We do all love Weird News and Oddities, so what about some random news picks of THE MOST ODD & WEIRD NEWS OF ALL TIMES?? Thanks to the Reddit Community, we have done an in depth search in the Today I Learned subreddit and here it is, the ultimate list of Totally Random Weird News & Oddities!
- Robert Pattinson dealt with an obsessed fan who had been camping outside his apartment by taking her out on a dinner date. “I just complained about everything in my life and she never came back.” (today.com)
- Millennial dads are spending 3 times as much times with their kids than their fathers spent with them. Back in 1982, 43% of fathers admitted they’d never changed a diaper. Today, that number is down to about 3%. (mother.ly)
- When the Nazis burned Sigmund Freud’s books he said, “What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now, they are content with burning my books.” (wikipedia)
- The FBI has struggled to hire hackers because of the FBI hiring rule that the applicant must not have used marijuana during the last 3 years. (nydailynews.com)
- Romans were known to create tombs for their dogs and gave them epitaphs to remember them by. One such inscription read, “I am in tears, while carrying you to your last resting place as much as I rejoiced when bringing you home with my own hands 15 years ago.” (thedodo.com)
- Willie, a parrot, alerted its owner, Megan Howard, when the toddler she was babysitting began to choke. Megan was in the bathroom, the parrot began screaming “mama, baby” while flapping its wings as the child turned blue. Megan rushed over and performed the Heimlich, saving the girls life. (telegraph.co.uk)
- Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t allowed to dub his own role in Terminator in German, as his accent is considered very rural by German/Austrian standards and it would be too ridiculous to have a death machine from the future come back in time and sound like a hillbilly. (blog.esl-languages.com)
- Dennis Ritchie who invented the C programming language, co-created the Unix operating system, and is largely regarded as influencing a part of effectively every software system we use on a daily basis died 1 week after Steve Jobs. Due to this, his death was largely overshadowed and ignored. (wikipedia)
- Syndrome K: a fake disease that Italian doctors made up to save Jews who had fled to their hospital seeking protection from the Nazis. Syndrome K “patients” were quarantined and the Nazis were told that it was a deadly, disfiguring, and highly contagious illness. They saved at least 20 lives. (mentalfloss.com)
- A man created a fake restaurant on TripAdvisor and asked around for good reviews. Eventually, the fake restaurant was the #1 restaurant in London, and was being called up 100s of times daily for bookings. For a day, the man set up a “cafe” in his backyard and served frozen food to rave reviews. (vice.com)
- Canadian researchers watched 40 episodes of ‘The Dr. Oz Show’ and found that nearly 40% of the medical advice is not evidence-based, and 15% goes directly against evidence. (reliasmedia.com)
- Kate Winslet keeps her Oscar in the bathroom so her guests can hold it and make acceptance speeches in the mirror without feeling self conscious. (variety.com)
- Hundreds of love letters between two gay World War II soldiers were found and are being made into a book. In one, one of them wrote, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all our letters could be published in the future in a more enlightened time. Then all the world could see how in love we are.” (bbc.com)
- There was a rumor that Stephen Hawking would deliberately run over the toes of people he didn’t like. He denied this rumor by stating it was “A Malicious rumor” and “I’ll run over anyone who repeats it”. (businessinsider.com)
- Michael Jordan once tipped a waitress a $5 chip for bringing him a drink. Wayne Gretzky stopped the waitress, removed the $5 chip, grabbed one of the many $100 chips on Jordan’s side of the table, and gave it to her. Then he said, “That’s how we tip in Las Vegas, Michael.” (sbnation.com)
- Keanu Reeves often foregoes some of his paycheck so that producers can bring on other notable actors. On The Devil’s Advocate, he reduced his salary by a few million dollars so that they could afford Al Pacino, and he did the same thing on The Replacements to be able to work with Gene Hackman. (thelist.com)
- Dr. Phil lost his license to practise psychology in 2006. Therefore, all guests on his TV show must sign a contract stating they are only there to receive “advice” from an individual, not a psychologist. (wikipedia)
- In 2006, a man in Portland, Oregon hired a hitman to kill his 51-year-old wife. His wife ended up killing the hitman with her bare hands. When Susan Kuhnhausen had her hands on his neck she asked him, “TELL ME WHO SENT YOU HERE AND I WILL CALL YOU A FUCKING AMBULANCE!” (wweek.com)
- A Georgia teacher who bought a $400 travel insurance policy was rewarded $10,000 because she read the fine print of the contract. After reading to page 7, she saw a “Pays to Read” bit that said the first to email and mention the fine print contest would win 10K. (tampabay.com)
- When Nintendo had a fall in revenue from the less successful Wii U its CEO cut his pay in half for 5 months rather than blame workers. (businessinsider.com.au)
- Eminem watched his daughter, Hailie, get crowned homecoming queen from an empty classroom in the school because he didn’t want to take the attention away from her. (people.com)
- A Harvard study found that hiring one highly productive ‘toxic worker’ does more damage to a company’s bottom line than employing several less productive, but more cooperative, workers. (tlnt.com)
- A New Jersey man bought a $5 bottle of orange juice from Shoprite; his wife said it was too expensive and sent him back to return it, because it was on sale for $2.50 elsewhere. He then decided to buy 2 lottery tickets with the cash refunded from the OJ; he won $315.3 million. (abcnews.go.com)
- Jimmy Carter is the longest-lived president, the longest-retired president, the first president to live forty years after their inauguration, and the first to reach the age of 95. (wikipedia)
- In 1998 Sony had the chance to buy the rights to almost every Marvel character for 25 million. They opted to only buy the rights to Spider-Man for just 7 million, stating, “Nobody gives a shit about the other Marvel characters.” (cinemablend.com)
