You know that old saying “you can’t make this stuff up?” Well, it turns out it’s there for a reason – real life is often more ridiculous and bizarre than we would ever accept from the storytellers in our lives.
These 16 facts prove the point, because if you didn’t know they were true, you’d totally be calling bulls*t.
16. Wait, seriously?
When I tell people that Bob Marley’s father was white, oh the nonbelievers!
“I don’t have prejudice against meself. My father was a white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don’t dip on nobody’s side. Me don’t dip on the black man’s side nor the white man’s side. Me dip on God’s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.” -Bob Marley
15. This goes at the top of the list of Terrible Ideas.
In the 1950’s into the 1960’s the United States designed a rocket that was propelled by the detonation of nuclear bombs. The only flaw in the design was the radioactive fallout created by running the engine.
It gets even more absurd than that. The entire program was only ended when the scientists created a scale model of a nuclear space battleship armed with nuclear missiles, naval cannon, and even plasma cannons (Casaba howitzers) to president Kennedy. He shat a brick and immediately ended the project.
14. I guess you really are what you eat.
Humans share 50% of their DNA with… bananas.
13. I didn’t realize they still “owned” so many islands.
France has more time zones than USA or Russia.
12. Math is the worst.
You can leave on a boat from a port in Pakistan, sail in a completely straight line, and end up in Russia.
11. In surface area.
Russia is bigger than Pluto.
10. Never ONCE?
In the show Lassie, Timmy never once fell down a well.
9. I hope he can swim a long way.
The Mongolian Navy consists of a tugboat with a seven man crew. Only one of them can swim.
8. I know which one is getting bullied.
The names of Popeye’s four nephews are Pipeye, Peepeye, Pupeye, and Poopeye
7. How come so many of them end up under tires, then?
Armadillos jump 3 ft straight up when threatened. This is to scare away whatever they are scared of. Imagine being a coyote and going “hey this looks kind of funn- ohhmahgod!”
6. My imagination is running wild.
John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, and Aldus Huxley all died on the same day: November 22, 1963.
EDIT Thanks for mentioning that Dr. Who broadcast next day.
5. Well, this is a whole lot of nope.
People completely shave orangutans and force them into prostitution.
Edit: since you guys ddossed the source site I posted, here’s a different source: http://www.vice.com/read/yo1-v14n10
4. I had no idea this was true.
The Who’s first drummer, Keith Moon, was the godfather of The Who’s current drummer, Zak Starkey, who is also the son of Ringo Starr, The Beatles’ drummer.
3. Read the whole thing, for real.
“… the night after [John Kennedy’s] assassination, the Navy pathologist who oversaw President Kennedy’s autopsy took the original autopsy report, and all of his notes from the autopsy room, and pushed them into his fireplace in his home in Bethesda, Md.”
Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=246712521
That whole interview is fascinating
2. I needed all the details on this one.
During WWII, an American airplane crashed near the Japanese island of Chichijima. There were nine servicemen on board. One was rescued by an American submarine. The other eight were taken in by the Japanese. Don’t wanna go into all the details, but through some time and events, the Japanese ended up EATING those servicemen. But that’s not the weird part.
The one serviceman who was rescued? That was George H. W. Bush.
Google “Chichijima incident” for more details if you’d like.
1. A con man AND a spy.
Saw this posted in another thread prior:
During World War II, there was a Spaniard named Joan Pujol Garcia who approached the Allies to spy for them. When they refused, he approached the Nazis, and they accepted him and gave him the codename Arabel.
Once he earned credentials working as a Nazi spy, he approached the Allies again, this time getting a job as a double agent, codenamed Garbo.
This is where the awesomeness begins: he fed the Germans a combination of mis-information, true but useless information, and high-value information that always got to the Germans just a little too late. He even started a spy network consisting of 27 sub-agents of his own. Keep in mind that not a single one of these sub-agents existed. They were completely imaginary, but regardless, he submitted expense reports for them and had the Nazis giving him money to pay their salaries.
At one point, when he had to explain why some high-value information got to the Germans late, he told them that one of his spies had died. He actually got the Germans to pay the imaginary spy’s imaginary wife a very real pension for her loss. Not only did his false information get the Nazis to waste millions of dollars, but he was also instrumental in convincing the Nazis that the attacks on D-Day were just a diversion, and the real attack was yet to come, keeping vital German resources away from the front lines.
He is one of the only people to ever get an Iron Cross from the Germans, which required Hitler’s personal authorization since he wasn’t a soldier, AND an MBE from King George VI.
I almost called bulls*it anyway – I had to Google a few!
What’s your favorite fact like this? Share it with us in the comments!
