40 Facts I Learned in 2025

2025 marks the fourth year that I've made a Things I've Learned compilation. I was originally inspired by Jason Kottke and Thomas Whitwell who each find a bunch of cool facts each year on the internet. On Whitwell's list this year for instance is the fact that "most characters in the film Idiocracy wear Crocs because the film’s wardrobe director thought they were too horrible-looking to ever become popular" and that "You can unlock the wheels on a shopping cart by playing sounds on your phone."

*Apparently the Atlantic even did its own list this year, so the idea is becoming more popular.

I started my list in 2022 to purposefully try to expand my daily browsing habits to new and exciting links. However, four years later, I find most of the eccentric, crazy, and just plain weird facts I learn come from the books I read, hence the lack of links in the majority of these 40 facts.

Like statistics, take all of these with a grain of salt, but for the most part I have double-checked them, or at least made sure it was not misinformation or a joke. Without further ado and in no particular order:

(1) The trivia on IMDB and the internet for the show ALF is insane. The show was a nightmare.

*Favorite ALF Trivia on IMDB includes:

Reportedly, tensions on the set were so high during the fourth season that Max Wright attacked the ALF puppet and screamed, "Put us all on sticks! We're the puppets here! We're the puppets"

Max Wright was famous for screaming out "Curse you, Hussein!" to the cast and crew, comparing conditions on the set to Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Max Wright punched ALF in the face during a taping after he called Wright a "total idiot" and a "Jewish loser."

ALF Creator Paul Fusco would not let people call ALF a puppet and instructed actors to never tell the press ALF was a puppet, but insist he was actually an alien.

Cast and crew kept falling down the trenches the puppeteers used to control ALF. They wound up naming the trenches after those who fell down.

The set, built 4.5 feet in the air so the puppeteers could be under the stage, was so complicated with traps and trenches that filming a scene for ALF to just cross the room would take one hour. Each 22 minute episode required 40-45 hours of filming.

One child put a cat in the microwave because they saw ALF do it.

(21) There is a Wikipedia page listing inventors killed by their own invention.

(3) Oklahoma City airport has a special terminal just for prisoners.

(4) "The straw that broke the camel's back" is a popular Arabic saying but did not actually originate in the Middle East. It originated in Europe as the feather that broke the horse's back, then became the straw and camel, and only then made its way to the Middle East, where it was translated into Arabic and became a popular phrase. 1,001 Arabic Proverbs; Brian Powell.

(5) Certain roles in movies are written to keep the character's lines to under 5 lines or under 50 words total. This is because the actors guild has rules and salary increases if actors go over the under five rule.

(6) For nominal leases in England, instead of doing a dollar (or pound), they historically do a "peppercorn." Other objects include a rose. Prince Andrew Paid One Peppercorn Annually.

(7) The armistice formally ending WWI was signed by German chancellor Marshall Fochs in train Car 2419 of the Orient Express in 1918. 22 years later, Hitler's troops located the train car in a French museum, and transported it back to the same spot on the same railway, in the same woods, and Hitler personally made Foch's French equivalent in WWI, Marshall Petain, sign France's surrender. The car was later blown up by the SS as the Russians advanced on Berlin in 1945.

(8) Cigarette production in America peaked in 1944 at 300 billion cigarettes. Of those, roughly 75%(!) were consumed by service members

(9) The ikh korig is a 100 square mile area of land in Mongolia that is supposedly Ghenghis Kahn's burial place was guarded continuously by generations of warriors all the way from 1277 to 1923.

(10) Henry Hill-- of Goodfellas fame- was also involved in a significant point shaving scandal for Boston College's basketball team

(11) The term Big Bang was meant as an offhanded put down by English astronomer Fred Hoyle in describing Russian astronomer's George Gamow's theory of the beginning of the universe. Einstein and Hubble had refused to consider the question-- Hubble saying it was like asking how the girl got in the cake, and fellow English astronomers like Hoyle followed suit.

(12) It wasn't until 1977 that the Super Bowl was broadcast in prime time with Super Bowl XII where the Cowboys beat the Broncos, who turned the ball over 8 times (including 7 in the first half!!)

(13) Staff Sergeant Hiroshi "Hershey" Miyamura who fought waves of enemy soldiers during the Korea War before being captured, received the only Medal of Honor classified top secret as he was a PoW at the time. It wasn't until he was released, it was made public 

(14) In addition to the Vatican, there is another small country in Rome, The Knights of Malta, that is only 2 acres and is the only country in the world to have a front door. Charlie Wilson's War; George Crile

(15) No player named Nick has ever played for the Knicks.

