39 Jaw-Dropping Facts I Learned In March That I Will Truly Never Be Able To Forget

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A few weeks ago, I started writing a weekly series featuring all of the interesting facts I had come across that week.

CBC / Via giphy.com

They range from stories about badass women, to cute animal facts, to horrifying tidbits about serial killers.

FOX / Via giphy.com

At the end of each month, I'll round up all of the facts into one big post, in case you missed any. That means that you might have seen some of these facts before in previous posts.

Here are the original posts if you'd like to check 'em out:

18 Mind-Blowing Facts I Learned This Week

21 Facts I Learned This Week That Shook Me To My Core

So without further ado, here are 39 facts I learned in March that I truly will not be forgetting any time soon.

1. Before machinery was developed that made the knife-making process easier, knife grinders in France used to have to painstakingly grind the blades against sandstone wheels to sharpen them.

Knife grinders in France 1902, they worked lying down to save their backs and had dogs sit on their legs for warmth. from interestingasfuck

These workers, known as "yellow bellies," because of the yellow color of the dust from the grinder, would lay on their stomachs to work because it was found to be the best position to maintain control, and it prevented back pain. The job required absolute precision, because if the grinders lost control, the pressure of the wheel would shoot the sharp blade at their faces. The workroom had to be kept freezing cold, so the men were encouraged to bring their dogs to lay on their legs to keep warm while working.

Vivamos como galegos / Via giphy.com

2.The Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest might now be a Fourth of July tradition, but it allegedly began as a competition for immigrants to prove their dedication to America. The hot dog stand opened in 1916, which according to Nathan's, was also the year of the competition that started it all. On the Fourth of July, four Irish immigrants gathered at the stand to see who could eat the most hot dogs to prove their patriotism. While many are dubious of this claim, ESPN tells the story every year during their airing of the contest. The first officially sanctioned event was held on July 4, 1972, and has been held every year since.

3.While many consider The Wizard of Oz to be the first Technicolor film, The Toll of the Sea, which was filmed in Technicolor, made its debut 17 years before Dorothy and the gang followed the yellow brick road. The Toll of the Sea starred Anna May Wong, a 17-year-old Chinese American, and marked the first time an Asian actor received top billing in a Hollywood production. Wong went down in history as the first Chinese American movie star. Her career spanned film, TV, and radio.

4.In 1930, a crew rotated the Indiana Bell Telephone Company headquarters by 90 degrees while the employees continued working inside. The crews shifted the building 15 inches an hour, using mostly hand-operated jacks. The entire process ultimately took about a month to complete. Inside the building, everything remained business as usual. All 600 employees still came to work, and there was no interruption to gas, heat, electricity, water, sewage, or telephone service. Shifting the headquarters allowed the company to build a second building to accommodate for the growing business.

5.After Prohibition, members of the mafia and other organized crime groups turned to plastic surgery to remove their fingerprints and change recognizable elements of their faces in order to evade arrest. In the 1930s, Joseph Moran traveled around the world, removing fingerprints and repairing bullet wounds so the mobsters could avoid hospitals. This turned out poorly for Moran. After bragging about his new gig, his body was found washed up onshore in Ontario, with his hands and feet chopped off.

Other mobsters DIY-ed the surgeries, using hydrochloric acid to scrape their prints. Some even turned to mutilating their fingers. These attempts often did not work. In some instances, the outer ridges of the fingerprints remained, while in other cases, the procedures didn't go deep enough to fully destroy all of the print's layers. These partial prints were often enough to still identify the criminals.

Netflix / Via giphy.com

6. In 1972, Italian singer Adriano Celentano released "Prisencolinensinainciusol." The song is complete gibberish, with completely improvised lyrics meant to mimic the way English sounds to non-native English speakers. While the song didn't make much of a splash at first, Celentano performed it several years later on an Italian TV show, and the song quickly shot to the top of the charts. Celentano wanted to test a theory he had that Italians would love any song that sounded like English, even if it had no meaning at all. Some even consider "Prisencolinensinainciusol" one of the first rap songs ever released.

