2 million years in the future. Or what “Future Man” would look like, as he referred to our descendants. Based on previous trends in our evolution, he concluded that Future Man will be hairless, big-skulled, small-jawed, and have few teeth.
Richard Proenneke left his career as a heavy equipment operator, flew to a remote Alaskan lake, built a log cabin by hand, and lived alone for 30 years.
Dean Karnazescan can run without ever getting tired due to his exponentially high lactate threshold. He was able to run a Marathon in the south pole at -25C and run for three consecutive nights before having to stop for sleep.
Shakuntala Devi, also known as the human computer, gave the 23rd root of a 201 digit number in 50 seconds. The answer(546,372,891) was verified at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation.
A Japanese Oil Tanker captain fell into a cactus at a Santa Barbara Oil Field, provoking laughter from the local workers. 5 years later he returned in an Imperial Japanese Navy sub and made the first mainland shelling of the US at that oil field.
English writer Charles Foster and his eight year old son lived like badgers in a hole in the ground for several weeks. They ate worms and grasshoppers, and traveled by crawling on their stomachs.
There is a man who has been walking around the world since 1998. He is currently in Russia.
In 1956, for a bet, while drunk, Thomas Fitzpatrick stole a small plane from New Jersey and then landed it perfectly on a narrow Manhattan street in front of the bar he had been drinking at. Then, two years later, he did it again after a man didn’t believe he had done it the first time.
Mike Merrill has modeled his life after the stock market. He’s issued 1,000 “shares” of himself and life decisions are made by his shareholders’ votes. Some of the life decisions his investors have made for him are his hair color, the car he drives, his love interests, and even his diet.
The world’s tallest man, Bao Xishun, used his long arms reaching 1.06m to remove plastic from the stomachs of 2 dolphins, which ultimately saved their lives, after trainers tried numerous other methods.