- Apes don’t ask questions. While apes can learn sign language and communicate using it, they have never attempted to learn new knowledge by asking humans or other apes. They don’t seem to realize that other entities can know things they don’t. It’s a concept that separates mankind from apes. (wikipedia)
- In the 1950’s, donut shops were some of the first food businesses commonly open late at night. They became hot spots for police working the night shift since it gave them a place to grab a snack, fill out paper work, or even just take a break. This is why donuts became associated with cops. (smithsonianmag.com)
- Japan has chosen Dragon Ball Z’s Goku as an ambassador of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. (konbini.com)
- A man falsely imprisoned for 10 years spent most of his time at the library to study law and prove his innocence, and then became a lawyer to help free other people who have been falsely convicted. (nbcnews.com)
- The crew of ‘Return of the Jedi’ mocked the character design of Admiral Ackbar, deeming it too ugly. Director Richard Marquand refused to alter it, saying, “I think it’s good to tell kids that good people aren’t necessarily good looking people and that bad people aren’t necessarily ugly people.” (wikipedia)
- Mario Puzo, the author of the Godfather books who’d also adapted them to film, had no idea what he was doing as he’d never written a screenplay before. After winning two Oscars, he decided to buy a book on screenwriting to learn how. In the first chapter, it said “Study Godfather I”. (npr.org)
- Max Planck was told by his professor to not go into Physics because “almost everything is already discovered”. Planck said he didn’t want to discover anything, just learn the fundamentals. He went on to originate quantum theory and win a Nobel Prize. (wikipedia)
- Gary Gygax’s wife was convinced he was having an affair so she followed him to a dimly lit basement and burst into the room only to find him and his friends hunched over hand drawn maps. Gary would go on to invent the role playing game “Dungeons and Dragons”. (wikipedia)
- After Beethoven went deaf, he found he could affix a metal rod to his piano and bite down on it while he played, enabling him to hear perfectly through vibrations in his jawbone. The process is called bone conduction. (cnn.com)
- Mythbusters once tested a combination of common materials that made an extremely powerful explosive. They deleted the tapes and swore to never release the information, then contacted DARPA and warned them about the possibility of misuse from the combination. (nerdist.com)
- Only three people in the nation were qualified to hand-pack the parachutes for Apollo 15. Their expertise was so vital, they were not allowed to ride in the same car together for fear that a single auto accident could cripple the space program. (history.com)
- The Japanese bullet train system is equipped with a network of sensitive seismometers. On March 11, 2011, one of the seismometers detected an 8.9 magnitude earthquake 12 seconds before it hit and sent a stop signal to 33 trains. As a result, only one bullet train derailed that day. (railway-technology.com)
- A Polish environmental charity put a SIM card in a GPS tracker to follow the migratory pattern of a white stork. They lost track of the stork and later received a phone bill for $2,700; someone in Sudan had taken the SIM from the tracker and made over 20 hours of calls. (theregister.co.uk)
- There’s a restaurant in New York that doesn’t employ chefs; they employ grandmas. Every day, a different grandma from around the world designs her own menu. (nytimes.com)
- In ancient Rome, commoners would evacuate entire cities in acts of revolt called “Secessions of the Plebeians”, leaving the elite in the cities to fend for themselves. (wikipedia)
- Nirvana played a concert in Beunos Aires where the crowd threw mud and trash at the all-girl opening act. Kurt Cobain was so upset that he sabotaged the show by playing mostly lesser known songs and teasing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ without ever playing it. (dangerousminds.net)
- The creators of “Parks and Recreation” did research for the show by interviewing actual government officials. One said, “Well, I’m a libertarian, so I don’t really believe in the mission of my job. Yes, I’m aware of the irony.” The character of Ron Swanson was born. (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
- Eminem’s song “Lose Yourself” was the first rap song to win an Oscar for Best Original Song, but Eminem did not even watch the awards because he did not think he stood a chance at winning. Instead, he fell asleep watching cartoons with his daughter. (wikipedia)
- Prince William and Prince Harry pulled a prank on their grandmother the Queen, by changing her voicemail answering message to say, “Hey wassup! This is Liz. Sorry I’m away from the throne. For a hotline to Philip, press one. For Charles, press two. And for the corgis, press three.” (upi.com)
- A group of undercover Detroit police posing as drug dealers tried to arrest another group of undercover police posing as drug buyers. (upi.com)
- The bellybutton is so dirty scientists are finding new unknown bacteria. One person had bacterium previously found only on Japanese soil, where he had never been. (theatlantic.com)
- In 1825 painter Samuel Morse received a letter which read that his wife was sick. The day after that a new one said that she was dead. When 2 days later he went to his wife, he discovered that she was already buried. Pissed off for the slowness of communications, he invented the Morse code. (wikipedia)
- You are less likely to die during an economic depression. This is mostly attributed to cleaner air, reduced traffic, and fewer dollars spent on vices like tobacco and alcohol. (nature.com)
- In 2012, a burger king employee anonymously posted an image on 4-chan of him putting his feet in lettuce, with the caption: “This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King.” It took 20 minutes for people to track down the branch the employee worked at and contact the news. He was promptly fired. (mashable.com)
- After studios refused, Monty Python and the Holy Grail was instead financed by the rock stars Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Jethro Tull and Elton John who all saw it as simply ‘a good tax write-off”. (wikipedia)
- Quebec banned ads for toys and fast food aimed at children under 13, resulting in lowered childhood obesity rates. (globalnews.ca)
- Research shows that starting school at 10am instead of 8:30am halves student illness and improves academic performance. (independent.co.uk)