Italian singer Adriano Celentano released a song in the 70s with nonsense lyrics meant to sound like American English, apparently to prove Italians would like any English song. It was a huge hit from Damnthatsinteresting

7.Turns out the Academy can be a pretty harsh crowd! The process for choosing the nominees for Best Documentary was formatted a bit differently than most of the show's procedures up until the mid-'90s. Academy members volunteered to be on the documentary nominating committee and gathered in a theater, armed with flashlights. Each movie was given 15 minutes to dazzle the audience. At the 15-minute mark, if the viewer wasn't enjoying the film, they turned their flashlight on and shined it at the screen. If the majority of the lights went on, they moved on to the next movie.

ABC / Via giphy.com

The practice ended after the 1994 awards, when Hoop Dreams, which is often thought of as one of the best documentaries of all time, was turned off after 15 minutes. People were so angry about this snub that the Academy eliminated the flashlight rule the following year, but didn't form a legitimate documentary committee until 2001.

8. According to cybersecurity company Hive Systems, there’s an algorithm that determines how long it would take a hacker to guess your password, combining the length and type of characters included to figure out exactly how long until your precious password is revealed. BRB, changing all of my passwords to be 18 characters, considering it would allegedly take a hacker 438 trillion years to solve it!

Scary truth is you don’t even need much skill from Damnthatsinteresting

9.Despite the fact that all eight members of the Titanic's band died during the ship's 1912 sinking, Roger Bricoux, a 21-year-old cello player, wasn't officially declared dead until 2000, 88 years after the tragedy. Bricoux, who was French, was even called a war deserter after he failed to show up for service during World War I. The French Association of the Titanic was eventually able to clear Bricoux's name. The musicians notably continued playing for as long as they could in order to keep passengers calm. It's been estimated that they played for two hours after the ship struck the iceberg.

10.Before President Warren G. Harding took office, some of the United States' most important documents were at risk of total destruction. Papers like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were stored in direct sunlight at the State Department, causing the paper to deteriorate. Harding noticed this, and had the Constitution preserved in a glass case. The Constitution is now kept at the National Archives in Washington, DC, along with the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.

11. In 1976, Ben Masel, a cannabis rights activist, decided he was going to take advantage of a rule that prohibits someone from being arrested while voting. He smoked a joint while in the booth casting his vote in the 1976 presidential election, and ate the evidence to prevent being arrested for marijuana possession before leaving the booth. Masel was a fixture on the Wisconsin political scene for the rest of his life, where he fought for the legalization of marijuana. He was prepping for a run for US Congress when he died in 2011. He was arrested an estimated 137 times for his political involvement.

Cannabis rights activist Ben Masel smoking a joint while voting in the 1976 Presidential election. Taking advantage of an apparent law that prohibits arrest while voting. [568x768] from HistoryPorn

12.While Daylight Savings used to happen in the last week of October, in 2007, there was a push to move the date to the first week of November. Why? Candy lobbyists were supposedly seeking an extra hour of trick-or-treat time. Their request was granted, and now, the clocks fall back after Halloween, allowing candy corporations to rake in that extra hour of sales.

20th Century Fox / Via giphy.com

13.Secretariat has gone down in history as one of the greatest racing horses of all time, and some of his measurements are mind-boggling. While the typical horse's heart weighs 8.5 pounds, Secretariat's clocked in at 22 pounds. “We were all shocked,” Dr. Thomas Swerczek, who performed the horse's necropsy, told Sports Illustrated in 1990. “I’ve seen and done thousands of autopsies on horses, and nothing I’d ever seen compared to it.”

14. Remember Bernie Madoff's 2008 arrest for the largest Ponzi scheme in history? Turns out the whole scandal could have been uncovered nearly a decade earlier, potentially preventing investors from losing billions. In 1999, Harry Markopolos, a financial analyst, was asked by one of Madoff's rival companies to develop a similar strategy to Madoff's. Markopolos quickly concluded that it was both legally and mathematically impossible that Madoff was getting the returns he was claiming. Markopolos immediately notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission, who brushed off his claims.

