Daily Fun Fact for 12/16/2011

Russian mobster Boris “Pretty P” Gorbachov was nearly allowed to settle permanently in the United States last year after winning a “Miss Bo Peep” costume contest that promised citizenship and a strawberry farm as the top prize.

Gorbachov was crowned “Miss Bo Peep 2011” after hiring Chris Crocker as his makeup artist and Judy Bloom as his pronunciation coach. Although some media pundits claimed that he won primarily for his beauty, esteemed former NYT journalist Jayson Blair praised his oratory ability:

“‘Pretty P’ recites every Mother Goose nursery rhyme with the dignified eloquence of a 10 year-old Russian female Barack Obama. Her angelic voice can restore the eyesight of the 3 Blind Mice and put Humpty Dumpty together again. Put simply, at this pivotal moment in history, this dark, cynical world desperately needs a sweet, innocent girl like Pretty P.”

Fortunately, the mobster was deported when police discovered that he had forced a legion of children, all aged 10-12, to do all manual labor on his new farm. Their tasks included picking strawberries, operating heavy machinery, and sometimes even pulling plows in small teams. They now live safely in foster care.

Fight child labor

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Daily Fun Fact for 12/14/2011

Thirsty partygoers and responsible parents lookin’ for a frosty, fruity thrill can find drive-thru strawberry daiquiri stands just about anywhere in New Orleans. However, this local treat may be causing a very syrupy problem on its city streets: Clever patrons mask the fact that they are drinking and driving by keeping unopened restaurant straws handy.

Police aren’t laughing at the fact that these daiquiri-toting “straw men” tend to cause traffic accidents. Officer Rengold told Factopolis that “street hooligans driving with opened strawberry daiquiris are responsible for at least 35 injuries a year, mostly due to illegal street racing and gang-related drive-bys.”

Drive-thrus now limit customers to only one straw per visit, and they can no longer pack adult-strength strawberry daiquiris with kids' meals. Unfortunately, an underground market for daiquiri straws thrives on eBay and amongst NOLA’s most notorious drug rings.

Officer Rengold urges concerted action. “Not only do we need to brush our teeth of this sugary madness rotting our morals, but we also need to brush our streets clean of this ‘berry’ big problem by putting these thugs on ice.”


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Daily Fun Fact for 12/9/2011

Today's fact is once again a guest fact:

Back in 1975, Jimmy Carter, soon to be 39th President of the United States, had a close encounter of the third kind. According to him, "Extraterrestrial bacteria in little extraterrestrial bacteria spaceships visited me on my peanut farm." What were they looking for?

Well, unbeknownst to most, many aliens (especially those largely invisible to the naked eye) power their ships with peanuts. Jimmy supplied them with enough peanuts for their journey, and they, showing their gratitude, plagued his opponent with the most severe case of explosive diarrhea yet experienced by man. From this originated the expression, "When the shit hits the fan," as that's exactly what happened (rather frequently) during the first presidential debate. As we all know, Jimmy Carter won, and the rest is history.

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Daily Fun Fact for 12/7/2011

Oprah has an ‘obsession’ with okra and incorporates it into every facet of her life.

“I love giving okra-related gifts from Oprah.com to my friends and family,” she said in an intimate, revealing interview with Factopolis. “Whether it’s comfy PJs with an okra print, professional-grade okra shaped stainless steel pans, fabulous okra earrings, or heavenly okra scented candles, okra gifts are always a big hit on Oprah.com.”

As one can imagine, Oprah loves cooking with okra. Her recipe book resembles a CEO’s rolodex and contains well over 300 okra recipes. She added, “I share tons of recipes to my Facebook friends through Oprah.com. You can also find several in my book Dreams of My Mother: Oprah and the Okra Empire, on sale now at Amazon.”

She reveals in her book that her love for the vegetable comes from her longtime partner, Stedman Graham, and her best friend Gayle King. “I call Stedman ‘my beard’,” Oprah said. “Um, by that, I mean, he grows on you quickly and can get scruffy at times, but at the end of the day he makes you look good in the public eye. I like him. He's sweet. He’s a pretty good guy.” Regarding her best friend Gail, Oprah has similar, if not more loving, words.

“She calls me “my little okra” and gives me little bunches of okra flowers and occasional pecks on the cheek. Our friendship has always been kind of playful; I like getting away from my ‘beard’ sometimes to focus on my friendship with Gayle.” She sighs and gets teary-eyed. “You always want to be with people you care about, but some people are more private. One day, maybe, when this is all over, we can experience the wonders of okra together and run away to ‘Okraland,” the theme park of our dreams.”

©Factopolis - Daily Fun Facts and Useless Knowledge

The information in this post is just for fun and does not reflect any judgments/claims about the subjects' preferences.

Daily Fun Fact for 12/6/2011

Contrary to the popular belief that grizzly bears are menaces to small, edible animals, they are inexplicably natural allies with certain animals one would expect would make to a great snack.

Bern Frank was a 650 pound grizzly bear at the world-famous zoo Berlin Zoo, named after US politician Barney Frank, and German cities Berlin and Frankfurt. One day, zoo keepers left the doors of the penguin pen open overnight, causing several chicks to escape. They were found next day cuddled against Bern Frank.

Ever the protective parent, Bern Frank charged at any zookeeper that tried to move the penguins. Eventually zookeepers permitted the penguins to play with their adopted parent for about an hour each day in order to, as one zookeeper said under the condition of anonymity related to Factopolis, “boost morale, but also to see if inter-species hybridity was remotely possible.”

The bear likely suffers from a rare disease similar to Prosopagnosia, a human disease in which sufferers cannot recognize faces. One potential corrective procedure would be to introduce wasps, which studies have shown never forget a face, into the pen to interact with Bern Frank.