(16) Hank Williams died on an overnight interstate car ride on New Years Eve / New Years Day meaning that no one can definitively say what year or what state he died in.

(17) Richard Gere's middle name is Tiffany. (Full disclosure, learned this one from Schitt's Creek)

(18) Smokey the Bear's name was originally hot foot teddy

(19) Polish / polish is the only word in English pronounced differently if a proper noun. The Polish polish Polish poles.

(20) The former capital of Japan is an anagram of the current capital of Japan (answer at the bottom!)

(21) Head to head, women consistently beat men in marathon swimming.

(22) In between WW1 and WW2, the US Army fell to the 16th or 17th largest army in the world (depending on the year) and was much smaller than the armies from Portugal and Greece for instance. American Caesar; William Manchester

(23) There are federal prison consultants who advise rich clients on which prison to request. Rise and Fall of the House of Zeus; Curtis Wilkie

(24) Every single Army in the world is set up in the Officer / enlisted rank divide. The last Army to try to get rid of the rank divide was the Red Army right after WW1 since they felt the separation of ranks went against communism. By the beginning of WW2 they had reinstated it finding running an Army by committee did not work.

(25) The NHL is the only major league that awards its championship trophy to the players and manager. All the other leagues give the trophy to the owner of the team.

(26) Neil Diamond, Barbara Streisand and Bobby Fischer not only attended the same high school, Erasmus High in NY, but were in the school at the same time as junior, sophomore, and freshman respectively.

(27) Abraham Lincoln's only surviving son, Robert Todd, became the general counsel and then the president of the Pullman company and sought to model its porter program on tips only (which is how the tipping culture in America began as detailed in last years learned facts) meaning the son of the president who emancipated people from free labor, then devised a system to use black people (you had to be black to be in the porter union) for free labor.

(28) While the Rio Grande is indeed Spanish for the grand River, in Mexico it's called a different Spanish name-- Rio Bravo, stemming from the fact the two sides couldn't agree to what type of River it was.

(29) In Pashtun, the word cousin also means enemy. Charlie Wilson's War

(30) On April 25, 1962—before he played a game for the Indians—Chiti was acquired by the expansion New York Mets for a player to be named later. However, he was sent back to the Indians on June 15, 1962, after 15 games and a .195 batting average. Chiti was the "player to be named later"; he became the first MLB player to be traded for himself. Three other players have been traded  aded for themselves: Dickie Noles, Brad Gulden, and John McDonald - NYT Crossword, 10 January

(31)The Apollo shuttle weighed 3000 tons on liftoff from the earth. On splashdown its weight was just 7 tons. Challenger; Adam Higginbotham

(32) Breaking the fourth wall on tv or movies is referred to as 'spiking the camera.'

(33) Rush Hour inspired the creation of the website Rotten Tomatoes. Site founder Senh Duong is a big Jackie Chan fan and built the website to collect reviews for all of Chan's Hong Kong films as they were being released in the United States. He coded the site in two weeks putting it up shortly before the release of this film.

(34) At Carlsbad Cave they have lint volunteers of people who remove the lint that falls off people's clothes

(35) You are most likely to die on stage if conducting an orchestra.

(36) Seminole is not an original name of a Native American tribe but instead a name adopted by a mixture of the Yuchi. Creek, and Cherokee Native Americans in the 19th century who were kicked off of better land in Georgia and Alabama and forced to move to then-backwater Florida. The name Seminole means wild wanderer. While the government in the 1850s removed many of them to Oklahoma, 300 or so remained and despite numerous efforts were never captured by the Army. To the present day, there has never been a peace treaty with the Seminole. Orchid Thief; Susan Orleans

(37) There hasn't been a new ski resort built in the US in nearly 50 years. Maxinomics

(38) The baseball catcher Gary Carter, who refused to curse, but was on the notoriously rowdy NY Mets team of 1986 is credited by Merriam Webster with being the person to invent the phrase 'F-bomb' because he refused to say the word "fuck." The Bad Guys Won; Jeff Pearlman

(39) In the 6th century BC approximately 60 million of the 100 million human beings in the world lived in Iran, whose borders were slightly bigger then but essentially haven't changed much in the past 3,000 years.

(40) The NFL used to have double punts where the punting team would kick it and if it was a short punt, the receiver would then kick it back to the other team to try to get better field position. From Bill Belichick.

***For those of you who read to the bottom-- the current capital of Japan is Tokyo. And the previous capital....Kyoto!

Thanks for reading and lets hope for plenty more cool facts in 2026!