TIL in 1999, financial analyst Harry Markopolos had informed the SEC that he believed it was legally and mathematically impossible to achieve the gains Bernie Madoff claimed. It took four minutes to conclude that his numbers did not add up, and another minute to suspect they were fraudulent. from todayilearned

Markopolos went back to the SEC in 2000, 2001, and 2005 with more evidence, but was ignored each time. It wasn't until Madoff's sons contacted the FBI about their father's financial fraud in 2008 that he was arrested. After the extent of Madoff's financial crimes were uncovered, the SEC conducted an internal audit to determine why the agency ignored all of Markopolos' legitimate claims. Madoff was given the maximum sentence of 150 years in prison, and died in jail in April 2021, at age 82.

15.It's impossible to pinpoint exactly how old a sequoia tree is until it's cut down. Growth rings located on the cross-sections of the tree stumps reveal exactly how old a sequoia is. The older trees get, the closer their rings are, as the tree grows the fastest in the first 75 years of its life. Once a tree falls or is cut down, scientists can use the data gleaned from the rings to get an estimate on how old other trees in the area are. From these rings, it has been determined that sequoias often live for over 3,000 years, with the oldest on record being 3,210 years old, making the sequoia tree the oldest living thing on Earth.

16.During the construction of Mount Rushmore, it was determined that there was room to add a fifth face to the monument. Soon after, a bill to include Susan B. Anthony was introduced to Congress in 1936. Rose Arnold Powell had been advocating for Anthony's inclusion for nearly a decade at this point, writing letters to then-president Calvin Coolidge and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Roosevelt agreed with Powell and also lobbied for Anthony to be featured on the monument. Soon after the bill was introduced, another resolution passed that said funding would only be used for the carvings already in progress, effectively ruling out Anthony's inclusion.

Gutzon Borglum, the lead sculptor on the project who thought that the inclusion of a woman on the monument went against his vision, came up with a compromise. He wanted to build a Hall of Records in a tunnel behind the mountain that would include historical documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as well as busts of figures who didn't quite make the cut on the mountain. The tunnel was never finished, but it played a big part in the plot for National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

17. Ethiopia is truly living on another timeline. The country follows their own calendar, which is rooted in biblical stories. The calendar is seven years behind the traditional Gregorian calendar, based on the notion that Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden for seven years. Most of the world switched to the Gregorian calendar, created in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, but Ethiopia was free of influences from the Roman church, and retained their own calendar. To this day, the country uses their 13-month calendar, with Pagume, the 13th month, having only five days. Many Ethiopians use both calendar systems interchangeably.

TIL that Ethiopia has a unique calendar which is 7-8 years behind the rest of the world. The current year in Ethiopia is 2014. from todayilearned

18.While Hedy Lamarr was probably best-known for her acting, we also have to give her some credit for helping to lay the foundation for the creation of WiFi. After growing bored of Hollywood and frustrated by the idea that she was only famous for her looks, she pivoted to inventing, creating a cube that turned water into fizzy soda and a design for airplane wings modeled off of bird wings.

At a party, Lamarr met composer George Antheil, where the pair bonded over their mutual love for inventing. They teamed up to create a frequency-hopping system, which manipulated radio frequencies to allow military torpedos to sidestep enemy interference. The government turned down the patent, and encouraged Lamarr to raise money for war efforts instead (she ended up raising $25 million, or about $340 million in today's money). Two decades later, the US Navy used the technology during the Cuban missile crisis, and it later went on to be the basis of GPS and wireless internet.