©Factopolis - Daily Fun Facts and Useless Knowledge


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Daily Fun Fact for 12/5/2011

Today it is possible to buy and sell cattle, 40,000 pounds at a time, from a computer screen through the cattle futures market. The practice has been around for about a century now, but for a short period (1918-1919) the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was renamed as the New York Livestock Exchange because stock traders shared the floor with living, breathing livestock.

No one could predict the impact that the homecoming of thousands of soldiers at the end of World War I would have on the demand for cattle meat and leather. The cattle industry had been in dire straits for two decades and industry leaders wanted solutions to stabilize the market.

The decision to make live livestock trading available at the Exchange floor was mostly a personal decision by Gordon Logic, then the managing director at the NYSE, as a favor to a friend who had lost several barns in a fire. Regarding his decision to add dozens of mooing, clucking, and defecating animals to the floor, he gave an apprehensive response:

“Most traders loved the idea of being able to buy livestock in small quantities but for all the wrong reasons. Most regarded it as a cheap and convenient way to get a live chicken at “market” prices. They’d drive down the price so that they could purchase all of them at a cent or two a pound, then magically the price would skyrocket the next day. They’d all say the same, sexist thing the next morning: ‘My wife’s a great cook and does whatever I tell her to do, but I wish she wasn’t such a heifer.”

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Daily Fun Fact for 12/4/2011

Gropeon® Inc. was a little-known sister division of Groupon® Inc. that specialized in collective couponing for adult merchandise. Gropeon® founders soon realized the miniscule customer base could not sustain the massive discounts that retailers were offering and sought additional avenues to convey traffic to the site.

The “Gropeon® Top 5!” incentivized celebrity groping and encouraged users to check the site often to discover the top celebrity gropers. The celebrity groper of the month earned notoriety as well as exclusive TV, movie, or music contracts.

Hollywood became awash in hysteria and groping incidents within hours of the site’s launch. Tyra Banks, who accrued an impressive 3 gropes (Katherine McPhee, Rosie O’Donnell, and Cookie Monster) in three days, described Sunset Boulevard as “out of control. You’d see Jessica Alba loitering outside the liquor store salivating and stretching out her hands as men sauntered by. She was as fearsome of a predator as I’ve ever seen, like a starving lion chasing down the sickliest gazelle as prey. You’d hear a scream, turn around, and see a herd of men running to the nearest police officer, crumpling at their feet in terror. It was a dangerous time for everyone.”

Celebrity gawkers flooded the site, causing overnight site traffic to hit 3 million page views. Google took note of the advertising potential of the site and offered 6 billion for Groupon® Inc.

The aftermath wasn’t pretty. The FBI shut down Gropeon® in the beginning of 2011 because the site led to a “demonstrable spike in serial gropings across the country.”

©Factopolis - Daily Fun Facts and Useless Knowledge

Daily Fun Fact for 12/3/2011

Today's fact is a guest fact from Richard Farrell.

The Spanish pirate Peach Beard Del Gato is considered by many to be History's most pathetic pirate. Standing at a mere five foot nothing, with a hint of stubble on his face and a receding hairline, he was rarely able to intimidate anyone. In fact, when asked about a robbery Del Gato committed, the tavern owner could only reply, “That was a pirate?”

The owner's confusion is understandable. Del Gato had all limbs intact and both eyes “unpatched.” His hat had been lost years before, and he was never able to afford a new one. Also, it was well documented that his parrot had a history of flying away, probably because it couldn't perch comfortably on his slanted shoulder. In Del Gato's defense, however, no one in the tavern got a good look at him as he ran out the door, stolen wine cooler in hand.

Daily Fun Fact for 12/2/2011

Amidst the post 9-11 hysteria, we got most wanted Iraqi playing cards, freedom fries, and that Enya song that makes everyone cry. Seeking to capitalize on this outburst of patriotic fervor, Mayfair Games, creators of Settlers of Catan and countless variants, tested small quantities of a war-themed ‘Settlers’ spin-off called The Settlers of Iraq.

The gameplay only deviated slightly from the original game. The game added two oil resource hexes and allowed players to build tanks which could be used to raze buildings and roads for a steep cost. The addition of tanks to the game added a much needed defensive aspect, but this caused most games to devolve into pissing matches and hurt feelings.

Another difference is that Settlers of Iraq replaced the faceless robber with Saddam Hussein. The robber functioned the same way as in the original with the added rule that only soldier cards (a US marine) could force Hussein off of an oil field. WHO NEEDS 7s? WE ARE THE USA.

But just as WMD were never found in Iraq, neither was this game found on many store shelves. Mayfair quietly let the game rot because they feared that it couldn’t compete against War On Terror, the board game.


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Daily Fun Fact for 12/1/2011

For a short time during the early 2000s, Ron Jeremy was Mr. Nintendo. During this period, he was a secondary voice actor for many of the video game company’s most famous characters, including Super Mario and Link. Although you will not hear his voice in many of their trademark exclamations, you will hear his voice in many exclamations in which they become exhausted, hurt, or surprised. Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s chief designer, wanted to claim “top American voice talent” in advance of the launch of the Nintendo 64, at the time the most advanced and highly anticipated video game consoles ever made.

Miyamoto made the recommendation to recruit Ron Jeremy when his top aide, a “huge fan” of Jeremy’s classic films, praised him for his “spirited exclamations that effused realism, agony, raw masculine power, and a hint of satisfaction. These are the most important foundational qualities of our company.” His aide also admired his ability to “excel over long periods of continuous physical exertion.” The Super Mario look-a-like was nicknamed Mr. Nintendo for his versatile voice-acting and for his legendary work ethic, which yielded 20 games over five years of work.

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