19.In 2004, Parisian police were participating in a training exercise in a restricted part of the Catacombs, the underground burial chamber in France. While underground, the officers found a sign that read, “Building site, no access.” When they went deeper into the tunnels, they found a camera recording them, which led them to a cavern that had been turned into a movie theater with a giant screen, chairs, and a large selection of movies. After digging deeper, the officers found a restaurant and a bar set up in another nearby cavern. No one knew who had set up the theater and restaurant, and the only clue was a mysterious note reading, “Do not try and find us.”

20.Lynyrd Skynyrd's lead singer Ronnie Van Zant predicted his own death several times. Van Zant frequently told people he would die before his 30th birthday with his boots on. Van Zant died in a plane crash just three months before he turned 30.

To make the story even more chilling, the band released an album just three days before the fatal crash, which also claimed the lives of three other members of the band. The cover art depicted the band engulfed in flames, and the album included the song "That Smell," featuring lyrics like "Angel of darkness upon you" and "The smell of death surrounds you." After the crash, the band's record label decided to withdraw the controversial cover, and replaced it with an image of the band against a black background.

21.Ever wondered why Oreo refers to the filling in their cookies as “creme” instead of “cream”? Turns out, the FDA doesn’t allow manufacturers to use the word “cream” to describe a food that doesn’t actually contain any cream or dairy, so Nabisco decided to use the word “creme” instead. But good news for vegans who love Oreos: Because the cookie doesn’t contain any dairy or animal products, it’s technically vegan! While the company can’t claim that the cookie is truly vegan due to the possibility of cross-contamination during production, the company officially removed all ingredients derived from animal products from the cookie in 1997.

Bravo / Via giphy.com

22.In 1980, the New Jersey State Assembly voted to name Bruce Springsteen’s song “Born To Run” the state's official theme song. Additionally, Springsteen, a New Jersey native, was to be named "New Jersey Pop Music Ambassador to America." The initiative was introduced by Carol Miller, a New York-based radio host who heard that the state was seeking out a theme song. The bill failed once it reached the Senate after they realized The Boss is actually singing about running away from New Jersey in the song.

23.Dolphin calves are normally born tail-first instead of head-first like most mammals to prevent them from drowning. Dolphins typically only give birth to one calf at a time, and their pregnancies last between 10 and 18 months, depending on the species.

BBC America / Via giphy.com

24.Richard Lee McNair is a convicted murderer who has been able to escape from prison not once, not twice, but three times. McNair, who was arrested in North Dakota in 1987, was first able to escape from a county jail by swiping a guard's lip balm. He rubbed the chapstick on his handcuffs and was able to slide out of them and jump out of a third-story window. While McNair was caught soon after, it didn't dissuade him from more escape attempts.

In October 1992, McNair broke out of the North Dakota State Penitentiary by shimmying through the ventilation system. He was on the lam for months until he was recaptured in Nebraska in July 1993. After being sent to a maximum security prison in Louisiana, police thought that McNair was locked up for good. In April 2006, McNair hid in between mailbags and was carted out of the federal prison. When approached by a police officer, McNair, who was wearing athletic shorts and a tank top, said he was just a civilian out for a jog. The officer believed him, paving the way for McNair to elude law enforcement and make it all the way up to Canada. Weeks after he reached Canada, he was stopped by authorities in a stolen car, but he was able to elude them. In August 2007, he was caught once again in Canada, this time in a stolen van. McNair was tackled by an officer and was taken back to prison, where he has remained since.

25.Sonkaj?rvi, a small town in Finland, hosts an annual wife-carrying championship during which husbands must carry their wives through a series of obstacles. The prize? Their wife's weight in beer. Although the contest is a Finnish tradition, other countries like the United States, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom have all adopted the sport. In recent years, the rules have deviated a bit, and teams are no longer required to be a legally married couple. In some competitions, if the wife does not meet a minimum weight requirement, the husband must wear a rucksack to make up the additional weight.

26.Just like how you're either left- or right-handed, most people are also either left- or right-eared and eyed. Many people prefer to hear things through their right ear, and if stimulus is passed through both ears, the brain will prioritize what is heard through the right ear. Brain scientists believe that things heard through the right ear is given precedence through the left hemisphere of the brain, which is where auditory cues are processed. In the case of being left- or right-eyed, your dominant eye is typically the eye that more accurately relays information about location and gives more input to the visual part of your brain. While there are no official links between dominant hands and dominant eyes, studies show that 90% of people are right-handed and 67% are right-eyed.

27.Richard Dawson, one of the original Family Feud hosts, had a habit of kissing female contestants. This habit earned him the nickname "The Kissing Bandit." TV execs tried to get Dawson to stop kissing the women, but Dawson refused, saying he kissed them to wish them good luck because that's what his mother did to him when he was a child. Eventually, Dawson asked his audience to weigh in on whether they thought the kissing was appropriate. Over 200,000 people wrote in, with the overwhelming majority in favor of keeping the kiss for good luck. In 1981, Dawson kissed Gretchen Johnson when she appeared on the show. The two fell in love and married in 1991. The pair stayed together until Dawson's death in 2012.

28.In Alaska, wood frogs don't pee for the entire winter, which typically lasts for eight months. The frogs recycle urea, which is the main waste in urine, into nitrogen, which keeps the frogs alive as they freeze while hibernating. The nitrogen protects their cells and tissues, allowing them to thaw out and resume business as usual once winter ends.

29. If you thought you knew how big each country was, you might wanna think again. Even though Gerardus Mercator created the revolutionary map we all know in 1596, it's a bit difficult to accurately turn Earth's sphere into a 2D rendering. In most cases, the Northern Hemisphere actually ends up appearing much larger than it actually is, while the distortion typically shrinks countries near the equator.

Actual size of countries vs What we believed the size of countries are from Damnthatsinteresting

30.People are outraged at how Turning Red is teaching children about periods, but this isn’t the first time Disney has released menstruation-related media. In 1946, Disney released The Story of Menstruation, a short that was sponsored by Kotex, which manufactures period products. The clip, which was often shown in schools for decades following its debut, faced criticism for discouraging the use of tampons. Additionally, the clip depicts period blood as white instead of red, and never references reproduction or sex. Jim Korkis, a Disney historian, notes that the overall theme of the short discusses periods as "a hygienic crisis, rather than a maturational event."

31.On August 28, 2003, Brian Wells, a pizza delivery man, entered a PNC Bank in Erie, Pennsylvania and slipped the teller a note that demanded $250,000 in 15 minutes. Wells lifted up his shirt to show that he had a bomb attached to him. The teller told Wells that it was impossible to open the vault that quickly, and instead gave him about $8,000. Wells left, even nabbing a lollipop from the bank. He was caught by police about 15 minutes later, and told them that he had been kidnapped and forced to rob the bank.

Just minutes after the police caught Wells, an explosive collar locked to his neck detonated, instantly killing him. The entire incident was shown on live TV coverage. After Wells died, police searched his vehicle and found notes that comprised a scavenger hunt. Police attempted to follow the hunt in order to find out if someone coerced Wells to follow through with the robbery.

In 2007, an FBI investigation concluded that Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong and Kenneth Barnes were behind the plot. While it still remains unclear how Wells knew the pair, investigators found a note in Wells’ home that connected him to Barnes. Wells’ family is adamant that he was just a pawn in the robbery attempt, while law enforcement reported that he was aware of the entire plot and had not been kidnapped as he claimed, but thought that the bomb around his neck was fake and would serve as an alibi if he were caught. Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes were both sentenced to prison for the crime.

32.Woolsey Hall at Yale University has a rather unique feature. When President William Howard Taft became an instructor at the university in 1913, the school had to construct an extra-wide seat to ensure Taft would be able to fit. Taft was also a huge baseball fan, so the school built a custom bench behind home plate to accommodate him. Taft topped out at about 355 pounds during his administration. After the university crafted the special seating arrangements, Taft lost 80 pounds by cutting bread, potatoes, and alcohol out of his diet.

33.Schoolhouse Rock!, the children's show known for teaching kids history, math, science, and more, was created by David McCall, who noticed his son had trouble memorizing his multiplication tables, but could easily recall the lyrics to his favorite Rolling Stones songs. He believed that if children were taught important topics through song, they would be more likely to remember them. He teamed up with Bob Dorough, a jazz pianist and vocalist, and the first song, "Three Is A Magic Number," was released in 1971. Schoolhouse Rock! became a phenomenon, and dozens of songs were released, from classics like "I'm Just A Bill," which taught children about the legislative process, to "Conjunction Junction," which covered grammar basics.

34.Back in the day, Irish women used to drink Guinness while pregnant, citing the health benefits of the brew, from its fiber levels to its high folate content. While it’s no longer recommended to drink while pregnant, some women still swear by drinking beer while breastfeeding, as beer is a galactagogue, or a lactation stimulant. In Ireland, breastfeeding women were once given a bottle of Guinness a day in maternity hospitals. It's now advised that breastfeeding mothers drink non-alcoholic barley beverages to promote lactation. Guinness has even made statements to steer clear of the myth: "I'd like to say once and for all, it's not something we support or recommend," Domhnall Marnell, a Guinness ambassador told CNN.

Guiness / Via giphy.com

35.Like a lot of literary icons, Beatrix Potter, the children’s book author who penned classics like The Tale of Peter Rabbit, kept a journal. Potter's mother didn't like how outspoken her daughter was, so Potter decided to write entirely in code so that her mother could never read what she wrote. Upon Potter's death, the journal was recovered, but the secret code was so complex that many thought it would never be decoded. A Potter super-fan got their hands on the diary and was finally able to crack the code after 13 years. They discovered Potter wrote in a "mono-alphabetic substitution cipher code," which meant that every letter was replaced with a symbol. The translated journals were later published.

36. Careful where you step! The peacock katydid is able to quickly camouflage itself to resemble dead leaves, but if it feels threatened, will pop its wings up to reveal its eye spots. If that's not enough to ward away predators, each peacock katydid has a unique pattern to prevent predators from being able to recognize and remember what the insect looks like.

The peacock katydid (Pterochroza ocellata) resembles dead leaves while camouflaging, but if threatened, it will reveal its menacing eye spots. No two peacock katydids have identical color patterns or wing shapes so as to reduce the risk that predators could learn to recognize a fixed visual pattern. from Awwducational

37.Scientists have recently discovered the largest radio galaxy to ever exist. The galaxy, named Alcyoneus, after the son of Ouranos, who was the Greek primordial god of the sky, stretches over 16 million lightyears through space, and was discovered about 3 billion lightyears from Earth by a mere “stroke of luck.” Alcyoneus is 100 times larger than the Milky Way.

BBC / Via giphy.com

38.Donald Henry Gaskins was notorious for terrorizing his South Carolina town. Gaskins, who was nicknamed "Pee Wee" because of his small stature, quit school at age 11 and teamed up with two of his former classmates. The group became known as "The Terrible Trio," burglarizing homes and assaulting and threatening children. After raping one of his friend's younger sisters, Gaskins was caught and sent to reform school, but he escaped. He went on to commit another murder and was sentenced to jail, where he killed a fellow inmate in order to receive respect from the other prisoners.

After Gaskins was released, he was unable to avoid trouble and was in and out of jail for the next several decades. He considered killing others his weekend pastime, and even became a hired hit man. Gaskins drove around in a hearse with a sticker that read, “We haul anything, living or dead,” and carried their bodies to his private cemetery on his property. People in his town didn't believe that Gaskins was actually dangerous, and just thought he was strange. He received the death penalty for his crimes and was executed in 1993. It’s estimated that he killed between 100 to 110 people.

39.While I’m still getting over the fact that William Shakespeare’s wife was named Anne Hathaway, I’ll do ya one better: When they got married, Anne was 26, and Shakespeare was only 18 years old, an age difference that was quite unusual for the time.